My Side of the Circle

A King's Ransom

2011-12-04T02:58:00.000-05:00

I was just wondering today how much is a King's ransom?
Has anyone ever had to get one back? It seems like it might have happened at one time or another..

What do you think?

The Balloon Test

2011-11-12T09:21:00.000-05:00

Is this you?

So, I was watching a show the other day, and okay, it was Ally McBeal's birthday, and Renee bought her 3 helium balloons and as the walked away from the camera view, she let them go. Just seconds after buying them, she just let go of the strings. I don't even remember if she looked up to see them going into the atmosphere or not.

And I wondered, which person are you? Do you let it go, or do you keep it around the house, maybe move it from room to room, or wear it tied to your clothing, or to your child? Really the child does not count in the test.

This is about you. If someone gave you a helium balloon, what would you do with it?

There is no right or wrong answer, it just interests me.

Maintenance

2011-09-18T16:45:00.001-04:00

Suddenly I'm in the maintenance business. Well, okay, it wasn't so sudden, it was more like a gradual change.
The thing is, as you age, your cat ages, your car breaks down, your roof leaks, your teeth break, the house is crumbling around you and you can never get a hot shower when you need one, and spiders, if you allow them, will spin the whole shebang into one shimmering stretchy bundle, if you did not walk face first into it on the way out of the house every day, and spend the next half hour pulling webs out of your hair.Which basically sums up my mornings.

I know I have aged when I start advising young women to pay attention; that they look as good as they ever will despite what they believe and that it will not last forever.

Suddenly under the barrage of pills I must gulp down on an hourly basis, I have to eat less and move more. When we were young, we were moving so fast we had to be slowed down, and now, we forget that we danced half the day away, and after that, walked to almost everywhere we had to go. Particularly in the city, one can walk two miles just getting to work and back. And in those days I did it in high heels.

I don't know if you noticed when you stopped wearing heels. Oprah still wears them, you think, so why don't I? All the makeovers on TV take dowdy home makers and put them in makeup and heels. That would fix at least 75% of everyone's problems. On the other hand, Oprah is taking her shoes off even on camera. If that does not tell you something, then it at least should be pointed out to her. "Oprah, put your damn shoes on girl, you on camera!" (taking a lot of license here, but Gail might say it like that.)

Have you looked at the skin on your legs and arms lately? I advise that you don't, it will just make you cry.
Just sit in a bath of any kind of emollient, I don't care, milk, Aveeno, any oil in the house except motor, (but not too smelly, as it may repel people), and hope to be magically restored before you look.

Of late, my skin has taken on the look of wrinkled, hairy silk, or the traditional (and there's a reason they say it) paper. This makes me sad. I sit in bed slathering moisture lotion all over anyplace I can reach and hoping to hell that I do not slide out of bed or have to wash the sheets. (more maintenance.)

I believe that women do most of the work in this world, and then have to work on themselves.
A couple weeks ago, one of my sheets tore and since then I am on a crusade to find something to replace them. I do not want mushy sheets. I want nice, crisp percale like they used to make. They were just a bit heavier than now, and it did not take 3 years, and that is not hyperbole, to get the sticky little surface stuff to lie down. I have amassed a compendium of complaints. And that's what happens as you age.

You have little patience with incompetence, and you want everything you like to be manufactured perfectly, and forever. Do not get me started on toaster ovens! And you have to pay so much more attention to a corpse which no matter how much attention you show will never look as good as it did when you were 20, with the possible exception of women on TV who have paid crowds of people to do the work for them.

Do not be completely dismayed, however. There are plenty of worse problems in the world, and if one can be solved with body lotion, well, it's a cheap fix. The rest is another story, and you will get through it.

I have to remind myself, no matter how bad it is, and you do not want to know what else is going on here, it could be worse. In the meantime, you are in the maintenance business with me.

Nuts to you

2011-09-08T01:28:00.001-04:00

I found a walnut in the mail box today. It's really just an open container, but still, I think the mailman did it, it was too heavy for a squirrel to carry, and it was still in its green husk.

In other news, I had to chase Squirly Mon (his name) out of the concrete urn. He was reluctant to go because he was burying another damn peanut. I don't know who gives the squirrels peanuts in the shell, and for sure, they are not growing in the yard. For one thing, everything that grows in my yard now gets stolen before it reaches maturity, and for another, peanuts grow underground.

Car Trouble

2011-08-16T06:33:00.000-04:00

The hub's car woke me (and probably the rest of the neighborhood) up at 4:44 this morning. The alarm went off and it was some time before I decided it might be my car and got out of bed to reconnoiter.

Turns out, it was not my car, but his, honking and blinking in the pre-dawn hours. I don't know about the rest of you, but it makes me paranoid to leave the house in the dark to investigate the innards of the car with the front door of the house open. Also, it does not make me feel good to lock the door behind me, making it harder to get back in should there be someone lurking under the giant holly tree.

After the first time I came back in, I had to check the whole house for prowlers. That does not sound bad until you know that there are 3 floors, a basement with 3 closed door rooms, and a walk-in attic.

BOO! That'll get your heart pumping. So I don't know how to get back to sleep yet. I turned on the radio and it is Jazz Fusion time. Not quite mellow enough for me. I'll just listen to the government fail on NPR, that should be soporific.

Meanwhile the car seemed to be locking and unlocking itself, and Volkswagens have this thing where the lights come on when you open the car door, and also when you turn the car off. This is a nice feature when you come home from anywhere and have to collect your bags, and coat and things, and the inside lights stay on until you get out of the car. I believe they may even be called courtesy lights.

The car was just sitting there flashing furiously, and then the lights would turn off briefly, and then they would recommence flashing. I locked and unlocked the car with the key remote to see if that would fix the problem, but it did not, and then, the car locked itself. Whoa, I did not sign up for this!

I got in and out of the car numerous times and played with the inside light controls thinking I had everything off in the front seat, when the back seat lights started flashing at a rapid rate, like my heart from running up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. It was a very eerie sight. Someone alert Stephen King, because the car is alive and I don't know what to do.

Okay, now my return key is not working in blogger. What else is going to short out on me? Because that's what I think is happening. The car is wet from 2 or 3 days of rain. The computer, that's just juju.

I went out again, putting on pants under my nightgown for the second and third trips. I opened the hood, but the battery appeared to be at an inaccessible spot in the engine for my height, in the dark. I thought I could just unhook the battery so the car could not do anything on its own. That was too much for me at 5 am.

Eventually, I went out again and got into the back seat and pushed on the lights. I was gratified, since there were not toggles or switches, that actually pushing on the lights themselves, turned them off. (At least for the meantime.)

Since the last time I got the lights off, I have checked several times. Everything appears quiet, and the sky is lightening up. It is 6:20. If I had a normal job, I'd be waking up now. When you factor in that I fell asleep at 2am, you will realize I probably got little to no sleep at all.

At least it's not hot out.

It's a shame, this is another one of those "I got so mad, I threw my drink across the yard"-( Martin Mull ) articles.

Some people tell you how to grow things, or control mosquitoes in swamps, or how to feed the disenfranchised. I just complain about my extra car. I could tell you worse stories. It's not all fairy tale here, but you don't really want to hear about it, and I really don't want to talk about it.

I just thought I'd talk about supernatural car behavior, then go back to bed.

Good Eats

2011-08-07T22:07:00.000-04:00

When you are alone in the house, you can eat anything you want, and the only person you hurt is....oh yeah, you.

The thing is, that when you live with someone, and you normally eat balanced meals, the kind that have protein, carbs and vegetables, not the applestack from minute to win it, and the other person or people know or believe that you are always eating reasonably you generally follow those rules so as not to get caught stuffing your face while supposedly on a diet. That is to say, until the entire pan of brownies disappears, they think you are in control of yourself.

A while back, half a blueberry cake disappeared and I had to ask 50 questions before I found out that the answer was "my brother and I ate it". Fair enough, but why the subterfuge?

Now I'm in the house alone, and no one knows what is going on here. I want to eat the vegetables, I BUY the vegetables and pretty fruits, and I visit them in the refrigerator when I stop by there to see if any ice cream with caramel has appeared there as if by magic.

I'm trying to get off the meat band wagon, and frankly, that one was easy. Now I am stuck on fried shrimp!
That cannot be totally good for me. The shrimp themselves are iffy, in that they are probably frozen and sold in bulk to the Greek Pizza shop. (remind me some time to tell you about the Pakistani Pizza shop, it may be here someplace) Anyway, those farmed shrimp (and I am guessing here, but it's prob'ly a good guess) that the shrimp are farmed, and as such, they are crowded, and because of that, they are filled full of antibiotics and heavy metals that are floating around in the water from people getting cured of things and flushing their drugs down the toilet. Okay, I totally did not mean to go there...

So for dinner, I had maybe 6 or 7 jumbo fried shrimp with "cocktail sauce". I don't know what they call it, it's a little take out cup with ketchup and a dab of horseradish in it. So I had that, some onion rings, (okay, that's the first time I had those in months), and some giant light green olives that you have to eat around the pit like hand fruit, they are so large, and a bunch of chocolate chips. No cookies, just chips. You save a TON of calories that way.

I am sure there are those of you who will be gasping at the unvarnished nerve of me to admit to such a revolting diet, (that was just dinner) and others who are saying " pish, tosh, I just ate a chicken fried baby whale, and chased it with a red velvet layer cake and a liter of mountain dew!"

So maybe I am not so far out of control as I think I am. I am hoping that by confessing to you, my friends and whatever you are to me, that I will try and behave somewhat before you come asking "How's that little eating problem going?" Or before I bust out of another size of jeans, having already donated all the fat pants earlier this summer, in a burst of optimism. (OH, NO SHE DIDN'T??? Yeah, I did.

So let this little tale of woe be a warning to you buckaroos. (I sent something to Texas today, and I saw Rango last night, and I am taking a little license here .)

Stay on the straight and narrow and eat the fresh food before we all explode in a collective self inflicted massacre. Well, that was weak, but I promise to work on it....

Movies I might See

2011-06-01T10:26:00.001-04:00

I found a list of movies I might be interested in ordering from Netflix. I'm not sure of all of them and I am not recommending any of them. I just thought they looked like a poem, and I have not been so happy with what they pass off as poetry lately in the New Yorker.

so:

Movies I might see

one day
the change up
immortals
what's your number
our idiot brother
thundersoul
the high cost of living
submarine.

Let them read some subtext into that.
Really, is that how it's done?

Twitter News

2011-05-03T14:36:00.000-04:00

I got a message from Twitter the other day. They said the men's gay chorus was following me.
I turned around to see if they really were.
They could be, but I didn't see them.

Wild Thing

2011-05-03T14:23:00.000-04:00

I heard "Wild Thing" on the radio the other day.
It made me think of my very first boyfriend. I don't know if I was ready yet, or if he was, but he thought so, and after a bunch of years of being the ugly girl, I was flattered by his attention.

He was a surfer with a Beatle haircut and exotic eyes like the the very skies above the beach where we met.

I don't know if either of us was the wild thing. I don't remember singing it together, but that is the song which reminds me of him as a young man.

He is grown now with grown up problems different from mine but no easier to deal with. I know where he is, far away from here and that long ago beach. Sometimes I hope he hears a song and thinks of me too.

You never know

2011-03-11T12:06:00.001-05:00

A funny thing happened.
My Father sent me an article from the New York Times Sunday Supplement.

It was about marginalia, the marking up and commenting not merely in the margins of books, but throughout the text, underlining sentences, adding little flourishes of one’s own, including but not limited to stars, brackets, and all manner of marking for reference at a later time.

The writer of the article infuriated me by lyrically extolling his nasty and destructive habit of marking up the pages of books. In fact, to me he sounded overly self congratulatory, actually boasting to writing as much in the margins as there may have been on the original page. To me, this is extreme hubris, and as I understand it, hubris is already extreme.
That he owned the books he had virtually destroyed seemed to me to be beside the point. How distracting to borrow such a volume and try to read through his copious blather? He described just such an incident, and that he needed to borrow back the book while the lendee was still reading. He said that she felt the clean book was somehow lonely.

In my mind this man is a negligent desecrator of the hard work of both author and editor and that instead of creating his own notebook for those meanderings of his mind he preferred to massacre the pristine pages of a new volume.
He even gave historical reference in his defense, possibly not noting that in the 18th and 19th centuries, one did not necessarily have the requisite quill and foolscap at the ready.

I was about to turn the page to finish the article when I discovered that the article sent to me was about soup, and the story about the marginal writer was merely on the outside of the folded pages.

I will probably never read the end of the article, and in any case had read enough of his outlaw ways with the written word. Instead, I will read the soup story intended for me, and perhaps make some nourishing and delicious chowder or stew on this cold and rainy spring day.

What's in a Name?

2011-03-10T11:32:00.001-05:00

I've stopped remembering names. I don't know how it happens, but some time in the last year I just quit.

I read a lot of fiction. Not romance, or historical fiction, but genereally sub-humorous prose with zany characters if I can find it. I like Tim Dorsey and Carl Haiisen ( can never spell that right) but also a lot of women writers, too many to mention. Once I went through a series of baseball and even golf novels, but that's immaterial here.

The thing is that I am reading along and I cannot keep the characters straight. I pick up the book and look in mid sentence where I left off, (I can remember where I left off, that's interesting), but I do not remember the story line, or who these people are. I have to say that if left to my own devices I will read 3 or 4 books a week, and that often the character names overlap so that there may be the same names in consecutive books, or even similar story lines which is purely coincidental, but it adds to the confusion.

I look at the page and wonder is Rory the doctor with a disabling disease, or is she the housewife living multiple lives in another dimention? I don't really know until I have back tracked a couple of pages or just gone forward to see what she does next.

The last book I read had so many characters that I treated them as I had when I read the "Russians" in my youth. The names were so cumbersome I just used the first inital, and raced past those crippling amalgams of consonants jangling in my mind. Eventually, in a burst of inspiration I quit reading them altogether. The book I was reading did not have difficult names, just too many to keep straight.

I forget the names of neighbors and people I meet sporadically, like at once a year parties. I may have spoken to them for an hour, but guaranteed, I will not recall their names 5 minutes or a year later. They, however remember mine, and I have no idea why or how they do.

I will remember your name if I have known you for 20 years or so, but last night in a dream, I forgot the names of some very dear friends. It could be that I have not seen them for years, and they did not look like themselves as sometimes happens in dreams. I woke up troubled.

I'm kind of worried, but most people say we are all forgetting things, and there is some stress to consider.

The thing is, if you run into me and I appear not to know you, just introduce yourself again. I will remember you or be happy to meet you. Does it matter which?

Ms. Information

2011-03-08T13:14:00.000-05:00

I've been looking for work sporadically although I am in dire need. The Etsy is slow going and no computer in the house does not help.

I was wandering aimless in Chico's the other day. I'm not really a Chico's kind of person, more like Salvation army, (the Sal) these days.

I was approached by two sales women, and told them that I had no idea what I was doing there.
Somehow, the next thing I knew, one of the girls told me she was nervous about her upcoming wedding.
"Well, what's the problem?" I butted in once more where anyone else would fear to tread.
She told me they kept adding to the wedding list, and it was out of hand.
"So, tell your boyfriend (of 10 years) to put all new people on a list and have a separate party after the big day."
She liked that a lot.
"I wonder if you could give me another opinion," she continued, "the girls made me register for gifts but we have been living together for 10 years and I have everything, and don't know what to do with all the new stuff!"
Easy, I told her, just keep all the new stuff and donate all the old stuff unless it's heirloom or something.
"Wow", she said, you should wander in here more often!" "Not only will I have great new stuff but I will get credit for doing good for others!" " I love that."
Just another day for Ms. Information I thought. How can I make money doing this?
Let me know if you have a problem or a solution.
I'm open to both.

What's in a Name?

2011-02-03T11:22:00.000-05:00

I have to have a tooth extracted. I had it worked on last year, and it has hurt ever since. I have bounced back and forth from my dentist to the endodontist who did the root canal, both claiming the tooth to be fine, and neither claiming blame for the pain. "that's his tooth" said my dentist. Now it's infected and I'm just having it out. The dental Surgeon's name is Wank. Yes, he's a wanker. Omygod, that's ridiculous, but it sounds like yank and that's close enough for me. I am nervous and expecting pain and misery which is basically what I have now, but with the addition of bleeding. (That's nice dear, could you change the subject?)

The thing is, I have noticed lately that people are once more becoming what their name tells you they are, as in mideval times. So the woman doing my alterations is named Taylor, for instance.

One day I went with a friend who was getting Lasik Surgery on her eyes. I don't know if you can get it any place else, but that's what we were doing. She was holding on to me so hard, the doctor must have thought we were a couple, and when he finished explaining the proceedure, he asked "do you have any questions, Meg?"

I said "Well, Dr. Foot, I would feel a lot better if your name were Iris or something, but other than that I have no qualms."

So that's my day, how's yours?

Feel free to write me.

Visit me wouldja?

2011-01-18T13:01:00.000-05:00

I might mention the shop is still open. Chandeluse.etsy.com. I have loaded it with home made (hand made) valentine jewelry and boxes. Still working on cards. I never print them out correctly so it's difficult, and for a woman who hopes to become a writer, I am surprisingly bad at greeting cards.

Remark

2011-01-18T12:59:00.002-05:00

Sorry I have been MIA. I have to type at the library and I have 9 minutes left so i gotta keep this short.
I was talking with the hub and he said :
Fast food always has cheese in it somewhere. Whether you order a milk shake or a salad there's cheese in there somewhere.

I hope it makes you laugh too.

Holy Cow

2010-12-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

At the thrift shop the Cristmas music was playing. Not my favorite tune but it kept building and building until it took my mind off the search for designer presents and I thought... that woman is singing her guts out here, and she is darned good! Just as I was thinking that, one of the workers passed behind me in mid sentence " So's I told them to go to Sears and Robot"..
Yes SHe Did!
Celine Dion finished O holy night, and we got on with our day.

A very Merry to any of you who are left. There's no computer in the house, so my midnight rambles are turned to library nocturnes.

Which Hand?

2010-11-05T17:35:00.002-04:00

Nory went to see her friend in Brooklyn. It took a lot of effort because she did not like to drive far, or to places where she had never been before, or not driven to before.

They wandered around the streets, stopping for snacks, and watching the beautifully costumed children trick or treat from store to store.

As they crossed one street, Nory noticed something sparkling on the asphalt. She scooped up a crystal drop earring. Scanning the street for possibly the other earring, she found a steel nut that had come loose from something or other.

Jon was waiting on the other side of the street, looking quizzical. What's going on? he asked.

Putting out two fists, Nory said choose one hand, and Jon picked one. It was the nut. So he took the nut, still looking at Nory like; what gives?

Nory opened her other hand, showing him the jewel inside.

You found that on the street? he asked, And I got the nut?

You chose the nut, Nory told him while pocketing the earring, and taking his arm in hers, they continued down the street.

CSI Home: The Case of the Missing Redhead

2010-10-28T11:16:00.000-04:00

Waiting for an important call, I realized I had ignored the state of the house for about 6 weeks. I decided to get with it.

While swabbing the kitchen floor, I decided to break at the oven and spray it with cleaner. That should take about 2-3 hours to eat through to enamel. (for more on this see: Accidents in the home).

Climbing the stairs, I noticed: they were disgusting. All manner of dirt dust and hair remained on the treads. Wearing my trusty Platex Living Gloves, (I think they actually might call them that although outside of the bubble boy I don't know who would call that living..) I climb one stair at a time rubbing furiously at the back edge and then sides and middle.

The resulting debris resembled a hairy bowling ball. There was soooo much hair! Obviously I had been there at least once.

This put me in mind of all those detective shows. Come on, they find one hair on the victim, and it's crime solved? I had enough evidence to convict myself a billion times over. I had hair there from when I was a redhead.

Wait a second.... I've never BEEN a redhead!

Case open pending further investigation.

Soup's On!

2010-10-20T22:36:00.000-04:00

Let me just run this one by you:
Rotisserie chicken soup.thrifty or pathetic?
Discuss amongst yourselves.

Recipe:
One mostly denuded chicken carcass
4-6 cups of water
large carrot cut up
stalk of celery with leaves on
half an onin large hunks
salt, pepper
parsley whole
include that dark jelly stuff on th bottom of the plastic chicken garage thing, that's the flavor package

Boil till it smells like grandma's house,( 2-3 hours) taste. If it's too weak cook it down some more. Eventually it should taste good. Then you can add:
leftover chicken
more smaller carrot and celery and onion pieces, sweated,
lentils (handful)
rice (some)
whatever...
maybe kale or spinach
maybe little pale meatballs
red bell pepper, if your stomach can take it
cumin, curry or Chinese 5 spice powder
you can take it from here,
I'm just waiting for the broth to cool.
And that's che sera cooking for today. enjoy!

Sexy Costumes

2010-10-14T12:57:00.000-04:00

I was tooling about the web the other day, when I saw a link for interesting Halloween Costumes. I am interested in costumes because they allow us, for a limited time only, to wear the stuff that would be ridiculous, outre', or just plain unappropriate most of the time.

I was disgusted to find that most of the costumes for women consist of mainly undergarments. It used to be that you would go to a party and everyone was a French Maid or wearing a catsuit, but now, everyone who dares, just puts on some underwear.

Even if it's unusually pretty, I don't want to see you without clothing. My friend Bob once went as Jesus Christ, but due to his stocky build, we all thought he was baby New Year. That loincloth looked way too diaper for us. Plus, it was cold.

One year I went as the Bride of Frankenstein. Too bad, I don't have a photo for you, but Mom was out of film or something. As I was driving through the turnpike, lightning in my hair, eyebrows severely altered, black lips, and bandages hanging from my arms, the toll guy leaned out of the booth and remarked: you look really hot tonight. He did not know me, and so he did not know how I looked every other night, and the party was about a week from Halloween. I'm still not quite sure what that was about, but it's a good story, and it's true.

When I got to the party, there were a load of catsuits, but I had my choice of suitors, and eventually chose a gorilla with an oversized tie. I thought the tie was an extra effort. He turned out to be Mr. wrong, inviting me over by saying "why not come over and make me dinner? I bought some kind of meat."

He was not sure what kind of meat he had bought, and from experience I knew he had not even salt and pepper with which to season said mystery meat.

I told him in no uncertain terms that it was not a good invitation. "You say, come over I have a mink coat, and some kind of meat, or perhaps; I have roses, champagne and chocolates, and some kind of meat." I suggested.

He did not think I was funny, or even helpful, which I really was, and when, a couple years later, he was to marry a young woman, I wondered how he had managed to convince her. It certainly was not his manner.
Maybe it was the gorilla suit.

Weather or Not

2010-10-14T12:37:00.000-04:00

I was going to go out today, but the threat of near-flood conditions deters me. In fact, I would probably just spend money, and I'd just as soon make money as spend it. I should be listing my entire house on different sites, but as of now I only have a hundred or so listings split between Amazon, Etsy (chandeluse), Ebay and Craigslist.

It's kind of boring, listing things online, and yet, when someone buys your stuff, you get such a happy rush, it's instant confirmation either of your good taste and refinement, or of your canny observation of the market. Either way, it makes you feel good to have a little cash come in when you have not worked yourself to the bone to earn it.

I could spend this time writing, listing, or making things to list. So far, the making things to list has been the most useless, as my main site sells Vintage items, and evidently Etsiers prefer their home-made to be separated from their vintage.
To go farther, it seems that they prefer their shops to sell only one item at a time, such as; soaps, party invitations, or portraits of Marie Antoinette.
I'm not sure why Marie is so popular, other than, we kind of wish we could march around looking like an elegant parade float or custom cake, more than we wish to wear the type of boring, don't pay me any mind couture we generally have around the house. It's kind of interesting, because most of us would rather be Marie Antoinette than Lady Gaga. Think on that, for a while, and get back to me about it.

Pumpkin Carving 101

2010-10-06T22:38:00.002-04:00

I tend to digress a lot here, so bear with me. Probably I should have edited more generously, but frankly most of it amuses me, and so you can be the judge.

Pumpkin Carving 101

The first thing you must do is find a suitable child. You might think that a pumpkin would be the first item on your list but you would be mistaken.

I don’t particularly recommend using children for many activities, but they are the most fun to carve pumpkins with.

My mother used to buy unusual shaped pumpkins and keep them around the house for indefinite periods of time. One year around January, I felt that this had gone far enough and enlisted my 6-year-old sister to help make the Jack-o-lantern. We had the very best time and the next day; no one at school would believe her story of pumpkin carving while there was snow on the ground. I got in trouble for destroying the squash. I still do not know for what purpose it was intended that we had to keep it for so long.

I do not recommend borrowing a child without parental permission, it is just not done, but let’s say you have a kid, maybe you are related to one of an age that will still be captivated with an activity where knives are wielded at vegetables for no practical purpose, and you can go together to get a pumpkin. I am going to leave you to your own devices at this point, buy, grow, pick, steal, whatever, depending on how fast you can run towing a small child and one or more pumpkins.

Once home in the kitchen, arm everyone involved with smocks or aprons. Count on getting everything sticky and messy.

On another occasion, ( I know, I TOLD you about the digressing) I had baked a large hubbard squash in the oven to use as pie filling. Lifting the pan proved slippery and the entire pan fell to the floor and splashed up to a spectacular height of seven feet. As I was slipping around the kitchen in orange goo, a telemarketer called, and like a fool, I answered the phone, thus applying gunk to one more surface. “I can’t talk now, I told the woman, I have pumpkin up to here.” She failed to believe me. That's the problem with my life, too many true incidents that just seem like they must not have really happened.

Newspaper is the traditional covering for your table. It is plentiful in most homes and in addition to slime; you can get newsprint all over everything. This is part of the gestalt of the deal. Note: Papers were plentiful before the national newspapers went to hell, and also before the advent of recycling, but I know of a house that is standing mostly because of the newspapers amending the strength of the walls.

The next step, planning the decoration, is a good place to use the child. Give it a large marker, be specific that it can draw only on the pumpkin or the paper, and let it go. Try not to be picky. If you are not happy with their design, you can make your own as the pumpkin has continuous sides. I kind of like making 2 or 3 faces per pumpkin, and they cast more light that way.

Cut the top off of the squash in question. An irregular cut will make you look like less of an idiot trying to make it fit again. Any attempt to make it an even circular cut will result in you spinning it endlessly over the opening and dropping it back inside with some frequency. A zigzag somewhere along the edge will remedy your lid conundrums. Also, try to cut at an angle with the widest part at the top and the smaller part towards the inside.

The next step is everyone’s favorite, and if it is not, you will thank me for advising you to invite a small person. Put all hands inside the hole in the top and wiggle your fingers and squish the seeds between your fingers, making jokes with your small person or not, as you wish. This part engenders merriment whether or not you have good comic material, and kids have their own ideas as to just what constitutes humor, and will let you know, whether you are interested or not.

You will probably have to scrape out the insides unless your child is particularly adept, as well they might be, knowing it is your child, who is, as we all know, smarter than ours.

All that is left is to cut out your pattern, and the powers that be are not holding us to faces anymore. You can make spooky trees, owls, ghosts or perhaps a replica of Mount Rushmore, as you please.

I would do this part myself, as handing tots cutlery is tantamount to mayhem and that parents frown on getting their child back with missing parts. During this boring (for them) interval, give them a bowl of the seeds to play with, that being the most delightful part of it anyway, and try not to be too hard on yourself if things are not perfect.

Put a candle inside, leave the lid off and turn off the lights and make spooky noises at each other. This should kill at least another one minute until your child lender comes to retrieve their progeny and berate you for overindulgence.

What a happy life! Rid yourself of the messy small persons, or rush them to the tub to clean off the excess squash. Pour yourself a drink and congratulate yourself on a job well done. You are now ready for Halloween. Or perhaps not, but you have made the attempt, and that is what matters.

The women are smarter

2010-09-23T02:21:00.000-04:00

I was in the GYN office, not particularly wanting to be there, and feeling kind of tired. I was resting my head on my arms which were crossed over one side of the chair arm, much akin to napping in school but to the side.

From somewhere in the middle of the line of chairs a woman reads aloud from a magazine; "A man does not know anything about a woman until he gets married."

From my odd perspective both physical and mental, not missing a beat, I reply "A man does not know anything about a woman until he asks her."

A man's voice sounds from the far corner, "That's the smartest thing I heard all day". Then a lively discussion ensued.

Glad to be of help, I said, just as my name was called.

Midnight Ramble

2010-09-21T02:53:00.001-04:00

When you are alone in the house, you don't have to play by the rules. You can get up, walk around, eat stuff you are not supposed to, blog all night, etc. Frankly, my eating is off, and a good thing too, I am losing weight like crazy but my clothes still fit. (drat!) Also, I am not eating like a hog, but I decided not to cook for a while. You do not know what a relief that is!

I picture myself just tossing out what's in the fridge, day by day, as if in a short film:
Monday: smell milk, if questionable, spill down sink, rinse jug and put in recycling container. All of this is taken from a rear view as if the camera is behind me.

Tuesday: Attack the veg bin, look for leakage or soppy vegetables, put in compost pile, clean out drawer.

You get the general picture. I can take all the canned stuff to the food bank at the church across the street. For some reason they specialize in harboring immigrants. Go figure people out, I sure don't understand it, but maybe they will love my old cans of chinese mushrooms and water chestnuts. (I like to be prepared for all contingencies).

So, the big deal is that I got a glass of ice water, and came up to write this. I was asleep but a wrong number woke me at 12:30 and I spent some time switching back and forth between Jimmy Fallon and Craig Ferguson. They were both pretty funny, but I hate the comercials.

I'm sleeping on half the bed. It saves a lot of bed making time in the morning. That's another rule you can break. You can sleep any way you want, sideways, for instance, but I don't recommend it. Bad feng shui.

This is not as funny as I had envisioned it. I had some deal in my head about making something with the "magic bullet blender" that you buy on paid for TV. I forget what I was thinking of making now, so that's lame. Those deals are so bizarre. I can just see people at home thinking; yeah, that seems like such a great deal, and I can give the extra (fill in the blank here) to my sister... but of course, they are mostly crap, plastic crap, made in china and guaranteed to break very soon after opening and quizzling around with the chinese goofy translated instructions. (as if anyone ever reads instructions).
The Ikea instructions are goofy too, in that they are mostly pictograms, but odd. Why should I put the dried cod in the sofa bed, you are wondering, looking at the booklet. Where can I put all these stupid allen wrenches after the book case is together that I won't lose them? They end up in the kitchen junk drawer, and eventually you find them and toss them because you forgot what they go to, and then the book case starts to wobble..... you know how that works.

The other night I went to the movies alone. It's little screening room, and I was the only one there. I took a seat in a minimally uncomfortable tub chair with a table, arranged my water and gummy bears, and had a little show just for me. How decadent, and indeed how wonderful.

I saw The Extra Man starring Kevin Kline (he was in A Fish Called Wanda). This one was kind of a strange movie. He was a down on his luck ex-playwright who is a walker for old women in New York, and he rents part of his crappy apartment to a young man with a curiosity about women's undergarments. Yeah, it got a bit wierd, but it was oddly uplifting, and had a happy ending. I laughed, I cried, yada yada yada, I'm not so good with book reports or movie reviews, as you may have noticed. Anyway, it was pretty stupendous. And then I walked the 2 blocks back home where I could do anything I wanted, and didn't.

What do you do alone in the house? Tell me a story. I'm thinking of sending a prize to the winner. It's a secret prize. Might be on my Etsy Store. http://chandeluse.etsy.com/ tell me what you might pick.

I fall Down

2010-09-13T09:07:00.000-04:00

the garage

Well, I fell down the other day. I wanted to tell people "I took a header" but no one knows what that means any more.

I did not break a hip. In fact, I don't think I broke anything larger than my humility, but I can feel a bruise high up on my chest. I think I actually bruised a rib.I can't see anything though.

Oh yes, and my knees, you don't want to see that.

So now, I am just achy and scabby, like a couple of cowpokes out on the prairie. My sister asked if I went to the hospital, but I don't think that's where you go for skinned knees.

I'm not sure why I'm telling you this. I should really tell you about the neclace and broken bracelet I bought at the yard sale right before this, but I have not taken a photo yet.

Man! this computer keyboard is really loud this morning!

So, I was at my neighbor's yard sale, she is in the friends of the animals, (no kidding) and was a professional estate sale type. She's sort of retired, but cannot resist other people's stuff. She always wants to get together for lunch but continues to forget that I do not know her last name or phone number, so when she called later to see if I was okay, I still did not have her phone number to call back.

I gotta walk over there.

I gotta walk a lot, because in the fall, I get so achy, I could die. If you walk, it takes all the pains away, don't know why. It's as if nature just sucks all the ache out of you. Try it, won't you? It could not hurt. Just do a couple of blocks and build yourself up. At one point I was doing about 4 miles each morning, if I can believe my pedometer. I'm going to say it works, and that it was four whole or part miles I used to walk.

Git along, lil' dogie, but don't fall down.

Better Living Through Chemistry.

2010-09-10T20:29:00.000-04:00

It's definitely fall and I'm so relieved. This summer has been a veritable hell, what with the weather and the health decline, etc. I've had just the most terrible day, and yet, right near the finish line, I have sold an item, and that cheers me up again.

It was my grandfather's mortar and pestle. He was a chemist, and being born in the 1800's, chemistry was tantamount to alchemy. He loved everything natural that could be produced artificially. It was new, exciting, and he had tons of ideas.

He was kind of old already when my Dad and his Brother were born, so he was not a ball player, or anything like that, but he had his charms.

He looked like Teddy Roosevelt. He made us bubble bath and a giant bubble wand to play with in the yard.
He grew hydroponic tomatoes in the 1940's in his basement. Dad said they were as big as your head, but tasted like water.

Also, he gave me a solar motor in the 1960's. It was set up in a cigar box, and spun a striped circle so you would get dizzy watching it. He also gave me a black light, and a bunch of metallic stones that glowed under it. That was fun, sort of.

He also figured out how to blow artificial scents from the fronts of stores so that people would be lured in to buy coffee, or pastries, anything like that. He left a formulary, which tells me how to make cosmetics out of chemicals, so backward, but for him so modern.

So, I'm a little sad about letting it go. Aside from that I have a few tiny little chemistry pots and lenses, and that's about it. I have the memories, and that is what I will keep.

Looks at Books

2010-08-27T17:25:00.000-04:00

courtesy of Amazon.com

photo courtesy of Amazon.com

This week's favorite: Aimee Bender's the Particular Sadness of Lemon cake.

It's about a girl who can taste the emotions of the people who have made the food she eats. It's a terrible experience, but she follows it along, and makes peace with it eventually. Her family is of course, disjointed and disaffected and do not believe what she is saying.

I loved the writing. And needless to say, I was entranced by the story. You might want to find this one. It's very popular.

Summer Corn

2010-08-26T17:32:00.000-04:00

Do me a favor.

Go to Johnson's farm. They have turned it into the kind of circus that will hurt your stomach, but you'll live.

In fact, I'd be surprised, if by the end of the day, you have not taken over.

Buy some corn, a couple of ears. Okay, maybe you have corn in the yard, maybe you don't eat it anyway.

Boil it for 6 minutes. If the stove is in the same shape as the truck, build a fire outside and boil it for 6 minutes.

Cut it off the cob. This goes against all reason, but since the braces went on, and even when they came off, I have done this, and the corn falls to the plate in little sections.

I used to call them books of corn.

Eat them that way (use a fork). No butter, no salt, no anything else.

That's the way I'd do it.

A Little Night Music

2010-08-16T01:16:00.001-04:00

Nory was not sleeping at all. The air was cool but damp, and it was difficult to acchieve the right combination of warm and tired.

She was thinking about an ex of hers who was living in Cape Cod one winter. He came down to get her and brought her back to a knotty pine house barely furnished but for a grand piano and a couch in the living room.

He had a bed, of course, and they would listen to the radio at night, falling asleep. The radio had no knobs so they had to put a dime between the prongs to turn the dials.

When she got there, she found a jazz station that played wonderful soft nightime music from the thirties. Together, falling asleep they heard big bands play slow numbers and Billie sing the sad blues.

When Nory went home for a while, Kenneth called her to say he could not find the station anywhere.

It is as if it only plays when you are here by me, he said.

What happened to clock radios? Nory thought just before drifting into slumber.

Two great books

2010-08-12T11:55:00.000-04:00

Both these books are wonderful! I would love to write like either one. The Contssa's New Machine is a twisted little fairy tale, but plausible story, beautifully written by Carey Wallace.

How Did You Get This Number is stories and observations by Sloane Crosley who just kills me, you will love the way she thinks. Also by Sloane is I Was Told There'd Be Cake. A similar book with different stories. Happy Reading!

Breakfast of Champions

2010-08-12T11:05:00.006-04:00

In which we find out that all new recipes need a trial run or three.
At the farmer's market last week I found a free sample of peach- nectarine cobbler and the recipe printed nicely on heavy weight cardstock. The cobbler was delicious if a bit too sweet so I took the recipe and bought a basket of nectarines, nice name, that.

No one really knows what nectar tastes like but the nectar you get in cans, surely must not be a food of the gods, should it?

So yesterday I decided that I would make this dessert, even though I was a bit short of the actual ingredients.

This I have called Che Sera Cooking, which is kind of make do and usually does, but with caveats. For more of this style see: oatmeal cookies.
Okay, so, it was supposed to be made with peaches and nectarines, but having way too many nectarines, I decided to go with them. They tell you to use the largest pyrex pan and I was melting the butter in it so I would not have to wash another pot, and I notice there is only one cup of flour in the recipe. That spelled disaster right there, so I pulled it out of the oven and transferred the half melted butter to the next size down, oblong baker. I was talking on the phone to my sister while this dangerous exchange was going on, and holding the phone with my shoulder and giving her a blow by blow account of the proceedings.

Then, you are supposed to use whole milk, but I had buttermilk which needed to be used, so I use that. With buttermilk, you should use baking SODA not Powder because of the acid thing, but I used it anyway. I used the full 1 T of Powder even though that seems to be a ludicrously large amount given the low ratio of flour.

Also, it's supposed to cook at 375 degrees but on my oven 375 is actually 400 but I forget and it cooks at, what, 350?

And it still is incredibly tasty.

I started this blog to write short stories, and there are some early on if you want to go back there, but now I am writing hair complaints and recipes, and I suppose that could get me more readers,which would be great, but it's not the glorious prose I had planned. Please, feel free to send people to the recipe and the blog.

Here's the recipe:

Melt one stick (1/2 C of unsalted butter) in the smaller of the two pyrex rectangles, about 8x11.
Take two nectarines and two peaches and peel if you want, but I did not.
Slice thinly (not too thin) and put in a pot with 1/2C sugar and 1T lemon juice and boil lightly about 4 min the fruit will be wilted and the juices will start to thicken.

Mix in a bowl: 1cup flour (it says one, but I think it might need more), 1/2 tsp salt, and 1T baking powder, and another 1/2to3/4C sugar and whisk to mix.

Add 1 cup of whole milk and stir to make a batter. Really, use the milk.

Pour the batter into the butter in the pan, spread around (I did not quite do that right) and then add the fruit mixture on top, try to blob it all over instead of just in the center like I did, and put it into a 375 degree oven for 40-45 minutes until golden brown on top. put a cookie sheet underneath in case it boils over. I don't know if it will rise more with the real milk.

There you go. Foolproof, wouldn't you say?

The Farmer

2010-08-08T21:02:00.000-04:00

I have a friend whom I have known for most of my life.
He has of late become a recluse, a rower, a musician, a hoarder, living in ever mounting levels of squalor and deshabille.

He is the smartest, most self reliant person I have ever met.
He is also quite manipulating.
And
He is barking mad.

It's a conundrum.

Tees

2010-08-06T10:59:00.003-04:00

I have a pile of t shirts on the floor of my craft room. I was supposed to be making skirts or something else useful out of them.

The fact is, I'm procrastinating. The first skirt, though I wore it several times, was not quite right, with the picture showing right at crotch level.

I should have cut it out, and made it into a pocket or something, but I did not want to cut it into so many bits, and it was still to be proved that my sewing machine would work on t shirt fabric.

I did not realize, until I took that photo, quite what a mess my studio has turned into.

Everywhere are piles of things to be sold on the internet. Maybe it's just under that one table that things have gone completely wrong. I know a lot of people who live in piles of junk.

I am the one who organizes their stuff and makes them give up a lot of it to recycle, or donate or trash if they have to. How is it that I have come to this junction?

I blame it on the people who are not buying the stuff I need to get out of here.

I could blame myself for not cleaning up. I am something of a neatnik, but lately, I need to find things that have sold, that are found at the bottom of that pile. Actually, they are in a box, or were until recently.

Fantasy being preferable to admitting slobbery, I'm going with that.

Banking Blues

2010-08-06T10:33:00.000-04:00

I got an email saying there was something wrong with my bank log on. I called the bank and they said it was a spam, but since I could not log on online, they looked into it.

"You responded to a spam in March, they said, so we disconnected your online log on".

What? I've been getting bills, and paying them. I check to see what I've bought that costs so much, and I don't see anything fraudluent going on. There was a lot of who's on first with various Indian and non Indian persons. I could not decipher the names of any of them.

What they never made clear was how I could tell if the "spam" was really pork or something they sent me.

Now my card is cancelled. No more fraudulent purchases from me. I have to go back to March and see if there is anything odd there. Another headache courtesy of the 21st century.

Ben Franklin didn't have to put up with this crap.

Concert Disaster

2010-07-28T14:26:00.000-04:00

Last night we went to a concert of the orchestra. Our neighbor gave us free tickets, as she was playing that night as a percussionist, her actual job.

The guests were Condoleeza Rice and Aretha Franklin. I don't know who would make such a connection between the two, but someone did.

Miss Rice, Condie came the shouts from around us, was elegant and played the most simple part of the most simple piano concerto that exists. She did not play as a professional, and might rather have played in someone's living room, but backed as she was by a major orchestra, performed competently, and made no big fuss. She had a large contingent of strident fans in the audience.

Miss Franklin sailed onto the stage as an ocean liner, her giant silver satin dress and coat breaking the non- existant waves before her. She looked as beautiful as she ever could. She was easy and made jokes for the crowd. She moves with grace, and large sweeping arm gestures.

Behind us were some women who were students and singers classically trained. They were excited to see the concert, and said so. There was plenty of time before the concert, and surrounding us were a lot of people, maybe 100 or so, all sitting on blankets on the lawn. It was almost cool,and no insects annoyed us. People were serving picnic dinners that ranged in complexity from full course meals, to wine, to water and a large bag of cherries. Everyone was excited but relaxed.

It was an unfortunate choice, but Aretha, instead of simply hiring back up singers, brought with her, a piano player, a synthesizer guy, and two women dressed in black and dangerously wielding tambourines. It seemed that there was also an electric bass and a guitar who were not part of the orchestra. There were still a good lot of the orchestra on stage, but against their will, the orchestra had to put up with sometimes playing with a CD in the background that added all the funky bits and backup singers.

What was left of the orchestra were stuck on the stage not playing for the better part of an hour.

I ask you; you get a world class orchestra to play behind you, and you make them sit still while you play a CD of the Blues Brothers ? Why not let them leave the stage? Why pretend? I will tell you, the orchestra members were really peeved. They are not old fuddy duddies, they like Aretha, the crowd loved Aretha, but that music switch was a major mistake.

And then... she tried to sing opera. Yes SHE DID! Oh baby, it was not good at all. Her voice is strong but failing in the slightest way, and several times she dropped her voice by an octave, just to get on with it.

By the end, we all felt badly for her. She was making those ear splitting sounds mostly related to Patti LaBelle, but not in key, and we were in misery. People in the audience were howling like dogs. I only hope that she did not hear them.

One of the women behind us crawled to speak into my ear, "I am classically trained, and this is not good!"
No, I replied. It is not good. The lawn crowd was dashing for the exits. The singer behind me left even though she needed to use a cane to do so, and she split so fast I did not even see it.

Then Aretha invited one of the Isley Brothers onstage. He was in his mid to late sixties, wearing a white suit. It was hard to tell if he came from backstage or the audience, and he was either not a fan of Streisand, or just did not know "They way we were", or could not get a note in. It was an odd choice, but we felt like she had a connection to this man in the past. People cheered wildly, ignoring the quality of the singing.
It was out of respect mostly.

THEN she announced that she would sing the National Anthem and we all stood up. And instead, she sang Our Country 'tis of Thee, and we all sat back down.

We waited by the stage entrance for our neighbor who was driving. The Orchestra members rushed out, clutching their instruments to their chests, lips tight, ears ringing.

We did the breakdown in the car, describing what we heard, and what she heard at the back of the stage behind the percussion instruments. By the end of the ride we were laughing a lot, enjoying the night, and the company.

We had a really good time.

I write like.....

2010-07-26T10:39:00.000-04:00

I went to http://iwritelike.com/ and put in two different blog posts.
Evidently, I write like Margaret Atwood, and David Foster Wallace, high praise indeed!

It's some kind of computer so it doesn't know I actually write like Erma Bombeck. You may not know her as she has shrugged off this mortal coil, but she was hilarious! She wrote about her home and life as many of us do, but things go awry in her life, as they do in mine.

Anyway, I'll take that misplaced praise any day. Please, pass it on, I need more readers, but I love my two faithfuls!

I must mention that it rained last night, and I finally had a great night's sleep with the windows open!! (party horns sound in the background) How about you?

Dog days

2010-07-25T12:12:00.002-04:00

I don't know why they call it the dog days. As far as I know, dogs don't like it any better than we do but since their "sanitary facilitiy" is outdoors they gotta go and drag their humans with them.

I suppose that picking up your dog's stuff is better than leaving it in the park for others to step in, and having at least once stepped in it, I gotta say the whole world is better off not having to wipe anything off their shoes.

It's a good thing dogs don't chew gum, but if they did, they'd probably swallow it. Humans think it's okay to stick under furniture or spit out on the ground where... yes, it gets on your shoes. Particularly when it's hot like this.

One time when I lived in the city I had to change a headlight. I took the car ( white honda civic) to a parking lot where I could sit on the curb to perform this operation. I was wearing my red Italian jumper and white faux ostrich cowboy boots. (Shut up! it was adorable!)

When I went to pull my legs out from under the car, they did not come??? How does that work? My legs were stuck, yes, stuck in gum. For no known reason I did not at that point take off the boots. That would have been sensible, but I thought I would just put a napkin from the glove compartment on the gas pedal and it would be okay.

It was not as okay as I would have liked. I drive a stick, so as I drove the thin crappy napkin form a fast food chain stuck to all three pedals, tearing to bits.
The more I drove, the messier it became, and when I opened the window the pieces of napkin swirled around my head like I was a post modern snow globe. I flailed my arms wildly, trying to see the city traffic around me.

Sometimes my life is a situation comedy. I tell these stories to people and they think I it's hyperbole. My nephew said about one story: Aunt Meg, that is not a story, that's a movie.

And so although my dreams of stardom went unfulfilled, at least my life is cinematic.

I don't know what became of the dog story. It was an interesting premise, but not having a dog shortened it up a good deal.

Have a good day, won't you? And please, pick up after yourself, and the dog.

Thank you.

Caleb Hawley

2010-07-23T10:05:00.000-04:00

I went to a free outdoor concert last night. It was a young man singer, songwriter who came to our town at the behest of the local musical impresario and harmonica artist, Bob Beech. nice guy, that Bob.

Anyway, he was sort of James Taylor meets Paul Simon.

He was adorable, infectious, energetic, had a wonderful singing voice and presence.

It was quite enjoyable even though I chose to sit on a tree root, which was dicey.

Look him up. listen to his songs: calebhawley.com.

Hair

2010-07-23T09:56:00.000-04:00

I haven't washed my hair in several days, despite the heat.
It feels like it might crawl off my head.
And still it looks quite gorgeous,
though I've just jumped out of bed.

I don't photograph well, so, no pic.

Unhealthful Eating

2010-07-20T17:37:00.001-04:00

I am fighting the dreaded GERD, reflux, that is. Evidently my whole family has some version of it, and I have had to give up seltzer. What the heck next, I ask. No coffee, no tea, no fruit juices, all herbals are suspect, no mint in the no tea.... I gotta say, there's got to be a positive way to say this, and I'm really trying.

How 'bout: I can drink all the water I want! Woooooooo!

Yeah, I thought as much.
In other words, if it keeps the phegm out of my throat and brings back my singing voice, then I've got to be all for it.

Here's a laugh.. remember all those fruits and leafy greens and whole grain whatsis we are supposed to be eating? They told me not to. I don't know what to replace them with as french fries, chips, guacamole, anything with a tomato or onion in it or vinegar or dairy food is also out of the question. It's a trial and error thing.

I went to Barnes and Noble but they only had one book which, after telling you what not to eat, told you to eat everything they told you not to. Yes, I concur.

Let me know if you have a good idea. I see Jello in my future.

What to wear?

2010-07-16T17:24:00.001-04:00

Okay troops, Sorry about that last entry, it was on my mind, but sometimes, I should just keep it to myself.
This one is more all inclusive.

I have to go to a christening.
I have to find something to wear. You can make the call
They are not necessarily in that order. You will be able to identify and assess the outfits named.
1. Blue flowered April Cornell dress, white shoes. It's one piece, but it gaps at the bust, makes my ass look gigantic, and maybe it's a little out of date or frumpy?

2. Black gaucho pants with a lively flower print, (so cute) a sleeveless black knit top (gaps at the armpits) and black shoes. 2 pieces, the waist of the pants is 3" high and elastic. I had to take some of the elastic out so I would not lose a kidney, they were bothering me there. And the top is almost fine,which means not quite fine, and at least one sister will make a remark.

3. Linen pants, silk top, silk cardigan, all shades of beige. This is my possible favorite? But the pants have gotten quite thin, I don't know if you can see through them, the silk under top has really long armpits and my bra shows, so I have to keep the sweater on.
It's 95 degrees. None of that is going to look crisp for more than 6 minutes. I am not a beige person but I thought it would be elegant? I don't know who I'm trying to kid.

4. The black and white nylon knit dress. Makes my rear look huge, and I have to suck in my gut the whole time. The V neck is too low and I have to pin it shut. The place where it is now pinned is good but shows maybe too much cleavage, so...

You be the judge. Don't hold back, just tell me. Okay, I gotta add pictures, but not with me in them, that just does not work. P.S. Keep in mind, that the dummy is a size 4-6 and I am a very short waisted busty size 12, and that while I can see things may need more pressing, this it.

Thanking you in advance. I know you'll do the right thing.

Traffic of the Dead

2010-07-14T14:56:00.000-04:00

I was driving to the thrift store today when I was thrown off by constuction. I had to go out to a major artery and make a left turn on a busy street where there was no light, and constant traffic was not stopping to let you in.

Anyway, there were 2 cars in front of me and a school bus in front of them. What is the holdup? I wondered.
It was a humongous funeral. I know this is a touchy subject, so bear with me. It was a long line of cars with those little flags on the fronts and placards in the window. My view was though the gas station pumps to the left of me. If there were a building there, there would have been nothing to see at all.

Who died? Could have been a policeman? That happens a lot lately in Philadelphia. But then people die every day. I knew it was not George Steinbrenner. He does not live anywhere near here.

I often think that when I die, no one will attend. Possibly one of my sisters, but that's it. There was no funeral for Mom, nobody was up for that. But that's my family.

A lot of the time when someone you know dies, or even when it's a relative of someone you know, you feel obligated to go to the funeral. Not always, but you know which ones you just have to attend. If you are powerful, well loved, or knew a lot of people, your funeral will be well attended, and like the funeral I saw this morning, tie up traffic for blocks.

Traffic is funny. People get all bent out of shape if you are not going fast enough, or forget a turn signal (which is dangerous, and rude at the same time), but everyone stops and gives the right of way for a funeral.

It's as if you rate higher on the respect scale dead, than you did alive. What's that about?

Where is the New Yorker when you need them?

2010-07-10T01:32:00.000-04:00

I just went back and read the first year of this blog, and I have to say I was amused for several hours

Try it: just go to the end, or like February of 2005 and start there. See if you don't have some fun.

Heat Wave

2010-07-07T15:05:00.000-04:00

It's been so hot out, it was difficult to move. For the first couple of days we acutally camped outside in relative luxury. We put up my craft tent that the hub and I made to go to craft shows. The bad thing: it is not waterproof. The good thing: shade, beautiful shade.

Being unwilling to move, we sat there, getting up only to hose down once in a while and reading magazines and books. This week's favorite has been Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith. This is not the original sendup of Jane Austen's famous novel, but a prequel to it, and written by a different author. I am told that the original is more violent and has more acutal Austen to it, but this was light reading (yes, I do heavy lifting but light reading) and pretty hilarious if you can get past the putrefying people.

Thanks a lot, Shakespeare

2010-07-02T13:15:00.000-04:00

No one has ever asked me; let me compare thee to a Summer Day.

Learning Curve

2010-06-29T14:42:00.001-04:00

Today I have been trying to learn something, anything that will help me with technical stuff online.
First, I found the New York Photography School site: http://digital-photography-school.com/learning-exposure-in-digital-photography which is complex but eventually I hope to make it work for me.

Next, I was directed from Etsy to another store site whose name I have not entirely mastered,, it's like Matsui, or something, that has a store AND a blog stuck right to it, and other bells and whistles. Only thing is: I could not see any of the stores. Maybe it's a closed system like a paramecium or something?

Next, I hooked up to tweetup? possibly, these things just swirl past my vision and create imaginary waste o' space in my brain. I feel like I now have the brain power of a cat, or a pancake or any other inanimate object. Anyway, after hours of trying to figure the RSS feed, (yes, I am that much of a dweeb), I hooked that up so that my twitter will lead you to my blog.

I am not that sure about twitter. Evidently, the way to self promote on twitter, (and that, more than anything seems to be what it is about) is to connect to as many people as possible and have them connect back to you. Right now, I have like 14 connections, and dumped a load of people/companies I was following, because they were not all that amusing, and they took up space that the people's posts that were interesting formerly occupied.

I guess it's not about what I want to read, it's about who I want to read me, and that's where the moral dilemma kicks in.

I would like my vintage shop to be a success and then maybe move on to a photography shop, but do I have to have giveaways, and tutorials? It's just possible I do.

My best online friend is spreading herself very thin these days, joining other craft groups and making things for her blog and 5 others, and going to work AND having a life. I asked her one time, how is it that you are able to produce so much? Her answer was simple; she does not have a television.

I know there's nothing on, but mostly I like to read while I'm watching bad television, and therefore do not make a load of stuff because I am lazy. I guess that's what it comes down to in the end. If I had paid more attention at school I would have a career that I was laid off from and collecting a large slice of unemployment, thank you President Obama, instead of blogging my life away and trying to sell used stuff online.

Hot time in the old town

2010-06-26T00:52:00.001-04:00

I'ts been 90 degrees out for a couple of days now. Yesterday, we had a very large storm, possibly a tornado by the looks of things. On the next street there are 4 giant trees down, and on several streets after that. Most of them missed houses, but completely blocked the roads.

We went out for a tour. It had been cool last night after the storm and then again in the morning but it kept getting hotter. It felt like Charleston S.C. in August, but it's still June, and we are about 13 hours north of there by car.

I kept changing clothing. The wrap around skirt was comfy but nothing matched it. The palazzo pants were cute but the elastic waist hurt my kidneys. I tried to cut some of the elastic out, but it was not enough, and there was no electricity to sew through all the layers to put it back together. None of my shoes matched anything, but if they did, my feet hurt in them. It's as if hot weather makes me lose my sense of style completely.

I put on no makeup which makes me look tired, and wear a baseball hat to keep the sun out of my eyes.
I never in my life thought I would be with a man who wears clothing bearing sports insignia, but I have, and that's hardly unusual, but I could not have guessed after being a milliner for years, that I would adopt a baseball hat. It's not attractive. I am not some tall rangy girl with a tomboy wardrobe.
I am a short woman with big hair, and women's clothing and it's looks just awful. I gotta say, it's practical.

A bit later I was in the kitchen and the refrigerator started making noise. I yell this out to Lou in the yard. He says open it up! Yes! Electric is back on. I know they are going to turn it off again eventurally, but tonight I sleep in air conditioned bliss.

By the Sea

2010-06-26T00:27:00.001-04:00

Nory went to the shore with her sister Lila. They were dressing for the beach, and Nory was putting on an old t shirt like flashdance meets Hokusai, and a skirt she made from old t shirts. It was her first attempt at cutting up shirts for skirts, and it was a success except that the design on the shirt ended up at her crotch. She spun it to her hip, but the shirt covered it anyway.

Lila said I bought a bathing suit. This was the one that did not make me cry. Boy, is that ever true. After a certain point in time, and with our mom's fatty gene pool, there's just no fighting off the distortion of the flesh. (see: legs of Dorian Gray)

Nory looked at her sister in the bathing suit and it was black and white polka dots. She herself had never gone in much for the dots, but we do what we can. It was not good, but if it was okay with Lila, then what the hell.

They trekked down to the ocean and the cool wind blew over them. They flopped on towels, just as if they were not middle aged women and sighed, looked at the water for a while and picked up their respective reading.

Drug Trials

2010-06-16T10:20:00.001-04:00

Here's the thing. Well, two things. I went online to make a new post, and got a message that my blog name was available to register. What the hell???

So I came to blogger, and here I am. Now I'm just confused. And dizzy.
I went to a dozen docs, and particularly one of the "top docs" for dizziness in the city. They did terrible things to me there, just to see IF I was actually dizzy. Oh yeah. I was sick for a week after those wonderful tests. They did brain scans, cat scans, and every kind of expensive thing, but did not find anything broken.

Now, as a last ditch effort, they want me to take diuretics. I remember my mother taking them to get rid of water on her ankles. I don't remember how much she was in the bathroom, but it was not as often as I already am.

I have not felt like this for months. Really bad. So maybe I take just one more drug. Or maybe I go on the all raw diet. I am not sure about those people. They claim it brings health and vitality if the most you heat anything is 118 degrees. Why? I just don't know. It sounds totally arbitrary. Obviously animal protein is out, as is sugar, although maple syrup is okay with them.

What you don't know about maple syrup: it's not a sweet as you thought. It's the corn syrup pancake liquid that is sweet. I like it. I am used to my food tasting bright and delicious. I can go without some things but the sugar thing: that's the killer.

I really should ditch any baked goods, and all sugar. I should live on lettuce and water as a friend told me.

Then he put me on embargo, so I don't know how good a friend he really is. Okay, that was something you don't need to read, but I'll leave it there anyway.

I gotta go out now. I'll be walking so if I collapse someone will find me, covered with ants (the ants are really getting to me these days) and wrappers discarded from foods at the Wawa convenience store.

Okay I sound nuts, but I can delete this all later.

Beauty Therapy

2010-06-04T17:12:00.001-04:00

Nory went to a therapist recommended by Lou's therapist. The new therapist was supposed to adress her propensity to anxiety and try to get Nory off some medicines she was taking.

First of all, Peggy (the therapist) decided Nory should take more EPA fish oil. Then she decided that Nory should see another more integrative doctor .

Then the therapist decided her vitamin D levels were low (from a copy of blood samples from her G.P.)

AND she sent Nory for even more blood samples and thought she might want to find out if she had yeast in her intestines. Well, thought Nory, between the bread and the yoghurt, I must have some yeast somewhere.

So to sum up: 2 added supplements, 2 added health professionals to see.

Nory went on Thursday because she could not read the invisible writing of the receptionist, and since it was not the correct day, and her hair was all gray in the fluorescent light of the bathroom, she went to the hairdresser next door. She had never gone there before, but it was pretty and the hairdressers seemed friendly and knowledgeable, so she decided to go in.

The first thing Nory annouced was: Do NOT dye my hair black!

Guess what? Black hair.

She asked her sister Lila what she thought. Lila said "I was not going to mention it, I thought you just had an accident with the dye".

The next day, after her acual appointment with Peggy, Nory went back and said "honey, (in the nicest tone)you dyed my hair black".

The Hairdresser looks like that Amazon from 3rd Rock, Kirsten somebody. She said well, you wanted dark brown. Nory said "I wanted brown". Greta said well, it will wear off a bit in a coupla weeks.

Well, thought Nory, not hideous. I just look like a goth girl in Talbots clothing.

12:45 Ironing

2010-06-01T00:46:00.000-04:00

Generally when I creep upstairs at night, it is cold. I am wrapped in layers of flannel and fleece, socks and slippers, almost gloves if I could, but tonight is so balmy after a very hot day that I wear a slip of a nightgown to sit at the computer.

It's nice to find an order on the computer. I sell my odds and ends, not a business so much as lightening up my stuff stash. It's a national holiday, so I did not expect anything from my computer, and mainly left it alone today. When I came up, I found my order and went to work re-ironing some fancy tea napkins in the heat of the attic. I must be mad. It was near 90 degrees today, and we spent it all outside, lolling in the shade.

I am not getting so very much from these napkins, but on the other hand, I did find them literally on the side of the road, while I was walking one day. There was a load of vintage linens, and I picked up what I could and carried it a mile back home.

I should have gone back. I left lace table cloths, and who knows what else there, but I was in a very karmic dilemma, and decided to leave stuff for others. I hope someone took the rest, or my good will has gone wasted.

I probably should not write at night when I have not much to say.

Yup, officially at a loss for words.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

Girl Scout Cookies

2010-04-25T11:05:00.000-04:00

I know I'm going to get a lot of flack if anyone ever reads this, but I have a rule about girl scout cookies; I don't buy them unless the girl scouts bake the cookies themselves, which they never do.

The girls (and mostly their parents) sell the cookies which have become increasingly smaller, with less cookies, and more artificial and unhealthy ingredients. Why don't the leaders teach the girls to make cookies, and have them sell fantastic cookies?

I saw a segment on SNL last night about this. The writer on TV wanted to buy the cookies all year in a store rather than be harrangued by small girls in berets and sashes only once a year.

He has a point, but I think if you had the cookies all year you would notice after a while, that they aren't as good as you might remember them being.

I went to a boy scout spaghetti dinner last night. I was ready for the worst and I got it. The food was like a school lunch. I was considering going to the kitchen and teaching them to cook, but they would not have had the ingredients, and frankly, they were not going to listen to me, a non christian in any case.

The scouts were sort of stunned like small cattle in an unfamiliar setting, but they followed directions, and tried to perform their duties to the best of their abilities. Some were better than others. Our waiter, not knowing us, was wary and seemed to have no sense of humor at all. He was unable to communicate further than what he had been told which did not include the fact that Spaghetti is also the plural for the word, and whether or not there was sugar in the iced tea.

I don't know how many diabetics went into shock after that carb and sugar loaded meal, but that is neither here nor there.

The kid at the next table called it paskettis, and even with some coaching by the men at his table, could not master the word. The pasketti kid, a small, white nerd type, while unable to pronounce the dish, was a lot more personable, and hung around the two large black men he was serving, making jokes, and having a great time.

What I wanted to point out here is that the boys were doing something more ambitious than the girls, and though it was for one night, the community was supporting them. Whether or not they made more money, I think the boys learned a little more real life experience than the girls.

I have gone up to a girl scout and taught her how to sell cookies. She was lackluster, and unwilling to speak to strangers. (probably from many years of indoctrination, and I cannot argue with the inntelligence of that).

She stood in front of me and wanly held a box of cookies with a limp wrist, and took no other action. I am not going to describe my lesson, but by the end of it, she was selling boatloads, and was also able to convince her parents to send her to Europe with a new wardrobe as a reward for being so enterprising. And no, I did not buy her cookies.

So, I really wish everyone would learn to cook decent food, and I wish the scouts of both sexes would find another way of making money. I know child labor has been abolished by law, but there's plenty of it going on. Perhaps they could become telephone solicitors.

Of Frogs and Men

2010-03-28T14:19:00.000-04:00

I forgot to tell you. We had dinner at the London grill the other night, and there were frogs all over the place. Stickers on the wall and statuettes of every material known to man strewn over every surface.

Finally I asked someone. It has to do with a plague they said. Something about Passover. They have books by the cash register.

The Haggadah, I said.

Yes, he said, surprised.

So, I guess the locust theme would have been too much for L&I I mused.

Fat Again

2010-03-03T12:05:00.000-05:00

Wow, am I fat. I took a photo for a hat that was not selling on my site. It is a flapper hat, and I think the main reason for it's not selling, it that it was not on a person. While it's true, I have been ill for 3 days, and eating almost nothing has lost about 5 pounds, the camera tells me I am gigantic.

I am wearing a large skirt which helps not a bit. Looks like an Army tent, sounds like a flag flapping in a strong wind.

Jeff suggests that I continue to not eat. Easy for him to say. It's 12 now, and I have not had anything, but I am going to have to have something. Yesterday it was 3 minute eggs, chicken soup, and jello, not much of any of that, and I gained a pound. I'm pretty sure it was just water that I lost.

Most of the time, I just forget about it, and then I see a photo. Of course, one year I lost 25 pounds and the pictures STILL made me look fat.

Bad Habit

2010-02-22T01:59:00.001-05:00

Every night when I am too exhausted to read any more, and my wrists ache from holding the book up, I put it down, and turn off the light. Immediately I get too hot to be comfortable in bed, and outside of the bed, the heat has been turned down to nothing, which generally registers somewhere between 54 and 61 degrees Fahrenheit (just in case).

I try to drift off, but my mind starts dictating prose that it thinks I should write, and often, I get up, and those words are no longer available to me, so I write whatever comes to mind.

I should not get out of bed, but when you cannot sleep, it is hard to stay put.

Shopping

2010-02-17T15:06:00.001-05:00

I could not stand being bound by the snow any longer. No, I was not buried under a mound of snow, but was just stuck inside because I don't think slogging about in 30 inches of snow is a lot of fun. Plenty of people do enjoy it, and when I put it that way, it sounds fun, but no thanks.

So, I went shopping. I am too big, I know it, you know it, every one is aware that I should not be buying clothes in this large size, but I've been good all winter. Not a thing. Not even from the Sal (salvation army). And I bought odd sale type items, and was fairly happy.

Then I went to Bloomingdale's. I saw stuff I loved alllll over the place, but even though I had mad money, I just could not spend 300 bucks on a blouse, jacket or anything else, for that matter. I am not a millionaire, and I tend to ruin my clothing almost immediately. It broke my heart, but I left all the flowery flirty, ruffled, chiffon peasant blouses in the store.

I came home and put on my new mud colored skirt that I would never have bought at regular price, or even on sale, but I had two different 5% offs, 50% on all sale items plus a $20.00 cupon, so the skirt was dirt cheap.

I went running up the stairs, and the skirt made the sound of a sail unloosed, luffing, as they call it, in the wind. Yeah, that's why they go on sale.

More about Brownies...

2010-02-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

The Che sera Cook February 6, 2010

Here’s the thing. I used to go to this place in Philadelphia that had giant brownies. they were over 2″ tall and about 3×3 square. They were the best brownies I ever had, and I cannot for the life of me reproduce them. They were very moist but not fudgy,and also not cakey and they were consistent all the way through. Of course that place closed, but I did ask for the recipe and they acted like they did not know where the brownies came from. But I know, they came from heaven.

Appliance Mutiny

2010-02-05T14:22:00.000-05:00

I don't know what's going on these days, but my kitchen seems to have a grudge against me.

I have had some trouble baking for about a year, and finally invested in an oven thermometer.It tells me what the actual temperature is, as opposed to what it says on the dial. Just as I suspected, it was at minimum 25 degrees lower than it should be and at max, 75 degrees lower.

The interesting part of that, is that it is not consistant, and coincidentally neither are my baked goods. I have tried adjusting the temp to match with spotty results.

The refrigerator has also started to act up. Suddenly the lettuce is frozen in two days. Ever see frozen lettuce? It does not stay frozen for long. It turns into green slime. Nice. BUT: when you turn the refrigerator to colder the freezer gets warmer. I think that's okay because the freezer was making things frostbitten. But this time, the freezer was too warm so I changed that, and then the refrigerator got too cold, and I am stuck in a circle, never having anything at the right temperature. On the other hand, and this is my go-to these days, I don't live in Haiti, so what's the problem?

The dish washer front fell off on my foot about a year ago. Turns out the crappy almond color that my husband made me buy all appliances to match, and which are going wonky, was actually just paint. The dishwasher (with the permanently stuck soap dispenser) is Harvest, Gold, a color which I presume was popular in the '70s. Swell.

The Water company has been doing a lot of work lately, and I caught one of them in the driveway with one of those wheel counters. I said: why don't you fix the pipes here?

WG: We have been fixing the pipes that are concrete from 1905, yours are cast iron from 1926, so it's going to take a while for us to get to it.

Our water is slowing down to a trickle, and guests won't stay because out of 3 showers, only one gets enough water to use. No baths, nohow.

Used to be I only had trouble with watches, and then with doorbells, two other stories. I don't know what's going on, but as long as they work marginally and stay rooted to the floor instead of roaming the house at night, I can probably deal with it.

I love the night lights..

2010-02-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

I went to the dollar store where I loitered, goggling at brightly colored gee-gaws and mylar ballons, tube sox and amazing stacks of multi-colored plastic crap of all manner until Marilyn could extract herself from the long line in the Acme, and stalled in front of a Johnny Depp - Captain Jack Sparrow Pirate night light, realizing suddenly that I was listening to Gloria Gaynor singing "I like the night lights, I love to boogie, yeah...) and realized it was night life, but that it worked for me.

Etsy Blues

2010-02-03T13:24:00.000-05:00

Sales have slowed down to a trickle though I have listed my heart out.

Okay, lame Valentine joke, but really, I gotta do more. They suggest the dreadded facebook or Tweeting, but I don't know about that.

So, I reduced the price of 3/4 of the shop to around five bucks. I may be taking a bath, but it might motivate all of you to spend your little pockets off. I sure hope so.

And speaking of Brownies

2010-01-04T12:46:00.000-05:00

I decided to help my friend Lolly shorten her video time for her blog. She is a cute 30 something who is a great crafter, and web designer who I befriended. She does not have a TV. Good for her, and she gets a whole lot more than the rest of us mortals. But then I have to explain TV references, because she really isn't lying, she just does not know about what's on.

Find her blog at Lollychops.com and see if you can resist her.

I was telling her that to make her videos shorter would keep people watching instead of wandering to the kitchen for some fortifying brownies:

And speaking of brownies: Dr OZ (an Oprah TV doctor who, in real life is a brain surgeon, who incidentally, my sister caters affairs at his family's house and says he is real life cute)

Ok, he's a guy that people trust and who wrote a book: You, on a diet, (see local bookstore or Amazon) told everyone to dump the fridge of sugar, syrup, (he did not mention jams but I suppose...) fat, transfat, and saturated fat, white flour, etc. This is just not real life. I mean, okay, I switched to the whole grain bagels, but I have got to have butter, brown sugar or syrup in my oatmeal, or it would just be library paste!

I usually add some kinda fruit, and cinnamon. Mmmmmmm.

Aaannd, I like my pasta just the way the Chinese invented it. Plain semolina or wheat, no "good for you kind of stuff" I am sorry, I am just not getting used to it.

Something Fishy

2009-12-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

When we were young, our grandfather came to visit every Saturday, or perhaps it was Sunday. He arrived with arms full of bags stuffed with smoked fish and bagels.

He brought lox, whitefish, smoked salmon, and my favorite at the time, smoked sable fish. I have no idea what fish that is actually called,unless it is sable, and I find it to be unbearably oily, but at the time, it was heaven.

He was a medium sized bald man, always in white dress shirt, and due to high arches, his shoes shined, were always untied in a very fastidious way. I can recall him laughing at some caper of my sister or myself, but mainly he appeared always to be calm silent and sober of mein.

Years later, I found out that he used to fish, go gambling and drinking with buddies, playing cards, and who knows what else, and having a lot of fun, but he never looked much like fun to me.

Because I was closer to my grandmother, he grew closer to my sister. Perhaps she feels differently than I about who he was.

He would come to our house and we would feast and then accompany him to the car wash where you could stay inside the car, watching the soap and water slosh against the windows. It was a perfect entertainment for small children, as it was cheap, we were contained in the vehicle, and it was of short duration ensuring that we were in as good a mood at the end as we were at the outset of the journey.

Today, eating an inferior smoked salmon, (which is not lox, but actual hunks of opaque salmon,) on a dehydrated unfrozen english muffin, I thought of my grandfather and his visits. I realize that I was never aware that those goods were expensive, not available in our suburb, and that he drove there from Philadelphia where he lived.

He never brought my grandmother with him. This was just a treat for his daughter (my mother) and his grandchildren, though my father also enjoyed the bounty of the delectable treats.

I was wondering where my grandmother thought he was. Surely, if she knew where he was, she would want to accompany him.

It's hard to find a good smoked fish these days.

Thrift

2009-12-10T00:51:00.000-05:00

You know you may have taken the thrift thing too far when you look at the night stand, and realize you have bought the store brand seltzer instead of the generic seltzer you were buying before. It's called Zazz. Really that sounds like something a lot more excitng than seltzer, but it being lateish, I'm not sure what.

I've been trying to make a buck on etsy these days, (http://www.chandeluse.etsy.com) so I have been spending money to make money,like that makes sense, but the thing is, when you are going to make something, food, or crafts, or an arbor (or Ann Arbor, little joke thing there) you are always missing one thing that makes your project unstable, unusable, or just parts with nothing to hold it together.

Don't start me on the craft stores, I am prone to wander in any store I happen into, and come out hours later wondering where the time went, but that's another story. The craft stores are just full to busting with intrigueing looking everythings in little packages hanging on hooks looking desirable. Then there are videos on the net telling you how to use the stuff as if.. and sometimes you learn a thing. But generally I just walk by and only get what I came for, but lately, they have just broken my will and I have bought all manner off odd ink and stamping stuff, and really, it's harmless fun and pretty much needs neither talent nor esthetic judgement, because they take all the trouble out of these projects. I have been using the distress inks. They make it incredibly easy to do what I used to do with acrylic paint. Instant antique papers and documents, photos and all that. I also got some Alcohol inks, but have not gotten into them much yet.

If this sounds like the woozy rambling of a sonambulist, it is. I am wandering in the night kitchen again, but instead of eating, I'm just stream of thought right here.

Odoriferous

2009-11-02T14:31:00.000-05:00

I was drinking my new favorite tea when Jeff walked in and asked "what stinks in here?" Since he is always asking that, I did not think much of it.

In fact, just moments before, I was wondering if my deodorant had given out, and smelled the inside of my shirt, and found no offense.

It was the tea! How can a harmless flavor like Black Currant, smell so much like human sweat? It's perfectly odd, and yet I like this tea so much...

Perhaps I should dash off a note to Twining's?

Watching the Feather

2009-09-06T12:07:00.000-04:00

Alone on a Sunday on the weekend of Labor Day, I think about the possiblilies for the day.
No friends have called with invitations, and He is sailing, sailing away again, as if he might never return.

In lieu of going out in the car, I decide to breakfast at the Regency. I can walk there in no time at all, and perhaps I might meet one of the neighbors to talk with.

When I get there, Chris, the owner/baker is relaxing outside. I get a nice smile, his curly almond colored hair peeking out of his perpetual baseball cap, his eyes, bright in recognition of a semi-regular customer. Generally, I only go once a week, it being expensive to eat out every morning, and I have a date with my neighbor Mari on the next street. She is busy as a rule, and this is our one time together, though she admits to popping in several extra times a week for her daily au lait.

Having exchanged pleasantries with Chris, I go and order my treat for the day, orange plum scone and accidentally latte instead of au lait, with a bit of caramel syrup.

"I'll be outside" I inform the new girl at the register. In fact, everyone is new, and not knowing the facts of their disposition; school, fired, just left, I have to suspect a new regime with none of the colorful regulars to inspire mutiny among the ranks.

I retire with my scone to a black mesh table under the basically unnecessary awning, as it is on the shady side of the street, and pick up my book; interesting enough and well written, but the narrator is back, and I find nearly everything around me diverting and interesting. My internal companion, speaking in my head, will not stop talking, pointing out the interesting and mundane in no specific order.

Chris himself brings my drink, which is when I can tell, by the inscribed feather in the foam, that I have ordered the latte, with espresso, instead of the au lait, with regular coffee. Some days the latte is kind of bitter, but today, with the inclusion of a heavy dose of caramel, is maybe a bit too sweet, but the dark gritty flavor comes through making it totally indulgent.

As I read, I try to measure out the scone to last until I have finished my beverage, but that's just not going to happen. The two flavors, melded with the butter and flour make a soft crumbly pastry, and it is gone though thoroughly savored, before I have finished drinking.

I love it when I get the feather in my drink, and earlier, months before, I thought I was getting special treatment, a little picture just for me. It is a bad habit my sister chides me for, ascribing specialness to myself. In point of fact, I do not actually think it a bad habit, and also believe myself to be an outsider as I am treated as such by the general public.

With every sip, I expect the feather to disappear, and yet, it remains, long after I am convinced it should. The foam on the coffee is very fine and thick, and I can not drink it separately, but combined with the espresso below. Towards the bottom of the cup, the feather, barely changed, the sweetness becomes cloying, but I must finish to find out the end of my quest. Will it remain in the cup, sitting on the bottom, or will it be quaffed three quarters of the way down?

As it happens, the image does not dispel until the last sip, leaving the slightest tracing of white in a coating that looks like the fur on an elk's antlers, velvety and uncompromised. I wonder if there is someone who can read foam as they do tea leaves. Of course there is always someone who will take your money under false pretences, and I don't really know about the tea leaves, either.

Reluctantly, having met no one else I know, I bus my dishes, and head home with only the narrator chatting away, and my eyes pointing out every stray leaf, and patch of blue sky as a possible photograph.

Post Mortem

2009-09-05T10:41:00.000-04:00

Let's face it. Both popcorn and french fries have a shelf life of say, plus or minus five minutes.

I came to work and decided that popcorn would have to be the breakfast of champions today.
As hot and steamy as popcorn comes from the microwave, it soon cools and only minutes after, becomes less fabulous, like a husband, or a diamond, or any other thing which is hard to obtain.

French fries are much the same, first you burn the inside of your mouth on the initial bite, then there is a minute or so where they are delicious, crisp hot oily ambrosia, and then, not.

We always keep eating them to the bottom though. We eat ever faster, trying to recapture the sensation of the first couple, but as the seconds tick by they become soggy, doughy, heavy, similes for the delight we craved when we started eating.

I got nothing else, I'm just calling the shots here.

Lost in Austen Again

2009-09-05T10:18:00.000-04:00

I rushed off to the market this morning, tying my bonnet before I had even got in the carriage...
Actually, there was no bonnet involved, but something is afoot.

I was on my way to work at the chandelier restorator where I am employed, and saw a sign for a yard sale. There was nothing enticing about this sign, but follow it I did, to a sale of antiques on a driveway. I asked the guy in the tractor hat how he came to have so much not-junk.

It turned out that he was a clean out guy. In other words, an estate liquidator, or maybe it's the other way. In any case, there was a dazzling array of brass, finely polished, an old silver mirror and brush set, a good deal of depression glass and an impressive collection of black glass which is mysterious and wonderful in itself.

He had a bit of everything, and of course, I needed nothing, but still came away with a tin from his estimable display- Prince Albert, for my father who used to tell of his phone pranks; "well, if he's in a can, let him out!". I also, and for no known reason bought a set of Gumby and his pony Poky, a show from early TV, and what may have been a biker neclace of silver with a claw grasping a rather large chunk of quartz.

I left there to pick up a prescription, and going into the Acme (pinnacle of greatness) I was waylaid by the odor of cooking crab, that at 9 am, no less. Yes, just as in days of old, they were cooking crabs over an open fire, surely a code infraction in these fractious and litigious days. I tarried but for a moment, realizing that I could not take hot crabs, nor live ones to work with me, and sighing, moved into the building.

As I rushed past the aisles of artificial boxed foodstuffs, I came upon a tiny display at the side of an endcap that was comprised of English Foods. There was treacle, TREACLE, for God's sake, which foodstuff I had only read about in fairy tales. Also present was a sauce in an A-1 bottle bearing a name that was more like H-4 (the original) it said the original, that was not my addition. There were digestive bisquits, Devon cream custard, pickallili, Coleman't mustard, all antiquated and definitely English foods.

I mentioned it to the beautiful pharmacy girl whose name always escapes me though she knows my name, and she asked "So you feel like you are in another time period?"
Yes, I said, somehow, things are just a bit wonky this morning. She asked where the section was, and I said "somewhere around 6 I think, on the side. Or I could have made it up."

After that, we discussed yogurts, and I suppose the spell was broken, but it made me happy to have a little out of the normal experience. I was not, even after all that, late for work.

Dancing Machine

2009-07-19T14:42:00.000-04:00

The other day a funny thing happened. I was at Frolic Wainright's, and we were leaving togther, me to fix my husband's dinner,he to a business meeting involving cowfolk, thus his attire of jeans, cowboy boots, a hat, and impenetrable shades.

As we passed through the parlor, a lively tune burst forth from the phonograph and Frolic, aptly named, began to gyrate, and to my surprise, took my hand in his.

It was Frolic who for years refused to take me dancing,. He hurt me by citing that our heights were too disparate, and worse, that I could probably not keep up on the floor because of his enormous grace and talent. He knew not at all, that petite as I was, we were equals on the dance floor.

So fifteen years later, you can imagine my shock when he dipped me deeply with infinite ease and grace, and in turn, he was surprised when I floated backward, following as if we were of one body, and lifting one leg high over his shoulder while my hair considered the floorboards.

He held me there for almost a minute when in an instant of inspiration I switched legs, kicking up my right leg, light as air, not at all affecting our balance, and as I rose from that position, pivoting away and laughing in pure joy of that short moment- he spun me and said "Not bad at all." and hastily added; "of course you'd have to wear heels, and I would have to wear flats if we danced." but knowing that all those years we could have been dancing together.

In fact, he never would take me dancing nor anywhere else, for that matter.

My broken heart ached as I started the car, turned on the radio, and going down the steeply turning drive, began to plan dinner.

The big Book of Aches and Pains

2009-07-08T05:40:00.001-04:00

I woke up again with that headache that hurts so much my stomach hurts too. Instead of taking my thyroid meds, I took a Tylenol. I have not been taking them much, trying instead enteric aspirin, as it is an anti-inflammatory. I don’t know. It seems to have subsided. I have waked almost every night this week with the same headache. Of course, at the doctor’s today, I totally forgot to mention them.

The other thing I forgot to mention was the rash on my stomach. It seemed so slight that I put it out of my mind. Really, who am I, Oskar Levant? He was a great pianist and hypochondriac. I am a middling hypochondriac, and I never was really good at the piano. For one thing, I never could learn to read music. I also have trouble telling time, but that’s one you try not to tell people. That’s one that they have trouble understanding.
Also, it makes me sound stupid, and in my estimation, and that of others, I am just the opposite.

It is almost 4 AM, and as usual when I cannot sleep, I wake up and write or read.

Anyway, I am thinking about this stomach rash, and the fact that I thought it was just my normal weed rash which for reasons I have never been able to explain always manifests itself on my legs. I may be getting old and overweight, but the one thing I have (had) was perfect skin. My skin is silken, one man likened it to a velvet skirt I was wearing, and he told me that my skin was far softer. Men have always chosen to tell me how good my skin feels rather than how pretty I am. You should tell your lover she is lovely, or pretty or some such, even if she is not so to the general public. That should be a given. I have not had such luck. One young man, who thought I was asleep, told me I was beautiful. He never said such a thing when I was awake.

Wow, I am a giant digresser! So this rash, I am thinking, it could be heat rash, as I get warm and kind of sweaty when I walk too late in the morning. Or it could be the Black dog t-shirt I got from the Sal. The Sal is the Salvation Army, where I get a lot of stuff.

I was scared recently by a woman who was kept from flying with me. We lost the plane because it was infested with bugs.
That’s really all they said except that 3 different crews had refused to get on the plane.

The woman was a nurse, and told me a story where she and her family got on a plane from Ireland, and then several days later broke out in a rash which turned out after much medical research, to be scabies, small bugs which burrow under the skin. So I am thinking I have contracted scabies from this shirt, which, well, I don’t know who was wearing it before me, but generally people in Nantucket where the Black Dog is, do not have scabies, unless of course, they got them from an international flight, which at 4 am makes perfect sense.

I washed the shirt today, and all my walking garb, just in case.

Self Explanatory

2009-06-22T14:08:00.000-04:00

So, I was tootling around the net and I found this great bakery, and I want to go but it's a good 3 hours away. Not justafiable.

Then, in the margins was an ad to recommend the best stuff, the best lipstick, (ok) and then the best bathing suit. BATHING SUIT??? Sir, I spit on you, and your advice!

Dress for Success

2009-06-20T10:43:00.000-04:00

I need to burn all my clothes. My favorite jeans don't zip.

I bought some crop pants and they make noise when you walk, and ride down when you sit. They are going back, like most things I buy.

I gotta go to a shower, and it's raining. That's appropriate.

No one is going to care what I wear. That's a given, pretty much.

I'm putting a load of it on ebay, but I don't hold out much hope because none of it is juicy couture.

Waiting for the Sale

2009-06-18T17:57:00.000-04:00

I put some things on Ebay. Like everyone else on Ebay, I expect to make a killing with my junk.
The thing is, often enough, it is someone else's junk. This time, specifically, it was shoes given to me by a customer at work. I took most of the stuff from her to clear out her front seat, and because I knew I would get to the Salvation Army before she would.

She had some semi pricey stuff, but unfortunately, not knowing my teenage swag, I gave it to the little girl upstairs whose feet are larger than mine. I know of at least two Ebayable items I gave to her, but I felt good about giving her something that cost me nothing but would have cost her mom and arm and a leg. No spilt milk there, really.

I kept the rest to sell or give away but first, I put them up for sale. I have been watching sporadically for a week now, and we are down to the last few minutes, and already two items have gone unsold.

I'm crushed. Brand new shoes listed cheap, and no one is biting. There were the Coach sneakers, but they were not the "cool" ones I guess, and someone paid dearly for them, but they are not turning the cash over to me.

One pair of man made sandals have a big name draw, and I was up to 21 watchers, and I was filled with glee at all the cash I was going to make from this one item, but bidding has been slow, and I may just be able to pay the fees on all of my listings.

So I am wasting your time while killing mine, waiting to see what this lousy pair of shoes brings.

I should just get another job.

Speak no Evil

2009-06-18T10:07:00.000-04:00

At the gas station, I rolled down my window, and told the attendant fifteen dollars of regular. I don't know, maybe everyone goes to Jersey, says fill it up, and leaves it at that. I wanted to get the best price, but I was very low on fuel, so I decided to get just about half a tank. This didn't seem like a big deal to me, but the attendant asked, fifteen? Normally in New Jersey, the gas stations are run by some big Sihk organization, and most of the guys have turbans, full beards and heavy accents. The youngish man at my window, though he had dark hair and eyes, had none of those attributes, and so I figured he understood me, and yet he was asking me to repeat my request. Fifteen, I repeated.
Fifteen? He said again.
One, five, I answered him.
One, five? he said?
Wow, I was in the twilight zone again, I was thinking.
Fifteen. I went back to the normal numerical request.
Fifteen?, he aked once more.
Yes, I finally capitulated.
Easy, he said, and proceeded to pump the gas.
Yeah, easy for you to say, I was thinking.

Later, near home, I went to buy milk. The man behind the counter at the local convenience store was friendly enough. He went to put my milk in a plastic bag. I was holding my own shopping bag up on the counter for him to put my purchase. He started to use his own bag again, and I thrust my bag forward again. After the third time repeating this mime, I said "my bag".
He said "I just wanted to see if you would talk".
I laughed, and told him that often, I don't need to talk, and things work out just fine.

It's interesting though, maybe a lot of discussion is what these strangers want from me. It is obvious what I want, and what is going on, but not talking at all seems to them to be aberrant behavior, but for me, it seems okay, particularly early in the morning, when I have not yet spoken to anyone.

Once, on a bus, I almost got into trouble. A black man sat next to me on the almost completely empty bus. I was nervous about him, so I did not say anything. Then he said "What, are you skin struck?" a new phrase for me. I was surprised at that and not speaking, pointed at my hand. "He said, hey, you can't talk, can you?" I thought this might make me less attractive to him so I shook my head in the affirmative. Unfortunately, this was just adorable to him, and he continued to make a pass at me. I mimed that I was married, by pointing at my ring finger, and though there was in fact, no ring on my hand, he understood, but still did not seem to mind. He was musing over our future together, when I decided to get off the bus before my stop, hoping that he would not follow me. " Goodbye, my girlfriend", he yelled, at my retreating back, "see you soon!"I had to walk another twenty blocks, but it was worth it not to be a mute any longer than I had to.

Some days I just don't speak on purpose, and some days it happens by accident. It does not seem to matter, odd things just happen to me, and that's all I can figure.

Short Sleeves

2009-05-04T12:59:00.000-04:00

It was a very rainy spring, and Nory was stuck inside. She could go out to hunt for the ever elusive cardigan sweater, but inertia and a stomach full of bagel impeded her progress.

She had been looking for suitable sweaters ever since fall when she took all the worn looking and ill fitting sweaters (mostly from the Salvation Army) back to the Salvation army, so they would not be clogging up her tiny closet.

It's a wonder, she thought, that no one seems to think I will need a sweater in Spring or Summer. They are selling shorts and halter tops which are no longer a staple since letting her short body go to wrack and ruin, but there seems to be no place where an open front sweater can be found. It is as if there was no sea air at the shore, or air conditioning chilling one to the bone in Summer. There is a certain age, it seems, where pulling a sweater over one's head just does not feel right, not to mention the ruination of a questionable hair style.

When it is hot outside, it is always cold inside, chilled to meat preserving temperatures in some places, while in others, there is no such provision at all. Once in a while, a girl can get away with a hooded sweatshirt, all too available, but why no cardigan sweaters heavier than tissue? There are tissue sweaters aplenty, but they are designed to wear over not one, but two or three tiny tank and t shirts, artfully disarrayed so as to show off all the different colors. This adds cost as well as bulk to one's outfit and one's person, which is not so much attractive in a postitve sense of the word.

The other mystery is the short sleeved sweater. Why wear a garment meant to keep one's arms warm, when there are no sleeves? Am I supposed to wear a long sleeved shirt under that? And if that is the case, what do I do when I go back outside and it is too steamy for that long sleeved under layer? Frankly, I am stumped, she thought.

In point of fact, Nory had such a short sleeved sweater, left over from college. In those days, she wore it in winter as a sort of vest over a long sleeve t-shirt, under a jumper. She was nice and warm, and enjoyed this outfit immensely. Unfortunately, with age came a thickening in the waistal and stomach areas that are crying out to be heavily disguised. The peasant shirts almost work, but she never quite feels completely comfortable in them.

It wouldn't hurt to lose a few pounds, she thinks for the twentieth time that week, but how? The answer: excersize and eating less food , is anethema to her, and she puts on the hated hoodie over the large and unflattering sweater from her sister, and sits down at the computer.

Rainy Day Women

2009-05-03T12:31:00.000-04:00

It was brillig and rainy on the day Nory decided to garden. Oh, bother, this is not going to work at all, so she threw herself into picking enticing items for the town wide yard sale on the next week.
Lou was in the garage building a dirt sifter for the compost. He insisted on using two by four wood so that with the addition of the dirt, the sifter could not be lifted without the help of a superhero, but Nory left him to his own devices.

Since she lives on a private road, and the nature of yard sales is kind of hit-and-run, Nory decided to set up around the corner at her friend Mia's house, aka; the Castle. It is not going to be fun dragging all that stuff out of the house and around the corner to the other house, only to probably have to drag it back home, but that's the plan.

Now to decide what she can afford to part with. There is so much stuff in her house, it seems incredible, and yet, until they take her to the "home" it seems that almost anything might be needed just after getting rid of it.

Everyone has done this at one time or another, she thinks. Stuff you got rid of and went looking for later, was probably stuff that should have gone anyway. The memory of your old crap is always better than it is when you are looking at it clogging up your closet, she thinks.

Nory goes to root in the attic for possible items to unload.

Dizzy test #1

2009-04-20T11:14:00.000-04:00

Lots of rain. Jeff is taking me (2:30) to get the dizzy tests. I hope I am not too sick like the last time. I think they have to try and make me sick to see what I have, but it's almost medieval, the way they go about this stuff even though it includes electrodes and machines hooked up to my head. Actually, maybe it's more Mary Shelley than anything else.

The worst part is waiting in that musty old hallway in that antique building. It's a fantastic old house on Pine street that has been virtually untouched except for the crappy wrinkling carpeting, since the 1800's. That's how long it has been an ENT office, and frankly, the woodwork could use some cleaning.

Anyway, the doctor is supposed to be the best in the country, but he is eccentric as hell.
If he's good enough for Julie Andrews , I suppose he's good enough for me.

The thing is, there is a lot of waiting. You might think that if they were running 3 hours late,they might tell you, but no, they would just as soon have you waiting in the hallway for 3 hours until you are all worked up.

The other thing is: the girl who gives the tests is this pretty red haired Russian woman who has incredible B.O.

It's bad enough being made dizzy, but to have to smell her in a small room in the basement with cold air coming in through the door to the outside is just hell.

You think I'm over sensitive?

Yes I am.

Still, I think I am entitled to my opinons.

Male Dilemma

2009-04-20T10:51:00.000-04:00

I have to do a lot of mailing stuff at my job, I kind of enjoy wrapping unwieldy items that are larger than my whole body and getting them out in the world.

Last month I mailed 7 Murano chandeliers to Dubai and did not break one piece of glass which was totally amazing. It makes me even more suspicious of the woman on ebay who sent me a picture of a broken kitchen bowl I sent her. She would have had to hit it with a hammer to break that thing, but that's a different story.

I found out the hard way, that you cannot mail a floor lamp in one piece. I did it twice and they broke both of them beyond redemption. (especially the 1920's glass parts that were triple bubble wrapped and then tubed and then wrapped again.) How they broke that stuff is just crazy. I did notice the forklift holes in the sides of the box when it was returned to me. What that tells me is, if it is not square, don't try to mail, UPS, or FEDEX it.

You can go to USPS.com and make mailing labels and have your stuff picked up right at your house. Unfortunately, they do not include the cheaper mailing options as media mail, first class, or parcel post on that site. I asked at the post office and they all played dumb.

Imagine a bunch of butch guys in those bad uniforms with bad haircuts (really, I am going to have to do some serious investigation on why postal employees have bad haircuts. Maybe that's what makes them go "postal", they hate their hair!!) Anyway, imagine these guys shrugging and perhaps fooling with their name tags, and denying any knowledge of what is on their web pages.

There is something wrong with that, but I suppose those guys never have to mail anything that does not fit in an envelope.

Ear, nose and throat.

2009-04-07T18:12:00.000-04:00

Went to the nose and thyroid guy and he says "didn't anyone tell you to have a needle aspiration?" And of course, I said no, even though the last time someone did a thryoid scan they stuck the needle in right there, without so much as a "by your leave".

Actually that guy did me a favor because now they want some more blood MORE BLOOD) from me and then the needle aspiration.

So then he sprays some decongestant/anesthtic up my nose and it goes down my throat and I start to panic because my throat is getting numb, and he is all "what's all the anxiety about"? as he opens my nose with a pair of pliers to a size just this side of a golf ball and says "put your head down and relax" as he is pulling up and out. OUCH OUCH OUCH. Let's see YOU relax with a numb throat and a nose full of pliers.

By that time, I am in full hysteria. OK, I'm a hypochondriac, but I really have a problem. Multiple problems, and this guy is so; ho-hum, I've seen a lot worse, like that matters to me.

So then he asks why I am so full of anxiety. You are just radiating anxiety there (in the chair that my feet don't touch the foot bar of). That's no way to live! He's telling me, and I already know this for a fact, that I do not care for the unbidden anxiety.

This sends me toward tears, but I don't bust out and cry, I just mumble some stuff about something.

Then he asks me if I exercise. Well, I spent the whole day digging in the yard, but perhaps that is not what he means, and as I do not spend every day lifting and hauling and digging I say no. He recommends that I walk a mile a day, which is not out of the question if my balance were not compromised as it so often is. I will do it, but not if the temperature is below 50. That's for someone healthy. No arguments here please.

I mention that I used to dance, and he actually says "tsk, tsk, it's even worse for someone who used to be active" Thanks, Doc. I said "You are tsk-ing me?" I cannot believe there is anyone left in the world who does that. He is India Indian but quite Americanized except for his lack of empathy and the tsking. I still cannot believe the tsk.

Another wonder recommendation is to use a neti pot 3 times a day. It is a small flower watering can or genie lamp that one pours salt water through one's sinuses with. It's not terribly pleasant for me, but it looks like that's a given. I mixed the solution up, (it has Karo syrup in it! who knew that a doctor would require me to stick corn syrup up my nose?) wishing I could warm it gently somehow without trudging downstairs to the kitchen, and yep, it still burns in my head. My whole head starts to tingle especially in the back of my brain section. It's like ice cream brain freeze with a kick. That's one thing about old age: way too much maintenance. I just did not need another routine to make it more difficult to get out of the house in the morning.

By the time I am 80, should I make it, I will have to stay up all night just to get in all the irrigation, brushing, flossing, slathering of extremities, grooming, makeup, wardrobe, inhalations and a million pills flushed down my throat.

Now it turns out that the tests they want have to be done at inconvenient hospitals and that for no reason I can fathom, they have to make the appointments for me. I can schedule an MRI for a brain tumor, but not anything on the thyroid. One more thing I must endure, only before, when they wanted 20 tests done, I wished they would schedule them for me. I managed that, and suddenly I am annoyed that they will do something for me. Obviously all this nose action has me in a tizzy.

Now I am typing while breaking in some new red shoes from Target. They are the only store that carries shoes in my size. They have some swell designer knock offs that are Palm Beach Tacky but the smallest size is one bigger than my feet. I may try them anyway. That will make me feel better.

I am also cooking a brisket. I was going off meat, but Martha had this recipe, and I do love some brisket. I put the wine in but I am used to a recipe with soy sauce. This had better not be a disaster.

The Kalishnikov Babes

2009-03-30T14:21:00.000-04:00

I got this postcard today. It is obviously a send up, but still it seems a bit off. I'm not sure how I got on this mailing list.

Evidently, it is about an actor who takes a job to get into the "big time." It's another case of poor life choices meets bad taste is timeless. (the last a quote from the late Frank Zappa).

You just don't get enough bad art like this any more.

At least I don't.

2009-03-30T14:15:00.000-04:00

It's kind of cold again. I was hoping for spring. Yesterday we had hail that varied form marble to golf ball size. It was quite surprising.

Over the weekend we went to a party with a 60's theme. Though most of us lived through it, few of us wore anything resembling our 60's wear. My clothes have not changed all that much. Jeans, boots, and a peasant blouse were pretty much the same. I even had a necklace left over from high school. I could never bring myself to get rid of it.

Harry wore his striped hipster bell bottoms. We were all amazed he could fit into them.

I fit into them standing up, he said. Driving over here was kind of tough, he admitted.

Driving Drunk

2009-03-23T11:11:00.000-04:00

Last Night, I could not get to sleep. I came upstairs to the computer and viewed a couple of forwarded youtube movielets. One was of extreme sheep herding, the other was of a drunk girl. I am not completely sure she was kidding, but I thought it was stupid of her to post it anyway...
I finally fell asleep at about 4 AM. I had a long dream and this is what I remember:

I was at work, and there was a leak in the basement. The water was rising at an alarming rate, so we called the plumber, and when he arrived, we showed him the problem and left the building. I was with my boss, and we left Karen alone to watch the business.

We went downtown. It was not a town I know, but it was the downtown district never the less. We wandered around and my boss gave me some gaudy earring/hair things, and I clipped them still on their cardboard, to my turtleneck, and we continued our travels.

At one store he ran in the back door and quickly returned, giving me a pastel printed very large tote bag made of some kind of water proof material which had inside it, a matching umbrella. It looked sort of like a Monet scene but kind of loud as those reproductions sometimes are. I was not sure I liked it, or why he was buying me stuff, and as I was already carrying a large full, heavy tote, I was not sure of the need for it, but I took it and thanked him and we continued on.
I asked him if he had stolen it, as he was in and out in seconds, and he reassured me that it was all right without actually admitting to stealing it.

Eventually we ended up at a French restaurant that was running some kind of special promotion. I recall my boss speaking and waving expansively with his arm while holding a large glass of red wine in a proper if outsized red wine glass. He was standing, not sitting, and walking around the restaurant looking at the posters for music concerts.

I told him that we could leave, or he could order "off the menu", something not so pricey. He said it was ok, but next thing I knew, I was nearing the end of what seemed to be a liverwurst sandwich and the crusts were falling apart. I put the last bits down on the plate as it was getting messy.

The waiter gave us a cupon for a free ice cream. The picture was of a nutty Buddy ice cream cone that we used to get from the grocery store.
There was a giant Dairy Queen across the parking lot, and we went in.

At this point, my boss became Meredith Viera from TV. She used to do news, but now does a morning show and a quiz show. More money, less work. Good for her.

The inside of the building was nothing like the outside which was larger than a regular DQ but inside it was like a fancy gelato store. We were looking for the flavors on the wall, and though there were enough signs, we could not find any flavors listed. Meredith was getting cranky and loud.

Unfortunately, Meredith was very drunk from the red wine at the restaurant. She wanted an ice cream for each of us although we only had one cupon. I asked the counter person for an extra, but they said it would have to be a prescription, and promptly signed one with a prescription for an extra ice cream and handed it to me. We never found the flavors, and in fact I don't know if we ever got the ice cream. I think we left without it.

It gets a bit fuzzy here, but we got into a large black car to get back to work, but suddenly we were in Tucson, Arizona. I do not recognize where we were, but there was an empty lot with a person sitting like the little ceramic souvenirs; wearing a sombrero and a blanket, and sitting with knees up and head down, the man was sitting in an almost empty red dirt lot. Meredith drove off the sidewalk and onto the red dirt yard, and I hollered at her to stop so that I could drive.

I was surprised that she capitulated so easily. I was feeling tired and kind of drunk myself, but I thought maybe I could drive without hitting anything. When I looked up, the man in the yard had turned into a woman in native dress, frozen in a tableaux with one arm outflung behind her and the other cocked partially over her face. She was alarmed by the rogue car and was calling her children who were running around in the area.

I started driving back, and realized we were never getting there by closing time.

Finally, I woke up and was feeling pretty dizzy and tired. I decided it was best to get up and get on with things. The house is freezing. It is just Spring, but it is cold out today, and the heat in the house has not yet been turned on.

Cutesy

2009-02-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

I have a new online friend. Maybe my only online friend and she talks cute. I have a bad habit, when I meet someone who speaks pidgin English, I imitate them thinking that they will understand me better. Sometimes it works. I used to go to cosmetology school (got my licence and all) (yeah, now you don't respect me any more) and there was an Italian lady. You really had to speaka likea dis for her to get it. I spent a year with her, and frankly, in the end she needed to take a translator to the test to get through it even though she could speak English, she did not always understand it unless things were mispronounced her way.

Don't tell me I'm talking down, I'm just trying to get my message across. This drives my relatives to distraction, but I am sort of convinced that it works.

Anyway, back to the online girl, I like her, and to be friendly. because sometimes my writing comes off a little too hard edged, I have started to be cutesy back. I can't tell anyone because then they would be nauseous and judgemental, but it's kind of fun masquerading as a nice person.

Really, I would rather confess to something worse, but that's all there is. For now, anyway.

Ex Post Moisture

2009-02-18T14:55:00.000-05:00

"Your sister's on the phone!" comes the voice from upstairs.
"Tell her to call back later, I'm half slathered" Nory rumbles.
The thing about getting older, is there is so much maintenance one must do on the corpus delectus. First, you just have to shave legs and armpits, then just a light lotion on the legs, and by the time you pass twenty five, you have added 4 or 5 other things, and have to pay way more attention to flossing than you ever expected to. Anywhere after 50 and suddenly you are immersing yourself in potions, lotions, and anything to get rid of the jowls, wrinkles and dry extremities. You start to tell people things like: "a whole lot of stuff you are never going to want to see is going on under these clothes." Anyway:
"Get the phone!" again. "get the phone!!"
Ufff, Nory steps lightly across the wooden floor so as not to break a hip, sliding on heavily lotioned toes, and then hip hops across the thick carpeted hall, trying not to leave spots she would have to tend to later, and then skids onto the flooring of the library room where she snatches the reciever off the phone with slippery fingers.

"What??" she shouts.
"Well, if you're going to be that way, we can talk another time" barks the younger of her two sisters.
"It's just that he wouldn't listen to me, and I had to get the phone full of moisturizers" Nory says, "I'm too slippery to talk right now"falling onto the couch with and audible phhuff.
"Never mind, then." says Lili.
"Well, now I'm seated, I'm more receptive to comments"
"No, you put me off, I'm calling another day"Lili waxes imperiously.
It's always something, isn't it(to herself).
Nory hangs up the phone and flails limbs, willing the unguents to sink in.

I'm Tired

2008-12-28T13:33:00.000-05:00

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.

Cereal

2008-09-01T16:03:00.001-04:00

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....

Protest Attire

2008-07-27T16:54:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-27T16:42:00.000-04:00

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.

Drugs in the Dark

2008-07-09T01:37:00.000-04:00

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.

Screwy Degree

2008-07-04T04:50:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-04T04:29:00.000-04:00

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.

Oil Shortage

2008-06-24T15:46:00.000-04:00

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.

As the World goes by

2008-06-19T15:51:00.000-04:00

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

2008-06-19T14:49:00.000-04:00

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.

The Bobs

2008-06-11T17:29:00.000-04:00

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

2008-06-11T17:17:00.000-04:00

“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.”

New Age cleaning.

2008-06-02T14:27:00.000-04:00

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.

Electrical Impulse

2008-05-05T15:49:00.000-04:00

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.

Buyer's remorse

2008-04-15T14:43:00.000-04:00

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.

Old cat gone

2008-03-19T13:51:00.000-04:00

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.

Every Day

2008-02-20T14:08:00.000-05:00

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.