Ex Post Moisture

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now Yer talkin' ".

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

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

Motherhood

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

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

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

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

I really liked that the woman said almost.

Drugs in the Dark

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

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

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

Screwy Degree

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

Denny's Story

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

Oil Shortage

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

As the World goes by

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

Grocery Talk

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

The Bobs

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

The Boat Race

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

New Age cleaning.

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

Electrical Impulse

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

Buyer's remorse

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

Old cat gone

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

Every Day

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

Waking Sleep

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

Washday blues

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

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

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

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

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

Dancing in the dark

I spend a lot of time walking around after the lights are out, and my vision is getting progressively worse. The thing is, I have been practicing to be blind, and it is completely no picnic at all. Sometimes I try to be graceful and wave my arms in a fashion I believe to be smooth and delicate, and at other times I bump into corners and bruise, or worse, miss the last step and almost fall.

I was in the market yet again and there was the bag boy, about 6.6 and with heavy white cataracts covering both eyes. He was trying his best, flailing his arms over the conveyor belt while bent at the waist, a position that I imagine could not be comfortable at all.

Worst of all, the checker was not helping. Were it me, I might shout out the items as I rang them up so that he would know what to flail for: giant paper towels, soda bottles, meat. AAugh! imaging suddenly packing cereal, cookies, spaghetti, and then wet, coldish meat!

The other thing was that the checker packed one bag but failed to remark about its presence to the bagger and so it was that I had to circumvent his flying arms to retrieve my remaining bag. The good part was that I only purchased 5 items.

I do not begrudge getting a blind man a job. I just wish they had found something easier for him. Perhaps gathering carts.

Tying one on

Yesterday I got a free bowtie. I had to get a shirt and tie for a waitressing job, and went to a tuxedo store.

There were no suitable shirts to fit me.
Being both short and buxom made both boys' and mens' shirts awkward and puffy in all the wrong places.

I turned my attention instead to the ties. There were hundreds of different ties on shelves in peach peck baskets. The salesman wanted me to buy a tie with round edges on the bows; it was gray satin and I did not like it one bit. I chose a sort of double butterfly made of velvet thinking that it might make me adorable in a way that would make me a lot of of money.

The salesman did not like the tie I picked. "That one is really shot", he kept saying, "The snap is right out of that one". The salesman's tie was striped.

I persisted in my desire for the snapless tie.
"Just put it in your purse and walk out of here" he told me, "anyone so insistent on having THAT tie should have it for free.

Seeds of Change

I got an envelope in the mail. It was addressed in block letters which looked to be male, possibly that of my college boyfriend, but that was a stretch.

There was no return address, the postmark was from Philadelphia.

The back on the envelope read: Happy Spring.

Inside the envelope I found a package of Shirley (mom's name) Poppies, named "Falling in Love".

The envelope and seed packet appeared to have gotten at least half wet, been crumpled, and dried that way.

I know who sent them.

I thought these things:

1.Risky
2.romantic
3.under the top?
4.overkill with the falling in love stuff?
5. Oh, for crying out loud!
6. Too little too late?
7. speechless, don't know what to say or think.
8.NOW you're trying to be nice?
9. I wonder how they will grow?

No number 10. What were you expecting?

It turns out I got a call from my sister saying "Didn't you get anything in the mail?" No, I don't think so, I told her. I did get some seeds though. "Wow, you did not know my hand writing? "(she mostly e-mails, and no, I don't) " Well, Shirley, that did not tip you off?" No, I said, they said Falling in Love, and that threw me off.
My sister did the slow burn .
I guess it was just wishful thinking.

Common Cold Blues

About one o'clock in the afternoon Norris decides to quit malingering and try to make herself useful around the house while waiting for her soup to melt.

Unlike other people, she usually made food from scratch and was comforted by the fact that no mother's presence was required to produce some chicken soup; a sure fire remedy for everything. Her soup had come from the freezer and was still in a solid state now in a pot on the stove.

Norris was no giant, and so it was that staggering around the kitchen in hangover mode that she noticed that the grime atop her small apartment sized refrigerator had reached crisis status. She'd been getting by the last few weeks with hapazard swipes at the accumulating crud, but feeling ill generated an urge to clean house.

I hate being sick in a dirty house, she often reminded herself. If it was not one malady, it was another, and in fact, Norris spent most of her time being nauseous, dizzy or both for reasons she could only guess at, and that numerous doctors had deemed to be non existant, though being frail or a hypochondriac in final analysis amount to the same thing.

Standing on the kitchen stool, Norris discovers that window cleaner and a paper towel are not going to do the job. Why did I have to start this? She wonders about this urge to clean while scrubbing vigorously with ammonia and squinching her face in another direction to avoid the fumes. Finally, she manages to clean the few items that sat on top of the fridge top to her satisfaction; (I'm really getting things done now!)as well as the refrigerator itself.

Moving on to another part of the kitchen, she broke the top of her sugar jar while trying to dislodge a knife jammed in the silverware drainer. It really was a tiny kitchen. She assembled all of the pieces of lid and considered throwing the whole thing out. Then she thought about what it would cost to replace which led to some cogitation about people who keep broken crockery and people who do not keep broken lids but keep things which are obviously missing lids, and so never use the items. It was a gift she had actually liked, which was a rare instance indeed, and that made the whole thing worse.

Weary, she dished out her soup and sat to relax and contemplate the situation further. All this comes of carelessness she thinks, and 2 lousy drinks. Why are there carrot skins in this soup? This doesn't happen at Campbell's. The whole episode truly irritated her.

Norris resolves not to be quite so handy all the time.

Fashionistas

I was in the Salvation army and found a semi attractive dress. When I put it on, I noticed a slight tightness under the arms but it seemed to fit perfectly. I opened the curtain of the dressing room to ask the gaggle of women waiting to try things on what they thought of it.

"Too young?, too frumpy?" I asked.

Oh noooo, it's great, they all agreed.

I pulled the curtain shut and heard: "It looks like it was made for her." and further, " The best part is that it does not look like it's even from here!"

Thus were born the Salvation Army Fashionistas.The reason it fit me was because someone had shortened the straps at the shoulder, shortening the torso, and making it suitable only for someone like myself who is torso-deficient. Thus the under-arm chafing. Now if I can fix that......

Two Jeannette stories

While undressing, Jeannette cut her nose on the museum admission button stuck in the buttonhole of her shirt. She had been thinking of changing to a sexy nightgown from the layers of bulky winter clothes she was loosely piled with in order to elicit some interest from David who was as usual glued to the television. Clad in knee socks and panties, she rushed to the mirror to see whether the sharply stinging cut would ruin the effect of allure. Eventually deciding that the house was too cold anyway, she compromised with the ensemble of socks, sexy black gown and topped the outfit with a gray hooded sweatshirt from a college no one they knew had attended.
The sweatshirt was a sore point in that it came via a former boyfriend who had stolen it from an unknown source, which meant that it was from the wardrobe of another woman. It was one of the reasons that she had stopped seeing that guy. His infidelities were legion and he had a habit of adopting clothing from women. He was a small man, and so, could easily fit into a lot of women’s’ clothing. This sweatshirt, however was just the right amount of oversize, and was exceedingly soft, so she kept it although who it smelt like now was up for grabs.
David was absorbed by a nature show; not that it mattered, he alternated between sporting events and nature shows and spent little time conferring with Jeannette about her preferences. For her part, Jeanette saw romance sneaking away once more and turned to contemplate her magazine and the frequent query- When did so many nature shows suddenly appear on TV?


2.
When Jeanette left her husband, it was without premeditation. She left the house and was gone. Disappearing was a skill she had developed as a teenager. Hanging out with a group of kids for hours and suddenly becoming rammy or bored, she would leave a room without fuss or preamble and leave the house as well. Later they would say to her: “It was hours before we realized you weren’t coming back”.
It was hours before you noticed that you weren’t paying attention” Jeannette would reply.

It was much the same with her husband. One day he woke up and leaned over the bed to kiss her sleeping face and beheld her empty pillow. Was she here yesterday he wondered?

Makes Good Use of Time

A Man A Car, A Plan: Planaman

I was driving home for a change, when I saw something unusual in front of me. A guy on a small motorcycle kept sliding back to have a discussion with a person in a car. I suppose they know each other, I thought, but instead of keeping pace with the slowly moving car in rush hour traffic, the cyclist would bound ahead, and then slip backward for another word or two. This action intrigued me, but it was only a mild aberration.
In another mile, the cyclist veered off, and made a turn and the rest of us in the rat race plodded slowly forward, a metal taffy pull on the highway; go ahead, shrink closer together, etc.
The next thing I noticed was that the guy in the car who had been the friend of motorcycle Bob, let’s call him, pulled up to a truck that was carrying the equipment and workers for a lawn service, and I saw the guy take a business card from the guy in the passenger seat of the truck.
This guy makes very good use of his time, I thought. Here I am just driving home, and this other guy is making friends, getting contacts, contracting work to be done. What else could he do while I drove passively behind? It turns out, that he could go to the drive in dry cleaners and come out ahead of me at the next light, a neat trick. He also picked up some dinner, cleaned the inside of his windshield, went through some mail on the seat next to him, changed his shirt, and tie, combed his hair, applied fresh cologne to disguise what I could only surmise was the accumulated odors of the day, and picked up his date at a bus stop which he probably arranged by cell phone before I pulled up in back of his car.
At this point, I was completely in awe. If he had not already picked up that other woman, I was going to jockey my car so as to get a better view of the guy and meet him myself. After all, a man who was so productive on the road could only be a paragon of efficiency in his home. Unfortunately I was not quick enough to think of that plan in time to catch up with him; also, the road was very crowded, as the rush to home continued for the majority of workers on our route. We continued driving for a while and the girlfriend wrapped a package she had pulled from her tote, changed her outfit, applied makeup, made one or two calls of her own, rummaged in the back seat to come up with a newspaper wherein she appeared to be engrossed in the classified pages, but the light in the car was fading, and my eyesight is just not what it used to be. Perhaps they live in the car, I thought. All they need is a bathroom and a couple of blankets, and they need never leave the car at all. Perhaps he conducts business by phone and laptop while making the rounds of his daily errands. Most other people would feel claustrophobic, but I know of one or two people who have lived in cars, or claimed to do so, and who knows how many people there are who just spend their day in the car? I know a salesman, but he likes getting out of the car to stretch his legs and to do business with his clients. He prefers eating in restaurants, too, as would I in his place, but the couple in front of me seemed perfectly content to conduct all of the business of their lives in the front seat of that small sedan.
Before I could surmise anything else about the two, we came to a stop at a gaper’s delay, and I read his bumper sticker, to wit: You don’t have to believe everything you think. Ain’t that the truth? I thought. Even stopped in traffic, I was being made to think philosophically by his choice of reading material on the car. Wow! I was blown away by the fabulous functioning duo in front of my eyes. It is not often that one gets a show while driving their humdrum route home from the daily toil for cash.
I thought about going further, but was afraid of being at some point disappointed. Surely they would embark at some destination, ruining the invention of my imagination. With some relief, as I neared home, I made my turn, even then wondering about the magical life of the man whose teacher must have written in his report card; makes good use of time.

On the Radio

Norris was at work, listening to some god-awful caterwauling on the radio. Katherine, working across the table asked "who is that?" Norris's opinion was that it might be Curt Kobain.
"Nope, too happy" was Kath's repy.
"Well, how about Nirvana?" opined Norris.
"Still too happy".
"I don't know," said Norris, "It sounds pretty anguished to me".
"Yeah, but it is still a happier anguish" was Katherine's last take on the subject.
"That could be our band's name" Norris said, knowing that there would not be any band, but saying so anyway. It was kind of like what she used to tell Tessa all the time; "I saw it, and frankly, it was poignant, but boring."

Phone Solicitor

Norris was tiring of immersing her hands in water. Talk about sub urbanity she thought. As if in answer, the phone rang, “Hi, I ‘m calling for the children’s hospital” said a young woman’s voice. Norris was let down; it was not a real call from someone good.
“Oboy” she was good at getting rid of telephone solicitors, but did not exactly enjoy it.
The telephone voice giggled at Norris’s dolorous reply and Norris asked “Do you want money?” Just before the girl could resume her memorized speech- “no”
“Well, do you want children?” Norris was thinking ahead here, “Because I don’t have either”.
“No,” the girl replied.
“Well, what is it then?”
“I want to know if you want the paper.” By now the pre written speech was totally out the window and Norris thought why do I want a paper from the children’s Hospital? They put out a paper? Talk about non-sequitur, sheesh, I didn’t mean for this to get out of hand.
“When you get the paper delivered, one dollar goes to the hospital…” the girl seemed to be veering back toward her previous spiel.
“Wait, I pay the hospital?”
“No, you pay the carrier but...”
“The hospital gets the money and I get the paper?” This is not too awful Norris thinks, and then thinks of having her Sunday mornings shattered by the rude blatting of the front doorbell, and having to face some obnoxious adolescent while still in her pajamas. “No, thanks, I’m not here a lot.” (Subject closed)
“Okay,” the phone voice registers, ( lost another one.)
Norris reluctantly returns to submergence.

Dinner Plans

and household woes

Hi , I’m really depressed.

Oh? What is it this time?

Well, I just discovered while cleaning the top of the stove, that the funny burning smell we were looking for last night was the brand new counter top and the brand new cutting board. This apartment isn’t even a month old, and already I have ruined something. Lou is going to hit the roof and I don’t know if I can take it.
Did you know that the amazing Ginsu steak knife makes a wonderful wood plane? In fact, it worked better than the actual wood plane I used first. In my usual Lucy tries to hide a cow in the kitchen style, I was hacking burnt wood off the cutting board when I realized that it smelled just like hotdogs.
Does this mean that all these years I have been eating thinly disguised kosher wood chips? NO, what it means is that all those old hot dogs are being made into cutting boards since people got so hinky about nitrates in the food. They chop up the dogs and press them into clever wooden shapes. In fact, I hear they do a mean parquet floor too, but that could be salami. I’ll look into it for you. Does the extra cash I blow on Kosher mean I get hickory instead of knotty pine? What do you think?

Well, I think this is great material for a story- it’s pretty funny stuff actually and you should write it all down like I told you yesterday.
I’m getting ready to go to my new job now. I just love wearing this neat little tuxedo shirt and my patent leather shoes. Do you want to have dinner at the monster inn before the Comet dance at the Planetarium tonight?

Well, here’s where my life is starting to resemble fiction, I already wrote our conversation before calling you. Do you think our lives are losing spontaneity?
And to answer your question, I don’t know if we can afford it; even if we only get the “victim”, we just shelled out 80 bucks for groceries last night and what with the counter and all he’s going to be in one hell of a mood and it will be a miracle if we get to the dance at all.

Maybe you could put a potted plant on the burnt spot.

No, it’s right next to the stove, which would not be good at all.

Okay, so how about a lamp? You have to see well to cook, right?

No, same spot, it’s just awkward. Anything put there would be knocked over by someone’s elbow.

Oh well, Dave and Denise are coming in at 6:30 and we’re going out for dinner and then to the dance.

Yeah, when they say 6:30 that means 9:30 if you’re lucky.

No, they promised to come early which means they could show up on time, and if they don’t show by 8:30, we’re going without them because we promised Timmy and Bagwan we’d be there by at least 10.

Oh. We.., maybe we’ll meet you. Or maybe there will be a national disaster before he gets home and the burnt counter won’t seem so bad. I’m working on dematerializing in case that disaster doesn’t come through. How about that?

Good idea! If you perfect it, let me know. Actually, you could dematerialize over here but I have to clean. I’ll see you tonight. Maureen is coming from the suburbs; I think we can get a ride with her.

Okay. She goes to the phone, calls Tess and reads the story to the phone, and hangs up. No answer. She leaves a message:
Hi, I really don’t have to call you now because I have already written the whole conversation down in case you’re not home…..still, no one answers; how typical. At least I got a few pages of dialogue out of it.
She tries calling someone else.

How to buy spices

An excerpt of the soon to be published Che Sera Cookbook:

When shopping for herbs and spices, get anything that looks good to you, or anybody with you, or the odd bystander in the spice store. Buy lots of colors, shapes and textures- you can find out what to do with them later, and if you don’t you still have the raw material for amusing home décor. Nothing looks better on your kitchen wall than a lot of glass jars full of great looking stuff.
Note: you may want to avoid buying some things which are too hot to serve as anything other than say, paint remover. This is precisely what sales help is for; don’t be afraid to ask for assistance in weeding out the more lethal items and hope this is not one of their “bad” days. If it is, buy stuff anyway, it will cheer you up some; probably nothing will help them.
Should you feel I have been too vague about suggestions, my guideline is:
1. green stuff
2. yellow stuff
3. red stuff
4. leafy substances
5. things that have shape
I don’t bother with labels. It astounds my friends and makes cooking look much more difficult than it really is. People are sure I am psychic. If you want to give this impression but are sure you will put curry into your tapioca, simply label the bottom of the jars. It is mistake proof and you sill still appear to be a culinary genius.

Sleeping Beauty

We were sleeping in the single bed in my room at my parents' house, and the sun shone on our faces waking us up. My eyes were still closed and you thought I was asleep when you raised up on your elbow and looking down at me , and said "God, you are so beautiful." I moved about acting asleep until you kissed me awake.

That was the first and last time any of my boyfriends said that to me. You thought I did not hear it, but I did. The sad part is that no one of you ever said it in my hearing. Why not?

Yeah, you might have a false memory. It's not you, it's the guy who will probably not read this.

The 4th of July

I woke up this morning hearing a band playing. This is not unusual as I often think I hear music in the house, mostly at night. Usually it is a radio left playing upstairs.
I realized it was the parade. I threw on some clothes and went downstairs to find Jeff watching the news in his sweatpants. "Parade" I told him. "I hear the bands". He of course did not believe me, so I wandered down the driveway to see the parade.
It's a small town kind of deal, part of the town marches, children ride bikes and everyone gets a small flag(made in China).
It is the neighborly thing to do unless caught out later, when you can plead the sleeping late defense. This year they gave out balloons, beads (to the faithful, I noticed, as they came from the church) and ice cream sandwiches. Breakfast of champions. When the black high school band passed I smelled pancakes and bacon. I mentioned this to Jane. She asked me what that meant. I said it means someone over there (motioning across the street) is making breakfast. She laughed, glad I was not making a racially biased remark. Small minds, small town USA.

Email Woes

Nory questions her contacts.

Nory, tired of forwarded messages and terse responses, asked Tom to write her a story. What she got in response was a series of the usual inane and whiny messages. A story, she thought, has characters and a narrative. These puny messages, while original to the writer, could be improved upon if he tried. She could not complain much, however, because hardly anyone but Linda wrote cogent letters.
Linda’s letters were so pleasurable to read that there was an impulse to save them for posterity. Nory did have a small cache of hand written letters from Linda and a few others that she could not discard. The only hand written note she possessed and had ever received from Tom, was a scrap of paper which read: Back in a wink of a quark’s life. When she found it, he had gone out to get provisions for breakfast that they would share, or perhaps it was something else, she could no longer remember; it was that long ago. She thought at the time, that a quark might be some kind of bird. In the years which passed between then and now, she had learned via several sources that the quark lived in space, and was not so much a bird as a particle; of what she had no idea, nor did she wish to find any more information about it. If she asked, she would receive a ream of research on the subject. Sometimes she asked for stuff just because she was too lazy, and he was so good at finding the information she wanted. The note itself remained in the shoe box with the other hand written letters and cards she had deemed worthy of saving.
At least I get multiple notes to amuse me, was Nory’s opinion. She thought Tom might agree, although he rarely concurred with anything she wrote to him, she felt that his disagreement was calculated so that she would write again to counter his remarks, or to defend herself
. She had learned over time, that to argue with anyone at all was probably not worth the time and energy expended, but Tom made her experience her feelings on a more dramatic level than others did, and she was not sure of why that should be. Still, she had started to realize when she was being baited, and replied to him with the same kind of banter he used on her. He did not like it much, and had begun to complain about her replies, calling her “glib”.
Not thinking that glibness was a problem, she stayed her course, and eagerly awaited further correspondence.

Ya call that music?

It's official, there is no music on late night television that I want to hear.
In fact, it may be safe to say that there is little new music that I wish to listen to at all.
It may just be the unnatural ringing in my ears (tinnitus) that is worse the last month or so, but I think it is just bad musicianship.

Have you any recommendations for movies I might like that I could rent? I am enjoying netflix, you get movies in the mail, and send them back. no human interaction required. No smell of rancid popcorn or rugs which smell of feet.

Evidently, the old ucch sound that you make that I make has been replaced partially by the newer and equally expressive yeish. Not quite sure how to spell it, but Jeff seems unable to resist repeating it after I say it. Sort of like Renee Chenault Fatah, whenever she is on I cannot resist yelling FATAH!!! and a woman on public radio : Latch mi Singh, Andy and I hear her at work and are powerless not to echo her name in unison.

Otto & Minton

The news that Otto Steerage and Minton Mention was burbling some dritz was wasted on me. “Burble burble at the drive-in with a vengeance sez Otto”
“Yez man, and’ double the dritz on that burger adds Minton, not one to be left out of a conversation for long.
Mitzi Maison Mint Mention was home cryin the fer god sake’s blues over the toilert. “I bin peein’ ever’ 5 minutes fer 3 days strait, an’ them two never stopped to pass the time, let alone, never you mind, sleepin. My only consolation here is the more I cry, the less I gotta pee.
The fact is, that’s been life as I ‘d known it in these parts for more time than I care to remember, so leaving the status quo, I perambulated over the Marie’s to find her contemplating which of a vast collection of brilliant striped bikini panties to wear that day. I liked Marie because she did as she pleased. She is a commercial artist and works out of the house. Yesterday’s temperature zoomed clear past 96 and possessing that knowledge and secure in the belief that it would do so again today, I showed at my more or less regular hour to watch Marie, hanging herself over that drawing board in those multi shade undies, drawing a ad for ether white toe polish an’ flippin’ the sweat off the underside of her tits with the back of her hand without smudging the tempera; no mean feat.
I wasn’t due at my job at the Once Around the Track Dress Shoppe & Hardware for another 3 or 4 hours and knew Marie’s was as cool a place to hang out flickin the sweat off as any other. Besides, that panty trick in the beat the heat weather had been mine before it was hers, and Minton an’ Otto was wise to me an’ started their burbling activities out in my front yard pretending to have joined up with the friends of the animals and sneaking peeps from the ladders that went up to all the plastic bird feeders left out by Mrs. Bendheim-Fiduciary of the Third National Truss.
So I say “Look, Marie, I know I started this business but did you have to make it into such a goddam fetish?” And she says” Yes, well,” in that prissy way of hers, “well if a girl’s only going to wear one garment, it might as well be flattering” and I counter with “You got enough eye makeup on to constitute at least 3 garments already. What is this? We havin’ a session with Playhorse Magazine this afternoon or what?” And she says “yeah, well at your age I guess a little too much makeup could be a bad thing but….”
“This wouldn’t mean you have loosed the news to the ‘friends of the animals” that this is where the birds come and cool their feather now that they invested in all those ladders in my yard would it?”
So Marie, she goes: “a girl’s got to look her best at all times, you know” and I figure it’s time I invested in a swimsuit and a lawn chair anyway, bohemian life going downhill at the current rate that it was. I double back just in case Mitzi has quit cryin’ the by god etc. etc. which she has since I offered her something constructive to do instead, namely; spending the none too hard-earned cash of her just about fictitious husband since most of his time was pent on burbling activities anyway, which everybody pretty much knew. Not that burbling actually needed to take up so much time in the life of a full grown man, but there it was, ugly as a scabbed up knee and as unstable as the afternoon heat, Minton was booked up with this erstwhile & Otto burbling which actually no body knew what that amounted to.
Hearing the ladder crash out in the yard brought to mind that metallic sound of long icicles crashing off the treetops on to the roof in winter. We heard some muffled cursing & took off out of there at a run. Let the neighbors deal with the mess. Prob’ly not even need of an ambulance.

Satin Chickens

Written 25 years ago…..

I got a note from my lover, vacationing in Austria. It was not the purple prose of a man in love; it was not the letter I thought I’d like to get.
I had a man who lives in Connecticut who used to write me these be-bop kind of letters that stretched my heart all out of shape and strained something in my throat. Those were the kind of letters a girl might expect from a man in love.
The day I got the postcard from Jonas he was to return from Austria, and laying around the apartment, waiting for his phone call, I got more and more upset and nervous. Where was he?
I had been thinking about this earlier letter writing person for several days because of a song on the radio. Steven used to use phrases of songs in his conversations, or in his letters, and not let on that they were not his own words. Often they were very cryptic, like the one about “satin chickens” and then, weeks or months later, I heard it, Lou Reed singing some thing about satin chickens, maybe an allusion, but there it was.
So, here I am, five, maybe eight years into my life and no real problems to speak of and here comes this Brooke Benton piece over the airwaves….”Ain’t it funny how time just keeps on slippin’ right away, and it stands out so clearly in my mind from one of those lost letters in a shoebox I keep stashed around here someplace.
For two or three days I try to remember the maiden name of Steven’s grandmother so that I can reach his cousins who live in the summer house down by the lake which is about a block away from the winter house up on the hill.
Eventually I come up with Mc Coy, how unlikely is that? I wonder, but it works and I reach Pierre, as I called the trombone playing cousin, and he says “This is so weird, Steve and Ruth just got married two days ago.” This is just too much for me, and having no decorum I ring up this two day bride who I probably got out of bed and say, voice from the past, not to worry. Steve was never one of your real big talkers and always kept up a strong guard. I don’t know what was going on there or how things were going , but as it was one of your four person weddings, I’d say she was pregnant (I was wrong) and that after living together the last few years, they had decided to get married.
I have to say that his voice on the phone did not give the impression that they were having any kind of a party.
It turns out he had been denied his unemployment benefits from the golf course and that eight years of college had not produced the famous fine artist I had envisioned him to become. “You pick the strangest times to call than anyone I’ve ever known” he told me. I apologized and explained that I really only wanted to talk about stuff, not get back together. He seemed so far removed and pretty cool, but I guess what else could he be?
Meanwhile I am annoyed at Jonas for not getting off the plane and rushing to phone me with his coat still on. I wonder where he is. When he left, his plan was to come back and live with me. Could be there’s a new plan in mind. Meanwhile, I’m lying here writing, thinking; ain’t it funny how time just keeps slippin’ right on away……

Bonnie's Farm

So, the last time I saw Bonnie, her phone rang and rang, making it almost impossible to finish a sentence. We tried, but kept losing track of our thoughts and had to start over a dozen times.

Then, one of her neighbors, a Nordic or German woman with sort of half a dog came by. The dog was some variety of Bassett hound, and his back end was held up by a harness.
He had to be heavy, and the womanwas struggling with him a bit. She said he was incontinent, mostly in the house. She could not make herself have the dog put down, and Bonnie, a pacifist and animal lover, said that even she would have had the animal put to sleep long ago.

We were in the yard where there were boxes of broken glass, frosted by the wash of water over long periods. She had gleaned them from beaches and water ways to use in her art projects. We were going to sort it except that we kept being interrupted.

I accidentally pushed bon's little white dog who was wet, a wiry compact little circus kind of dog, off the mini trampoline I was sitting on, and into a box of her glass that was all over the yard. The fact that there were copious amouts of seaglass and a trampoline in the yard was confounding enough but seemed normal, knowing Bonnie.

Eventually she said “all I really need is permission to throw it all away." I said "I think you can throw this away", but needed to choose a few choice pieces to take with me.

After that, the guy who rents a parking space dropped by for a chat and Bon insisted that “It is never like that here.” The parking guy agreed that the yard is usually quiet.

I felt like I was at a very sub-urban circus with all rings going at once.

The dog suddenly had blood flecks all over it, and we thought it was from the glass but no, just a snake for crap's sake, he had caught a snake in the yard, and the snake was bleeding.

We were just getting over that when her husband (the chef) came home with takeout, looking pissed and complaining that she had not answered the phone. They had not been married long, and he did not know me but appeared to suspect that it was my fault that everything had gone awry. I made away not liking the vibe at all.

There was some mention that he was closing the restaurant and making a full time job of music. Perhaps that would be a good reason to be cranky, but I had nothing to do with that.
I wonder how they are doing.

The New Scentsation

Perfume makes me gag. I used to wear a lot of it and made other people sick and did not understand their problem. Now it is my compaint too. I get a lot of magazines because they are a cheap diversion. Mostly I look at the pictures. The cats like the subscription inserts which can be wadded up into toys.
Most of these journals include a number of perfume samples which even when removed from the magazine, leave their essence lingering, giving my perusal a vaguely nauseating effect above and beyond the effects of the drivel offered up as prose.
Strangely, all of the scents smell the same to me. I keep meaning to write a short story where a young woman commits suicide with one of these perfume inserts. She slashes her throat with a fatal paper cut. Live fast, die young, and leave a good smelling corpse, that kind of thing.

Golf and Pagentry

AA new look at America's favorite pasttimes.

Talking about Golf with the neighbors the other night when my mind went wandering. “I know what’s wrong with the Miss America Pageant” I blurted in nonsequitur, “No water hazards!” At that point, every one in the room got the jist and made remarks along the lines of: Miss Alabama approaches the 9th green, Oh, She’s in the rough!
Or, she is up to her knees in the water hazard after a grueling trek though the sand trap on the left. Well Jim, that stain’s not going to come out any time soon…..
It was pretty amusing. It was one of those “you had to be there” moments. I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

Birthdays of the Dead

A bit of a complaint.
An old friend wrote me two e mails, the first being something about Moliere, the French playwright of the what, 17th, 15th, century? And the second read: Happy birthday Sartre. Not Jean-Paul, or Jean Paul Sartre or any other version of a complete name. The latter philosopher lived in the 20th century, but was not a close acquaintance of either of us by any means. ]
Immediately, as I have no edit button in my brain, I shot back a smart remark for him to reserve that type of erudition for women he hoped to meet at the beach and that perhaps said women would be more impressed by his mere mention of great writers and thinkers of the past.
This, as usual met with less than enthusiastic reception, but I had no care.
I can’t deal with people celebrating birthdays of the dead. I just barely condone celebrations of the birth of living people, but still find it unseemly to have to give gifts to people just because they give themselves parties. I have no real complaint about parties for children unless they are first (and possibly second) birthdays in which case the celebratee is probably not aware of what the hubbub is about.
I found it disappointing when the Birthdays of Washington and Lincoln became little more than an excuse for white sales, something that does not actually apply any more.
While I am mentioning the linen sales, I must also remark that no stores are fooling me to rush to a sale, when I noticed that there is some kind of weekly discount deal in progress.
Nonetheless, I take umbrage for the celebration in honor of people who cannot appreciate the effort.
I also wonder what is to become of toys and gifts left at roadside shrines. I first saw these near bridges in Rome, Italy, and found them to be funky art installations.
As it turns out, these impromptu gatherings of items now accompany the deaths, mostly of children, and mostly in poor neighborhoods where the children of the participants may not have toys of their own. I wonder, if after people leave the site, small unfortunates can avail themselves of these toys left for departed souls, or if they must pass by daily and covet playthings which day by day become more soiled and ruined, losing color and substance until the pile of items goes the way of the intended recipient.

Yard Sale

To Shop, or not to shop?
We were driving in upstate NY, having just gone antiquing in Cold Springs and were driving back to Croton when we passed a sign that said: Greystone Monastery, and under that a smaller sign that said Yard Sale. All four of us are keen bargainers and avid flea-market fiends so one of us said “Monastery Yard Sale”.
“OH, no,” I said, “what do they have, old cassocks?”
“And grails,” Deb was quick to add.
“Yeah, how often do you need those?”

Mental Sorbet

In which our heroine redefines her parameters

Walking through the courtyard, Nory heard Tyler cursing quietly beneath the old station wagon. It was one of the largest wagons Nory could remember, but probably her father had owned one very much like it in the early ‘60’s. This was lower and way longer than an SUV, and truth be told, though kind of ugly, also had an odd eye appeal. She knelt down to say hello, and find out what he was fixing today. Tyler’s family owned a lot of cars, and at least one needed work at any given time, so it was not unusual to find him beneath one.
“Hi,” she said to the aggravated boy.
“WHAT?” was his anguished retort.
“Well, I just thought I would say hi and see what you are fixing. “
“I am replacing the exhaust system, and I got it stuck.”
Nory, on the ground, looked through the car. She noticed that on her end, there were places for bolts or screws so she asked” Where does this attach?” Tyler pointed to the rusty spot where the exhaust would bolt to the chassis of the car. “Well, if that is where it goes then you have got the whole mess on the wrong side of whatever this is called” indicating some piled flat pieces of metal hanging from the underside of the car.
Tyler came out from beneath to see what Nory was talking about, and told her that those were springs and that she had once again hit the nail on the head. He had the entire contraption on the wrong side of the springs. At this point, Kevin, noticing Nory speaking to the bottom of the car had sidled over to grasp the situation more firmly. The two boys then scraped knuckles while Nory directed calmly. Once the assemblage was put into place, Tyler asked “did you, in all of your stories neglect to tell me that you had been a mechanic?”
“Nope,” said Nory, slipping off to finish her task.
It was not until her drive home that she realized what had occurred. Earlier, during a misunderstanding because she could not remember the name of the pound sign, her employer laughed and told her that her true calling was to be a comedian. I am not really that funny she thought to herself. I think I am more like mental sorbet; I cleanse the mental palate so that people can think clearly.
I do that a lot, come to think of it. She finished the ride home listening to the radio, feeling quite pleased.

Middle Canadian

A start of a story..

I guess you could say I’m middle Canadian. I have medium brown hair and eyes of indefinite color that they call hazel at the motor bureau. I stand about 5’10” in my socks and I weigh about 175 pounds, no tattoos, no big or irregular facial features, no tics or physical deformities. I live in the middle of Canada and I don’t speak French. I probably would have set up housekeeping in the middle of lake Louise if that were the neutral midpoint, but then I’d be an amphibian, and I don’t know if that’s possible. My name is Tom, the rest is just as normal, it really doesn’t matter. We live in a suburb, not too big or small and I work for a company pushing paper all day, not much to it, I believe they have forgotten I am even here, working in my little cubicle so far back in the office that no one bothers to make the trip. I eat my lunch here, no fraternizing though I guess I could if I wanted to, and home at the end of the day by public transportation, just another cog in the wheel of industry.
I thought I wanted this life. I moved away from all I knew and remade myself, lost my accent, forgot my relatives, closed up shop so to speak, and took up life anew in this new land. Lately though, I have begun to wonder.

The thing is, I grew up in Kentucky, Land of juleps and thoroughbreds , and I spoke with a drawl. I was an only child, a towhead, and at the top of my class. I was tall and strapping for my age, made all the sports teams in school and stood out in general until high school, when I started my slide to anonymity. I hated the loud bragging style of my dad, who would always call attention to everything in ways I found obnoxious. Dad would be the center of anything and everything, starting a spitting contest down at the general mercantile, for example, in those days the townhouses had not yet been built and we were gentlemen farmers. We lived in a huge antebellum style house, left in the family since the Civil War days and I grew from proud to embarrassed to be living in such a monstrosity as I gained friends and saw the modest farmhouses and new clean suburban tract homes where they lived. I died a thousand small deaths daily at the shenanigans of my father who kept country ways even as his wealth grew to put him at the top of local society, where he was considered a “character”. In the South, we do not hide our social miscreants, we show them off, and are proud to be southerners. My Daddy had horses and I grew up with horses. I learned as a small child how to feed and water and later, at about 8 or 9 I was let to hotwalk or exercise the horses to warm them up before a ride or race and then to cool them down again after. Later, as I aged, I had to groom and muck out stalls. It was tough, but I liked the animals and the solitude, as long as my father was out of the barn. Did you know that race horses can only have names that are 18 letters long or less? That’s the rule and because of that, the owners all try to push the envelope with long-winded names. That’s one of the things my father used to do that irritated me so much. We had a horse named Bucket, but to race him my dad insisted we call him Buckets of Bullitts! Just to get the full count on the name. I thought it was a pretty stupid name for a horse, but it did not hurt his running and dad kept joking we should a named him Buckets O’ Simoleons (something they called money someplace in the old days). You might well wonder where my mom was, a good enough question. I love my mother; she’s still, last I heard, alive. She was pretty and kind had a nice smile and actually sang while hanging the wash and doing chores in general, kept the radio on for company and disputed with the various announcers as to the veracity of their various claims. She was sweet to me and a great cook too, but she paled beside the larger than life figure of my father, and if she sounds just too good to be real then so be it, allow me my illusions of memory, for this is how I like to keep her in my head. Cheery but shy, a beautiful, red headed counterpoint to my fiery, loud and obtuse male parent.

I don’t know what attracted me to Canada, It may have been the war. It may have been seeing droves of them on US television that made me see them as regular, well adjusted humans with no discernable accents but a small proclivity to mispronounce the letter L, something, I am told they are taught at broadcasting school where you sort of swallow the letter and make instead a glottal noise instead, making the words sound clearer to the listener, but it’s a tricky maneuver and often as in the case of one prominent announcer, comes off as a speech defect. The man just can’t grasp the nuances of the technique. Anyway, thinking that Kentucky was far too colorful or obvious , I moved towards the middle of the United States, but as it turned out, all the areas I encountered, had some other weird cant of language or behavior. In Minnesota there is a great population descended from Swedes or some such and the twang of their voices is just unimaginable and then populated with all manner of archaic exclamations as: ........ And this is the place where my memory went still, and I have not returned to this place since.

No comment

A complaint
Okay, I hope some one is reading this, but I need comments too. Everything should be accessible and easy to do, just leave me a note.
I don't need an epic, just a bit of enthusiasm, perhaps.

Sing Sister

Who would have thought, I was thinking, that I could be here doing this? Chances are few that anyone would be likely to walk in and catch me, but that’s the way my mind works. Anyway, I’m bent over, ass out (fully clothed) with my head in the clothes dryer crooning “It had to be you” to no one in particular, and appreciating the acoustics, if not my voice. I used to think I was a good singer. I was still convinced of this until I listened to the playback on my answering machine; not your choice of preference of major recording stars. Whether or not this notion is true is immaterial, and so I sing wherever no one will catch me. I once recommended to a psychiatrist that I sing in the car to get rid of stress. The windows are shut, and although I can be seen, I don’t think I can be heard. Wow, she said, I am going to have to suggest this to my patients.
I have forgotten at least half the lyrics to every song I ever knew, the number of which was considerable and spanned decades before I was born. This is unfortunate as I like to sing a song all the way through without the additions of made up words or scat which I am not suited for.
In the car with Jeff, I often pick up the lyrics I remember to a song written in the 20’s or some obscure folk item that I have stuck in my memory thanks to ex boyfriends with a penchant for country, bluegrass, blues and the ever popular library of congress folkways collection. He looks at me unbelieving almost every time. Sometimes, when I hear a song I know that he has heard before, I say ‘sing it, Jeff!”, but if the arrangement is not familiar, he will not recognize it.
I try not to burden others with this small passion I have and I appreciate it if you keep your singing to yourself if you are tone deaf. Whistling around me is strictly forbidden as it acts like fingernails on blackboards. I had to quit a job because for some reason, all the employees and customers started to whistle. I almost lost my mind.
On the other hand, I have heard people, usually who work with vegetables; I know this is inexplicable, but in Megworld anything is possible, singing out in public and not caring a whit. Generally they see me and stop, but twice I have told them to continue, and congratulated them on their cheeriness.
So go on, sing yourself to bliss or blues, just don’t do it in my presence.

Speaking of Sleep

I was talking to Bruce in a two bit dive. I cannot remember what brought us there. I think it was a chance encounter on the road that made us pull over at that spot. No matter.
He was telling me that he could not sleep and was fearful that as he became older, he would not be able to sleep because he would be afraid of dying in slumber.
“What?” I asked, “You’re afraid of missing something?”
“No” he replied,” It’s just that if I were awake I could fight it.”
“Why are you even thinking about this? I mean, we all think about death sometimes and we’re all going to die, but what good does it do to worry about it? Do you want to die?” I wondered aloud.
“No, that’s the last thing I’d want to do” says Bruce.”
A moment passes as we take a sip and look into each other’s eyes.
“Are you doing this on purpose?” I ask, smiling wryly.

Oatmeal Cookies

Baking with Ms. Information
Buy the really giant size of oatmeal, the kind that looks like a silo and barely fits in the car. The reason you need this size is economics; the smaller size costs twenty five cents more for 100 lbs less product. (Thank you consumer’s digest.)

The new improved box has a plastic lid which actually makes it close well, and makes you feel guilty about discarding it, unlike the old box which opened with a string which would invariably break while trying to open the oatmeal causing you to employ every sharp utensil at hand, the end result being an imperfect bottom ridge which crumpled when you try to replace this makeshift lid. You still had to throw that one away because they only recycle newspapers and glass in your neighborhood. In fact, there is no place which accepts paper containers except for nursery schools and if you do not have a toddler, they will not accept gifts from strangers either.

I realize that this detour is immaterial to the process of cooking, but it is food for thought.

Okay, use the recipe which used to be on the back of the box, but which will be on the inside of the lid causing you to open the box before shopping for ingredients (kind of dodgy to open it in the store, but we do what needs to be done.) Make half the recipe because if you don’t you will eat all of the cookies yourself if they are any good. Also the idea of using half a pound of butter in anything will make you sick. Mutter bitter imprecations towards the media for enforcing extra guilt on you.
Carefully add ingredients in their proper order and then, realizing that your family will not eat walnuts and that you have already eaten ¾ of the chocolate chips straight out of the bag, decide to use apple chunks instead, no matter what havoc the extra moisture will cause, and some dates because you like them and they will bulk up the batter. Add more stuff than you think the recipe would have called for and then throw in the leftover chocolate chips.

Note: the calories saved by eating the chips without the cookie part will save you tons of calories! Think about it.

Notice that the texture is very creamy and produces few cookies on the tray- Attribute this to halving the recipe and question your foresight. Put cookies in oven and in approximately 1½ minutes, just enough time for the batter temperature to have melted the chocolate, realize that you have forgotten to add the oatmeal. Blame this oversight on the fact that the box was so large you assumed it was furniture with a recipe tacked to it. Ignore the fact that oatmeal was listed as an ingredient and that you forgot it. Quickly grab the cookie tray with a potholder and pull the tray out of the open. Your first impulse will be to grab the tray with your hands but believe me when I say, this is not a good time for second or third degree burns on your fingers.

Scrape the melted stuff back into the bowl with the remainder of the batter and incorporate, looking at the interesting color of the cookies as opposed to what you had previously expected.

Helpful hint: the only really acceptable tool for scraping runny batter off of the pan is the 1950
Farberware metal spatula acquired from your mother who received it with a matched set of utensils as a wedding gift, or you could use a spackling tool, whichever comes to hand first.

Add the missing oatmeal and a bit of flour to firm it up and put cookies back on the tray and into the oven. Under bake just a bit for soft chewy cookies.

Further note: when entertaining, finely ground glass sprinkled liberally over the cookies prior to baking lends a festive glitter and added crunch to the surface.
Bon Appetit!

Next week: How to mix cement.

Fudge

An oldie but a goodie. (get it?)
Driving home from the shore, we pass a candy store whose main staple appears to be Fudge. I believe the name of the store is Madge’s Fudge, and that gives it away. It was a Sunday, and after 5 when we passed the store, and although all other stores selling food, gas, liquor, and sundries were open, this store was closed, prompting me to ask J, in the driver’s seat, have you ever seen that store open? No, he had not, in his memory although the store was decorated for July 4th, and the grounds were neat, and there was a fresh coat of paint on the walls of the building.
About 20 miles later, right next to a restaurant, we saw a second fudge shop, and it was also closed, and yet the business adjacent to it was doing a land office business.

In short, fudge is icing without the hindrance of cake. As a small child, my sister was hugely popular at birthday parties because of her dislike, or possible indifference to icing. Fudge is a confection that is either enjoyed immensely, or disliked entirely, depending, I think, on one’s affection for sweets and fats. Since the addition of a non-fat, artificially sweetened version, I wonder about the criterion, but then, I suppose the people who purchase the imitation are thinking about their health in a superficial way. If they were really concerned with the fat and sugar, they would just give the food up. Unlike my grandfather the chemist, who believed that artificial ingredients were better - read: less expensive, I feel that where food is concerned, I would always prefer the original recipe, so my figure has suffered while my taste buds enjoy themselves.

After passing the second closed shop, I again asked J,” What do you make of this? All of the other places on this road are open, and the candy stores are closed.”
“ I don’t think it is a fudge time of day,” he offered.
“ Well, at what time would one be interested in such an indulgence?” I inquired.
“From 2 to 5” was his concise answer, and in answer to my further questioning “and would it be a sunny kind of a day?”
His answer was only “yes.”

After that we discussed that although anything could be had from mail order and the Internet, we felt that salt- water taffy was a commodity only to be obtained on a boardwalk in New Jersey. There was a general agreement that for no known reason, fudge came under the same heading.
When we went to Cape May, his mother blithely requested that we bring her some fudge, as if it were not readily available elsewhere, or that coming from a resort town, it might be all the more deluxe. As it happened, the temperature in the car was about half that of molten chocolate, and we decided against a purchase.

A friend of mine, in an effort to help me find a job, and be satisfied with something close to minimum wage said “Just think of it as pocket money. When I lived out west with my first husband, I was at home with the kids, and to make some extra cash, I made the most wonderful fudge, and wrapped it in beautiful cellophane, and sold it to people and stores. After a while, I was making so much that it took most of the day for me and the maid to finish.”
I was astonished at this story, not because my friend was handy in the kitchen but because of that offhand way she threw in “the maid”. If a person could afford to pay a maid, did one really need pocket money? Maids were a lot cheaper in those days, and I suppose it was a lot of help to have a second pair of hands in the kitchen. If she spent money on the ingredients, and took the time, and paid the maid, and still made money, was her husband wise to this scheme or did he approve of her ambition? My friend is worldly and sophisticated works mostly in Art Administration these days, and it is amusing to imagine her in a western town, wearing her day dress and apron as was done in the 50’s, whipping up candy with the maid, in the kitchen. She may have even saved some for her family to have for a treat.
My real desire was to ask,” could you make some for me?”

Chocolate Jesus

Last week Andy wrote to me: Does Jesus love me more than the Easter Bunny? Because, I don’t see him leaving me any chocolate rabbits and I have never seen a chocolate Jesus.
Well, Andrew, your wish is about to be fulfilled. I have decided that there is money to be made in the Chocolate Jesus business.
We can sell them all year; baby Jesus for Christmas, and even Pieta Jesus and Mary for Easter. Consider having the fabulous Jesus on the cross chocolate figurine with raspberry filling running from his stigmata. YUM!!!! There could be the Jesus turning water into wine with a tie in to the Coppola Winery, and there could be millions of chocolate Jesus fish! The possibilities are endless! And why stop there? We could make chocolate Moses for Jews, chocolate Buddhas for the Asians, and Chocolate Vishnu and Ganesh for the Indians. It’s a gold mine, I tell you! There will be no stopping us. The only problem is that they melt when you try to keep them on the dashboard with the other crap you have there.

Names

In the car one day the man of the house declared “I’m going to change my name”. This is something he has been doing for years, ever since basket ball players started converting to Islam in mid-career. “From now on,” he would declaim, “my name is Acccchmed Hamid Jamarrr bar Icccchhhmbenrabi” or some such, which included many difficult guttural choking sounds. On this particular occasion he decided that his new moniker would be Portulaca Tollplaza. I inquired if this name would be hyphenated: Toll-Plaza like some African American Debutante, but no, he thought that just the one word would do. Will you change your sisters’ names too? I offered; they could be Ovaltine, Lavoris and Binaca (her father being of Hispanic descent.).
One of his sisters once related a story to me of a boyfriend who called her butt face. I told her that this was an indication she needed a new boyfriend. This was a girl who could have been on the cover of a magazine, and yet she settled for a really bad pet name from a guy who turned out to be every bit as good as that name.
My friend Tess has always had names for everything, including inanimate objects such as stoves (the Mighty Viking) and cars (the brick). Most people are happy if they find names for all of their children, but Tess has named children that she does not have: her son is Hiawatha Boulevard, and her daughter, Terracotta Statuette.
We have neighbors who we tried in vain to make friends. They remain friendly but aloof, and when we think about inviting them to something we say how about calling Chickie and Willard, or, do you think we should invite Fontaine and Brevard? Those are not their names, we know the real ones, but continue to invent new ones, and we always know whom we mean.
It is a rare day in the house when we don’t give the cats new names. It’s not that the cats don’t have good names, although in the case of Skippy, nee Farafluff, it kind of was, and they both still manage to recognize their own names or the names we have chosen to call them at that particular juncture.
Many of us do not care for our given names, but they often fit particularly well. My sister and I never liked our names because they were different from any one’s name that we knew. Children will make fun of anyone’s name just for the fun of it, and because it makes another person miserable, but when your own parents give you a bad name it just seems cruel. As it happens, I do NOT have a bad name, I just needed to grow into it. My other sister was named inadvertently by me, and every girl born that year seemed to have that name. That also is a burden to a child. “I will not be Hennifer 2, she told the Spanish teacher; make the other girl number two”. I think that showed moxie. I should have named her Amanda which was someplace on the list, but I was under the gun with less than 30 seconds to make a pronouncement, and that is the reason for my sister’s very normal name.
To review, odd name, not appreciated, normal name also unappreciated. I don’t know how to fix that, and as I said before, we become the name we were given.

Television Shows of my Dreams

Having a lot of time on my hands, I tend to read a lot, but I also watch too much TV. Sometimes the shows are so ludicrous that besides not watching them I think up alternative shows that at the very least could be no worse.

Freudian Slips:
This show is a panel type quiz show sponsored by Victoria’s Secret. I have not decided firmly whether or not all contestants will be required to wear women’s undergarments, but it is humorous to imagine say, Mandy Patinkin wearing a satin chemise. The celebrity contestants, would sit behind a table so that the underwear showing would be above the waist, and therefore not completely untoward.
The questions would all be about their personal lives, and the answers could be true or false. The opposing team would try to catch them in their lies.

Wheel of Misfortune:
In this show there would be a big wheel to spin. The “prizes” on the wheel could be a trip to Bermuda with your legs broken, or simply get pushed off a curb. The contestants get to choose, and the lucky winner would appear on consecutive shows until completely disabled. While this does seem cruel, it would attract the same crowd who go to tractor pulls and wrestling. This contingent is known in the business as TWBBM, or tattooed women and beer bellied men. It is not known why the less money you make, the more noise you prefer in your entertainment, opera not completely withstanding, but it has been proved to be true.

Queen for a Day:
This show would be to take up the slack in the dearth of shows for gay people. It would work the same as the older show with the same name, but would have gay contestants vying with each other for the most egregious sob story. In addition to washers and dryers, the winner would be given a makeover at Frederick Fekkai, or some other prestigious Salon.

Another version of this show would be Queens (NY) for a Day, in which the unfortunate contestants would have a race from midtown Manhattan to Queens by public transportation or cab. The winner would receive an all expenses paid “Day in Queens”, whether they already lived there or not.
This show would be televised like a marathon, with cameras following each contestant as they jump turnstiles, argue with cabbies, dodge shoppers at rush hour and stiff arm the homeless in their frantic race crosstown.

Phone story segment

So, said Sadie, so maybe everybody is not Beethoven.
This seemingly offhand remark drove Jake into frenzy. “Yeah, and maybe everybody is not even Liberace.”

Dolling, God forbid I should break you the news but Liberace is dead, and at least he was a nice boy, good to his mother.

MOTHER! He was SO gay, not that you noticed, and further, not a very good musician, which you obviously missed and which is why I mentioned him . Thank you so much for padding the blow but God forbid, Beethoven is also dead.

Nonsense dear, just yesterday he was on the radio; I don’t know why you insist on trying to upset me all the time.

This has been a lovely chat mother. I ‘m so glad I called you in my hour of need; maybe I should have called Liberace’s mother, she would have made me a bundt cake or something and told me was a wonderful guy. Yes, I know she passed form this earthly vale before the death of her beloved son. Thank you for your support. He imagined the defunct Bartles and James deadpanning the remark from their T.V. porch, and goodnight! He slammed the receiver back on to the phone. I am so grateful that technology has not bypassed this receiver angle. Pushing that tiny dot on the cell phone just does not allow one to vent his emotions.

Jake used to have great heart rending phone slamming arguments with his girlfriend Nory. Both of them would bang the receivers down on their respective rotary phones. Sometimes Nory found herself banging the damn thing about 12 times before the crashing crescendo finally ending the call.
On one particular occasion he called her back, shrieked “You can’t do that to me!” and then he slammed the phone as hard as he could. On her end Nory threw the whole phone across the room until it jerked short on the 20 foot cord. Then she lay exhausted and furious on the bed until that beep beep the phone is off the hook noise drove her nuts and she crawled across the floor to replace both pieces quietly upright on the floor.

Jake’s cat came and rubbed against his legs. Phinny, as the cat was named this week was tiger striped and came from a farm with another impossible name. Actually, he, like all cat owners, changed the cat’s name as his fancy chose, and the cat chose whether to respond. Actually Jake had two cant but the other one (Elizabeth) was a surly grouse who only responded to the sound of cat food poured into a bowl. Elizabeth was a gift from one of his exes and no named by her although it was a male. “Angel, he said, I know this animal is only 8 weeks old, but it definitely has testicles”.
“Well, I don’t care, it looks like Elizabeth to me” she insisted. Calling the cat by a misgendered name may have made the cat grousy, and perhaps it was just in the animal’s makeup. Meanwhile, Jake’s vet has a field day with the misnomer, calling in colleagues for consults, asking whether the cat had cross -dressing tendencies and so on.
So Phinny the cat was his only real ally at the moment but it did help to have someone, and he pulled the limp feline to his lap where it settled until her next hyperactive impulse.