New Year's Eve rang in this morning with news that a lifelong friend had died, and with it, came a day devoted to writing a Memorial for him. Because of the holidays, and his pre-expressed wishes for an absolutely private service, almost no one has heard the news, and for a while, it will be able to stay that way. Not long. He was beloved by many, known by very, very few.
He lived a tremendous life. I have spent the day calling a few people, and putting off most others. It would be nice for them to welcome the new year without knowing something so unbearably sad.
I also know that unless they were on the call list, he wouldn't much care if they ever find out. The time for them to think of him -- to go see him and call him and invite him to dinner -- was long before his last few days. I am happy for the holidays and special occasions he was able to celebrate at my house this past year.
Because his death was so unexpected (no long vigil at a hospital bed), I found myself thinking all day: what would he want? what would he do? I believe he would want very little time wasted on grief or ceremony, and a lot of time spent celebrating his life by trying to do more of what he did -- which was walkin' his talk. If somebody was hungry, he fed them. If they were homeless, he took them in. He never screened a call. If he was alive, he picked up and asked what you needed. If someone was cold, he gave them the coat off his back. That's not an expression. He really did that. I saw him do it.
I went through the entire holiday season without experiencing one moment of faith, but I find myself clinging to one now, in my hope and belief that he is in a better world, because he was sure too damn good for this one.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Up on the Rooftop....
They seemed like a truly extravagant amount of trouble, but God knows, I certainly hope they become an annual holiday tradition like Harriette's cheese straws.
I credit the richness of the holiday fare with the completely insane cartoon dreams I had all night, from which, I awakened at 4 am to a persistent scritch, scritch, scritch on the rooftop, just over my head.
I opened one eye.
The TV was off. The stereo was off. I had left the blackberry downstairs on the charger on my way to bed. The iPod battery had died and I had clawed my way out of the ear buds in my sleep. The only light in the room came from the dim glow of the on-switch for the electric bedwarmer (which I have named Steve, after my three alltime favorite boyfriends). The usual street sounds were completely deadened by snow. It was as quiet a moment as has ever existed in this house, until, there it was again. Scritch, scritch, scritch.
At this point, I sat bolt upright in bed, rubbed my bleary eyes with the backs of both hands, and said, out loud, with some fog-induced expectation of a clear answer: "Santaaaaaaa?"
It wasn't him. As far as I know, anyway.
After further listening, it sounded just like the raccoon/cougar/hobo/possum that got caught in the attic this summer. I'm not sure what the critter turned out to be, because he (or she) never took the bait that the critter-catcher set for him. Eventually, the scritching stopped, so I figured s/he died, or moved to a nice farm in the country.
Of course it might not be the same animal. It could be a cousin. It could be anything. I considered calling Trapper John, who interrupted a wedding to come check my traps last summer (and that's not a euphemism). But I quickly thought better of it.
They might be willing to come set traps on Christmas Eve, but certainly no one would come monitor them on Christmas weekend, and the whole point of a humane trap is to catch and release. If you don't release fairly quickly, it isn't very humane at all.
I already hate the holidays. I don't think I could take the prospect of euthanizing a damn reindeer in my attic.
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If We Can Make It Thru December
Friday, December 24, 2010
Spoke Too Soon
"Remember, you can't spell Families without Lies."
I don't mean to be smug about the Holidays, but I am far from the last-minute shopper type.
Sometime around Halloween, I procure everything I could possibly need from the suburbs for the next six months (dog food, 50 gallon drums of Palmolive... the usual). Then a week or two before Thanksgiving I issue a travel advisory, reminding everyone I know to stock up, as if preparing for the apocalypse. "I'm out of Eukanuba," they might idly observe. "GO!! GO NOW!!" I say. "You won't be able to get within a million miles of PetSmart til January," I insist. "Do you have shampoo?" I'll fret out loud. "You might need it."
Holiday traffic, like ballgame traffic, rarely "happens" to me. I plan ahead. I re-route. (I said I don't mean to be smug; I didn't say I'm successful.)
So it should be some indication of the love that I have for my mother that we ended up at Bed, Bath and Beyond two days before Christmas.
It's a mother-daughter tradition that we grab a movie and a meal sometime Christmas week. I remember the first ones were Terms of Endearment and Working Girl circa 1980s. One year was Brokeback Mountain. A couple years ago it was Four Christmases (Dwight Yoakam plays a pastor!) This week, it was Little Fockers. The movie isn't important (obviously). It's just a couple quiet hours away from the usual holiday chaos. Then we usually hit the January sales, a few weeks later.
This week, as I scoured Fandango for any movie playing as far from any shopping corridors as possible, she lobbed in a bombshell. "Would that leave us time to run in Bed, Bath & Beyond so I can use my gift card?"
I think my response was along the lines of "WHAT??!! Bath and WHAT?!! NO. That would take FOUR HOURS." I wasn't even being hyperbolic -- for once -- I'd heard tales all week of people spending an entire day trying to turn left out of the Target parking lot. (And I chuckled a little under my breath when I heard these tales. "Amateurs," I thought to myself, a little self-righteously.)
"Bullshit," she observed matter-of-factly. "I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and it was fine. I was in and out in no time." It's "practically Christmas already," she added, along with some rationalization about how everyone had already finished shopping by now. (Seriously?)
I offered a few token protests. We were already going to have to re-route around ballgame traffic downtown. There might not be time to eat. We were all gonna die. That kinda thing.
This was met with an incredibly intricate array of shopping necessities revolving around two gift cards that were about to expire, a one-day discount that was maybe 150 percent off, and some sort of elaborate point system that I believe involved her becoming CEO of the company if she spent a certain amount before midnight.
At which point, I shut my mouth. This was obviously important to her. And when we got there, I realized why. There were all sorts of restrictions that involved one special-per-shopper and one-offer-per-transaction and spend-this to get-that. I think at one point we schlepped one load out to the car, donned disguises outta the trunk, and went back for another round. I can't be sure. I know I lost her in the crowds more than once and nearly went to the register to have her name announced to come get her abandoned child. Then I would catch sight of her little red knit pom-pom Santa on the top of her Christmas cap bobbing along just under the rack of 2-for-1 balsam candles.
As family jobs go though, there are worse gigs than Christmas Mule.
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--Robert Duvall, Four Christmases
 |
| a stocking stuffer from my Mom, 2010 |
Sometime around Halloween, I procure everything I could possibly need from the suburbs for the next six months (dog food, 50 gallon drums of Palmolive... the usual). Then a week or two before Thanksgiving I issue a travel advisory, reminding everyone I know to stock up, as if preparing for the apocalypse. "I'm out of Eukanuba," they might idly observe. "GO!! GO NOW!!" I say. "You won't be able to get within a million miles of PetSmart til January," I insist. "Do you have shampoo?" I'll fret out loud. "You might need it."
Holiday traffic, like ballgame traffic, rarely "happens" to me. I plan ahead. I re-route. (I said I don't mean to be smug; I didn't say I'm successful.)
So it should be some indication of the love that I have for my mother that we ended up at Bed, Bath and Beyond two days before Christmas.
It's a mother-daughter tradition that we grab a movie and a meal sometime Christmas week. I remember the first ones were Terms of Endearment and Working Girl circa 1980s. One year was Brokeback Mountain. A couple years ago it was Four Christmases (Dwight Yoakam plays a pastor!) This week, it was Little Fockers. The movie isn't important (obviously). It's just a couple quiet hours away from the usual holiday chaos. Then we usually hit the January sales, a few weeks later.
This week, as I scoured Fandango for any movie playing as far from any shopping corridors as possible, she lobbed in a bombshell. "Would that leave us time to run in Bed, Bath & Beyond so I can use my gift card?"
I think my response was along the lines of "WHAT??!! Bath and WHAT?!! NO. That would take FOUR HOURS." I wasn't even being hyperbolic -- for once -- I'd heard tales all week of people spending an entire day trying to turn left out of the Target parking lot. (And I chuckled a little under my breath when I heard these tales. "Amateurs," I thought to myself, a little self-righteously.)
"Bullshit," she observed matter-of-factly. "I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and it was fine. I was in and out in no time." It's "practically Christmas already," she added, along with some rationalization about how everyone had already finished shopping by now. (Seriously?)
I offered a few token protests. We were already going to have to re-route around ballgame traffic downtown. There might not be time to eat. We were all gonna die. That kinda thing.
This was met with an incredibly intricate array of shopping necessities revolving around two gift cards that were about to expire, a one-day discount that was maybe 150 percent off, and some sort of elaborate point system that I believe involved her becoming CEO of the company if she spent a certain amount before midnight.
At which point, I shut my mouth. This was obviously important to her. And when we got there, I realized why. There were all sorts of restrictions that involved one special-per-shopper and one-offer-per-transaction and spend-this to get-that. I think at one point we schlepped one load out to the car, donned disguises outta the trunk, and went back for another round. I can't be sure. I know I lost her in the crowds more than once and nearly went to the register to have her name announced to come get her abandoned child. Then I would catch sight of her little red knit pom-pom Santa on the top of her Christmas cap bobbing along just under the rack of 2-for-1 balsam candles.
As family jobs go though, there are worse gigs than Christmas Mule.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Bed, Bath, and Beyond the Circle
If We Can Make It Thru December
Jesus Saves; Bourbon Balls; and Happy Endings
Secret Santa
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
If We Can Make It Thru December
"The office Christmas party. A time when they all think they pre-ordered the beef wellington. Then, when you bring out the starters, they have remembered otherwise. But by now the entire group have swapped seats or are sitting on each other's laps and there are bodies on the kitchen floor."
Today is the shortest day of the year. From about Halloween on, I white-knuckle it til today. Tomorrow, the days will begin to get longer. Tomorrow, I'll begin to count the days til Spring. With all due respect to Hag, who might not "mean to hate December" ("it's meant to be the happy time of year"), I loathe it with everything I've got. I start with the weather and the miserably short days and work my way through to every single thing I hate about Christmas and the fact that I can't go to a bookstore any time from Thanksgiving til January 2 without a helicopter. This is the first winter in a decade I've lived without a garage (like an animal), so throw a perpetually iced-over SUV into the mix, along with a few impotent cans of Prestone, which precipitated something like a rage stroke when my windows perma-froze into the OPEN position last week.
From the moment that first "oh-oh-oh overstock.com" commercial rings in the season, I want to "oh-oh-oh open a vein."
My pal Pete asked me a couple weeks ago just what it is I hate about the holidays and I had to admit I wasn't sure. After some thought -- besides the music and the decorations and most of the food (flaccid broccoli anyone?)-- I believe it's the disruption to routine that completely discombobulates my Rainman. I like order and I hate chaos and I don't like having things out of place. As long as I can run along on my little inner hamster wheel, I get along ok. Disturb my carefully controlled environment and schedule, and I'll either die, or I'll accidentally stress-eat all the other little hamsters. I am nothing if not a fear biter.
I do like presents. I like to give them and I like to get them. I celebrated with Electronics Santa last weekend and a new Blu Ray (for me, not him; he got a book; it is a very good book). It was supposed to come with ElectronicsSanta's flatscreen TV two Christmases ago, but I could only take so much change at once. I insisted on waiting two years to see if Blu Ray is really the last word on the agenda for awhile (having gotten screwed in the early years of 8 track tapes, although it is the best way to listen to my Jim Croce Greatest Hits collection), so now that I have one, expect something truly digitally extravagant to be invented later this week. I certainly don't require anything as grand as electronics to be happy though. One year, all my friends gave me batteries and light bulbs, because I constantly complain there's nothing worse than running out of either one. That was a great year.
The only other thing I like about the Holidays -- and they're soft of a present -- is Harriette's Cheese Straws. They are the stuff dreams are made of. In fact, I wrote a little song. It goes like this... Well, I can't write music, but if I could, I would endlessly compose odes to Harriette's cheese straws. They somehow manage to be simultaneously light and fluffy, yet delicately crispy. They're wafer-thin. The flavor is indescribably tangy and tart, with just a hint of bite. It would not be an exaggeration to say I think about them all year long. It is the only reason I am ever nice, because in the back of my mind, I am thinking that if I am good, I might earn some of them at Christmas. It's the only time she makes them. She's given me the recipe, but I've never attempted them. It wouldn't be the same.
So it was a source of no small distress at my cousins' going-away dinner last night when we were head-counting for Christmas Eve reservations and it came up that Harriette will be out of town for this year's festivities.
What? Out of town? Where was she going? What would she be doing? Who would she be with? And then.... eventually.... Inevitably..."Well.... What about the cheese straws?"
What about em?
"Did she... you know... leave me some cheese straws or something? I mean... she wouldn't just leave town without... making provisions...?" Would she? Surely not. This is the woman who, confronted with a mudslide on her road on the way to Easter brunch, somehow hiked down a mountain and handed her homemade country ham biscuits off to a fellow guest so that her offering to the gathering wouldn't even be late. In my mind, I think she handed them over a raging river and that river was filled with alligators. The road washed away... but by God, we all had country ham biscuits. The food gays have pointed out on more than one occasion that all of our menus suffer a bit from Gone With the Wind syndrome ("as God is my witness....")
This.... this is the woman who made dog biscuits from scratch last year for the neighbor basset (dog biscuits that Ian ate... Ian! the neighbor husband, not the neighbor hound).
At some point at last night's dinner, it was implied (if not stated outright) that maybe I was being a little... selfish. I think the question was along the lines of, "you mean with everything she has to do to get ready for her trip, you expect her to stop and worry about getting you cheese straws?"
Why?
Would that be wrong?
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Harriette's Kitchen
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Word
--Ross Raisin, in What the Months of the Year Mean to Me, from The Guardian
Today is the shortest day of the year. From about Halloween on, I white-knuckle it til today. Tomorrow, the days will begin to get longer. Tomorrow, I'll begin to count the days til Spring. With all due respect to Hag, who might not "mean to hate December" ("it's meant to be the happy time of year"), I loathe it with everything I've got. I start with the weather and the miserably short days and work my way through to every single thing I hate about Christmas and the fact that I can't go to a bookstore any time from Thanksgiving til January 2 without a helicopter. This is the first winter in a decade I've lived without a garage (like an animal), so throw a perpetually iced-over SUV into the mix, along with a few impotent cans of Prestone, which precipitated something like a rage stroke when my windows perma-froze into the OPEN position last week.
From the moment that first "oh-oh-oh overstock.com" commercial rings in the season, I want to "oh-oh-oh open a vein."
My pal Pete asked me a couple weeks ago just what it is I hate about the holidays and I had to admit I wasn't sure. After some thought -- besides the music and the decorations and most of the food (flaccid broccoli anyone?)-- I believe it's the disruption to routine that completely discombobulates my Rainman. I like order and I hate chaos and I don't like having things out of place. As long as I can run along on my little inner hamster wheel, I get along ok. Disturb my carefully controlled environment and schedule, and I'll either die, or I'll accidentally stress-eat all the other little hamsters. I am nothing if not a fear biter.
I do like presents. I like to give them and I like to get them. I celebrated with Electronics Santa last weekend and a new Blu Ray (for me, not him; he got a book; it is a very good book). It was supposed to come with ElectronicsSanta's flatscreen TV two Christmases ago, but I could only take so much change at once. I insisted on waiting two years to see if Blu Ray is really the last word on the agenda for awhile (having gotten screwed in the early years of 8 track tapes, although it is the best way to listen to my Jim Croce Greatest Hits collection), so now that I have one, expect something truly digitally extravagant to be invented later this week. I certainly don't require anything as grand as electronics to be happy though. One year, all my friends gave me batteries and light bulbs, because I constantly complain there's nothing worse than running out of either one. That was a great year.
The only other thing I like about the Holidays -- and they're soft of a present -- is Harriette's Cheese Straws. They are the stuff dreams are made of. In fact, I wrote a little song. It goes like this... Well, I can't write music, but if I could, I would endlessly compose odes to Harriette's cheese straws. They somehow manage to be simultaneously light and fluffy, yet delicately crispy. They're wafer-thin. The flavor is indescribably tangy and tart, with just a hint of bite. It would not be an exaggeration to say I think about them all year long. It is the only reason I am ever nice, because in the back of my mind, I am thinking that if I am good, I might earn some of them at Christmas. It's the only time she makes them. She's given me the recipe, but I've never attempted them. It wouldn't be the same.
So it was a source of no small distress at my cousins' going-away dinner last night when we were head-counting for Christmas Eve reservations and it came up that Harriette will be out of town for this year's festivities.
What? Out of town? Where was she going? What would she be doing? Who would she be with? And then.... eventually.... Inevitably..."Well.... What about the cheese straws?"
What about em?
"Did she... you know... leave me some cheese straws or something? I mean... she wouldn't just leave town without... making provisions...?" Would she? Surely not. This is the woman who, confronted with a mudslide on her road on the way to Easter brunch, somehow hiked down a mountain and handed her homemade country ham biscuits off to a fellow guest so that her offering to the gathering wouldn't even be late. In my mind, I think she handed them over a raging river and that river was filled with alligators. The road washed away... but by God, we all had country ham biscuits. The food gays have pointed out on more than one occasion that all of our menus suffer a bit from Gone With the Wind syndrome ("as God is my witness....")
This.... this is the woman who made dog biscuits from scratch last year for the neighbor basset (dog biscuits that Ian ate... Ian! the neighbor husband, not the neighbor hound).
At some point at last night's dinner, it was implied (if not stated outright) that maybe I was being a little... selfish. I think the question was along the lines of, "you mean with everything she has to do to get ready for her trip, you expect her to stop and worry about getting you cheese straws?"
Why?
Would that be wrong?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Jesus Saves; Bourbon Balls; and Happy Endings
Secret Santa
Ian!
Harriette's Kitchen
Last Day of Summer
Word
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Sit, Jack. Stay.
"We ate, my father remarked, 'as if there were no God.'"
This is the week that my gay husband, finally undone by the kitchen renovation at his house, temporarily moved in. Even Jack packed his little doggie bags and came along. The poor husband-in-law was left behind to manage the chaos and construction dust.
It has been the idyllic living situation. He likes to shop and decorate, and I like to cook. By the time I got home from work, he'd fixed the stereo and had Iris DeMent playing and had somehow found a roaring fireplace on HD TV. A warm cashmere sweater was waiting for me with my pajamas, and the Cave was softly lit and scented by a delightful series of what I imagine to be $432,000 candles.
The first night, we made my grandmother's macaroni and cheese. I had no idea I even knew how to make it. I tested a trial run, with coaching from my fellow southern pal Rache, the week before on my BFF. We agreed it was good, but I had made too many substitutions. Penne pasta. Fancy cheeses. A pecan crust. Not what I had in mind.
So once he arrived, we walked to DiscoKroger in The Driving (if hyperbolic) Snow for a box of honest-to-God elbow macaroni. I had never bought it. Never made it. You would be surprised how far a box of that stuff goes, as we ended up with 42 gallons of mac and cheese. (We're down to two or so now.)
The next morning before work, I somehow whipped up biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast (again, I had no idea I knew how to make sausage gravy, but it turns out, I do).
By this point, it's fair to say that the kitchen was coated, floor to ceiling in a fine film of butter and flour. There was butter in crevices I didn't even know existed. (But by the time I got home from work, order had miraculously been restored.)
Last night, to celebrate his birthday, he treated everyone to a big night of Theater, and then we happened upon the one place in town that had Lamb Chops as the Special. After which, we concluded that we now completely believe in The Secret and the Law of Attraction and maybe even Oprah, because -- since we had had at least roughly 37 conversations about lamb chops this week (in connection with planning the Christmas dinner menu) -- we are completely convinced we conjured them onto this Menu (where we'd never seen them before). So while we ate these lamb chops, he was scrolling catering menus on his iPhone, figuring out where we could score more lamb chops in time for Christmas.
By the time the cheesecake arrived for dessert, that reminded us of the grilled cheese sandwiches he'd made last week and how good they were, but what we really needed was a good homemade tomato soup to go with them. Bisque. We needed to make bisque. Barely pausing long enough for them to wrap up our doggie bags, we marched straight to the DiscoKroger for the celery and onions we'd need for the mire poix. Then we stood there a little stunned in the glare of the fluorescent lights realizing there were no cashiers, and they had abandoned us to the U-Scans. As far as I was concerned, at that point, we had two options. We could abandon this store in favor of one that was staffed, orrrrrrrrrr, one of us would just have to create a distraction while the other bolted out the door and ran for the getaway car. I was already busy creating just such a plan in my head when he mysteriously started punching buttons on The Machine. He eventually fed it some money; it burped up some change; and our incipient life of crime was momentarily delayed.
Within an hour, the soup was on, garlic was roasting in the oven, and we'd each staked out our respective positions in the cave, found a great movie (which neither of us remember), and were nodding off over our reading material (out of the 173 new releases on my bookshelf, he'd somehow unearthed my freshman year annotated copy of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness... I had the new Vanity Fair).
The night before, I'd fallen asleep in front of Restrepo, which I'd been looking forward to for months. It's an incredibly loud movie, and he made merciless fun of me for snoozing through it, while I insisted I was just resting my eyes (much like my grandmother and his Aunt Mae). Not surprisingly, I fight sleep violently, so he gets a big laugh watching the process. He says, "it's like Sunset. You know it comes every day, but you hardly ever catch it when it happens."
Last night, we fought the good fight til about 4. I heard him snoring and went over to tuck a blanket under his feet, at which point, he sat bolt upright and said, "Vigilance!"
Startled, I said, "What? Bilbo Baggins?"
"No. Vigilance," he said, and went right back to sleep.
Then I wandered upstairs to bed, and the only sounds heard around here the rest of the night was the occasional opening of the refrigerator door, followed by the unmistakable whisssssh of aerosol made by the spray-whipped-cream can from the Snooty Falooty Store. I don't even know if that was him or me.
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--Katherine Anne Porter
 |
| Jack camps out in The Cave |
It has been the idyllic living situation. He likes to shop and decorate, and I like to cook. By the time I got home from work, he'd fixed the stereo and had Iris DeMent playing and had somehow found a roaring fireplace on HD TV. A warm cashmere sweater was waiting for me with my pajamas, and the Cave was softly lit and scented by a delightful series of what I imagine to be $432,000 candles.
The first night, we made my grandmother's macaroni and cheese. I had no idea I even knew how to make it. I tested a trial run, with coaching from my fellow southern pal Rache, the week before on my BFF. We agreed it was good, but I had made too many substitutions. Penne pasta. Fancy cheeses. A pecan crust. Not what I had in mind.
So once he arrived, we walked to DiscoKroger in The Driving (if hyperbolic) Snow for a box of honest-to-God elbow macaroni. I had never bought it. Never made it. You would be surprised how far a box of that stuff goes, as we ended up with 42 gallons of mac and cheese. (We're down to two or so now.)
The next morning before work, I somehow whipped up biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast (again, I had no idea I knew how to make sausage gravy, but it turns out, I do).
By this point, it's fair to say that the kitchen was coated, floor to ceiling in a fine film of butter and flour. There was butter in crevices I didn't even know existed. (But by the time I got home from work, order had miraculously been restored.)
Last night, to celebrate his birthday, he treated everyone to a big night of Theater, and then we happened upon the one place in town that had Lamb Chops as the Special. After which, we concluded that we now completely believe in The Secret and the Law of Attraction and maybe even Oprah, because -- since we had had at least roughly 37 conversations about lamb chops this week (in connection with planning the Christmas dinner menu) -- we are completely convinced we conjured them onto this Menu (where we'd never seen them before). So while we ate these lamb chops, he was scrolling catering menus on his iPhone, figuring out where we could score more lamb chops in time for Christmas.
By the time the cheesecake arrived for dessert, that reminded us of the grilled cheese sandwiches he'd made last week and how good they were, but what we really needed was a good homemade tomato soup to go with them. Bisque. We needed to make bisque. Barely pausing long enough for them to wrap up our doggie bags, we marched straight to the DiscoKroger for the celery and onions we'd need for the mire poix. Then we stood there a little stunned in the glare of the fluorescent lights realizing there were no cashiers, and they had abandoned us to the U-Scans. As far as I was concerned, at that point, we had two options. We could abandon this store in favor of one that was staffed, orrrrrrrrrr, one of us would just have to create a distraction while the other bolted out the door and ran for the getaway car. I was already busy creating just such a plan in my head when he mysteriously started punching buttons on The Machine. He eventually fed it some money; it burped up some change; and our incipient life of crime was momentarily delayed.
Within an hour, the soup was on, garlic was roasting in the oven, and we'd each staked out our respective positions in the cave, found a great movie (which neither of us remember), and were nodding off over our reading material (out of the 173 new releases on my bookshelf, he'd somehow unearthed my freshman year annotated copy of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness... I had the new Vanity Fair).
The night before, I'd fallen asleep in front of Restrepo, which I'd been looking forward to for months. It's an incredibly loud movie, and he made merciless fun of me for snoozing through it, while I insisted I was just resting my eyes (much like my grandmother and his Aunt Mae). Not surprisingly, I fight sleep violently, so he gets a big laugh watching the process. He says, "it's like Sunset. You know it comes every day, but you hardly ever catch it when it happens."
Last night, we fought the good fight til about 4. I heard him snoring and went over to tuck a blanket under his feet, at which point, he sat bolt upright and said, "Vigilance!"
Startled, I said, "What? Bilbo Baggins?"
"No. Vigilance," he said, and went right back to sleep.
Then I wandered upstairs to bed, and the only sounds heard around here the rest of the night was the occasional opening of the refrigerator door, followed by the unmistakable whisssssh of aerosol made by the spray-whipped-cream can from the Snooty Falooty Store. I don't even know if that was him or me.
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Not Sam Shepard at the Door
The Lemon Thief: Moral Relativism at the Disco Kroger
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Take Me To The River
"Gayle, I do not get out much, and I certainly don't get out to sandwich stores."
I am not a roughing it kind of girl. I did it when I was a kid: real camping, in the Smoky Mountains, with tents, sleeping bags, and inner-tubing down the river. (I should admit, however, there was indoor plumbing... geezus, we weren't animals.) I did my time. That was enough.
Once in a while though, I do like to get out of town and see some trees. Luckily, I have friends who live in The Woods and The Country. Some live on Farms. And another has a cabin down by the River, which is where we all went today for an all girls chili "campout." Meaning we "camped out" in the upstairs ski-lodge style great room, with our feet propped up in front of a big fireplace (it is possible the air conditioning was on to facilitate the apres-ski effect, because we hadn't expected it to be 78 degrees in November -- I would not, of course, post that on facebook for fear that crazy anti-air-conditioning lady will pop back up on there and accuse me of blowing the tops off mountains). After we ate for awhile and drank some good red wine, we "hiked" down to the River and observed some "Nature."
As usual, I refused to get too close to the water because everybody knows about my Jessica Savitch phobia of drowning in three feet of water (I don't want to drown in any amount of water, but it seems especially cruel to be afraid of water and then drown in a ditch, to say nothing of the fact that her dog died with her).
It was a tremendous day, with half a dozen highly interesting and entertaining women from all over the world, catching up on art and politics and our jobs and boys (nearly everyone had a new one to report).
I don't like Oprah. I think she's smug.
But this was a little like Oprah and Gayle's big Yosemite adventure, which I watched last week, so I could text the BFF all about it in real time, along with my plan to try fly fishing -- including the fact that Gayle managed to catch her shoe on fire.
If I were going on a trip, I would take my BFF, and she pointed out, it's because "we are united in the fact that we go to four star lodge or excellent three star lodge because, Hell, you won't fly. And we just forego the actual nature." She then clarified, "Nature = the lodge in that Wyoming/Montana-ish movie with Brad Pitt... but with wi fi. And paths through the pines. Definitely paths. I am not saying we get Brad Pitt. I am saying that we get the lodge."
I concurred, pointing out, "you know I don't like Brad Pitt. He's smug."
I said we are a lot like Oprah and Gayle, only straight.
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--Oprah, to Gayle, on why she kept mispronouncing Panera on their big Yosemite adventure
Once in a while though, I do like to get out of town and see some trees. Luckily, I have friends who live in The Woods and The Country. Some live on Farms. And another has a cabin down by the River, which is where we all went today for an all girls chili "campout." Meaning we "camped out" in the upstairs ski-lodge style great room, with our feet propped up in front of a big fireplace (it is possible the air conditioning was on to facilitate the apres-ski effect, because we hadn't expected it to be 78 degrees in November -- I would not, of course, post that on facebook for fear that crazy anti-air-conditioning lady will pop back up on there and accuse me of blowing the tops off mountains). After we ate for awhile and drank some good red wine, we "hiked" down to the River and observed some "Nature."
It was a tremendous day, with half a dozen highly interesting and entertaining women from all over the world, catching up on art and politics and our jobs and boys (nearly everyone had a new one to report).
I don't like Oprah. I think she's smug.
But this was a little like Oprah and Gayle's big Yosemite adventure, which I watched last week, so I could text the BFF all about it in real time, along with my plan to try fly fishing -- including the fact that Gayle managed to catch her shoe on fire.
If I were going on a trip, I would take my BFF, and she pointed out, it's because "we are united in the fact that we go to four star lodge or excellent three star lodge because, Hell, you won't fly. And we just forego the actual nature." She then clarified, "Nature = the lodge in that Wyoming/Montana-ish movie with Brad Pitt... but with wi fi. And paths through the pines. Definitely paths. I am not saying we get Brad Pitt. I am saying that we get the lodge."
I concurred, pointing out, "you know I don't like Brad Pitt. He's smug."
I said we are a lot like Oprah and Gayle, only straight.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Harriette's Kitchen
Last Day of Summer
Best of Oprah? Hardly.
Martha Stewart says Dispatch the Cock
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Dad's Estate Planning
"Do you need a set of buggy springs?" my Dad asked when he called last night.
Hmmm. I know from previous queries this summer ("do you have any use for an anvil?") that this is partially another adventure in estate planning, and partially a segue into a meditation on the state of health care reform.
"I can't imagine that I do," was my answer, as I pictured the looks on the neighbors' faces if I just parked a skeleton of rusty wagon wheels in the driveway.
"They're probably at least 150 years old," he added by way of modification - slash - persuasion.
"Nope," I said, refusing to elaborate, knowing that otherwise this could turn into a fairly lengthy debate on their merits (which I'm sure are substantial). Then I asked an open-ended question, certain that the full story would come out, uninterrupted. (According to the audiology tests after he punctured his eardrum last year, his hearing is about 70 percent gone... but to be fair, he never listened. His preferred conversational format has always been The Monologue.)
So his latest brush with death -- precipitating the necessary dispensation of the buggy -- involved some sort of injury incurred while feeding the catfish in the pond. Possibly, something was broken tripping over a bucket. Did he go to the doctor? Don't be absurd. Why not?
"Do you know what it cost me last time I went to the doctor?" he asked indignantly. "A hundred and ninety bucks just to rub some salve on my belly!"
"You mean the ultrasound?"
"Yeah, I guess. But what I am saying is that was just MY PART of it. It COST more than THAT. A lot more than that."
"Is that the one where they found out about those last couple heart attacks?" I asked.
"I got a new haircut," was the answer. "You know my barber retired. And every time I went in there I had to wait and wait and wait. And you know all those men in there don't have but seven hairs on their head all together," and this was followed by a long list of the virtues of Myra, the new barber, and how he found her.
So, what about this injury?
"What about it?" he responded. "Oh, I cussed more than I probably have in the last six months," he added.
Was that the entirety of the treatment? "Nahhhhhh. I found these two old pills from the Dentist. So I took them, and then I laid on the sofa and watched Gunsmoke."
Anything else?
"Yeah. Midnight Cowboy."
What?
"Oh you've seen Midnight Cowboy. Jon Voight? Dustin Hoffman?"
I must have paused too long there. "You knoooooow, Ratso Rizzo."
I wondered aloud if maybe an X-Ray or something was called for... something more restorative than the powers of say, AMC or TNT.
"Did I tell you about my new phone?" was the answer.
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Hmmm. I know from previous queries this summer ("do you have any use for an anvil?") that this is partially another adventure in estate planning, and partially a segue into a meditation on the state of health care reform.
"I can't imagine that I do," was my answer, as I pictured the looks on the neighbors' faces if I just parked a skeleton of rusty wagon wheels in the driveway.
"They're probably at least 150 years old," he added by way of modification - slash - persuasion.
"Nope," I said, refusing to elaborate, knowing that otherwise this could turn into a fairly lengthy debate on their merits (which I'm sure are substantial). Then I asked an open-ended question, certain that the full story would come out, uninterrupted. (According to the audiology tests after he punctured his eardrum last year, his hearing is about 70 percent gone... but to be fair, he never listened. His preferred conversational format has always been The Monologue.)
So his latest brush with death -- precipitating the necessary dispensation of the buggy -- involved some sort of injury incurred while feeding the catfish in the pond. Possibly, something was broken tripping over a bucket. Did he go to the doctor? Don't be absurd. Why not?
"Do you know what it cost me last time I went to the doctor?" he asked indignantly. "A hundred and ninety bucks just to rub some salve on my belly!"
"You mean the ultrasound?"
"Yeah, I guess. But what I am saying is that was just MY PART of it. It COST more than THAT. A lot more than that."
"Is that the one where they found out about those last couple heart attacks?" I asked.
"I got a new haircut," was the answer. "You know my barber retired. And every time I went in there I had to wait and wait and wait. And you know all those men in there don't have but seven hairs on their head all together," and this was followed by a long list of the virtues of Myra, the new barber, and how he found her.
So, what about this injury?
"What about it?" he responded. "Oh, I cussed more than I probably have in the last six months," he added.
Was that the entirety of the treatment? "Nahhhhhh. I found these two old pills from the Dentist. So I took them, and then I laid on the sofa and watched Gunsmoke."
Anything else?
"Yeah. Midnight Cowboy."
What?
"Oh you've seen Midnight Cowboy. Jon Voight? Dustin Hoffman?"
I must have paused too long there. "You knoooooow, Ratso Rizzo."
I wondered aloud if maybe an X-Ray or something was called for... something more restorative than the powers of say, AMC or TNT.
"Did I tell you about my new phone?" was the answer.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Family Estate
Six Feet Under
Ease Up Florence Nightingale
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