Fruits of my labor (day)

I have this memory of my Mom and Grandmom making jelly in Fall. It’s a compound memory, I think, because I only remember one instance and Mom says this happened every year. I was far too little to help. I sat at the kitchen table, probably with a coloring book and some crayons, while they moved back and forth between the sink and the stove. The kitchen was full of the smell of jelly cooking. That’s mostly what I remember, the smell. Like bottled grape juice, only much more intense. They got the grapes from an arbor my Grandpop built behind the garage.

“Do you remember that time the yellow jackets got drunk?” Mom asks. “We’d picked grapes the night before and left them in plastic bags on the porch. Next morning, the bags were buzzing and moving. Full of yellow jackets, but they were so drunk from grapes left in the sun, they couldn’t even sting us.”

I remember hearing about it. I must have been there. I can see it in my head, but I don’t know if I remember the event or the story.

It’s been a while since I had a Concord grape. I pop one in my mouth as we're washing them. Sweet first, then sour. The sweet seems to come from close to the skin, which is tough. The flesh is green, sour, and chewy. Definitely not a table grape. Mom puts a grape in her mouth too, and the taste of it triggers a memory about her great grandmother (who was very old when Mom was very young. She walked with a cane). She thinks maybe she used to watch her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother make jelly. So we're carrying the tradition from farther back than I thought.

“Maybe we should save some of these seeds, make an arbor here,” I suggest.

Mom says arbors are generally done from cuttings. Growing from seed takes far too long. Grandpop got the cuttings for his arbor from the people who lived across the street from Mom's aunt. These folks had a couple of outbuildings, one of them a barn (always a horse or a cow or some livestock living over there), and along the side of one of the outbuildings was a grape arbor.

Mom and I grew up in the same area, 20 years apart. As she’s telling me where Grandpop got his grapes, I’m silently comparing the Trevose/Langhorne of the 1950s and ‘60s with the one of the 1970s and ‘80s. Livestock, farming, as a matter of course? There was only one working farm left in the area when we moved away in 1986. Then I put both of these towns next to the very, very citified version that exists today. It’s a place I had a hard time recognizing when we were down there for my cousin's wedding.

"When seeing a Jaguar in the parking lot of the Shop 'n' Bag becomes commonplace," my aunt once said, "it's time to move." She lives in Virginia now.

"I think I'm getting a little too enthusiastic with the mashing, here." I say. "There are purple flecks on the sink. And the drainboard. And the wall. Oop! And on my shirt."

"Oh, that's all right. It washes off the sink and the drainboard, and the wall's getting tiled eventually. That's just a primer coat. Your shirt, though..."
"Ah, it's not an important shirt." Now it's the Grape Jelly Making Shirt.

Because I'm the one who wants to learn how to do this, Mom is hanging back, giving directions. She'll demonstrate something, then hand it over to me. This was, after all, my idea.

There it is, the smell I remember. It happens shortly after the grapes start cooking. It fills the house.
"Man, I wish I could take a picture of that smell," I say. Best I can do is take pictures of the grapes.

As we're setting up to strain the grapes, something pops into my head--a strainer made of cheesecloth suspended from the legs of an upside-down chair. But that wasn't for grapes. Apples?

"That was for apple jelly," Mom says. "I used to use cheesecloth until I broke down and bought jelly bags. They wear like iron, and they're reusable."

For making the grape juice we use this big wooden shillelagh-looking pestle in a big jelly bag-lined sieve. It take a little while, but I eventually get a nice rolling rhythm going. It ends up being what Mom thinks is a little over a gallon of juice.

Mom describes jelly-making as a really good activity for the working woman. You don't have to go straight from grape vine to jars in one headlong rush. After we make the juice and cover it, we're done for the day.

The next morning after breakfast, we get serious. All the jars, lids, and rings get washed. The jars get put in a big kettle full of water on the back burner, to be boiled and thereby sanitized.

Time to break out the pectin. While the pot on the stove talks to itself, Mom has me read the pectin packet's recipe for grape jelly, as well as all the steps I'm to go through to get this stuff in jars and processed. There are instructions in the Ball canning book too.

Thank goodness they both say the same thing. The last thing I need right now is conflicting information. And, according to the chart in the canning book, since we're on a mountaintop somewhere over 2000 feet we have to add five more minutes to how long we boil the jelly once it's been jarred.

"So what would they do in New Orleans?" I ask Mom. "They're below sea-level." The chart makes no mention of low altitude cooking.

"I have no idea." She admits.

My Dad comes through the kitchen, dog right at his heel with a toy in her mouth.

"Getting started? Sure hope this batch doesn't make our teeth turn blue."

Mom made a batch a few years ago, her first since moving upstate (I think) and it did indeed turn your teeth blue if you ate it.

"That was the weirdest thing!" Mom says. "I still don't know why it did that." I silently hope it's not something to do with the grapes grown in this region.

Mind you, the threat of blue teeth didn't stop anyone from eating that jelly. You just had to be extra vigorous with the toothbrush afterward. And no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for school or work lunches, unless you wanted people to stare at your mouth all afternoon.

Once the water starts to boil, the timer gets set for 20 minutes, and we start to make the jelly. The idea is to have the jelly and the jars ready for each other at the same time. Another smaller pot of water has been set to boil for the lids. Must remember next time I do this, even though the jars get boiled, the lids do not. That weakens the rubber seal. You just want them hot and loose. After the water gets boiled and turned off, that's when the lids go in the pot.

As before, Mom directs the cooking from over my shoulder. I keep thinking of that mantra they recite on so many of the home improvement shows: "Learn one, make one, teach one." I guess by then you know it really well.

The timer goes off just in time for me to set it again for the jelly. It has to do a hard boil for a solid minute. The foam is starting to form. The recipe says to skim that off at the end, right before jarring starts.

Actually, the recipe calls it "scum," like it's pond algae or something. Mom says it's just air bubbles.

"It's still jelly, it's just not as pretty," she says. We skim the foam off and put it in a custard cup. I see a couple slices of bread in that foam's immediate future.

Now comes the part of this whole procedure that made me nervous to think about. Processing the jelly. Jars get taken out of the big pot -- we start with two, so that there's an assembly line going. After that, one jar gets removed at a time. It's to retain sterility.

The big-mouthed funnel goes into an empty jar, jelly fills the jar to about the start of the threads on the lip. Funnel gets moved to the waiting jar, lid comes out of hot water and onto full jar, screw on lid. Put full jar out of the way, take another jar from the pot. Now fill the jar that has the funnel in it. Keep on going until you're out of jelly or out of jars.

We manage to get 8 full jars of jelly from this batch, plus some extra that we put in a jar with the "scum." We decide it's time to stop for a taste test. We call Dad in to the kitchen so he can have some too.

Ohhh. This beats the heck out of store-bought jelly. The first bite brings back another memory from when I was little, of Mom making me a cream cheese and grape jelly sandwich. It must have been with homemade jelly, because I haven't thought of it in years.

"My mother used to do something when I was little," Mom said. "She'd make me a cream cheese and jelly sandwich..."

"I was just thinking of that! You used to do the same for me."

By this point, I'm starting to feel indignant for the slighted cloudy bits of perfectly good jelly, and decide to rename it "skim." Mom concurs.

After the taste test (thumbs up all around), it's time to process. Mom assures me I have no reason to worry.

"Now, if we were using a pressure canner, that would be a different story. Though they've made some improvements in them over the years. Getting jelly on the ceiling used to be a common occurrence with pressure canners in my mother's day."

"I'd rather not use one of them," I say.

"Me neither," Mom agrees.

But this procedure is pretty tame. Six jars in the hot water bath is all that will fit in the pot without the jars touching. After the water comes to a full boil, it needs to stay in there for 15 minutes (10 minutes normally plus five more for high altitude). Then take those out and boil the rest. Leave the rings on until they're sealed.

I spend the 20 minutes after the jars come out of the water listening for the "sssspop!" that let me know they have sealed. They all do just fine.

Mom does the next batch, herself. We still have 3 quart jars full of juice after the second batch, and Mom decides to process them so that I can use them later. I should get 2 more batches of jelly out of them, plus another 2 cups of grape juice that I could probably use in cooking or something. She sends me home with a dozen jars -- the 8 I processed, 1 to replace the skim jelly in the fridge, and 3 more. I'd bought 12 jars from Wal-Mart, and guess she wanted them all filled for me.

You're not supposed to store them with the rings on, because sometimes the rings rust shut. I keep them on for travel, though. Not really interested in having a jar come unsealed on the bus.

For some reason, probably because I was little when I first saw Mom and Grandmom do it, I thought making jelly was really hard. It isn't. Which makes sense, really. If it were that difficult, so many people wouldn't be able to do it. But to a little kid it seemed like magic--take grapes from the back yard and turn them into something that doesn't look at all like a grape? Amazing.

Learn one, make one, teach one. I guess this means I have to make more jelly soon.

And, no, there were no blue teeth this time around.

Modeling my new backbone

I went down to pick up the next piece of a project I'm working on for my old boss. Waiting on the cart for me were way more items than what I agreed that I would take at one time (and I've emphasized that to them quite a few times already). They do this all the time. They're supposed to pull between 40 and 60 reels of microfilm (I've told them repeatedly to try aiming for 50), and for the third time in as many weeks they had over 60 waiting for me to take away. A couple of weeks ago is was 115. Today it was 88.

I used to just take the reels, reiterate that I wanted between 40 and 60, and think ugly thoughts at them as I dragged stuff back to my cubicle to work on it. Part of me wanted to do it again today, but I stifled that impulse. If I kept letting them get away with this, pretty soon there would be over 100 reels on that cart again. I should know that, having worked with them so long. They push. You offer one of something, they ask for two. Give 'em an inch, they think they're rulers.

Dammit, I set a limit for a reason. I do have other things to do.

I asked my old boss what she wanted me to take, the 63-reel long title (three over my limit, but that's okay because it's an entire title), or the 25-reel long title and the first 35 reels of the 63-reel long one. She looked surprised.

"Well we don't like splitting runs up if we can help it..."

"Okay, so the 63-reel one."

"Well, but we have a list we're going by and we don't want to confuse the students doing the pulling."

They're already confused, I thought. They can't even count to sixty.

I went to the folder with the list in it and flipped a few pages.

"Next title is 37 reels long. I'll take the 63 reels today, and then Thursday I'll take these 25 and that 37-reel title."

She agreed, but I don't think she was happy. I used to have "Welcome" written on my back in 15 languages. I think she expected me to roll over and play dead. I'd said something to my supervisor and the head of my department at my annual review a few weeks ago along the lines of needing to grow a spine where these people were concerned.

Looks like it's starting to happen.

Sneaky

About a minute and a half after starting work this morning, I gave myself a wicked paper cut on the tip of the middle finger of my left hand. Oh, it's gonna be a good day. After running around with my finger in my mouth for a bit (don'tbleedonthebooksdon'tbleedonthebooks) I finally located a band-aid and slapped it on the wound.

Shortly after that, my old supervisor popped up outside my cubicle and attempted an ambush. It started with desultory conversation about what I was doing (viewing microfilm), and then moved on to this:

"I was going to ask [my supervisor], but thought I'd run this by you first to see what you thought. [A librarian from another section] usually looks after our desk when we have staff meetings and trainings, but he's on sabbatical right now. We were wondering if you and [my fellow refugee] would be interested in doing the desk for us. I mean, I could get one of the students to do it, but ..." and then she trailed off, looking at me expectantly.

"I have so many things going on right now, I just don't think I can take that on too," I lied, sending up a silent prayer of thanksgiving for Malory's warning.

"Oh. Okay. I just thought I'd ask." And then she vanished.

After she left I tracked down my colleague to warn her of a possible sneak-attack. She hasn't been approached yet. At her suggestion I emailed my supervisor (who's out today) to let her know, just in case those people try to do an end-run 'round us and "seek permission" for us for something we don't want to do.

Here's the thing: if the situation were reversed and someone approached one of my old supervisor's employees with an offer like that without checking with her first, you'd hear her screams of rage from as far away as Pittsburgh. Sneaky little mumblegrumbleumph.

D'you think it was an omen, which finger got the boo-boo?

Memory jogging

I'm on vacation today. I don't go to my parents' house until tomorrow, but I wasn't sure about that when I made my vacation request. So I'm spending the day straightening up some, then doing laundry. Nice to be able to take things straight from the dryer and put them in the suitcase without having to drag something across an apartment complex first.

I was reading the comments from the latest post from the Bloggess and someone said they thought "Corpse Honey" would be an excellent band name (you need to read the post to understand what that was about), and suddenly I thought of something that happened years ago:

In Stratford, Ontario on vacation with a friend. Stratford has a h-u-g-e theater festival, mostly Shakespeare (well, it is Stratford after all). As a by-product of this there's a thriving B&B trade. When this festival started over 50 years ago the town passed an ordinance forbidding hotels within city limits. Didn't want destroy the pretty look of the town with towering buildings. Also keeps a lot of the money that's spent there on lodging right there in town, as opposed to going to some chain of hotels. Very smart.

Stratford's also the home of the Ontario Pork Congress. Ham or Hamlet, take your pick.

Anyway, we were staying at a B&B, walking from our lodgings to one of the performances. We crossed a bridge -- over the Avon, of course. The Avon is full of ducks and swans, as well as canoes, kayaks, and paddle boats that can be rented out at a little kiosk off to the left of the bridge somewhere. As we're crossing the bridge, two kayaks pass under us, each being piloted by a young Mennonite girl -- they have a largish Mennonite community up there too.

"Oh, I just thought of an excellent band name," I said to my friend.

"Yes?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage. . .The Kayaking Mennonites!"

She does that fake roar-of-the-crowd noise, then asks,"So what do they play?"

"I'm thinking something along the line of Barenaked Ladies."

Haven't thought of that trip in years. I really would like to go back to Stratford again, but I don't know when I'll have the money to. US dollar has tanked, Canadian dollar is super strong (oil money. I know everyone thinks of the middle east when they froth at the mouth about "foreign oil," but really a lot of our oil comes from Alberta. Hard to get worked up about Canadians, though, isn't it? It's like hating the upstairs neighbors for being quiet), and right now most of my money is going towards my mortgage.

Oh! And I have to go get dressed right now and go in to work anyway, though not for work. I have an overdue library book that I keep forgetting to bring in. Silly. I work there and I can't get my books back on time.

Sorry for the disjointed random feel of this post. That's the way my mind is working today.

A far too common scene at work

There's an elevator lobby on the first floor of the library. It has four elevator cars in it, two on one wall, two on the other. They face each other. On each side of the lobby, installed between the two elevator doors for that side, is a button that controls three of the cars. The fourth car is on its own circuit with its own button. I have to go past or through this lobby at least six times a day, and usually on at least one of those passes I witness the following:

Patron, aged twenty-something, probably a student, walks over to one of the elevator buttons and presses it. It lights up. So does the one on the other wall. Patron then stands facing the elevators doors that flank the button he just pushed and waits for the car to come.

A car arrives, but on the other side of the lobby (which is maybe 15 feet wide). The elevator goes "Ding!" The lights on the call buttons go out. The patron looks up, looks left and right at the closed doors in front of him, puzzled. The door of the car on the other side of the room starts to close. Still looking at the doors in front of him, the patron hits the button again. Door on the car across the lobby flies open again. Elevator goes "Ding!" Light goes out.

Button. "Ding!" Button. "Ding!" Button. "Ding!"

Oh, for the love of....

"It's behind you!" I call as I walk past. I swear, sometimes I feel like I'm living in a British panto.

Patron turns around, sprints to the waiting elevator, gets in just before the door closes. Another twenty-something patron comes into the lobby, presses the button for the elevator, and stands facing the doors that flank the button she just pushed...

Future of the world, these kids. I don't mind admitting that sometimes I'm a little scared.

Hey gang, I'm a mortgagor!

This is the first moment I've had where I could fire up the ol' laptop without feeling guilty because I should be doing something else. So here's how it all went down:

Friday: Up at the crack of dawn. Examining, pitching, packing things until about nine, when I figured I should probably get myself ready. J. arrived at ten and took me to my soon-to-be townhouse. She said when she brought the electrician over there Wednesday the sellers still hadn't packed, and Mrs. Seller said she was taking the day off of work the next day to do it. As we pull in, we see a U-Haul parked out front. They're still moving things out and cleaning. Turns out the sellers left the day before, they're returning home to Turkey (I thought so! I'd said as much to J. at one point), and have given/sold the contents of their house to some other Turkish folks still living here. Friends of theirs, I think. We look around, everything is fine. One of the two men clearing out hands me the keys to the front door and to the mailbox. J. drives me off to the bank for settlement.

At settlement is the nice lady from the bank who got me the PHFA and county loans, the realtor for the sellers, a representative from a settlement agency, my realtor, and me (of course). The woman from the bank hands me a sheaf of papers. These are all my copies of the documents I'm about to sign. And away we go. She hands me a paper, explains what it means, I sign it. She takes that one away, hands me another one, explains it, I sign it. And so on until she runs out of papers. Then she switches chairs with the settlement agent and we start again. We go through the statement that says what I owe. I hand over a cashier's check for that. She hands me two checks: one from the county and one from the bank. I endorse them and hand them back to her, stopping to remark that quite a lot of money just passed through my hands. After the last piece of paper is signed and notarized, she folds her hands over the whole sheaf of them, smiles, and says,

"Congratulations, you are now in debt."

"Oh, I've been here before."

"Well, welcome back!"

We all shake hands, and J. drives me off to the Wal-Mart so that I can make copies of the keys. She gives me a hug and a present, a binder with all sorts of tags and labels in it, all set up and ready to be filled-- a sort of home documents organizer.

I call first my Mom and then my sister to let 'em know I'm now a homeowner. After I get keys made, have a celebratory lunch in the Eat 'n' Park, and buy a bottle of sparkling white wine for later on that night (Asti Spumante), I head on back to my apartment for more packing. At about three I call a taxi, and drag myself, a suitcase, a duffel bag, and a canvas shopping bag full of stuff over to my townhouse. From there I do laundry, and while I'm waiting for it to finish I sit on the steps and stare at my living room through the bars of the banister. I did take a few pictures, and just as soon as I figure out what I did with my memory card-to-USB converter, I'll post them to Flick'r. Mom and Dad had said they'd be here by 7, Ditter and Stretch thought they'd be here by 8. At 7, Mom calls to say that they're just leaving now--there was a terrific thunderstorm that they didn't feel comfortable driving in, and it just let up.

When Ditter and Stretch show up, I show them around the place. We take a look at my little front garden patch. There's an almost dead rosebush that she thinks she can show me how to bring back. There's also a huge hollyhock by the front door that Stretch thought was a weed. There's also all sorts of weeds and unidentified vegetation in there, and a small tree in need of pruning. I have no idea how to do that.

Ditter takes me shopping for all sorts of stuff I need and didn't think about--also, we're going to swing by the apartment and pick up the cat. While we're in the store (we were there a very long time. It was 10:30 when we hit the check-out line) Mom calls to say they hit fog so they had to go around "the long way," and they'll be another 45 minutes or so. After picking up the cat (and my sleeping bag, and a couple other things) we head on back to the house to find that my brother-in-law has weeded the patch, fixed a window screen that needed attention, and done a couple more minor fixes. He joked that if I'd already bought the paint, he'd have started one of the rooms already.

I let the cat out of her carrier and watch her slink around the place, investigating everything. She stays close to the wall--it must feel safer that way. We just get dinner started (at 11 at night!) when my parents pull in.

Upon crossing the threshold, Mom and Dad give me a golden dollar coin, two loaves of bread, and bottles of soda--some sort of tradition called a "first-footer," though it's usually a New Year's Day tradition. A dark-haired man is supposed to enter your house and give you money, drink, and bread.

Dinner is ready-made pizza bought in a grocery store and baked in 12 minutes and a glass of Asti Spumante to toast the new house. We finally go to bed around 12:30.

Saturday: I take my painting crew out for breakfast, then we buy paint and all sorts of other stuff: a flashlight, new doorknobs and deadbolts, all kinds of things I can't remember now. The previous evening, Ditter had whipped out a steno pad and a pen and wrote down everything I said in passing that sounded like something I needed. It reminded me of when she got married and I was her maid of honor--I had done something similar. Then we take it all home and paint. And paint, and paint, and paint. Then, just for grins, we paint a little. The tangerine dream master bedroom is hit with a coat of primer, and while that dries we paint the future guest bedroom "Violet Devotion" (lilac). Then some of us paint the master bedroom "Summer Ivy" (medium dark green), while others start to tape the living room. And by the way, it's humid and stinkin' hot, so we're all doing this and dripping with sweat. The new place has no air conditioning. The cat spends most of the day lying in the bathtub. Poor kitty is very hot. Her coat is too heavy for this heat.

Sunday: Ditter has an open house to run back in Lancaster, so she and Stretch leave around 8. Mom, Dad, and I paint the living room "Honey"--it's supposed to be a gold color but is a little more yellow on the wall than it was on the card or on the sample daub the mixer put on the lids when he was done. Maybe it's because it's going on top of a pale mint green, no primer in between. Doesn't really matter. I like this color too. Then we go back upstairs and do touch-ups of the lilac room and the green room. My parents leave around three.

Most of the rest of the week has been spent either clearing out and packing up the old place, waiting for one technician or another at the new place (cable guy yesterday, electrician today), or touching up the paint. I keep finding spots that need more paint. The green room is especially tricky. We were having trouble seeing what we were doing--there was a glare from outside that interfered with how well we could see the walls. I've had to wait until the sun goes down, turn on the overhead light, and dab, dab, dab away at the walls. I was doing that last night until 11. Did something similar today with the lilac room. I dragged a lamp in there 'cause there's a bit that anyone painting would have trouble with--to paint, you have to stand between the wall and the window, effectively obscuring your only source of light. There's no overhead light in there. I should go check it now that it's getting dark out and I'm not getting interference from the sun. Haven't even gotten to the living room yet. Need to do the same paint-at-night routine in there as well.

Couple of little irritants: the guys who bought/were given "everything" were extremely literal. They took every single curtain rod, and I think they took the toilet paper dispenser in the bathroom. Also, I found that I have only one working light bulb in each light fixture. If there are sockets for more than one, they're filled with burnt-out bulbs. Nice, huh? I don't care that much about the bulbs, I'm changing them all over to those fluorescent ones that use less energy. But the curtain rod thing irritates. Those are fixtures, they were supposed to stay. So when I painted my bedroom last night I got to do it in full view of anyone who happened to glance out the window. Everyone knows the master bedroom of #10 is green.

Ah well. Back to work, now that it's dark. Time to show folks what color the living room is.

Signs you're approaching Harry Potter overload...

1. While explaining the layout of her garden, your mother points out that the romaine has been placed within a small circle of snap peas so it won't get too much sun and bolt. Your immediate mental image is of lettuces lifting themselves out of the ground and running full-tilt for the edge of the forest. Warning.
2. Because the weather is absolutely gorgeous today, you decide to take stroll through campus over your lunch break. In your travels, you notice one particular area where it seems to be raining quite heavily. You look up for the teeny raincloud that must be making this happen instead of down for the half-hidden sprinkler in the ivy that actually is causing it. Danger.
3. You knock a plate off a table. It breaks in two. You have to fight the urge to grab a pencil, tap the pieces, and say, "Reparo!" Seek help now.

Games night

"Did I tell you," Chief Loon asks as I tally up our scores, "that we received another $25 donation for the Wasp? That brings our total to $844."

"Awesome!"

"Yeah. I have half a mind to go down to the library with a check for six dollars, just to make it an even $850."

"You're still winning, by the way." I deal the cards. "By an embarrassing amount."

"I think I kinda like this game." It's a card game called Five Crowns. I bought it last winter from one of those games-and-calendars stands that pop up in malls all over the country right around November and vanish by the end of January.

"Me too. It's like a kinder form of gin, except with five suits and really nice artwork."

"I don't play gin." She picks up her cards and starts to rearrange them.

"No, me neither. Not with people, anyway. Gin makes me swear."

"What does vermouth do?"

"Don't know yet."

"Ah. Working your way through them alphabetically, are you."

I nod, concentrating on my cards.

Games night is something the Chief came up with last fall. At 7 pm on the first Saturday of every month, we (the Loons) open up the teeny little ex-train station that serves as Bellefonte's Chamber of Commerce building, hang out a sign that says, "GAMES NIGHT!" and play board and/or card games for three hours. The idea is that people can drop in and play with us, bring their own games, whatever. It gets announced in a couple of the local papers, and the Chief puts out a come-one-come-all message over the libraries' email the day before (did I mention we're coworkers? We are. Different departments, same building). So far, the only time anyone who wasn't a Loon (or a Loon's spouse) showed up was accidental. People asking directions, looking for info on Bellefonte, etc. Nobody stops in to play with us.

Here's the thing: I don't like playing games. Chief knows this, and thinks that I'm either extremely kind, I'm slightly masochistic, or she's a lot better with the guilt than she thought she was. I keep showing up because I have this image in my head of her playing solitaire for three hours or (as she put it jokingly at the last games night, when this subject came up) playing rock-paper-scissors by herself all night and losing.

It's not really accurate to say that I don't like playing games. I do play them, see. I even own a few. I don't like competitive people. I want to play just to play. My childhood friend Suzanne and I used to drive her mother crazy with the way we played badminton. She'd sit on the porch and watch us bat the birdie back and forth, back and forth.

"You do know that you're never going to score if you keep hitting it to each other," she'd point out.

"Are you keeping score?" Suz and I would ask each other in unison. Our unspoken common goal was to keep the birdie aloft as long as possible.

My family is full of poor losers and worse winners, and I still bear scars from a Monopoly game where my father swore at my mother. If I run into someone who must win, I get put off. At first. Then I feel the Beast rise within me and I need to win. I need to crush this person who presumes to think they can beat me. I want to send them home crying. That disturbs me.

And so, I play games online at Pogo against a computer whose feelings won't get hurt. Or I play with the few members of my family who are gracious winners and losers. I try to model my playing after my Grandma Ruth, who died a year ago this past April. She was an excellent game player -- anything you wanted to play she'd try, but she really liked cards, scrabble, and yahtzee best. She taught all of her grandchildren how to play some of the games she liked, and now the whole clan (and there are hordes of us. We could populate a town, these descendants of Grandma Ruth's) plays canasta, at least. Most of us play shanghai rummy, backgammon, and hearts as well.

She was cutthroat. If she saw an opening she'd take it, and she'd expect you to do the same. But when she won (which was most of the time) she didn't rub your nose in it. She'd just reshuffle the cards, or collect the dice, or slide the tiles back into the box, and say, "Again?" And whether she was winning or not, she always complimented the good moves you made, marveled with you over your stroke of luck if you rolled 5 6's as a double yahtzee, applauded your seven-letter word.

I try to be like that, and most of the time I can silence the Beast and be a gracious winner or a good loser.

As long as I don't play gin.

Love for sale

Standing in the checkout line of a local grocery store, bored, I decide to read the back of the packet of cat treats I'm buying (product name deleted so I don't get sued):

A [product name] treat is special the moment you give it, and even more so the moment after. Because that's the moment, in the wake of that deliciously satisfying taste, when your cat shows how much she loves you--with purrs and smiles just for you. And if you don't have that loving moment often enough...you're not giving your cat enough [product name] treats.

Interesting. I thought a pet's love was unconditional. Silly me.

And how did they know my cat was a she?

Mary

A friend of mine died over the weekend. She'd been battling breast cancer for quite some time. She was in remission when we met, but the cancer came back about ten years ago. She's been fighting ever since.

Mary was an amazing woman -- interested in everything, loved the arts, loved nature. She used to travel a lot, back when she was healthier. She was always trying to do new things. I think it was that interest in everything that kept her alive so long, even when she was so horribly sick -- she wasn't done looking around yet.

I've found myself trying to be more like her in recent years. I don't think I ever told her that. No, I'm sure I haven't, because I don't think I even realized that's what I was doing until I typed it a moment ago. The cynic in me tends to roll her eyes skyward when anyone talks about someone being "inspiring," but really I guess that's what she was. The determination with which she held onto life, the way she refused to allow illness to get in the way of her enjoyment of things, the enthusiasm with which she embraced a new idea or activity -- I want to be like that. She's part of the reason I took a drawing course a few years back (just to see if I could draw), and there's a little bit of be-like-Mary in my decisions to blog, to bellydance, to get out there and do something instead of hanging back and dithering. She used to ask for dancing updates. And demand demonstrations. When I visited her in the hospital last week, I mentioned I'd enrolled in an intro to wheel-thrown pottery class that starts the end of this month. That made her perk up a bit (she was a potter, among other things). We made jokes about dancing and throwing at the same time: the wheel going one way and my hips going the other.

She became a potter after her cancer went into remission the first time, back in the 80s (I think). Long before I met her, she'd switched from making regular-sized pottery to miniatures. I have some pictures of her work on my Flick'r account.

I think that Mary wrote her own obituary. It sounds like her voice. I'm not sure how long it will stay up on the newspaper's site, so I'm saving a copy of it on my computer. If the link breaks, I'll work something else out.

I hope this isn't a monthly occurrence

"So," I ask, stretching my arms out and turning from side to side. "Do I look like I got dressed in the dark?"

My officemate barely looks at me before responding, bless her. "No. Why?"

"'Cause I did."

"Power's out again?"

"Most of it."

Yeah, that's right. Most of it. At ten o'clock last night my apartment was plunged into darkness. I could see that the answering machine was still on, though (it's in the back corner of the kitchen) and I could hear the refrigerator running. This led me to assume that a breaker tripped, even though I hadn't heard it go off. After flicking various switches in the breaker box a few times, I realized that wasn't it. I poked my head out the front door and saw some of my neighbors wandering around asking each other whether they were having power problems. Some people were completely out. Some people had a few things that wouldn't work, and some people had situations like mine. I'm guessing the people I didn't see weren't affected at all.

I tried calling the complex's office on my cell phone. I got no answer, not even the answering machine, which lead me to believe the office was affected too. The manager has emergency numbers posted on the office door, so I decided to head on up there and see if I could get hold of someone at one of them. I didn't make it very far, though, before another neighbor told me he'd talked to our manager (who is also fellow tenant, apparently. His cable went out and about two seconds later the phone started ringing off the hook--people from all over the complex calling with problems), who was now on the phone with the electric company to see what was up. So I went home.

My heater uses natural gas but the fan is run on electricity, so I had no heat last night. I grabbed every blanket I could find and huddled up with Delilah (who, by the way, was as happy as a pig in poo and spent the whole night purring loudly in my face. She loves it when weird stuff happens). I attached the alarm clock to the one working outlet so that I could at least get to work on time.

No coffee this morning, and a cold sink-bath by candlelight. Yuck.

Around 7 this morning, some fella in a hardhat went door-to-door to explain the situation to us. One of the lines from the transformer was out, so anything attached to that line was out too. They would be digging up our driveway and parking lot again, hoped to have everything restored by noon today.

Admittedly, electricity looks a lot like magic to me, but I have what I think is a logical question: why would you attach parts of an apartment's wiring to different lines? There doesn't seem to be much reason behind the way it was done. It's not like everyone's lights were out, but the refrigerators were all fine. In some cases it was just the reverse. Is that standard practice, or am I right in suspecting that my complex was put together by the Keystone Kops of the construction industry?

Everything should be fine now. I suppose I'll find out when I go home.

Sounds of the season

Pa-pow!

I sit bolt upright in bed. Was that a gunshot? I jam my glasses onto my face and look at the clock: 2:45 AM. That means it's really 2:18. The police will want to know when I heard the shot. I wonder if I'll have to explain why the alarm clock is set 27 minutes ahead.

I don't remember getting out of bed, but now I'm in the front room, peeking through the slats of the window blind. Can't see a thing. As I'm deciding whether to call the police or not, I hear it again. Different this time:

Zzzzzt! Pa-pow!

Oh, for pity's sake. It's been the fourth of July barely two hours, and someone's already setting off firecrackers. He (I don't know why I'm so sure it's a "he") probably bought them from that huge tent in the Wal-mart parking lot tonight, stopped there after work. Then, since tomorrow's a holiday, he went out drinking with his buddies. Bars close around two, so he probably just got home. He's not sleepy yet. A little bit bored, in fact. And then he sees his fireworks....

Screeeeeeee! Pop.

I shuffle back to bed, climb in, put a pillow over my head. Now that I know what the noise is, I can probably sleep through it. Oddly comforting to know that one's neighbors are just idiots, as opposed to being violent criminals.

As I start to drift off to sleep, I decide I'm going to have to suspend my disbelief a little more when watching TV or a movie. I never believe it when I see a character go from being sound asleep to sitting straight up in bed. Apparently it does happen.

Bang!

Moron. I hope he gets rained on at every single football game he goes to this Fall.

Mom's test and kitten #3

In all the excitement about furry houseguests, I forgot to mention a call I got from my Mom. She had her stress test on Tuesday. They have to analyze the results yet, so she didn't have much to tell me. They told her there were a couple of odd results, but that women her age get false positives a lot, which is why they did some sort of scan as well. I want to say it was a CAT scan, but that maybe because I have cats on the brain. As soon as they've looked at that scan, they'll call her for another appointment.

She said she looks like she had a wrestling match with an octopus. There are little "sucker" marks all over her from those sticky pads from the ends of the wires (remember the intro for The $6 Million Man?). One of them took off some skin when it was removed. Dad said (and I agree) that you'd think that they'd show just a teensy bit more care instead of just yanking the things off you when they're done.

It wasn't a long conversation, and she was off to call my sister with the same bit of news. I warned her that she'd forgotten to tell Ditter about the stress test to begin with, and she might get a bit of a tongue-lashing. She was surprised. She thought she had told her. Apparently when she talked to my sister, they got off-topic and never wandered back onto it.

In other news, I found out what happened to kitten #3. On my way through the complex yesterday evening, I passed a woman sunning herself outside of her apartment. I thought it was the woman from the pair I spoke to last Thursday, but her hair was up this time, and I didn't remember it being quite so red. Next to her was a cat carrier, just like the new one I bought for my guests. I took a peek into it, and this little striped face peeked back at me.

"I have two kittens in my kitchen that look just like you." I said to the little face.

"Oh!" said the woman. "You found the others?"

Apparently their little one made her foray into the great big world Friday evening, in the middle of a downpour. They heard her crying in the drain pipe (sticks out of the hillside, it's what has made that ditch between the lawn and the woods), and they were sure she'd drown if they didn't get her out of there. It took them the better part of an hour before she'd let them near her, and she hissed and bit at them for a day or so afterwards. She's fine now. Plays with their little Yorkie (Pebbles), who I'll bet she thinks is a large, funny-looking cat. The woman says she's not sure whether they're keeping her or giving her to a friend of theirs who happens to be a vet. She says it gets harder everyday to think of giving the kitten up. I wonder now, which one was it I saw chasing after Mama Cat that day? None of them are white and black tabby. Maybe it was the one I have that is tan with very fine black stripes.

The two I'm tending are now officially on the waiting list for the adoption center. It's purely a space consideration, and kittens get adopted quickly, so the coordinator thinks there will be room for these two in about a week. I'm supposed to ask the vet for a combo test tomorrow (to check for feline leukemia and feline AIDS--I didn't know the latter existed until yesterday) on one of them, and if that comes back OK, then it's all systems go. The center won't take them if they've been exposed to either of those viruses. I'm not going to worry about that unless I have to. She said we only need to test one of them, because the test is expensive, and 99% of the time if one is virus-free then the other one is too. Makes sense. She doesn't want me to get them started on the shots, though. They'll do that at the center.

Backstory and horses

These are Dan and Cee, the two horses that the Amish work crew brought in to help them clear the land where my parents wanted to build. There was a lot of salable timber in that lot, most of it cherry trees. In lieu of payment, the lumber was carried off, milled, and appraised. Then it was decided how much the work had been worth and how much wood would be an equitable trade. The leftover wood was handed back to my Mom and Dad. There are enough board feet of cherry in what they got back to cover the dining room and living room floors. The cherry will be lying almost directly over the place where it once stood. I think that's pretty cool.

This idea of a cabin in the woods has been an ongoing discussion for as long as I can remember. There have always been magazines about log home-building and books of floor plans tucked in various corners of wherever we were living. It's been so long in coming, I was beginning to think it would never happen. They bought part of this property back when I was in high school, some 20 years ago now. A little while after that, a lot right next to it came up for sale. They bought that too, and joined it to the first piece. This gave them access to the cul-de-sac at the top of the mountain. Now their property extends from the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom.

A couple of years ago they finally got the finances sorted out, found a plan they both liked from a company named Lincoln Log Homes -- yup, same name as the toy building blocks. There's even a link to the home-building site from the toy site. See it? In teeny print at the bottom?

The way the Amish got involved in the whole thing is like this: a lot of Amish having been moving into my parents' area in recent years, coming mainly from Ohio. It's a fairly large community now. Mom and Dad were out for a drive one afternoon, having a conversation about finding a contractor for the house. Just then they passed by an Amish farm that had a sign in the yard, advertising the farm's owner as a builder and carpenter. They pulled into the driveway and talked to the man, asking him if he thought he could build a log cabin from a kit. He thought he could, and he knew a lot of people who'd welcome the work. And just like that, with a few words and a handshake, they had the promise of a team of builders. He asked that they not refer to him as a "contractor"--something scriptural about contracts, apparently. So Mom asked what they should call him. "How about calling me 'Danny?'" he responded.

The horses in that picture are his. I'm not sure I have this right, but I think he's the one who milled the wood. He deals a lot with the English (the Amish really do refer to anyone from the outside world as "English." That wasn't just a gimmick they used in Witness), and has provided a lot of work for his fellow Amishmen. Wherever he lives, though, he tends to annoy the bishops. He skates right on the very edge of what's allowed, and I know of at least one time he was approached and formally corrected. He had too many worldly possessions to suit the group, apparently, and they told him he needed to give away one of his horses. Yes, he had to give it away, not sell it. He wasn't allowed to profit from the loss of it. So one of his little boys had to say goodbye to his pony. But Danny did get his point across to them. He made sure it didn't go to an Amishman. If he wasn't going to profit from his loss of it, neither would they. He gave it to a little English boy.

He finally got sick of them meddling in his affairs. I have a feeling this happens to him wherever he goes, too--he's lived a number of places. Not long after he finished my parents' house, he auctioned off his animals, his furniture, and various pieces of his farm equipment, sold the land, and moved his very large family to Virginia. Everybody misses him, especially my folks.

I live too far away to have witnessed most of the construction. Mom got a digital camera for Christmas a few years ago, and would email Ditter and me illustrated updates. The pictures had filenames like "still life with cement mixer" and "this is what happens when you play with Lincoln Logs too long." I've been trying to upload the latter to this Blog, but Blogger's having none of it. I wonder why. Oh well. Maybe next post. Since I didn't take the pictures myself, I can't load them into Flick'r, or I would. Well, I guess I am able, but I may not do it. Copyright infringement and all.

The new homestead

Every time I go visit my parents, something has changed. When I visited last November for Thanksgiving, they had installed cabinets and (finally!) a sink in the kitchen. Up to that point they'd been drawing water from the bath and toting it out to this contraption they had leftover from their days as restaurateurs -- an old salad bar cold table. It worked fairly well as a sink, except that it wasn't connected to a drain pipe. So dishes were washed in basins in this thing, then the water was schlepped back into the bathroom and flushed down the commode.

The cabinets, by the way, were finished by my Mom--in more ways than one. A lot of the people associated with the building of this house are Amish, and there have been a few miscommunications due to the fact that German (Old, Swiss, High German) is their first language, though most of them speak English very well. Mom and Dad had asked Andy (the carpenter) to leave the cabinets unfinished, meaning "don't paint them." Well, he didn't paint them. Nor did he sand, attach hardware or doors. He built the cabinets, shelves, and drawers, and left them "unfinished," as requested. So Mom spent a large chunk of autumn doing all of that before she could get to what she'd meant by finishing them -- painting them either a brown so dark that it's almost black ("espresso," I think that's called) or an antique white.

But as I say, that was done last November. This time it was the bath room that's looking more pulled together. More storage, and a funky toothbrush/soap/cup holder made out of brushed nickel that looks like a plumbing fixture. And huzzah! Knobs on the doors to the bathroom and the bedrooms! Previously, Mom had taped over the knob-hole of the bathroom door (for privacy's sake, much to my Dad's amusement. As if he's going to peep at her), which meant that if you shut the door all the way you had no way to open it again and you had to ask someone on the other side to let you out.

On Easter Monday, they'd decided the weather was such that they could start the heavy carpentry-type stuff again. Dad's been installing a radiant heat system in the floors. This cabin has a cathedral ceiling in part of it, so baseboard heat made no sense--the heat would leave the units, climb right up the wall and hang out at the roof line. Instead, the heat will come from piping in the floors, and heat the place from the ground up. Slight hitch: you can't use the system until all of it has been installed. They've spent the winter using propane space heaters and kerosene heaters, and lots and lots of layers of clothing. Brrrrr.

So Monday, I helped Mom shift everything in what is currently the dining area into what is currently the living room, after moving a few pieces of the living room to other parts of the house. With the floor clear, Mom and Dad then proceeded to lay down the wooden guides (that Dad designed himself) for the tubing of the heating system. Pip (their dog) and I stayed in the front bedroom, where I knitted and Pip sat on the bed, facing the doorway, watching the sub-floor get built. Every time Dad came into her line of sight, she wagged her tail. It was funny. Poor dog. She is not a fan of change, and that's all they've been doing for at least two years now--change in small increments.

There will be more later. I've promised G a blog entry with pictures of the horses that cleared the land, and that will need a bit of an explanation. It's way too much to add to this post. Let me leave you with a picture of how things looked outside as of last August.

Bathroom Humor

"I may be abandoning you for a while," says the Chief Loon as we walk through the front door of Barnes & Noble.

"Okay," I reply, heading in the general direction of the craft books.

"Oh, yes," says C.L. a moment later, "definitely abandoning you." She's still right behind me. Sounding a bit distressed, in fact. We're both trying to get around the couple ahead of us, who are sauntering down the center of the aisle. Mercifully, they turn off into the sports section. The way ahead is clear.

Turns out C.L. and I are both headed to the same place. Rest rooms are right next to arts & crafts.

"I may need some indemnity." say C.L., slamming shut the door of her stall. Indemnity? Maybe she means amnesty. Whatever. Something tells me this isn't the right time to ask.

"Vee?"

"Yo."

"Sing!"

"Sing?"

"Please."

A command performance. The little DJ that lives in my mind is caught napping. I have never before been called upon to provide cover for public potty noise. In a blind panic, the DJ grabs the first thing she can find and slams it onto the turntable without looking at it. This is the only reason I can think of that explains why I am throwing my head back and belting out:

"Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends!"

[laughter from the next stall]

"Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends...
I can't remember the next two lines,
'Cause I learned this 20 years ago,
But that's no reason why they can't be friends."

"Thank you."

"That is so going in the Blog."

Upon reflection, I suppose I should have been singing scat.

Signs of Spring in a College Town

The past few days have been "unseasonably warm," to quote the weather man. Yesterday in particular was absolutely gorgeous--at least 60 degrees (Fahrenheit), sunny, good-smelling, full of birdsong, the whole ball of wax. I spent most of the day outdoors with a book, with a brief interruption for the good-bye lunch of a (now former) co-worker who's moved to another library on campus.

Today it was back to reality. The high temperature for the day was in the forties, and we'd already reached that by 7:30 this morning. It was spitting snow by 3 pm. Ugh.

I'm not depressed, though. I know Spring is almost upon us. The signs of it are everywhere. Yes, there are robins about and the daffodils are threatening to bloom at any moment, but that's not what I mean. There are three very specific things that occur here that I consider harbingers of Spring, and the first one made an appearance today:

• Dancing Through: We must have an ISKCON temple nearby, but I'm not sure where. Every year at about this time a local group of Hare Krishnas take their drums, cymbals, and flyers and wend their way through the downtown area, singing and dancing all the while. The flyers are invitations to dinner. I should take one sometime, just to find out where they live.
• Social Unrest: Each Fall, the student body's attention is caught by some sort of social/political issue. Sometimes it's global in flavor (when I went to school here, we were all hot about Apartheid and the fact that the university had investments in companies that did business with South Africa. A few years back it had to do with homelessness and famine), but lately it's been more about the atmosphere on campus: race relations, religious intolerance, free speech, things of that nature. An incident early on in the school year will get everyone talking. The campus newspaper will run articles and editorials about this incident. These are followed by angry letters to the editor. Momentum builds slowly throughout the year. Sometimes (like this year) there are two issues, and you won't know until the very end which one is going to win out. Usually right around the middle of April whatever-it-is finally erupts, and there is a protest on the lawn outside university president's office. Then, in a show of support for whom- or whatever, a large group of students set up a sort of vigil/camp, either on the lawn or in the student union building. They live there until they feel they've gotten their point across. Or until finals week is over and they must all go home. Sometimes on my way from one end of campus to the other I find myself having to thread my way through this impromptu village, and I always get the same warm, affectionate, protective feeling for its inhabitants. Nostalgic for my twenties, I guess, or maybe just for the innocent belief that a symbolic gesture could accomplish something.
• Improvisational Drum (Semi)Circle: Campus and town are divided by a low wall that runs the length of the main drag. One of the class gifts many, many years ago was a semicircular section of seating (try saying that out loud) built into this wall. In the evenings, just as soon as the weather starts to turn (and stay) pleasant, a group of townspeople shows up here. Each one brings a percussion instrument -- hand drums and bongos, mainly, though sometimes there is the odd tambourine or cow bell. They set up there in that half-circle and play for hours. As the spring drifts on into summer, they are joined by a dancer or two -- different dancers each year, sometimes different each day. As far as I can tell it's just people who get carried away by the rhythm, take off their shoes and start dancing in the grass.

It's things like this that make me love living in a college town. I don't much care for the way everyone goes football-crazy in the Fall, but I do enjoy this part. Heard a shopkeeper say to a customer today as the drums and cymbals faded into the distance, "Geese are flying north, and the Hare Krishnas are out. Spring's on its way."

Adventures in Dining, or: No More Chicken Broccoli?

I decide it's time to go back to the New Chinatown restaurant. I have studied the little take-out menu I took home last time and picked out a couple of possibilities. I will not be done in by a man with a knowing smile or the words, "Hi! Chicken broccoli?"

Prepped, ready, and wearing my game face, I take a deep breath and open the door. The man I'm expecting to see behind the counter isn't there. It's the younger man, the one who seated me last time, and who doesn't know anything about my ordering history. I settle myself into an entirely different booth, and make a show of perusing the menu. I've already decided it's going to be either the Chinese mixed vegetables or eggplant in garlic sauce. I'm leaning more toward the second choice. I've had eggplant cooked a number of ways, and liked them all. My mom does a breaded, fried eggplant that's tasty, and I know I was served eggplant parmagiana somewhere. There's another Chinese place up the street that does something called "Wonderful Eggplant" that's pretty good.

I order eggplant in garlic sauce, steamed rice, and a big glass of diet cola, and settle down with my book (Revenge, by Stephen Fry -- I believe its European title is The Stars' Tennis Balls). As the waiter brings me my drink, a question flits through my mind: why it is that you could throw an egg roll in this town and probably hit a Chinese restaurant? We have at least 5. We're not really that big a town.

A few minutes later, the woman I always think of as "Ma" comes out of the kitchen with someone's take-out order. I don't know whether she owns the place, but she certainly runs it. She is always around here somewhere. I can't tell whether all her employees are relatives, because when not talking to customers they speak in Chinese and I can't tell what they're calling each other. But if body language and tone of voice are anything to go by, she's definitely the matriarch. She sees me and waves.

A bell rings in the kitchen, and she disappears into it, returning a moment later bearing what must be my order.

"Hi, how you doing? No more chicken broccoli?" She plunks down the plate in front of me, along with a little bowl of rice.

"No, I, um. I'm getting kind of bored with it." I'm staring at what she's brought me.

"Ah. Well, enjoy." And off she goes.

It looks like whale meat. Whale meat? Where did that comparison come from? I must be accessing some half-remembered memory from a sixth grade social studies movie about Eskimos. I wouldn't know whale meat if you pointed it out to me. Nevertheless, that is the phrase that leaps to mind: whale meat.

They must have used a whole eggplant. It's in big cubes, and it hasn't been skinned, so it's part black and shiny, part almost colorless. And the garlic sauce has added to the glossiness. It looks...weird.

Well, try it, for pity's sake. Quit acting like such a baby. Plenty of things that look strange turn out to be pretty good. Take caviar for example. I wonder who the first person was caught a female sturgeon, cleaned it, and said to himself, "Mmm, I bet that'd be good on toast." Mind you, I've never had caviar, and I doubt somehow I could make myself eat it.

I take a bite, and immediately wish I was dining with someone. Somebody should at least enjoy this experience. I'm sure the face I'm making is priceless. It's distress. It's an I-can't-spit-this-out-I'm-in-public face.

Have you ever had potato soup out somewhere, or maybe just a soup with potatoes in it? Maybe the soup has been simmering in a pot all day, maybe it was microwaved just after you ordered it (depends upon the sort of place you're in, I guess). Your first taste tells you that the broth is at the right temperature, and subsequent bites are all about the same. It doesn't occur to you that the bits of potato would be any different, right? And all the time, those potatoes are lying in wait, ready to make you cry, hoping you'll be stupid enough to not test them first before biting. Potatoes don't just retain heat, they hoard it.

Guess what? So does eggplant.

It is hot. It is eye-watering, palate-blistering, this-will-scorch-my-throat hot. Radioactive. I take a swig of soda, and that manages to cool things down enough that I can swallow it. I realize it was so hot that I couldn't pay attention to anything else, so I still don't know what it tastes like. I play around with a couple more pieces, opening them up a bit so that some of the steam (or whatever) can escape, and then I try again.

We have a texture problem. The skin is very chewy (just call it tough, why don't you), and the flesh is mush. As for taste...there is none. You'd think with the sauce, this stuff would have developed a garlicky flavor. Nope. Nothing. The sauce is great, though. Goes well with the rice.

I eat a few more pieces, because she's watching me. Probably because I think of her as "Ma," I feel I can't just leave it there on my plate. It would hurt her feelings. So I move it around a bit, trying to hide the fact that I'm mainly eating the rice, and go back to reading my book. All the while I'm watching her out of the corner of my eye. The second she heads back into the kitchen, I take the plate over to the trash can and dump half of it in. By the time she comes out of the kitchen I am back in my booth, looking like I never left. Whew.

When I go up to pay, she asks me how it was.

"It was okay," I answer. I don't say what we both know.

I'd have been better off with chicken and broccoli.

The Cleaning Game

I came home last night to an unwelcome message on my door. The complex's office was notifying me that sometime between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. today, maintenance would be by to install a new smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector, in accordance with some state law that got passed about all apartments needing to have them.

I'm not irritated about them wanting to keep me safe. I already have a smoke detector--more like a heat detector, really. I've never seen it respond to smoke. Opening the oven door if I'm checking on something I'm baking sets the thing off. So does boiling water. So does opening the bathroom door too soon after I get out of the shower. It makes an earsplitting noise, and while I know that's the point, it's aggravating because it's doing it for no good reason. And it frightens the cat. I usually end up waving a towel at it yelling, "shut UP!" until the air around it cools down a little.

A carbon monoxide detector sounds great, though, especially considering last year they replaced my electric heating unit and the water heater with a set that uses natural gas, so carbon monoxide could be a possibility if the thing isn't working right. I think.

No, the thing that made this news unwelcome was that some stranger was going to be in my apartment. I hate being reminded that I don't have the only key to this place, and that the people who have the other one could show up any time they wanted. I only get told they're coming out of courtesy. I don't think I can tell them not to. Also, as I mentioned in my first post, I am not the world's best housekeeper.

That's the major issue. After I read the note I took a look around the apartment, and suddenly I was ten years old again with my mother standing in the doorway of my bedroom, hands on her hips, disapproval oozing out of every pore. Like Bill Cosby, I have a mother who is an authority on pig sties. Sigh. I was going to have to clean up a bit.

I decided it would probably be more productive to go to bed early and get up at the crack of dawn to clean until it was time to go to work, rather than clean a little bit at night, go to bed, and lie awake fretting about how much I'd left undone. So I went to bed at 8:30 and got up at 3 this morning (oy!), dressed, overcaffeinated myself, and worked at straightening up until it was time to catch the bus at about 7:20.

Delilah (my cat) was completely confused and suspicious. I usually only get up that early when I'm traveling somewhere, but there was no suitcase in evidence. She decided to supervise. Much more interesting than going back to sleep.

The procedure went something like this:

1. Identify an area that needs attention. Grab a trash bag and set it up so that it's open and easy to dump things into.
2. Sort things in this area into three categories: Keep, Toss, and Unsure. Remove cat from trash bag. Throw contents of "Toss" into trash.
3. Remove cat from space left by the "Toss" pile. Sort through the "Unsure" pile, and ask oneself whether these items are really necessary. Decide they aren't. Remove cat from trash bag, throw contents of "Unsure" pile into trash.
4. Remove cat from space left by "Unsure" and "Toss"piles, replace with the contents of the "Keep" pile. Repent of some of the things thrown away and remove them from the trash--along with the cat.
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 until bag is full.
6. Take bag out to dumpster (making sure the cat isn't in there). Upon return, look at apartment and realize it doesn't look all that different. Start over again, and be more ruthless about the "Toss" pile.

I really hate cleaning. It doesn't help that I've lived in the same teeny apartment for 12 years, and I have accumulated a lot of junk over that time. I really need to move to somewhere larger, but every year when that lease addendum shows up I look around and think, "Moving means packing. Ugh. Oh, just one more year," and sign the addendum.

On the positive side, the place is a little more tidy. On the negative side, it's only a little more tidy.

Also on the positive side, this activity afforded Delilah hours of entertainment. She loves the Cleaning Game. She forgot the second half of this game, though: spending the rest of the day cooped up so that she wouldn't get stepped on or accidentally let outside by the maintenance men. Believe me, I'm hearing about it now. It's a good thing I don't speak Cat, or I might get my feelings hurt.

And, one more positive, I found some things I thought I'd lost for good. But since the object of this exercise was not to Get Organized but simply to Get Things Out of the Way, I'm pretty sure I've hidden a few other things from myself. I probably won't find them until the next time maintenance threatens to come calling.

I should probably take this opportunity to start organizing the place for real: take it little bit by little bit, and really truly find places for everything. Maybe I'll do that.

Tomorrow. Right now, I think I'm going to bed.

Happy Groundhog Day.

I'm Not Management Material

Have you ever had a sentence from stranger's conversation stray into your ear and leave you with more information about him than you really wanted?

I was in the dairy section of a local supermarket yesterday afternoon, giving myself frostbite while trying to find the milk carton with the best "sell by" date (they load the cartons from the back, see, so the newest ones aren't within easy reach), when I heard a man behind me say to whomever he was with:

"Of course you want your subordinates to do well, but...not better than you."

What?

I turned around quickly to see who'd said that. There were two men walking past, but neither of them was speaking now, so I couldn't match a face to the voice. And I really wanted to. I wanted to imprint that face on my brain so that I could draw a picture of it from memory later. Or maybe if I'd been a little more on the ball (and didn't have hands numb with cold) whip out my camera and take a photo of him. Or at the very least ask him where he worked, so I could make sure no one I cared about ever applied for a job there.

He hadn't said it sarcastically. He had been absolutely serious. Almost off-hand, as if this were something everyone knew.

Is it? Really? Am I that naive?

Probably.

I hope not.

I've trained people, but I've never been solely responsible for someone's supervision. I'd like to think, though, that if ever I am someone's supervisor and they go on to better things, I‘d be proud. Like a parent. I don‘t think I‘d be upset.

Why would you? Why would you need to keep the people under you under you?

I've spent the past day or so turning that round in my head, wondering what sort of petty, selfish person would feel the need to guard against a subordinate's success. As if one person's success must come at the expense of another’s, because there's only so much of it to go around, y'see. I wonder if this man is the sort that lifts a good idea out of someone's memo to him and claims it as his own.

Doesn't being the person/department that hires, trains, and ultimately produces really good people who go on to become great at whatever-it-is say more about you than if you appear to be some sort of go-getter with a bitter, unhappy staff that knows they're being kept down?

I’m glad he’s not my boss. And I’m very glad my doesn’t boss think that way.

Or does she?