What's the opposite of cyberstalking?

For reasons I should probably talk to a trained therapist about, I go online and look up old boyfriends from time to time. It isn't because I want to keep in touch with them, or that I care about their well-being; I have no warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia about these men. I want to know where they are living because I want to stay well away from them. One of them is in North Carolina, and I don't think he'll be moving any time soon. The other one I haven't been able to find an online trace of at all.

Until today.

I wasn't sure at first that it was him. He has a very plain, common sort of name. There's no picture on the entry I found. There might be one that's suppressed until you join the site (reunion.com, I think), but I'm really not that keen to see him. I know his mother's name, though, and that was on this listing too. It also had the right age, the place where he grew up, and named a couple of the other places where I know he has lived.

I'm not going to describe the relationship except to say that I never want another one like it. He used to reside in New York City, moved there right after we graduated college. I have been abnormally paranoid about visiting that city for 20 years. I was convinced that even though the odds of it happening are incredibly long (how many people live there?), I'd run into him somewhere--that he'd walk right up to me and say hello. Sort of like When Harry Met Sally on crack, where instead of the story ending with a New Year's Eve declaration of undying love, I'd wind up arrested, with my face splashed across in the New York Times the next morning: "Tourist kicks ex-boyfriend to death at FAO Schwarz," the headline would read. Or something like that.

Are you remembering that BlogHer was in New York this summer? I was secretly afraid to leave the hotel. I was also secretly afraid that he worked for the hotel, and that they'd find his body stuffed in a laundry chute shortly after I checked out. But now, if I can believe this search I performed over my lunch break, visiting New York City is no longer a problem! I can go there every weekend if I want to. He's on the west coast now, living in a suburb of Seattle.

Damn. I wanted to see Seattle. I guess I'll have to wait until he moves again.

Snapshot Sunday #2

These aren't pictures taken with my camera, they're scanned. A long while back I took a drawing class through the arts center on campus. Our first project was to take some image out of the newspapers and sketch it. I chose an oxford shoe, and shocked myself when I found out I really can draw. I don't have a scanned image of that.

Not quite as far back, a blogger I used to be in contact with named Anna suggested we each do that same thing again and post our results. We shared our drawings with each other, but we didn't post the results on our blogs. I don't think she was happy with how hers turned out, and I didn't want to publish mine without her publishing hers.

Her blog has been inactive for years now. I think her life got very complicated and she didn't have the time or energy to both live it and then write about it.

So anyway, here's the picture I drew from. I can't remember what the ad was for, or what magazine I tore it out of:

And here's what I did with it:




















And now I want to dig out my sketch book and draw again. Like I have time for that right now.

Feeding frenzy (Warning! Contains grumbling)

Today I went to Wegman's and bought most of the things on my "Buy Ahead" list for Thanksgiving. I got an almost 14 pound turkey for about $4, because I had a shopper's club card and bought at least $25 dollars worth of other stuff.

The whole store was crazy. It appears everyone picked this weekend to do the same thing I was doing, and probably for the same reason: the football team has an away game today. You can't get a thing done in this town on a home-game Saturday. The store added to the crowd by scattering Pilgrim-hatted employees around the place to hand out samples, coupons, sweepstakes entries. There were also random stockers with their big rigs parked right smack in the middle of aisles. Because it's imperative to get more fish sticks into aisle 7 at one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, I assume.

People amaze me sometimes. This woman and her daughter pulled their cart right in front of the frozen turkeys, looked at them all without choosing one, and then just parked there. There were three more of us trying to get in and out. These two just hung out, oblivious. It reminded me of Jelly Man from a couple years back. One woman tried to squeeze past the daughter to get at the turkeys behind her, and that girl didn't budge an inch. She just kept staring at the cupcakes in her cart (because purple frosting is so hypnotic), completely unaware of anything else. And no, there were no earbuds to blame, pouring loud music into her head and obliterating all else. I checked. She was clueless all on her own.

After a couple of minutes of politely waiting for this pair to get their shit together, I gave up. Muttering "Excuse me," I pushed past the mother and started looking for a good turkey. She got out of my way (barely), but then stood blocking my exit. I so dearly wish I'd had the nerve to say, "Really? You have a whole bloody store to zone out in, you have to pick the turkey case? In mid-November???"

While I was trying to get round her another woman was trying to get in, giving me dirty looks because it looked like I was causing the hold-up. I shrugged and gestured over my shoulder to the living statues behind me. She glanced where I pointed, assessed the situation, nodded an apology at me, and transferred her stink-eye to them.

If this is what shopping for Thanksgiving is like, can you just imagine how Christmas will be?

But! I saved about $11 on my turkey! Silver lining!

Today's brief musing brought to you by...

...conjunctivitis and the differences in personality between Delilah and Sophie.

If Delilah had ever had pink-eye and required antibiotic ointment be applied right in the eyes three times a day, by the end of Day Two she would have been watching my every move. She would've hidden from me, run by me on her way from one end of the room to another, and treated me with suspicion no matter what I had been doing. She would have slept with one (infected) eye open. I would've been treated to long, deep scratch marks on my neck, chest, and probably my arms.

Sophie? Well, she has no front claws, but her back ones are still there; and her teeth work. She hasn't used either yet. She fusses when I put the stuff in, makes noises to tell me this is not her idea of a good time. She tries to get away by backing out from under my arm. Afterward she eats the cat treats I provide as a sort of apology/reward, she sulks for a moment, and then it's as if she shrugs and says, "Ah, whatever." Next thing I know she's looking up at me with her poor little greased eyes and saying, "You're my best friend. Even when you do crap like that. Can I come sit up there with you?"

Yes, Sophie, of course you can. And I promise I won't do that again for another eight hours or so.

Which unfortunately for one of us is right about now.

Produce fatigue

The final pick-up for my CSA half share was last Friday. Thank heavens. I don't think I'm going to renew next year.

Don't get me wrong, this whole support-the-local-economy-while-eating-healthier thing is great. I cooked a lot of new things, like a spinach, onion, bacon, and chard quiche. I pickled beets. I did a lot of stir-frying. I made more pesto. I experimented with things that I thought might go together, with general success (a weird take on chili, for example -- chicken instead of beef, garlic, onion, greens instead of beans, a ton of spices, and egg noodles. Looked strange, tasted great). I have a ton of tomatoes in the freezer at the moment that I want to turn into tomato soup before my parents get here in two weeks. I'm seeing homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese as lunch for that Wednesday. If I can get around to it.

Problem is, I'm still not using everything I'm given before it goes bad. I didn't get a freezer this year like I thought I would--money was a little too tight--so I couldn't blanch and freeze things as much as I would have liked. Mom and I experimented with fava beans and failed. I'm up to my eyes in potatoes. Before I started freezing the tomatoes they were attracting fruit flies.

And the eggs! Dear Lord, the eggs. That was new this year. They started a co-op or a trade or something with some other farms, and now we get eggs every couple of weeks. I didn't realize how little use I have for them until I started to get so many. There was a three-carton pile-up in the fridge at one point this August. I mean, a girl can only eat so much egg salad before she starts to smell like a sulfur mine. I made that quiche, I baked a little bit, I scrambled a few, but the eggs just kept on coming faster than they were leaving. Eventually I just gave the new cartons away to my neighbor when I brought my share home. She tried to pay me for them. I had to assure her that she was doing me a favor by taking them off my hands.

I really don't have the money to shell out on something if I'm not going to be able to use all of it. And this year they didn't offer a discount for next year to renewing members. They haven't sent out an email about renewals at all, come to think of it.

I'll do this again in a few years, when finances are better and I have a little more cooking experience. And a chest freezer. Definitely need one of those.

I think what I'll do instead is go to the farmer's market every Friday next season and buy a smaller, more manageable amount of produce. Then I'll work with it over the weekends.

Cat's eyes, pilot programs

Sophie's had something funky going on with her eyes, some sort of infection. I took her to the vet today to see what it is and what they can do about it. The vet says she has conjunctivitis. He gave me some ointment with erythromycin in it that I have to apply to her eyes three times daily for two weeks.

It's gonna be a fun two weeks, but her eyes will thank me for it when we're done. I have no idea how she caught this. Maybe it's leftover from being out in the Big Bad World before we met? I don't know. Delilah never had it.

That presentation I mentioned yesterday went really well. A lot of people were interested, which was a nice surprise. I was expecting screams of rage. We did get some people who didn't like the idea we had, but about 90% of the room agreed that now that we've seen whether this thing we're attempting can be done, it's time to test it out. That way we can decide whether it should be done. The task force is now going to design and run a pilot program with a few interested campuses. Part of me is excited. Part of me is saying, "Oh great, more work."

Favorite part of the whole day: calling the taxi to take me to the vet's. The dispatch operator asked how many were going and I replied,

"Just me. And a cat in a carrier."

"Okay," he said. Then to himself, in that voice people use when they're writing things down (I pictured a clipboard): "One person, one boxed cat."

A little nervous

I got named to a task force earlier this year whose charge was to look into doing something very different with regard to our libraries' collections. We met all spring and summer, took the fall to write our report, and tomorrow we are making a presentation at a yearly two-day retreat for all the librarians from the satellite campuses.

When we're done we're going to be greeted with either be applause or pitchforks and torches. Or maybe stunned silence. In any event, I'm a wee bit nervous and preoccupied right now, so I can't think of anything to write. So here, look at some pretty pictures I took of the garden this summer:



My big purchase this year, garden-wise: a climbing rose called "Joseph's Coat."



The lone sunflower to make it to adulthood. Everyone else either died off or failed to thrive.



Bought a morning glory seedling at a craft fair. I had no idea what color I was going to get. Happy that it's deep purple.

Cat. Bag. Out of.

So my Mom saw the online pictures of the gansey in progress and got all excited. She can't wait to get here for Thanksgiving so she can touch it. Exactly what she said. Myself, I'm hoping that I'm done by Thanksgiving so that I can wear it. Though, knowing my propensity to wear my dinner on my chest, perhaps that's not such a good idea.

A few hours later Mom emailed me to say she'd been looking on Amazon for copies of "Knitting Ganseys," quoted me a price she saw advertised for a used one, and wanted to know if the one I got was at a similar price.

I said yes, and then went on to explain the whole used book/higher price/better condition thing. Then I wrote:

Uhm. Having said all that, can I just say please don't buy the book because...well...Christmas is coming...and...yeah. I've started my shopping early. :)

Hint received, rejoicing commenced. Oh well. She's getting more than just this, so I guess it's okay that she knows about it. I'm not saying what else I'm giving her, though, 'cause she swings by the blog from time to time (Hi Mom! [waves]).

Folks, please try to remember that Christmas is if not right around the corner at least in the same county by now. Don't buy stuff for yourselves. Point out what you like and then walk a discreet distance away so we can get it for you. Wouldja? Please?

In Thanksgiving prep news, I've taste-tested the wild rice dressing recipe (thumbs up), the sweet potato recipe (thumbs way up), and the apricot relish (thumbs sideways). I think I'm going to buy some mango chutney or something for this year and substitute that for the cranberries. The taste of the apricot stuff was good, but the texture was unappetizing. Mushy. I have an idea what's wrong--the recipe calls for canned apricots. I think fresh (or even dried but soaked in something like orange juice) would be better. I'm going to play around with this over the summer and see if I can't fine-tune it into something usable.

Snapshot Sunday: The Gansey

So here are some pictures of the sweater I'm working on:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

I'm pretty pleased with it so far.

Success on the horizon

As soon as my battery charges up, I'm taking a picture of the sweater-in-progress and posting it here. I just joined the front to the back and tried it on. It fits! Huzzah! Next I work on the sleeves and the collar.

I'm so pleased with myself. I think this is something I would actually be happy to wear in public.

Of course, since I want to take a picture before I do anything else to it, that means I have to hold off on starting the sleeves. Well, maybe I'll work on another project for a while tonight.

#12, you are in my sights. I should have you crossed off before Thanksgiving!

In a bit of a rut at the moment

So here's the kind of day I've been having lately:

• I wake up on time but take about 45 minutes to talk myself out of bed.
• I turn on the coffee pot and then run back upstairs to take a shower.
• By the time I'm out of the shower I realize I have just enough time to do any three of these things: eat breakfast, drink coffee, get dressed, brush teeth, catch bus that gets me to work on time. The bus usually loses.
• I spend my work day feverishly trying to catch up with all the work I should have been doing over the past three months but didn't because I got press-ganged onto a project for another department. It started by doing something for them as a favor and rapidly turned into the Beast That Would Not Stay Fed. Now that it's over they at least have the decency to be grateful about it, but I still want to stab them all repeatedly with a dull pencil.
  
• While working, I hum softly to myself in an attempt to keep the running commentary in my head from leaking out of my mouth. No one would want to hear what's going on up there right now.
• Lunch is had hunched over my desk. I then either read my non-work email or do a few rows on the gansey I'm trying to knit (if I remembered to grab the bag it's in on my way out the door that morning). I shave about ten minutes off of my lunch to make up for not getting to work on time.
• At some point during the day I catch sight of myself in the ladies room mirror and wonder what the hell happened. When I left the house, I looked fine. By the time I see myself in the mirror, I look like someone dragged me through a hedge backwards. The hair in particular looks ridiculous.
  
• I come home to a cat who is absolutely thrilled to see me. While I change into pajamas, she rolls around on the bed and meows at me, no doubt telling me how many skeins of yarn she subdued that day.
• Dinner is usually something so unremarkable I can't remember what it is ten minutes after I put the plate in the dishwasher.
• After an hour of surfing, I admit there's nothing on TV. I go to bed obscenely early. Like, old-people early. I drift off to sleep only to wake with a jolt about half an hour later, realizing I haven't blogged yet and that I'd better get on that if I'm serious about NaBloPoMo.
• I get up and write.

I just realized, writing that, that while I can't get myself out of bed to go to work I practically leap out of it to write a blog post. What's up with that?

Here's hoping my behind drags a little less after we turn the clocks back. I do better in the morning when it's light out. And now I'm going to bed.

Turkey Day for 4

My sister just emailed me this morning to tell me the Lancaster contingent will be just her this year. Hubby has to work Thanksgiving Day (he works at a lab. They can't shut down for a day, they have delicate procedures going on that can't but put on hold. I think holiday time off rotates. I'm betting he's off next year, 'cause he was off last year), so his parents are staying there and the three of them will be having their own Thanksgiving. Ditter's coming to my place.

My parents are coming Tuesday evening so Mom can help me do some prep on Wednesday. Though you know what? Prepping for four doesn't sound nearly as difficult as prepping for seven. I'd better not get too relaxed, here, or I'll be a maniac on the day itself. Who am I kidding? Of course I'm going to be insane on that say. Ditter's coming Wednesday evening, after work, I think. I don't know how long everyone is staying. It'd be nice if they could stay until Saturday or something. There's a football game here on Saturday, though, and they might want to get outta Dodge before all that madness starts.

It'll be like old times. Except that instead of at Mom's (where it used to be while I was growing up) it's at my house. Which is still a horrible, horrible mess right now but hey! I have three weeks. Oh, crappydoodle. I only have three weeks. Exactly three weeks. If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go clean something now.

Oscillate Wildly

I have a new musical crush. Janice Whaley is working her way through the Smiths' catalog, hoping to record covers of the whole thing by December 31, 2010. She uses only her voice and some software. She calls this scheme (and her blog) The Smiths Project

Her latest offering made me want to make out with my headphones:



I need to go lie down.

P.S. To hear the music, just hit the little "play" button. You don't have to buy anything. I think I'm going to be buying some stuff to download to my iPod, but that's mainly to make sure she has funds to continue.

Election Day 2010

I voted. And all I really have to say is thank heavens that's over with for another year.

I am so sick of the sniping, the back-stabbing, the name-calling, the out-and-out lies candidates tell about each other.

"He's an out-of-town transplant!"

"She wants to raise your taxes!"

"He did raise your taxes!"

"He wants to make all guns illegal!"

"He wants to make your kids pray in school!"

Next campaign season I fully expect one candidate showing pictures of the other one in kicking puppies or passing out crack pipes to small children. And then the other guy will retaliate by showing a video of his opponent having a kitten for breakfast. On toast.

I think what bothered me most this season were all the computerized campaign phone calls I received. Didn't they used to do these in person? Are people not volunteering like they used to? It's a weird mixed message I'm getting: "Look, we want you to vote for our guy but we're tired of saying it. So here, listen to this recorded message from the candidate's wife/mother/imaginary staffer named Dave."

It is so unsatisfying to scream "F--- off and leave me alone!" at a computer. You know? But I guess it's an even trade. I wouldn't hear their message, they didn't hear mine.

Ow

I woke up a couple hours ago with a vicious headache that nothing has been able to tame. Aspirin? It caught the aspirin one-handed and tossed it aside. Caffeine? It swatted that away and kept coming. Allergy medicine (because maybe it's sinus pressure)? It blew a raspberry at my Allegra. Multivitamin (maybe it's lack of iron)? "Nice try," it said with a sneer, lunging at me with both hands.

I've called in sick to work and plan to sit here bundled up on the sofa with a cup of mint tea for a while. I have some sort of brand X excedrin that I'm going to try later. Can't use it until this aspirin I took wears off. There's aspirin in the brand X stuff. Don't want to thin my blood so much that my ears start to ring. (Yes, I did do that once. Not my idea of a good time). Meanwhile I'll just sit here and pinch the area between my thumb and index finger with my other thumb and index finger (old acupressure trick Mom taught me. Sometimes it works) and wish this beast with my head in its fist would just go away.

Deep breath before the plunge

Well, tomorrow is November first, which means the start of National Blog Posting Month. This will be my third time through. Expect it to be heavy on Thanksgiving angst, as I'm once again having six people and two dogs over for dinner and my house is once again a total mess. In fact, I should be cleaning it now. I'll try to keep the online fretting to a minimum.

Tasks I've assigned myself to get done before this Turkey Day include:

• sorting out the craft room
• rearranging the living room
• cleaning out the freezer
• shampooing my sofa as well as a perfectly good (but a little grubby) La-Z-Boy rocking recliner that I rescued from the trash this summer. It wasn't in the trash, mind you, just right next to it. I noticed it one day on my way to the bus stop. Bunch of boys who moved out of the end unit the night before trash day had set it by the dumpster with a "free to a good home" sign on it.
  
• shampooing the area rug in the living room. Or maybe I should just replace it with something that doesn't look so haphazardly installed. This thing is a remnant the last owners bought and hacked down to a size that almost covers all the living room floor. It was tacked down at the doorways with clear packing tape. Classy, no? Maybe when I'm out getting a strap clamp and some wood glue I'll start pricing area rugs.
• repairing a kitchen chair -- hence the need for a strap clamp and wood glue. I broke a kitchen chair last winter with my big toe. Don't know my own strength, apparently. I was sitting in it, feet tucked under, and when I got up I must have hit the piece that connects the front and back legs together in a weak spot with my toe, 'cause it went "crack!" And I said, "Are you kidding me?!?" Then I went online to look up how to fix it. According to the webpage I need: wax paper, cord, wood glue, and a strap clamp. Looks simple enough, I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet.
• refurbishing two old kitchen chairs that now live in my craft room. They are part of a second-hand three-piece dinette set that I used to use in my apartment at as a kitchen table. Years of abuse from the various cats in my life had left them tattered and without stuffing in the seats. Now that I have a cat who can't shred things (but she tries! Boy does she ever.), I might as well put new cushions on them. This is one reason to sort out the craft room. The supplies to do this are buried in there somewhere.
• testing some Thanksgiving recipes. Dad can't eat cranberries because he's on coumadin for his heart, so I looked up some alternatives for cranberry sauce and emailed them to Mom for her opinion. We're trying one that made with apricots, an orange, ginger, cilantro, dry mustard and turmeric. I'm gonna test it first. If it tastes nasty, I'll look for something else. Actually, I'm testing it today, if I ever get my rear end in gear. I'm also testing a crockpot stuffing recipe with wild rice in it, some corn dish with fresh sage, and a sweet potato recipe. I'm going to use a rotisserie chicken from the local grocery store to eat with all this stuff instead of trying to cook another turkey. We'll save the turkey-roasting for Thanksgiving Day. I'm crazy, not stupid.
• trimming back the tree in my flowerbed. Again. I'm this close (imagine a finger and thumb held very close together) to asking a male family member to bring a chainsaw with them at Thanksgiving and take that tree down. I don't know whether it was planned to be in the flowerbed or if it's a volunteer that someone decided to keep, but either way it was a bad idea. It's too close to the house. It's always pushing on the windows. I cut away the bothersome bits, they grow right back. The only thing that's kept me from doing it sooner is that robins come nest there in May. It's not the only tree in the neighborhood. They'll find somewhere else.

So anyway, NaBloPoMo. Posting everyday for a whole month. The annual experiment to see how long it takes me to get sick of the sound of my own voice. Wish me luck. Just in case I get stuck, there's a Twitter feed I'm going to follow that supplies daily writing suggestions.

Anyone want to join me? Misery loves company, after all.

Better late than never

By the time I got around to uploading by pictures from 10/1o/1o, they'd closed the group on Flick'r to new entries. Ah well.

Here they are anyway:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Number 12, and where I've been

I'm trying to tackle #12 on the life list -- knitting a sweater. I wasn't terribly specific on the list, but what I really want is to knit a sweater I am willing to wear in public. I've decided to knit gansey, because hey, why start easy?

Ganseys (also called guernseys) are sweaters that were traditionally knit by the wives/mothers/sisters/daughters of the fishermen of the Channel Islands (most notably Guernsey, hence the name) and worn by said fishermen. They were usually dark blue. I don't know why that color in particular, unless it's because it was the most practical one. These sweaters were all about practicality. They were knit in all in one piece from the bottom up, had a section at the bottom that could be torn out and reworked if it wore out, had gussets under the arms to save wear and tear on sleeve joints (thereby prolonging the life of the sweater), usually had the initials of the wearer knit into it somewhere (I'm thinking that was to ID sweaters and match them back up to owners on washing day--you have 4 men in the family all with similar blue sweaters, you're going to have a hard time telling them apart otherwise) and had some fancy knit/purl designs and simple cables in them. The plainer ones were work sweaters, the fancier ones were for dress. Wikipedia does a much better job of explaining this, if you want to know more.

I got interested in ganseys when my Mom mentioned she was looking for a good, free pattern for one. Being a library employee, I put my little research cap on and started digging around on Ravelry and coming up with some good book titles. I mentioned them to her and suggested she take some of them for a test-drive through interlibrary loan before she decided to buy some. And then I started to ILL them, myself. Borrowed one called "Knitting Ganseys" and after reading it decided that yes, I could probably do this.

Wish me luck. I've been thinking that knitting a sweater in the round might be easier than knitting it in pieces and then sewing it together. I've tried the piece-it-together way before and was disgusted with the results. Let's see if this works better.

Thing is, I can't knit and type at the same time. This is why things are quiet right now. Though I can't use that excuse next month--I'm going to do NaBloPoMo again.

And I just realized, I crossed off making a pie from my list but never wrote it up. So I need to do that. Maybe I can write the post in my head while I'm knitting.

Edited on 10/18/10 to add: Just found this in my drafts. So far the sweater is going well. I've gotten about 1/2 way up, and am now working solely on the back. It looks pretty good so far, if I do say so myself. (And I do...)

As soon as I get home (provided I remember) I'll post my 10/10/10 pictures and at some point this week I'll talk about making the pie. Maybe. Well, the pictures definitely, but I'd rather knit than write right now.

Oh! And the opera was really good. They used this interesting set design, called it "The Machine" -- a bunch of planks that could be raised, lowered, tilted -- with them they got the Rhinemaidens to swim by suspending them on cables, made the gods look like they were flying, made a staircase to Niebelheim, all sorts of things. It was almost like the set was another cast member. It reminded me a little of the way they used a rotating stage in Les Miserables. There are so many more things you can do with a stage like that than a traditional set of flies and curtains.

Now I'm all excited for Die Walküre in May.

Das Rheingold

When I was in sixth grade I somehow got lumped into the same class with the Gifted kids. They were called “AT” in our school system (for “academically talented”). The AT program had its own special teacher, one per school, who would teach us things that had nothing to do with the regular curriculum. The man attached to my middle school was Mr. Mason.

For reasons I’ve yet to figure out, Mr. Mason would regularly preempt our classes, take us all to his little class room, and talk opera at us. Specifically, he would lecture on Wagner’s Ring Cycle. He had a little stage and paper dolls to act out scenes of the various operas and everything. After he’d gone through the whole cycle he grouped us into pairs, assigned us another opera (ours was Aida), and made us do the same sort of thing for that opera that he had just done for the Ring Cycle.

My partner was a very serious girl , 1st generation American, the only child of very serious Polish parents. On top of being wicked smart she was a virtuoso on the piano. I never saw her after 8th grade. I don’t know if her family moved or if she got admitted to the Philly performing arts school or what. If she’s not a concert pianist now, she’s probably off trying to cure cancer or working for a Supreme Court judge.

Ours was not a happy marriage. She would get irritated with me on a regular basis. I can’t remember the reasons. Perhaps my artwork wasn’t up to par. She was a perfectionist, and I had not yet discovered that yes, I could indeed draw. (I didn’t figure that out until I was in my 30s). Perhaps I wasn’t serious enough--did I mention she was serious? Almost to the point of humorless. It was Very Important that she do well at whatever she attempted. If she hasn’t become a concert pianist, a lawyer, or a research scientist it’s probably because her head exploded sometime in college.

The upshot of all this opera hooey is that my mother demanded I get taken out of the AT class. The school fought her on it, but she told them to test me: if I didn’t meet the criteria for “AT” (I was skating right on the edge), she wanted me in a new class the next year. I didn’t know about this at the time. Maybe they asked her not to tell me about it so that they could get accurate results. Probably a good thing. If I’d known, I might have thrown the test. I was so unhappy with those AT people. I was not so much fish-out-of-water as goldfish trying to live in a tank full of clownfish.

I got called to the guidance office, sat down, and asked a bunch of questions. I think it was an IQ test. I guess my score was again right on the edge, but (thankfully) just low enough to put me with the normal kids.

Sixth grade has left some lasting marks:

1. Grammar mystifies me. Not usage--I know the rules instinctively (I hope) but I have never been able to articulate what those rules are. Past participle? Gerund? No idea. I use them, I suppose, but I wouldn’t know one if it bit me in the behind. I blame sixth grade and Mr. Mason for that, because it was the English classes he kept poaching for his little operatic tutorials. I have a very clear memory of sitting on the stairs at home, watching Mom cook dinner and grumble, “Going to be standing in the unemployment line, not knowing what a linking verb is. But she’ll know the plot to Aida!”
2. I do actually know the plot to Aida. I threw back my head and howled when I heard Elton John was making it into a musical. Two protests there: ever since he and his writing partner split up decades ago, every single song he sings sounds exactly like the one before it—bland; and? Musicals generally have happy endings, unless you’re talking about Camelot. Operas do not. I haven’t checked to see if they messed with the ending. I don’t want to know.
3. I vaguely remember the plots to the Ring Cycle. This only comes in handy when watching an episode of “Morse” or “Lewis.” And I can recognize “The Ride of the Valkyrie” when I hear it after one measure is played.

Still, when the local theatre sent out an email about the Metropolitan Opera’s season a few weeks ago (which they stream live and in HD into the theatre downtown) listing Das Rheingold, the first part of the Ring Cycle, as the opening performance of the year, I was interested. After a little bit of dithering I decided I was going. It’s today. Homecoming weekend. Town is going to be nuts. The performance is at 1 pm. The game starts at noon. That means I should be able to get to town just fine (we turn into a ghost town during the actual playing of the game), but coming back afterward is going to be an absolute nightmare.

I sure hope there are subtitles ‘cause otherwise I’m going to be a little lost. Sixth grade was an awfully long time ago, and Wagner’s stuff didn’t stick in my head the way Aida did.

Farewell Latte

I've been starting to pay more attention to how much money I spend regularly on "unnecessities." I know that's not a word, but I don't know what to call it. What I mean are things that I don't need but have come to spend money on as a matter of course--things that I used to consider luxuries, back when I had less money and more sense.

For example: it hit me this week that every morning I spend around $3 (maybe a little more) on a latte I buy in my workplace's basement cafe. That's at least $15 a week, $60 a month, just on coffee. A lot of the time (but not always) I buy myself a pastry as well. That's another $2. Not sure how much that is a week, since I don't do that everyday, every week, but it adds up. So today as they were making my latte I said to myself that this is the last one. The Farewell Latte.

This isn't the last one I'll ever have, mind you. I may upon occasion decide to go out for coffee. But I'm relegating them (elevating them?) to the status of Treat, the way I did when I just got out of college and didn't have much money. My roommate and I would occasionally go out after work for "yuppie coffee," as we called it, and wind up at a local cafe with big cups of coffee, pieces of biscotti, jazz music, and conversation. It was an event, because neither of us could afford to do it more than once a month.

I'm going to learn how to make them at home. Maybe I'll switch to cafe au lait, since that doesn't require espresso or a thing to make the milk all foamy. We'll see. Maybe I can find a cheap espresso machine somewhere.

I just took a sip of my Farewell Latte, and you know what? Knowing that it was the last one I'll have for a while has made it taste better somehow.