Author: wideeyedfunk

Rolling in the clover.

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The neighborhood is full of them, those little yellow signs: “Keep Off Pesticide Applied.” Crooked Hankie and Sweet Miss Tibbit prance by them without a pause, sniffing and nibbling and thinking dog thoughts. I read them, I observe the lush green carpet lawns, and I get it. That stuff is soft and inviting and looks just like a fresh new shag carpet. I mean, I guess it looks like a fresh new shag carpet because I haven’t actually observed one of those, mainly I see used, flattened, stinky shag carpets awaiting tear-out in the less updated homes the WideEyedHousehold has purchased over the decades. But then, our evening walkies round the corner into our WideEyedYard and the joyous chaos of bees buzzing and butterflies fluttering and beetles creeping among the taller green stuff is so soothing to me. And to Hankie and Sweet Tibbit, because they stop, drop, and roll as soon as they hit it, standing up reeking of green clover and scattered with little clover blooms. Our yard is cut long because the …

Dark light unicorn.

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I think my motorbike has a secret identity. My suspicions started yesterday morning. Sunny day yesterday, first day of my own little mini-staycation because sometimes a person needs a break, and the motorbike and I headed out on errands. Please, these were vacation errands: bookstore, chocolate shop, and wine shop, all to acquire goodies with which to wallow, small packets of joys that fit into my backpack. Motorbike and I parked in the lot at the bookstore, and I looked back at it just before I went in. It’s mostly black, lean, and it sucks all of the light into itself and then glows it back out as dark light. It is frankly beautiful but a little bit tough looking, like a really awe-inspiring pair of well-engineered high heels that you can run in if you have to. It sat there, clearly waiting for me, biding time with the Hondas and Subarus and people movers of various sorts that folks use to get here and go there. “That your motorbike out front?” a bookseller a …

Leave the puffer behind.

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70 degrees Fahrenheit. Possibly the most perfect temperature. And friends, I’m incredibly relieved to report that I’m experiencing it today. Experiencing it outside. Because of course inside my second story office in my antique house with antique radiators, it is usually well over 70 degrees when it is 65 degrees downstairs at the thermostat and 15 degrees outside. I’m not making sense. Blame it on the 70 degrees. On this day, I left my ankle length Patagonia puffer on the coat rack for morning dog walkies for the first time since mid-November. I felt mostly unprotected and I did worry a bit. What if the situation changed around the corner? Ok, now I’m bragging about my own bravery because the truth of the matter is that I had on thinsulate lined Carhartt bib overalls, blundstone boots, my red pompom hat, and a slightly lighter jacket. But not the puffer and that’s something. My smile actually ached in my cheeks in the final block, and it is certain any watching neighbors, and in the city there’re …

Double Dog Indignity

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Ten decades. Ten thousand miles. Immediate indignity in the WideEyedHousehold. Or is it love? The old stuff I bring home despite long and windy WideEyedSpouse sighs seems to get along ok with the old stuff already here. Basement-abandoned, mildew-stinking, dusty, grandparent furniture, lamps, rugs, geegaws – they all seem to agree to the neutral zone pact of the WideEyedHousehold: meld or hit the road. Each of them has a history with other families, sometimes these are decades long histories of ill use and hard living. Sometimes they glow as the treasures they have been and are to me now. I like to think when they get here, they are open to new histories, new families. And, dogs. Two days ago the most recent old-thing arrived, a rug fragment originally from central Asia. It has been tooling around the world since 1920. Turkistan to someplace, [someplace to someplace], someplace to Arizona, Arizona to the WideEyedHousehold in Buffalo, NY. Packed in trunks. Rolled. Folded. Squashed. On trucks and boats and planes and feet. Ten thousand miles over …

November Hoses

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The WideEyedSpouse is lying under the back porch with a heat gun. Miss-Tibbit-the-Useless-Little-Black-Dog is staring in wonderment. Crooked Hank, entering the third winter of his young life, believes it all to be nonsense. Tonight it will freeze and freeze hard. The hose stopcock is already frozen open. Probably bad things will happen in the coming arctic blast if it isn’t drained and closed. Boring, expensive things. Friends, don’t judge us here in the WideEyedHousehold! We started the snow thrower two days before this morning’s snow labor. I packed the Smooth Ride’s trunk go-bag last evening (winter coat, blanket, fruit leather, water vessel, plastic bag, cat litter, little shovel, and a Wawa Truck Pez pack). The Joan of Arctic Sorels are out and were  deployed this morning. The bomber hats undrawered last week. A person can only do so much to prepare before the wretched realization arrives – all that work is simply to endure winter. W I N T E R. I thought about tropical winters as I forcibly shoved the snow thrower through a …

Boat anchor tour

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We acquired motorcycle licenses, the WideEyedSpouse and I. Our 49cc Keeway scoot now proves insufficiently amusing. Yes, I can feel the wind and catch a thrill while waaaaaaahhing over to the co op for some organic, fair-trade, shade-grown coffee. Yes, cruising the park roads helps me to think long thoughts while dodging joggers, dogs, kids, and beefy rugby teams. But… We need more now. Expectations are higher. Bigger joy seems attainable. Some of us are hoarding ducats for a spring purchase of a shiny joy that is reliable AND fun. Others (hint, the WideEyedSpouse) want instant and corroded joy, with uncertainty, tinkering, troubling oil leaks, electrical problems, snapped choke cables, wonky carbs (heh?). The Spouse will roll a steel horse on up that drive right now, and to that end we are touring the boat anchors of Western New York. Every weekend. The Mighty Pathfinder towing a clattering U-Haul motorcycle trailer. Just in case. Because nobody pretends he’ll ride one of these clunkers home. It goes like this… – We’re here to see the motorcycle, we …

Breathless potentiality

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The sun angled into the car wash entrance this morning, making the falling bubble curtain into a solid wall of thousands thousands thousands of rainbows. I watched the hood of the smooth ride disappear into to rainbow wall as the car wash rails drew us in and held my breath, hair a-prickle and fingers tingling, to learn what was on the other side. (Nothing, just the rest of my day, but my heart still pounds with rainbow potential.) 

Aggressive boot issues

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Yeah ok, so yesterday I saw my snow boots propitiating to who knows what and this morning there was snow on the ground. I’m not saying cause and effect exactly, but one second your Joan of Arctic Sorels are sacrificing to something and the next morning you are out there with the Evil Snow Shovel? More than a coincidence. The lesson here, at least the lesson here at the WideEyedDomicile, is that you don’t get the boots out before the snow comes. The big furry pac boots live on the boot tray next to the ice grabbers and the Rieker-cold-but-not-bad boots. They’ve been waiting there, not-so-patiently since I extracted them from the back of the hall closet in November. Evidently they felt unappreciated, bored. I don’t know, what do dusty unused snow boots feel like when the weather isn’t snowy? You tell me. Whatever, their plan worked. Today the Joan of Arctics tromped me on dog walks, around campus, to the store, and clumped around on the Smooth Ride’s gas pedal. They insisted that we …

Sticky missions

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A year and a half, more or less, of stress and misery masked by smiling fortitude. Yuck. I’d rather wail and screech. Family deaths, an unjust nation, job hunting, and illness. The horoscope writer in the newspaper hates Sagittarians because every day I’m told to keep my head down, trust no one, stay close to home. I drag on my cheerful stripy socks and live each day like it isn’t preceded by something wretched. Miss Tibbit the Useless, Crooked Hankie the Corgi, the WideEyedSpouse, and I walk the three block walkies circuit most evenings. Christmas lights are going up all over the neighborhood and legions of bagged leaves line the strip between the sidewalk and the street. Hank pees on as many as possible, his stout corgi body rushing to the next leaf bag each time. I can tell he loves marking up the captive yard parts. After each leg lift, he gives me a sideways look and a grin and then accelerates to the next, ears aflap. Tibbit ignores the leaf bags and gathers …

Haircuts and love.

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The WideEyedSpouse had a haircut this morning. “How’re you getting it cut?” I asked while backing the Smooth Ride out of the WideEyedGarage. (And I should not have been talking while doing this. There is a 1 cm gap on the driver’s side and a 4 inch gap on the passenger side with lawnmowers and doorframes and stuff so…concentrate!). The Spouse did a little dance step. “You know, like the guy in the movie with the dancing.” I hit the brakes. It was mesmerizing watching this in the dim garage, his just out of bed hair waggling around unpredictably. “Huh?” I had nothing. I leaned partway out of the car window, trying to see and hear better. Did that just happen? “The movie with dancing, you know.” He did another little dance step with some jazz hands to the side. The garage keys in his hand jingled. I had the sense he couldn’t really get into it because he was stuck in the small space between the Smooth Ride and the Mighty Pathfinder. “Wha?” I …