Author: wideeyedfunk

Lemme me see the other side.

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I’ll tell you what. I have lived in Minnesota. I know what cold feels like. I spent a couple of winters in Anchorage. I know what big snow looks like. I grew up at the South Jersey shore.  I am familiar with bone cutting, sand carrying, January winds that administer the midseason microdermabrasion treatments. Stings a bit when the feeling comes back into your cheeks. Now I’m in Buffalo. And I am becoming expert in the wintry mix. Sloppy.  Gusty. Raw. The Christmas pine garlands are flopping all over the place. And dog walks are wretched. “Yeah.” Sorry, that was Miss Tibbit interrupting us. This afternoon she pranced onto the back porch, got blasted in the face with a sleety snow, and turned around to come back inside. Wasn’t worth it. No thank you ma’am. Buffalo winter means that Hamish the Corgi and Sweet Tibbit come home from walkies with salty wet feet. Hamish’s undercarriage is a cindery mucky mess. Every time. (The cat just sneezed in my wine by the way. Just saying. Nice …

The daily suspense of straight razor shaving.

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Last Christmas I gave the WideEyedSpouse a reasonable quality straight razor.  Months of careful research led me to a shave-ready Dovo at Vintage Blades LLC. I learned about stroping. Honing. Shave oils and after shave balms. I was an anthropologist of the man-world, specializing in the use of one of the scariest tools ever to approach a face. This past week the Spouse has finally settled into the straight razor shave. I read that it can take up to 300 shaves before a man is proficient. Before that they can expect to have a little pain, a little blood, maybe a scar or two. The Spouse is now on Shave 6, or so. He’s in there right now, carefully approaching his face with the startlingly sharp blade. It’s a quiet process, no water running, no tap-tap-tap of the plastic handle of the safety razor on the sink edge. I feel fear. What is happening in there? Is he bleeding out on the floor? I’m looking at the threshold under the bathroom door – nope, no …

The geese were flying without moving: a portent or just the end of a long week?

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I watched a lopsided arrow of nine geese hover above a leafless oak. The massive oak was far larger, more truly there than the tiny clapboard church it grew near. I could see the willows on the far side of the intersection, their fronds fluttered nearly horizontal in dense gusts of wind. In the Mini’s speakers, Rihanna and Eminem sang about being friends with the monster under the bed. An old man wandered in the graveyard across from the church. The light turned green and the Mini and I accelerated away. That was Friday. I thought about the geese, the trees, the old man while the WideEyedHousehold cleared and mulched leaves on Saturday. They all wandered around in my head while we did the Fall housecleaning on Sunday. Here it is Monday, and I’m busy at the desk, those geese still hovering in that mental space just above my eyes. What did I miss about that moment? What was I supposed to see that I did not? I want to go back to campus and …

Walking dogs in the fall has a certain frisson.

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The leaves changed in here Buffalo in that last week or two. An orangey road glow replaces the striking sun to shadow dichotomy of summer. Bowers formed by century-grown wrinkled and twisted tree branches, trimmed into arches over the sidewalks, allow a little more of the post autumnal equinox sun through so that there is a gloaming rather than pools of shade. Miss Tibbit and Hamish kick up leaves as they trot along, noses in the air to catch the damp scents. Fall dog walks joyously beautiful. They are peaceful. The fair-weather dog walkers have abandoned the parks and streets and Miss Tibbit has fewer dog friends to yowl toward. Hamish has fewer challengers to his tiny and vulnerable Corgi dignity. Yet, fall dog walks are fraught with danger. It is a social danger, sure, but no less frightening for that. It is all Hamish’s fault. As you may know from past chronicles, Hamish is a Master of the Craft of Display Defecation.  His joy in his craft is unsubtle. A car full of family …

Thanks Mini, for getting sick before the dead of winter.

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Team WideEyedFunk spent 5 hours in the garage Saturday, transplanting the Mini Cooper S’s failing electronic thermostat housing. It wasn’t quite freezing outside and I could feel my toes for most of the afternoon. Sure, some nice folks at the Mini dealership could have done it for us, and I could have stayed all warm and toasty on the sofa. But, the WideEyedHousehold is cheap. We suited up in chilly weather gear, prepared the surgery table, and started the multi-hour Mini evisceration. First the air box came out. Good thing we had a new air filter ready, the old one was caked with Buffalo street filth. Poor Mini was feeling asthmatic. We unplugged a couple of vacuum hoses, a bunch of electronic stuff, and yanked out the wiring harness box. We drained most of the antifreeze out of the engine. Messy, like pumping a stomach. Then, the WideEyedSpouse leaned deep into the engine and unhitched six hoses from the thermostat housing. Some went to the turbo cooling system, some feed the heating system somehow, and …

The snow shovel crept to the front of the garage.

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Five months ago the bright yellow snow shovel lurked in the back of the garage, giggling and biding its time. It was creepy and irritating. Today the show shovel made its move to the front of the garage. It rests on the snow thrower. The WideEyedSpouse and I excavated the snow thrower from under a heap of empty plant pots and landscaping tools in the back corner. It now lives in a prime position in the front so that when, not if, the snows come I can just crack open the carriage door and drag that wretched, growling, exhaust belching machine out into the winter calm. I like to stand for a moment in the quiet hiss of a million flakes landing and wallow in the low skies and monochromatic peace of the snows before I crank up the 2-stoke. After that it’s all shock and awe and far flung snow masses and the crunchy rip of dog toys grinding through the blades and fwoop, out the chute into the neighbor’s yard. There’s no serenity …

Home Renovation Made Possible by the 1970s.

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If Looking Glass had never recorded Brandy (my life, my love, and my lady is the seaaaaa), would I have been able rebuild and repair every half fixed house I’ve lived in for the past 15 years? If the Commodores didn’t make Brick House (She’s a brick-house. Mighty, mighty, just letting it all hang out), could I have boogied my way through edging uncountable ceilings on the top of a high ladder, among the fumes and echoes? How long could I have endured the paint striper chemical gloves without Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain (I bet you thought this color was pret-ty, pret-ty, you’re so tacky…)? The WideEyedSpouse hears the ocean rumbling and smells suntan lotion when we stream Big Joe Henry’s 1970s heavy show on New Jersey 101.5 or the itunes Best of the 1970s. The Spouse grew up in Ocean City, roasting in the summer sun, listening to pop music on transistor radios. Me? I hear sanders and smell sawdust because I grew up in old houses. I failed to learn from my youth …

Curse Not the Green Tomatoes, Make Chutney.

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The Fedco seeds Cosmonaut tomato variety yielded fine, heavy fruits in my garden this summer. They failed to ripen. I may have had words about that in past times. I take them all back. The knife wielding WideEyedSpouse and I picked, washed, chopped pounds of green tomatoes to make six pints of chutney, six pints of green tomato gold. Five are left. Yesterday, on hearing that I had chutney stored in the basement, WidedEyedFriend W made unsubtle overtures toward getting some of it. I pretended not to understand. There are only five pints left to last an entire year. I am already planning a 2014 green tomato garden. I combined two recipes (1, 2) I found on other sites to make my own concoction based on what they said and what I had around: 12 cups seeded, cored, and diced green tomatoes, 5-7 pounds 1 cup raisins (paid no attention to light, dark, whatever) 1 cup Craisins 2 cups mixed chopped onions, shallots, 2 garlic cloves (in exponentially decreasing volume order) 3 cups brown sugar …

Revolution Style | Look Your Best During NSA Interrogation!

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Our government has failed us and it is time to oust the dysfunctional ruling body and call for a revolution, but we don’t want to be caught in the wrong outfit when the NSA comes for us, do we girls?! Make sure you have on pieces that leave you comfortable and put together after days in an unmarked NSA detention cell! You’ll look fresh and fashionable in “who’s this criminal?” NSA instagrams and you’ll be ready for your CNN interview as soon as you’re released! The Dress – An unstructured, lined silk with ¾ sleeves and a fanciful pattern in a darker palette won’t bind up, won’t show blood stains after you’ve been slapped around, and silk is tough! A quality silk can take rough wooden benches, handwashing in toilet bowls, and won’t rumple past a certain “I’ve been up all night” élan!  The ¾ length sleeves will keep you warm during cold phases of environmental torment and can be pushed up when the heat is on! Be sure to find one with a charming …

The world’s slowest rotating restaurant.

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I slurped my left-over broccoli soup dinner, “Huh?” I replied to the WideEyedSpouse. “It’s like we’re on the world’s slowest rotating restaurant,” the Spouse repeated. I gazed at him, thinking maybe those Left Hand Milk Stout Nitros were hitting him a little hard. They could rotate a room I guess. The Spouse had been thinking about the fact that we live on this spinning ball in the middle of an awesome hugeness and that gravity is the only reason we aren’t flung off. After dinner, he stood in the driveway while the dogs had an evening yard romp and stared at the stars. “If you look long enough, you can see that they are moving and that we are moving.” I don’t know what happened to the Spouse that he had a moment of awareness of the vastiness. Maybe it was triggered by our camping trip to the wilds a week or so ago. The night sky was huge, the Milky Way looked like mist flowing off the mountains around us. A couple of satellites …