Author: wideeyedfunk

Should I be proud that I outsmarted dogs?

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We’re out of dog biscuits. No, I mean, we’re OUT of DOG biscuits. Cookies. Snackies. Num nums. Call them whatever you want, doesn’t change the fact that the jar is EMP-TY. The WideEyedHousehold economy runs on milkbones. I don’t want to hear a lot of noise about dogs should listen.  They listen just fine when they want to. And when they don’t want to, I rattle the cookie jar lid, sharpens their hearing right up. I carry a pocketful of cookies pretty much all the time. Dogs are less apt to be nervy when there’s a pocketful of cookies around. But we ran out. No Cheerios to replace them. No Cheez-its, chips, or peanut-butter-stuffed-pretzels. Nothing. The WideEyedSpouse and I are on our own. I opened the fridge, hardboil some eggs? Too messy. Cut some cheese chunks? No, I’ll end up eating it all linty from my pocket and everything. Arugula? That’s just panic talking. My eye fell on the bin of dog dinner kibble on the bottom shelf of the pantry. The dogs like it …

One Score and Two Hours Ago…

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…the Spouse and I married on a Tuesday afternoon and unbeknownst to us, the WideEyedHousehold formed. Coalesced. Here we are four apartments and four houses, five cities, and 16 cars later. We got married at 2:30pm and I planned to stop and think about it at 2:30 today – exactly 20 years later. When I looked at the clock it was 4pm and I was folding whites in the basement laundry room. I thought back. At 2:30, the Spouse was vacuuming the downstairs while I vacuumed the upstairs. Evidently marital harmony sounds like whining Orecks. Twenty years ago today I had on a purple dress with a little row of flowers along the back, Watteau train level. The Spouse had on a suit, the first of the three he’s owned as an adult. I remember our family sort of awkwardly assembling at the church, then there was some chanting, then we were married. No one bothered to turn on all of the lights in the church. It was after all a Tuesday afternoon, not a …

Abeyance

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Yep, this is the summer of abeyance. The house isn’t quite painted. Decisions about staying or going are waiting until the green is replaced by blue on ALL FOUR sides. “And on the garage,” the Spouse says. The grapes aren’t quite ripe. Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog hangs around the arbor, so they must be close. I caught her using her nibble teeth on the bird netting. “You’re going to have to wait,” I told her. Unbelieving she licked her chops and glanced at the fat clumps of red grapes. My grant proposal MIGHT be funded but we won’t know for sure until October, when the federal budget passes or fails.  “Just hold tight,” the grant program officer told me. My heart thumped HARD twice, then pattered away a little quicker than normal. “Have you ever had a heart attack or stroke?” the Doc asked at a recent check-up… Amazon hasn’t shipped our package of dog poop pick-up bags yet. One thousand small black bags for one thousand offenses against the neighborhood. I’m carefully hoarding our few remaining …

Save the grapes.

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In past times the marauders took all. This year we vowed to defend against their incursion. The harbingers arrived yesterday evening, as we ate the evening meal. I gazed out the open windows and into the gardens as is my habit in weather fair and foul. The grape clusters are small this year, but numerous, and their purpling flesh glowed in the lowering sunlight. I admired their bounty and watched the leaves of the vines rustle in our summery breezes. But wait. My eyes sharpened and I peered intently. Not breezes rustling the leaves! Not breezes at all! The leaves shook and shimmied as two, no three, no! Many robins and starlings gripped the vines with tiny feet and ravaged the fruits with rapacious beaks. A fight broke out over a particularly lush patch. Wretched pillagers fighting! Over MY grapes! “They are here!” I announced to the WideEyedSpouse, “They are in the grapes!” He slewed about in his chair and gaining his feet stormed the arbor with determined strides. The winged looters fled his arrival, perching …

Work avoidance.

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Miss Tibbit and I followed the tiny lizard footprints and tail wiggles through the driveway sand. They pitter pattered up a little slope, back down. Around a bump. Wee busy lizard feet. A winding curly trail crossed over the lizard tracks. Once. Twice. The lizard tracks ended in a particularly fancy curlicue. Uh oh. Miss Tibbit and I looked at each other. We’re pretty sure a snake just had breakfast. Later the Spouse and I gazed out at the Atlantic, trying to work up the energy to read our novels. I think the sun was going supernova above us. A pod of Bottlenose Dolphins arched and swam in the middle distance. “I guess we’re clear of sharks,” I said to the spouse and went in for a swim. Three pelicans glided at wave height along the pellucid outgoing tidewaters. Invisible jets roar overhead. “Clearly we have stealth technology now,” the Spouse observed. I’m more concerned with the miniature jets that swarm the shrubs near the stairs to the deck. Dozens of juicy dragon flies are …

High places

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Miss Tibbit and I stood in the rain eating black raspberries off the canes in the backyard. I reached high, Miss Tibbit plucked the low ones with her front nibble teeth. Their pure, rain-washed fruitiness is soothing my stomach after a feast of lamb vindaloo and chicken xacuti, samosas and deep-fried paneer at the Taj Grill. I can hear the rain pinging on the steel frame of the scaffolding. We should be painting. Monsoon-like rains and passing lightening storms make it impossible. The scaffolding arrived a week ago on a big rig. It traveled across country for 22 days to get here. Twenty feet of bright yellow painted tubular steel and mini-girders. So cheery. So horrifyingly high. From July 2 to July 5 we spent the daylight hours perched on Level 1 (6 feet), Level 2 (12 feet), Level 3 (18 feet) scraping, washing, priming. The husband of each neighboring household came to see. From my aerie they all looked the same: wide legged stance, arms crossed over the chest, head tilted back, mouth a …

Working from home on a Friday morning.

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The dogs and I were minding our own business here in the partially-painted WideEyedDomicile. Tibbit-the-Useless-Little-Black-Dog was monitoring the front walk and alerting us to the passage of Every Single Thing. Hamish the Corgi kept sighing and rolling his eyes at me here in the office. My grant proposal writing was going ok. You know, words were coming out of my fingertips and the keyboard kept on clattering. That’s the noise of productivity friends. But then I thought of my uke. My cute little soprano uke resting on its wee stand in the parlor. Once I thought of my little uke, I couldn’t stop thinking about Elvis. What? No, I can’t tell you why, it just happened that way. The why is lost in the vasty mystery of my inner mind. I don’t question this stuff. Now, an hour later, I can more or less play “Can’t help falling in love”.  My neighbor who also is working from home today might be regretting his decision. But I’m glorious in my own mind. I’m obviously channeling Elvis as …

Rain Delay

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We lost the Mini to car fever yesterday. The WideEyedSpouse struggled heroically for months. Yesterday he succumbed. Yesterday, a bright sunny day perfect for painting a century home, we spent in the air-conditioned comfort of a car dealer’s showroom. The Mini stayed there. We left to rearrange the snow shovels in the garage to fit the new WideEyedMobile. “Tomorrow we’ll work on the house all day,” the Spouse said, staring dreamily in at his new ride. But. Rain. Guilt-less, feck-less, fancy-free we fled the Homestead with our Niagara Wine Trail Passports (thanks WideEyedMLB!) in hand and turned left and right for an hour or more, heading east and north into rural western New York. We crossed and crisscrossed the Erie Canal. We skirted Lake Ontario. We saw old houses tumbling down, fixing up, and hovering undecided in a state of quasi-repair. Trucks and Chevys from oldy-time hid half under tarps – rusty butt ends sticking out. Kids played in puddles, trailers huddled in clusters on abandoned farm fields. We breathed deeply of non-city air and …

Old House | Freedom Thief

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We had freedom once. We hiked. We rode mountain bikes. We visited antique shops and flea markets, clutching take-out lattes. We read the whole Sunday paper to fill the time before brunch. But our lives seemed empty. So we bought a house and fixed up it. Then we moved. Bought another house and fixed it up. Then we moved, to the biggest, oldest house yet. It must be painted. I do understand that there are professionals who do these things for you. For buckets of ducats. But the WideEyedSpouse and I sort of want to see what is happening on the house. Get a sense of coming maintenance. And, we want to run the 35 foot boom lift and stare down at the neighborhood from our lofty position. Yesterday we started. We scraped. I washed with pre-painting detergent. No, I’m ok, it only burned a little when it dripped down my arms and off my elbows. We painted. Creamy white. Deepest blue. We painted until 12 minutes after sunset, knowing that rains were coming and hoping for the …

Pulled pork eight ways since Sunday

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The WideEyedSpouse smoked a ten pound pork shoulder over the weekend. I mean that exactly. Over the weekend. It was a 16 hour process, not including the preparation of the rub, the annual smoker cleanse, the pre-smoke meat rest, the post-smoke meat rest, and the actual pulling of the pork. The smoking aromas were intoxicating. Enticing. I told the Spouse that it was like I had traveled to some city with a BBQ reputation and I was in line for some of the good stuff. All day. As it turns out, ten pounds of raw pork shoulder equals about seven pounds of smoked pulled pork. For two people. We are now two days out from the initial meal of pulled pork sandwiches, Memphis style. I have eaten: Pulled pork on a plate, Pulled pork out of Tupperware, Pulled pork sandwiches, again, Pulled pork snackies for evening peckishness. There are half pound pulled pork packets in the freezer for future delights such as pulled pork chili, pulled pork omelets, pulled pork fried rice, pulled pork tacos, pulled pork …