Author: wideeyedfunk

The meatballs are in the crockpot.

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The outside world was a rude -6°F this morning. The dogs wasted no time out there during morning walkies. They failed utterly to enjoy the hard, crystal blue sky and sparkling snow. Fair enough. I am appreciating it from my office window. Death dealing icicles are dangling from every house for blocks. One neighbor has glaciers forming in the deep vee swales of his roofline, the forward ends are ten-foot long broadswords aiming for earth. Or his car. Because he parks under them. The snow squeaks under feet and tires. The ground isn’t the ground anymore. We’ve all given up trying to clear sidewalks and driveways entirely – we’ve taken to forming a smooth surface of the trampled up, super frozen mass. My boots thunk on these elevated walkways. Miss Tibbit-The-Useless-Little-Black-Dog pees on them and it all disappears. She can’t be the only one. Melting day is going to be awesomely gross. Bleach down the neighborhood gross. In desperation I applied Swarovski Crystal tattoos this morning. They are tiny, wee crystals on adhesive. Now my cheek …

What happens when one of your top five take-out places gets a liquor license and installs a bar?

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Nothing good and everything wonderful. Last weekend I was starving, STARVING after cleaning the house, doing the laundry, walking dogs, and visiting the car show. Sliding gracefully in and out of dreamy luxury sedans (I recommend the Audi A7 for sheer comfort and interior silence) and climbing into wee-electric cars (the Chevy Spark doesn’t feel real) works up an appetite. We stopped at a newer restaurant that’s supposed to be good  – a two hour wait and hairblowingly loud music in the bar. The WideEyedSpouse looked down his nose. “No. Much No.” We tried a BBQ joint. One hour and 15 minutes. Good food but not that good. Drove past our number one sandwich take-out joint. Closed. Friends, we were now out of our milieu. We were in downtown Buffalo after dark. Unusual. We were looking for food without a plan. Rare. We weren’t calling for pizza. Shocking. In fact, we had given up on the very notion of take-out. The universe shook and I was cast adrift, hungry, helpless, sad. The Mini motored us up …

I’m a (naked) farmer.

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Written on the beach: Happy Bay, St Martin. The sun competes with the wind for fierceness today. Same shockingly bright blue-green water gleaming under azure sky. Same beach filled with cows, naked people, and partially clothed people – and by filled I mean one or two people, here or there, along a kilometer or more of beach. The small herd of beef stock lounges under the palm trees and Caribbean scrub. Sailboats bob. Jet skis roar by once an hour, sounding like an emergency, like an air raid. A naked man shooes away the cows coming to check out the WideEyedBeachFunks. He claps energetically, “git! git on!” he tells them. They amble away, looking not too bright. He turns to me all bronze-tan and anatomical. “I’m a farmer,” he says in a Missouri twang. “Thank you,” I tell him, eyes wide behind my incognito sunglasses. Vacation. Final beach day.

Seal-self doesn’t see in grayscale.

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I cross my legs at the ankle and spread my arms, belly down in the water. Friar’s Bay is shallow and calm, the water extra salty, the same temperature as the air. I float effortlessly: only nose, forehead and eyes above the water. The rest of me lurks just below the surface. I am a seal. I am a seal, and I monitor the strange beings hauled out on the sand before me. I flip and spin, to watch out to sea where the moored sailboats disgorge more of the many-limbed creatures. They too will haul out on the beach. I flutter my flip…er, hands and feet to float over the little reef. There’re fish and seaweeds and urchins to be looked at in there. I flip and spin. The little black dog occupying the beach is heading toward two empty beach chairs and blue beach bag filled with snacks and novels. My seal self doesn’t care. My person self has concerns. The dog passes the chairs. Seal self dives, disappears among the rocks, emerges …

Darkest January.

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The long haul is here. The days are cold, too cold and windy for good dog walks, gardening, anything really. The nights are frigid, too frigid for standing in awe of the starry universe. The short hours of daylight, and don’t try to convince yourself otherwise, yes the days are getting longer but they are still short – the short hours of daylight pass interminably in the dark gleam of overcast skies and no end in sight. The house creaks and bangs in the shifts from cold to exceedingly cold. I can hear my neighbor’s back door slam in the hyperlucid air. The dogs bark each time. Shivering a little at my observation post at the window, I think dark thoughts about wearing their warm furs as a cloak. That would stop the barking. Sirens blast through the city more or less constantly. January is the season of emergencies. Fires burn hotter, car accidents shatter windshields and bones more spectacularly, the cold makes the emergency greater, the response itself dangerous. The WideEyedSpouse and I have …

Hamish the Corgi, Almost a Person

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Hamish the Corgi is almost a person. He has plans. He has dignity. He is hampered in life only by his tiny, T. Rex front legs and his lack of thumbs. Sometimes while he watches me analyze data and write I just know he gets it. And if he could speak in my language he would engage in discourse. But then. A bug wanders past. It is happening right now. I can see him trying to ignore it but first his eyes, then his ears flickered in the direction of the bug. It’s one of those triangular bodied bugs, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, that show up in the winter sometimes.  Hamish can’t resist a good stink bug. He is sprawled on the floor, holding the stink bug cupped in his meaty little paws. Oops, it just “escaped” and he had to pounce a little to get it back in the dog paw corral. I guess that got boring and he just rolled onto his side and rubbed his face all over the bug. He …

Not cold in the library.

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I don’t get out much and when I am out and about my interactions with Other People are confusing. Confusing for me because these days I’m not super great at tracking communications unrelated to my work. Confusing for them because I am entirely unpredictable in my responses. For me the Other People seem like a radio station fritzing in and out. I respond to the portions I comprehend. Recipe for weirdness. But. Sometimes my difficulties are surpassed. The WideEyedSpouse and I were at the Central Library downtown on New Year’s Eve (Friends, this is how I ring in the New Year. With books.) The Central Library is a tricksy place filled with lunching corporate workers, homeless people in from the cold, retired people, people on long bus layovers, and kids. I keep my eyes to myself and my hand on my wallet – always good business in any city or university library. I waited for about three-fifths of my lifetime for the person ahead of me to do the self check out. He kept getting …

The benevolent dictator at Christmas.

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My absolute dominion over the thousands of beings in my WidedEyedDemesne is of the gentlest nature. This is my moral and ethical choice – as you know, with great power comes great responsibility. In the holiday season, I strive to make the lives of my WideEyedSubjects shine brightly. For Hamish the Corgi, a stuffed Olaf the Snowman waits under the tree – Sven the Reindeer is sitting next to him, having no notion that he is a gift for Miss Tibbit and that his days are short. Fitz (the betta fish are always named Fitz) will have a new moss ball. Wiggins the Ancient Cat received a teeth cleaning and three extractions – the vet tells me this was a gift of life. This almost made my heart swell in direct proportion to the shrinking of the WideEyedTreasury. The hundreds of red wigglers in the worm bin, so content to ooze in the dim moistness – I’ve got three eggs shells and some mushroom stems for them. Wiggle worms, and squirm. Enjoy your holiday feast and …

Snow shovel is worried.

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Does it have a reason to be ? I’d say so. There it is, leaning by the back stoop waiting for the new snow fall. The first big one this season was a bust in Buffalo, but Snow shovel got some snow removal action. Another snow fall is happening tonight and tomorrow. Not a big one – which is actually best for Snow shovel.  If the snow is only a couple of inches the WideEyedSpouse tends to grab the shovel instead of the snow thrower. It’s quieter. Snow shovel appreciates the action – you know it gets bored waiting around for snow. But. But snow shovel is broken. One whole side is fractured away. Too many freeze thaw cycles in Minnesota and Buffalo. Too many wet, heavy snows. Last year a whole chunk sheared off and fracture lines are visible throughout the entire scoop. Snow shovel has to know it is a matter of time. Today is the day. I was wandering through Lowe’s looking for a bin big enough to haul a dismembered axis deer …

I went to Space today.

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I just watched the Orion deep-space capsule flight test video. I watched the capsule leave Earth, the fiery tails of the booster rockets glowing against a dawn sky, wishing I were one of the 27,000 people who watched it live this morning. Then I saw the blue curve of our planet emerge against black space from a camera mounted on the capsule. The world shrank and space grew. Then, and you have to stay with the video to the end, then the booster rockets detached and the crew module floated alone in space. My heart floated with it. Take five minutes from your day and watch the video. The capsule is home again, splashed into the Pacific Ocean, but for a little while today I went to space with it.