All posts filed under: Life

Always so surprising.

Nuns and the Cosmos.

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I saw two nuns standing outside a condominium construction project that used to be a giant Catholic church. Back in about 1920 Buffalo was rich. Gangsta rich. More millionaires than any other city in the United States and that was back when a million was a million because a cup of coffee was about nickel and that included your lunch. The 1920s gangsta rich families built and maintained what seems like a thousand fabulously vast glories to God and themselves. The blasted, sinking shells of these vainglories litter the urban landscape. This one, the one with the nuns today, at least was spared generations of bats, birds, and urine-soaked crack mattresses. It is going straight from sins to kitchen sinks in a year. So, the nuns. One nun was holding a latte cup and the other had a green baseball hat on over her wimple. Both of them were wearing kicks. Sneakers. And their body postures weren’t all stiff and nunny. One was leaned back gesticulating (with her latte cup) and the other nun sort …

Responsibility avoidance, Or, There are two kinds of spurs my friend.

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The grass in the back yard is long. Mowing has become critical. The new back stoop remains unfinished. The parts are in the garage, some assembly required. The new house colors, still undecided. Stripping the old paint, urgent. But it’s raining. 47 hundredths of an inch today so far in a long slow endless shower. Well now, that’s just too bad. All of the day’s chores were outside chores. Howsoever will I pass the time? I’ll tell you how, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and a lace knitting project. 178 minutes of men of poor moral character. Italian made cotton Tahki yarn in a peaceable spring leaf green, bamboo needles, and a simple leaf lace scarf pattern. A match made in work avoidance heaven. I knit three, and watched Blondie shoot Tuco down from the gallows for the second time… “I’ll keep the money and you can have the rope”. Slipped one purlwise, knit two and passed slip stitch over while Tuco caught Blondie in his hotel room… “There are two kinds of …

Sunday morning in the rain.

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We rented a 2005 Dodge Ram 4×4, grey with a red capper top, from a guy who doesn’t like over taxation and who is concerned that the WideEyedSpouse’s new hologram infused New York state driver’s license will be remarkably difficult to counterfeit. The rental rates were hundreds cheaper than one of the chain operations. The truck is sticky with years of mysterious stains. The side panels are dense with underbrush scrapes. “I buy ‘em prescratched and pass the savings on to you,” the guy told us. For once I feel no fear that I’m going to be fiscally punished for a minor rental car infraction. I didn’t even use a cup holder for my iced latte yesterday. Madness I know. We stayed the first night in an airport Marriott. The toilet overflowed for no reason. The light switches had grime encrustations. The floor corners desperately cried out for a solid vacuuming with a crevice tool. Other guests were also given our room so that the door slapped against the security lock five minutes after I …

The third crane on the Fish Dock.

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My phone binged at me while I was stopped for an unloading school bus on Homer Spit. I watched the cutest collection ever of tiny-wee Xtra Tuff boots splash down into a puddle at the bus exit. I glanced at the console where my phone rested. “Third yellow crane in,” the message said. The flashing red lights eventually quit blinking and I turned left onto Fish Dock Road. I putt putted the overloaded minivan between forklifts hauling fish bins, hoses, and hairy-faced men in overall Helly Hansens. Their Xtra Tuffs weren’t particularly cute. My minivan rental did not match the lifted pickups parked all over the place. There it was, the Puk uk. I walked over to the skipper to introduce myself. “Hi,” I stood next to him looking down into the Puk uk. “I’m C….” I told him. He glanced at me. “I figured,” he said. My logistics handlers were already loading the WeatherPorts, fuel, and other gear. The skipper craned the stuff onto his foredeck using the Fish Dock crane – you pay …

Indiana Jones may have been a little smelly.

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Think it through. He packs a gun and a whip in the smallest suitcase I’ve ever seen. There just isn’t room for spare socks and underpants. He wears the same pants, shirt, and hat throughout every field expedition. That suitcase is too small for a couple of clean sets of clothes. If you add it all up, he must have been really amazingly smelly. So smelly that it defies belief that he could sneak up on even the sleepiest, slow-brained guard. I am speaking from a position of deep knowledge and experience here. I just packed up my gear for a field session in the far northern wilderness. Gun, whip, hat – sure they are in the bottom of the crate if you want to think so. Let’s say that the moment I learned the grant support came through I checked the loads on the revolver and tossed the whip into my packing crate, then finished off a couple of fingers of whiskey. Or, you can picture me huddled over the computer monitor late into the night …

Toilets, and I didn’t know my mom lurked in my head.

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I don’t know what it is about my neighborhood, but people swap out their toilets A Lot. At least once a month there’s a toilet sitting on the curb on our three block dog patrol. We’ve replaced a toilet or two around here, so I’m familiar with the brands and qualities of toilets on the market. I can tell by the empty new toilet box leaning against the old, abandoned toilet whether or not the home is 1) a rental, 2) being prepared for sale, or 3) a cared-for owner inhabited domicile. If the toilet is a brand I’ve never heard of, if the flush rating is listed as 4 or 5 rather than 10 – it’s a rental. If it is a good brand but lower end model, probably someone did a quick refurb to put a place on the market – you get the name but you aren’t out of pocket too much. There are a bunch of older folks in our neighborhood and as they sell up after 40 or 50 years, …

My heart is a like a neutron star, dense and heavy.

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My heart is like a magnetar, dense and heavy and a thousand times magnetized. Four weeks from this day I will board a flight to the far away field location. I will have no phone, no lights, no motor car – ok, we do have a satellite phone for emergencies but not much else. Our sole luxury is the outhouse we are taking with us. Stacks of long underwear, socks, field pants, and equipment are growing in the front parlor. This is remote field research. My heart is heavier every hour. I look at the WideEyedSpouse and I think, I won’t see you for weeks and weeks. I pet the dogs and I worry – will you be ok while I’m gone? Wiggins the Ancient Cat creaks by, I fret, will you be alive when I come home? The weight in my chest is a coalescence of the open wide joy of learning that I was going to have a funded research program this summer. As the time for leaving grows closer, the plane tickets …

The little table asked to come home with me.

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We meant to get to the estate sale earlier but the lure of sleeping late on Saturday morning proved too much. As it turned out, we got there in time. This estate sale was 4 stories of furniture, rugs, leaded windows, and interesting heaps of stuff. It was in a partially converted industrial warehouse in downtown Buffalo and I can’t figure out what was going on. Maybe some living space, maybe some packrat issues, maybe a business?  Wasn’t clear. The stuff was arranged on raw cement floors flea market style on the first and fourth  floors, stacked warehouse shelving on part of the second, and weird decadent lounge on the second and third with little side rooms of warehouse chaos. Everything was tagged twice. Black price was Friday. Red price was Saturday morning.  Everything was at least half off the red price and we were told by another dusty scrounger that it was best to just talk to Andrew (one of our local estate sale moguls) for the best deal. The WideEyedSpouse and I both …

I think I’m doing adventure wrong. Or at least wearing the wrong clothes.

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A spring Orvis catalog came in the mail yesterday. Usually print catalogs are trash carefully delivered to my door – from the mail carrier’s hand to my recycling bin. This time the economically-advantaged adventure vibe sucked me in. Vests with useful pockets. Ripstop trousers. Manly jewelry that signals rugged adventuresomeness. I’m trying to decide if men buy that for themselves or receive it as gifts. Page 16 stopped me dead. Above the expedition pants and vintage military belt there’s an evocative picture of a luxury lodge at a game preserve in Namibia. I can’t take my eyes off of it. I can see a comfy bed, white pillows, chairs, reading lamps and I think I see a bathroom tucked discretely in the back. I bet there’s staff, too. I live in the wilds for weeks to months most summers. My expedition pants are ancient Carhartt’s (because I think they stopped making women’s work pants) and WideEyedSpouse’s old khakis. My belt is the same leather belt I’m wearing right now, but soaked with eucalyptus oil so …