All posts filed under: Life

Always so surprising.

Jeans Requiem

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My favorite jeans became disreputable approximately one year ago. One week ago, 50 weeks after they had moved from faded-but-tidy to holey-and-disreputable, two separate incidents forced me to recognize the end may have come for the favorite jeans. Incident 1: Mel and I were scoring targets at the archery range. I held the clipboard with the score sheet, pencil poised. Mel said nothing. I waited. Still nothing. I glanced up. Mel was looking at my jeans. Or rather, he was looking at the holes. Each knee was exposed, with rips running about 5 or 6 inches north and south of the rip epicenters. In that area of my pants, there weren’t so much pants as knees with flaps of pants framing them. “Looks like you’re falling out of your jeans there,” Mel gestured at the place where my jeans should be in case I wasn’t aware of the areas of offense. “Huh,” I said. I cavalierly dismissed his concerns because Mel is Methuselah and may have conservative notions of appropriate attire. Incident 2: The WideEyedSpouse …

“You married a winner.”

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The rain is lashing down on the ice and slush and the temps are standing just above freezing. Hamish the Corgi went belly deep into greasy puddles on the walkies. Miss Tibbit the Useless fastidiously danced along the margins of the sidewalk lakes. She was clearly disgusted. The WideEyedSpouse and I were disgusted. It is disgusting out there. The Mighty Pathfinder hauled us and our rattling, quivered arrows and bow cases to the conservation society for archery league. Nothing good was on the radio, advertisements on most every station but the preacher man’s. It’s just a little too apocalyptic to listen to talk about a savior when we’re hurtling through traffic at light speeds in a big truck. So the flip flip flip of the wipers counterpointed the every changing melodies of bad songs and local radio ads as the Spouse rolled through the stations. We skittered across the glaciered parking lot of the conservation society clubhouse and thumped our boots on the snow mats before throwing open the door. It was warm and bright …

These Boomers are trouble.

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These Baby Boomers with their smartphones and supercharged Buicks….I think they are breaking free after the years of paying off mortgages, refinancing for kids’ college, and paying them off again. They are rebelling against the discipline of working for The Man long enough to build a pension, grow that 401k. They watched everything fall apart and the investments disappear in the Recession. They learned their lessons and have done their time. They have Opinions and owing nothing to anyone, they are unafraid to express them. Boomers, especially the retired Boomers, are wild and free and they live in the Now. Boomers are Trouble. A Boomer lady took me off the line in her shiny black Buick last week. Maybe the Mini’s turbos could have bested her, but she surprised me. I think there were empty grandkid chairs strapped into the back seat of her car – it’s hard to say because she flew by like a bat outta hell. A minute later, at the next traffic light, I was poised for the race, clutch down, …

Filtering winter.

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I have dogs. I have work. Sometimes the WideEyedHousehold needs staples like groceries or wine. There’s no choice for me, no opt out, no polite refusal. I have to go outside into the Winter at least three time a day. Miss Tibbit the Useless prefers fewer times in truly foul conditions. Hamish the Corgi goes out there whenever I go, climate is secondary to boon companionship. Two tools allow me to filter out the Winter. 1. Joan of Arctic wool lined, faux-furry, Sorel rubber boots. I wear them with my suits, squeeze them on over my ancient magic-dissertation-writing sweatpants, tuck my jeans down in. I CAN’T FEEL THE COLD IN THEM. Knees down, I’m inside, next to a roaring fire. 2. Kate Spade gigantic sunglasses. I poke those architectural specs onto my nose during howling snow storms, for days of hazy winter twilight at noon, and in those rare-for-Buffalo sun-glared snow conditions. The lenses are so big, cover so much of my face…everything on the far side of the Kate Spades is artificial, none of …

Removing the self.

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Like I keep telling the WideEyedSpouse, the trick to fixing a series of bad shots is to take the self out of the equation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no expert on shooting a bow and I never will be one. The best I can hope for is less embarrassing scores in the coming months and years. However. I can claim expert status on trying really hard and failing. Then trying again. In an annoyingly recursive cycle of going after the same goal in slightly different ways. The emotional, intellectual, and temporal investments for most of my goals are catastrophically high. The failure part is gruesome. Picking myself back up, reorganizing, icing down the lumps – these are my unfortunate areas of expertise. I sure wish crowing over victories and throwing celebratory champagne parties were my practiced skills. But. Failing to hit a bullseye in archery is such a miniscule failure, a wee moment of disappointment in myself and my abilities. And it is repeated with rapidfire frequency. Twang. Miss. Twang. Miss. Twang. Miss. Multiple …

The eerily prescient fortune cookie.

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I love fortune cookies. The way they snap and crumble into shards of fresh tasting, sugary crispness. That crunch. Learning to say a word in Chinese. shí liú. grape. I hold fortune cookies in my hand and think about the fortune before I crack them open. Will I meet new people? Should I trust the man with green eyes? Will monetary advantage be mine? Does adventure keep the heart young? Should I learn to dance? What are my lucky numbers? 15. 22. 37. 8. I never pick the fortune cookie, I let it pick me. Yesterday a long delayed, blizzard-stuck package arrived at my snowy door. The boys (dogs) and I dumped it in the front parlor, which is our official package opening location. Rejected items never make it out of that room. Dirty antiques found in other people’s estates begin new lives in the WideEyedHousehold there. It is the ante-chamber to my life. It’s the room where I let guests linger until I decide if they are permitted to participate in my greater homestead. Sometimes …

Splashy blood, a 7-tentacled octopus, and holey plaster on my birthday.

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Two score and some years ago I was born to the WideEyedParents during one of the longest, darkest nights of the year. The event was remarkable only in that I proved to be a girl – although this is a matter for debate. Not whether or not I was (am) a girl, but whether or not it was expected. WideEyedDad says he pretty much expected sons, reasonable considering that girl-children are rare among the WideEyedFunks. WideEyedMom claims she had selected only girl names for use on me. The Parents rushed me home for Christmas, where Mom discovered that Dad had left the old, discarded washing machine on The Front Lawn, For Days, At Christmas. Dad advises me not to discuss this further as it remains fresh in Mom’s mind. Inside the house, I imagine that the Older Brothers found my pink self a bitter disappointment. Probably they asked for a race car track, a rocket, or a tape recorder and Santa brought a squally doll instead. And so, my arrival to this world and the …

Saturday shopping list: Christmas tree, egg nog, Victor rat traps…

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“Oh holy night, the stars are brightly shining,” I sang to myself while I smeared chunky peanut butter on the bait bar. I walked across the kitchen to peer out the back door. The snow was easing up a bit. I could smell the Frasier fir warming up in the living room. We had just bought it, half price because I guess you’re supposed to get your Christmas tree as soon as December hits and the local garden center was looking to liquidate their remaining tannenbäume. So, while the cut rate tree warmed up from the 15°F outdoor world to our balmy mid 60s living room, I loaded up the rat traps. “We’re ready here,” I called out to the WideEyedSpouse and bundled up for unpleasant outside conditions. We gathered up our shockingly large rat traps and headed out. “It is the night of the dear savior’s birth,” I sang as I crawled under the back deck, spider webs trailing from my Nome, Alaska ski hat with a goofy white pompom, nastiness clinging to my …

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 …