wideeyedfunk

Category: Life

Always so surprising.

  • Jeans Requiem

    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 and I were selecting new spectacles at the Optician. Expensive process. We take our time. Try on everything. And why not? I thought I looked cute as a button in my Joan of Arctics, little blue blazer and favorite jeans. The Spouse said to me, “Man, you really need a new pair of jeans.” I peered at him through the Kate Spade frames I was trying out. I opened my mouth to say something rude but the Optician from across the room beat me to it, “Yeah,” he agreed with The Spouse, “when they get that bad you have to be careful about bending over in public.”

    Jeans2Slumped on the sofa with a glass of wine that evening I picked at the fringes of denim along the tears in my jeans. I thought about all the places, all the countries we’d been to together. Reviewed all the really fantastic outfits we’d made together. I’d given professional papers in these jeans. Taught in them. Worn them for uncountable hours of research and writing. Flip flopped through summers in them.

    I am now wearing a new pair of jeans. They are awkward and stiff. I look like someone else in them. I feel like I am wearing someone else’s pants. The waist feels funny. It is distressing and I keep thinking about my favorite jeans, washed and carefully folded in the bottom of the pants drawer of my bureau. Are they lonely in there? Will the new jeans gloat about our forthcoming adventures? I want to go put them on. But I can’t, I mustn’t. The much loved, favorite jeans can only be worn in memory now.

  • “You married a winner.”

    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 and dry inside and full of the league members setting up bows, belting on quivers. “Hey now,” I half yelled into the room. “Hey!” came back at us.

    PinI always set my recurve up faster than the Spouse, my gear is simpler and I guess I don’t have the eye for precision. He was tightening a sight screw and I was putzing with my stuff when Paul C., our league leader, swooped into our table space. He was holding a little manila envelope to the Spouse, “Congratulations,” he smiled. The Spouse is inherently suspicious. He didn’t take the envelope straight away. “For what?” he asked, peering out from under his Lancaster Archery Supply hat. “You won your class on one of the Sunday shoots,” Paul held the envelope closer. Matt took it, opened it, looked at the cool little winner pin. “Looks like you married a winner,” Diane said to me from the sign in counter.

    Heh. That cracked me up.

    DeerHeadFrontSo we shot our arrows. More or less ok for both of us. The Spouse’s pin gleamed on his quiver. The deer heads in the corner patiently displayed the conservation society tshirts for sale. And the rain lashed down outside. I was in the end lane against the wall and I could see it out there through the window: cold, wet, ugly.

    The Spouse’s team beat my team tonight, but near the end my shooting improved. The weather didn’t and we scrambled through the rain to the Pathfinder, from the Pathfinder to the back door, and now the WideEyedHousehold is huddled on the sofa safe from the day. And you know, I married a winner. We have a quiver pin to prove it.

  • These Boomers are trouble.

    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, engine racing. Boomer lady’s car didn’t even twitch when the light changed. I could see her texting in my rear view mirror as I zipped away. Texting! To whom?? Another driving Boomer probably!

    Now, replace “Boomer lady” with “teenager” and those sentences describe something so expected that it’s banal.

    The Boomers are wearing sporty clothes and passing me on the running track at the park. The Boomer ladies are getting to all the good yoga pants sales before I do, and looking better than me in those disgusting stretchy trousers. Sometimes. Two Boomers followed the WideEyedSpouse and me on a zipline trail in the Caribbean. What were they thinking?? Don’t they know that older bones are fragile? Don’t they know that they are supposed to be tired? These two tree climbing Boomers were posing for the camera and laughing as the zipped along behind me. Gah!

    Am I the only one worried that these Boomers are living like teenagers, except that they are rich enough and legally old enough to do whatever they want, whenever they want? They are building Boomer housing developments where no one BUT Boomers can move in. What’s going on in there?

    These Boomers. And it’s just going to get worse as more of them smell freedom and break out of forty years of responsible habits. Don’t use up all the good times Boomers – my turn at the Fun is decades away.

  • Filtering winter.

    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.Boots

    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 it is real out there. Things exist only if I decide they do. Everything is better when I’m in the Kate Spades.

    KateSpades

    That’s it. The Winter is absurd. It won’t stop. Get yourself some quality filters and occupy a warm, gloaming place of your own making.

  • Peckish.

    And then I came across the WideEyedSpouse,
    standing in the dark kitchen,
    eating pickles.

    I left him to it.

  • Removing the self.

    ArcheryJan2014_cropLike 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 failures in under a minute. I feel my eyes bulging and the top of my head wanting to blast off. Inappropriate language hovers around my tongue, wanting to be said. And then, I get used to it.

    Then I can remove myself from the moment. I remove myself from the preparation and the consequences. I shut off the bits of myself that fret, that count results before the action is taken. For about 15 seconds I live entirely in Now. Twang. Bullseye.

    When it works, there’s a little surge of adrenaline. A chemical victory party. I stand for a few seconds and let that fade. Subtract the self. Twang. Bullseye. Please, I hope this works for the big goals too.

  • The eerily prescient fortune cookie.

    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 they are, sometimes they aren’t. It’s chilly enough in the front parlor that the uninvited aren’t inclined to de-coat. Perfect, really, for moving folks right along: “Yes, yes, nice to see you too, stop by again sometime…”

    I digress.

    The package. It had a fortune cookie in it, taped to the packing list, right at the top of the box. Since there was only the one cookie, the choice had already been made, this cookie came to Me. I cracked it open.

    “There will be snorkeling in your future.”Fortune

    The boys and I crunched through the cookie and I sat back in Hamish the Corgi’s rockstar chair.

    IMG_1687I was stunned. How did this cookie know I was heading out to snorkel in the coming days? How could this cookie know? I chewed the last of the cookie, because of course that’s part of the deal with a fortune cookie. Ok. Better accept it, I thought to myself. I leaned over to unpack the rest of the box.

    FeetandDogsTen minutes later I flopped my flippered feet over to the mirror above the hearth to see what I looked like in a low volume, water-injected silicone skirted mask and red ultra-dry snorkel. Heh. I looked funny. But geez, that fortune cookie really had it right. Weird.

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

    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.

    The WideEyedParents with Younger brother, not too many years after I came along.
    The WideEyedParents with Younger Brother, not too many years after I came along.

    And so, my arrival to this world and the WideEyedFamily was associated with complexities of joy, irritation, and darkling feelings. The trend continues. This year I celebrated the final day of my 40xth year with death, dismemberment, and mild destruction. Followed by a lovely dinner, thoughtful gifts, and simple joie de vivre.

    In the earlier hours of my birthday, I found myself kneeling in carnage, dressed in full rain gear, under the deck. Sprays and splashes of brilliantly oxygenated blood soaked into the limestone block and pooled on cement footings. The WideEyedRat (boy was he ever) had snapped two traps and flailed himself free of both before expiring next to his rat hole. Rain beaded on his dense fur, his tailed stretched entirely out with a tiny curl at the end. He was stiff. Well into rigor mortis. Didn’t fit in the bag. Well the body did but I crawled out from under the deck with a heavy bag that looked like it held a single strange stick.

    Octopus1At lunchtime I arranged myself with pliers and my new dog leash hook. It was an octopus cast of poor alloy and its tentacles were too close together for my liking. Now it is a septopus with a stump. I figured the septopus was still authentic and not just a broken hook. Accidents happen even in the deep, maybe especially in the deep. My catastrophically injured Septie was going on the wall, ideally on a stud. I plugged in the drill.

    I never did find that stud, but I did confirm that the plaster and lathe exists in a near continuous plane under the layers of paint on the back stair wall. Septie dangles from the single drywall anchor that survived insertion.

    Exhausted, I had just turned 40something remember, I retired to the sofa with a glass of decent red wine, Buffy the Vampire slayer reruns, and my long-term (perpetually unfinished) knitting project. The WideEyedSpouse rattled in the kitchen, concocting my birthday dinner. I wondered, is this what life was like for 1970s husbands? Relax with a drink and TV while someone else prepares to feed me? I would have fought harder to keep that if I were them. Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog sighed and snuggled closer to me and Hamish the Corgi watched me from his chair across the room. I felt loved. Content. And warm against the foul winter rainstorm happening outside.

    Hamish

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

    “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 knees. Around the support posts, past the stack of old landscaping bricks, to the house foundation wall. “Ok,” I called over to the WideEyedSpouse. He handed a rat trap from the hatchway on the side of the deck, peanut butter waggling on the bait bar.

    “Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘til he appeared and the soul felt its worth,” I sang as I eased the trap bar back on its scary spring and carefully propped the lock lever into the bait bar notch. “Careful,” the Spouse murmured from his position in the hatch door, as though we were setting sensitive explosives. I slowly moved my hands away. Set.

    I scooted a few feet to the right, singing again, “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!” Again, easy, easy, now, I pushed back the bar, set the lever and backed away.

    “Fall on your knees,” I sang loud and strong, unafraid of missing the notes because who was to hear me but the rat trying to dig into my foundation. I sort of was hoping I was the last thing he heard. I back crawled out from under the deck, singing more quietly to myself because I had to concentrate on missing the insect carcasses twirling in the little winds under the deck. “Oh hear the angel voices, Oh night divine, Oh night when Christ was born.”

    The Spouse helped me stand up when I hit the hatchway door – whistling oh holy night. We locked up the hatch door to keep the poochies out and stomped through the snow back to our Christmas tree.

    This morning we saw little rat tracks leading away from the house. I guess I really missed those high notes.

  • The daily suspense of straight razor shaving.

    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.

    Razor3This 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 red puddle spreading out. And the dogs don’t seem overly interested – wouldn’t you think they would be if lifeblood was splashing, spilling all over the white bathroom floor?

    My new habit is to be dressed and ready to leave the house for an emergency room run before the Spouse heads in to shave. Nothing too nice though, because presumably there will be staining gore all over.

    Each day begins with the suspense of a slasher movie. I know something really dangerous is happening behind that door. Will the Spouse saunter out all fresh-shaved and relaxed? Will I hear the thud of his draining body hitting the floor? That straight razor was a great gift – sustainable use of resources, a cool skill for the Spouse to develop, a hint of old-timey in our tech driven everyday – but it’s going to take some time before I stop planning for triage in the upstairs bathroom.