wideeyedfunk

Category: Life

Always so surprising.

  • The kitchen junk basket went rogue.

    I just wanted a rubber band. One rubber band from the kitchen junk basket.

    IMG_3333

    This was too much to ask from the junk basket. Four minutes and thirty seven seconds into the task I marched – marched calmly –  to the basement for my sledge hammer. It is a 10 pound sledge. Not the heaviest. It has a shock absorbing plastic handle. Not the most traditional.

    It works.

    (When I bought my sledge two older guys in line with me nudged each other a whole lot until one of them worked up the nerve to ask – “Is that for your husband’s truck? Heh heh heh,” they both laughed and poked each other with gnarled index fingers. “Hoo boy, he must have done something pret-ty bad. Heh heh heh.” I didn’t smile. “Yep,” I said.)

    Anyway.

    Next time I want a rubber band, the [new] kitchen junk basket should consider giving it up easy.

  • Snow trash is the best.

    Gloriously foul and endlessly fascinating, snow trash happens when the deep snow melts and reveals the urban detritus of weeks. It is a special seasonal process to be enjoyed only a few times a year. Because I happen to be a professional studier of the material remnants of human activity, I can’t look away from a nice nasty city snow bank. I like them to be really full of good stuff and I stop for particularly rich ones to be sure I’m seeing everything. This isn’t the WideEyedSpouse’s favorite activity, but the dogs sure don’t mind.

    Dog dookies are ubiquitous in the melting snow banks. Big, small, dark, light. You can really see the variety of diets fed to the neighborhood canines. Here in Buffalo chicken bones also are typical in the melting snow mounds. Perplexing. Yes, Buffalo Chicken wings, but does everyone eat them all the time? They must fly from car windows like confetti.

    I see newspapers, catalogs, dryer sheets, and Kleenex that appear used but may just be wet from the melt. I haven’t developed a way to determine used versus wet yet but I do tend to think crumpled means used. They come in all colors: white, pink, green, yellow. I have suspicions that the yellows started as white and they are in fact used.

    A shoe appears every now and again and it baffles me every time. Where does that single shoe come from? Who walked home with one shoe? If you noted that your shoe had come loose from your foot, in the winter, would you not backtrack? Go on a little hunt for your missing shoe? What I should do is determine if the single shoe is statistically significantly correlated with the presence of a spray of brightly colored vomit. Which, by the way, can be observed on the white snow with alarming frequency. Here my broader hypothesis is that inebriated people throw up hard enough to toss a shoe, and then they don’t notice their shoe is gone. Although, there are no bars in the immediate vicinity, so they must be home drinkers. Alternatively, the vomit could innocently result from too many chicken wings or a terrible Kleenex supported flu that hits while walking the family dog (which parsimoniously explains the vomit, the Kleenex litter, the uncleaned up dookies, AND maybe even the shoe. Now that’s hypothetical model building friends.). I might be looking for too many causal links. I can’t help myself, that’s what I do.

    Yesterday the dogs and I saw something entirely new. A unique specimen. A kidzbop 3 CD had sliced into a snow bank and it gleamed in the morning sun. A prize. Hamish sniffed it pretty good and Tibbit wee’d near it. From its position in the snow bank, about 1.4 meters in from the street, I could posit that kidzbop 3 had been flung from a moving car. The presence of the kidzbop cd in the snowbank distracted me all day and I developed a series of hypotheses explaining why the cd had been flung:

    H1: “What? No baby I don’t have any kids.” Fling.

    H2. I went home and found kidzbop 3 online. Gave it a listen. Who wouldn’t?. And so, Hypothesis 2: Track 1: remake of Soak up the Sun. Track 2: remake of Hey Baby Hey Baby Hey sung by tunelessly chanting children. Track 3: (does it even matter?)…Fling.

    H3: “Oh look, a cd came in my used car…” Fling.

    H4: “Oh God, the baby just puked in the car! All over everything!” Fling.

    H5: “Mamamamamama play kidzbop. Play kidzbop. Play it. Play it. Plaaaaaayyyyy iiitttt.” Fling.

    I went back later to get kidzbop 3. It was gone. Gone.

  • Worm Bin Chronicles: Winter

    “Good thing we have the worm bin,” I said to the Spouse the other day.

    He gave me a blank, flat eyed stare. “Why?” he asked in a tone that said he didn’t really want to talk about the worm bin, could think of no good thing related to the worm bin.

    “Because the compost heap is frozen,” I told him, feeling cheerful and content with my little WideEyedEcosystem.

    The Spouse turned in his chair and peered out the kitchen window to the back garden. I could see him noting the foot of snow draped over the garden. I could see him not making the connection. He, as you may recall (Worm Bin Chronicles: Inception), hates the worm bin. Spine-tingling, hair-raising hates the notion of hundreds or thousands of juicy, wriggling worms snacking, always munching in a bin in our house.

    “If we didn’t have the worm bin, where would we put the veggie trash?” I asked him.

    He sipped his beer and thought. “The trash?” he asked.

    I glared at him and slapped my Fedco Seeds catalog onto the counter. I flipped to page 128 and spun the catalog around, pointing about halfway down the page to the Worm Castings offering (8 quarts for $15.00). “Those worms are making money in there,” I told him. “At least they have a job,” I said, referring to our lay-about small black dog of limited wits and multiple degrees (P.K, F.C.)

    The Spouse leaned forward in his chair a bit to peer at the fine print of the catalog. “Uh huh,” he said and leaned back unconvinced, unconvincable I fear.

  • 1,500 miles of family, Or, Caviar tastes like chicken pox.

    Stop 1: Scottsville, Esmont, Charlottesville Virginia WideEyedFunks:

    I was spooning caviar onto a smear of cream cheese at the pre-Christmas dinner snackie spread. Sister-in-law L. and Older Brother set us up with fine cheeses, Dracula’s Dilemma pickled garlic, some kind of awesome aged herbed salami.  And caviar.

    Our WideEyedParents were across the room and from around the Christmas tree we could hear dad shouting at mom: “Do you want some cold cuts?”

    “A cool one?” she said, “no, I don’t want a beer.” Heh. Might be time for hearing tests.

    Sister-in-law N. pushed through Sister-in-law L. and me to get to the snackies, “Quit snack blocking,” she told us. I inched my counter stool over an inch or so, but not really too far. I hadn’t tried all the cheeses yet.

    I lifted my caviar cracker to take a bite. “You eat that stuff?” Older Brother asked, clearly doubtful. I shrugged and ate the cracker. Older Brother watched me chew. “I don’t eat it,” he said. “Good,” Sister-in-law L. said, “more for the rest of us.”

    Older Brother glanced at her and put his attention back on me. “Caviar reminds me of when I had chicken pox in my mouth,” he paused, I think to judge my response. I had stopped chewing, riveted despite my worries for what was coming. “When the chicken pox popped they released salty juices that tasted juuuuust like caviar.” He smiled at me. I swallowed my chewed up and popped caviar with difficulty.

    Younger brother walked by, jiggling Baby Nephew. “Oops,” Younger Brother said, watching a big drooly spit up splat to the floor. Hamish and Miss Tibbit were mildly interested. Oldest Brother called from the Sunny Southwest. We talked about Sister-in-law J.’s belly dancing costume and safety pins. Young nephew strolled past in his new skateboard helmet, and Niece clacked at her new laptop.

    Stop 2: Ocean City, New Jersey Family of WideEyedSpouse

    Two particularly elegant women from My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding accidently joined us for Christmas 2.0.

    Older Niece wore her excellent new hat while she thumbed at something on her new smarty phone and Younger Niece trotted around the living room, tormenting Hamish with her interest in his plush fur. He ran, WideEyed, from corner to corner seeking asylum.

    Sister-in-law K and Brother-in-law P sat numbly watching Younger Niece and Christmas 2.0 events. They manage in retail and Christmas is Not Kind to the folks who at the most fundamental level facilitate our national economic security.

    Mother-in-law sniffed her new Chanel perfume, remembering Valentine’s gifts from her dad back in the day, and WideEyedSpouse and I waited to see what the relentlessly greedy Miss Tibbit would manage to steal from the table.

    All the while, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding flickered on the TV behind us, benign and quiet, until we noticed the bride and her maid of honor beating each other into the sidewalk outside of their wedding hall. Sister-in-law K. grabbed the remote to turn it up. We watched in awe.

    Stop 3: Buffalo, New York WideEyedHousehold

    1,500 miles, 14 accidents in the cat hut, 2 major winter storms, 9 bottles of water, 7 travel cups of coffee, 6 days later, and we are home. The Christmas candles burned in the windows of the WideEyedHouse to greet us. The new snow gleamed on the garden fence and pergola, and Miss Tibbit did a little dance in the drive while Hamish rolled and rolled in the snow.

  • Job wanted for newly graduated smallish black dog of limited skills.

    TibbitDiplomaLast Tuesday evening the WideEyedSpouse and I marched down the block with Miss Tibbit to her training final exam and graduation, belching the happy taste of Sahlen’s hot dogs and a reasonable lost-grape-of-Chile Carménère red wine. We were all nervous. Miss Tibbit had been nervous all day with an upset stomach which she emptied explosively on the side of the bed, the bed post, and the floor.

    Miss Tibbit passed the test with what might be considered a C. Maybe a C+ with a special commendation for savant treat catching. She walks beautifully, sits like a dream, and will not/can not resist throwing herself on people to demonstrate her love. She escaped her leash during Cooper the standard poodle’s walking exam. Mayhem. Demerits. She won a ribbon for showing the most improvement during the course. Which means, of course, everyone recognized her remedial start state.

    Miss Tibbit waking from a rejuvenating post-baccalaureate nap.
    Miss Tibbit waking from a rejuvenating post-baccalaureate nap.

    Yesterday the WideEyedSpouse stood gazing down at Miss Tibbit, who was lounging across three remotes, the Xbox controller and the WII wand on the living room sofa. He asked when she intended to take her newly inked diploma out on the streets to look for a job. Miss Tibbit stretched and blinked at him. She needs time to chill after the intense discipline she used to earn her degree, she told him. She has to get in touch with what will make her fulfilled, figure out what the next step is. She heard there’re advanced degrees in dock jumping, agility, and citizenship. She’s going to ask around, see what other dogs think of the different programs. Maybe travel a bit. WideEyedSpouse stared at her for a moment and then walked with purpose out of the room and down the hall.

    I heard ice cubes clackle into a glass in the kitchen and then the fizt of one of my Fever-Tree tonic waters opening. The WideEyedSpouse was mixing himself a nice, super-premium Gin and Tonic rather than pursuing the conversation with Miss Tibbit. He knew, as I know, soon enough the WideEyedHousehold will be writing more checks for Miss Tibbit’s graduate education. Her dog brother Hamish the Corgi knows it too, and I can see him planning something expensive to even the score on his own account.

  • A smug end to weeping and wailing.

    It is an unfortunate quirk of WideEyedFunk life that I can’t have anything nice. I drop things. Trip over things. Knock things from mantels, shelves, the wall. My ruination of something precious is always followed by stomping and loud wailing on the theme of “Why can’t I have anything nice?” for fifteen to thirty minutes

    This time it was my Cleo Skribent left-handed nib, stainless steel, piston reservoir fountain pen.  I don’t carry this pen out of the house because it will be lost. I use it at my desk and planned to do so for the next 40 years. And then over the weekend I dropped it. Of course I did.

    Cleo2Because the Cleo Skribent is so wonderfully heavy, it fell with authority. Because the Cleo Skribent hand-enameled nib is so wonderfully lovely and precise, it bent all to crap. The fall from my desk was effectively the annihilation of all that is nice about my desk life. I love this pen and I love the peacock blue ink I put in it. Go ahead, write your grocery list with a pen that cost more than the groceries. You’ll see – milk, eggs, dog chow, beer…they never looked so good. Yes, ball point will work, as will pencil, blood, chipped stone, or wax tablets pressed with cut reeds. I prefer my Cleo Skribent.

    I was in the kitchen, under the bright stove light with some needle nosed pliers, weeping and wailing, shrieking and feeling sorry for myself when the WideEyedSpouse found me. Or perhaps more accurately, when he decided it had gone on long enough to be interesting.

    The pliers were too big. The nib was too bent. I needed jeweler’s tools. I needed to send it away for repairs. I might as well just throw it in a drawer because This Pen Is Dead to Me. I Can’t Have Anything Nice. I sulked away to the kitchen table with a medicinal glass of wine.

    The WideEyedSpouse swigged from his can of Pepsi and had a look at the Cleo Skribent. He unscrewed parts, pulled things apart that I was sure weren’t meant to BE apart, and ended up with just the bent nib and a pair of pliers way too big for the job. He bent a little, peered at little, bent a little, peered a little. After a little while he handed my whole pen back to me. It worked. Like it never even happened.

    “Awesome,” the WideEyedSpouse said, “There is nothing I can’t fix. And I don’t even need the proper tools to do it.” He looked pretty smug.

    Cleo3But who cares. The Cleo Skribent writes again. I’ll let him have this one.

  • I really like trains, I always have.

    Maybe I like trains because I grew up knowing that PopPop used to drive trains (I also knew he carried an ice pick during peanut deliveries to bars in Harrisburg but that didn’t have the same intrinsic appeal at first and I didn’t appreciate his genius for years). Grandma once told me he came home tired and awed because he had piloted a new kind of engine across Pennsylvania from Ohio. “Oh Myerly” he told her as he flopped across the bed, “that engine was something.”

    Maybe it was the awesome train set we had in the basement.  I had my own SOO engine before I was 7. White with red trim. It gleamed as it soared, shicka shicka shicka, past our model station and waiting matchbox cars. It stopped for no one.

    Maybe the liking struck c. 1977 when I rode the commuter train into Philadelphia with my dad. It was near Christmas so it was chilly and smoky exhaust and bits of flotsam blew around the train when it heaved into the station. It stank. It was loud. And once we got on, it clattered and swayed in the best way.

    I just really like trains.

    TrainBridgeI like to look at trains. We lived rural during my teenage years and the route to anywhere was crossed by train tracks leading to the coal-driven power plant. They interrupted the road, more or less as they pleased, and sometimes a busy person had to relax, not worry about being late, and count the train cars. I like the engine yard at Strasburg, PA. I like rusting, abandoned train cars. I like to see random bits of trains scattered about our world. Diners. Weird homesteads.

    I like to ride trains. Underground or above ground, trolly car or closed car, small gauage, monorail, or full size, plastic molded commuter seats or plush spacious travel seats that sometimes change into bunks: As far as I remember I’ve tried trains in or around Paris, St Louis, D.C., Buffalo, Memphis, London, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Charlottesville, Philadelphia, NYC, Skagway, Seattle, Lisboa, the Franklin Institute, and Strasburg. I look for reasons to need a train. When I fly into a new airport I check – can I take rail into the city? Can I ride a train to the museum or conference? Does a train pass by the home of any reasonably nearby family? I know there are thousands more trains for me to try, but I have time and there’s no real rush except that some trains are being mothballed. Called obsolete by powers beyond my control.

    I rode a train from Lisbon to the Algarve in my first adult jet-lag fog. I stepped from plane to ferry to train to beach in one long bleary journey. I slept on the train. For two weeks I carried 2,000 year old animal bones in my bag on the Washington DC Metro Blue Line. I had to cradle my body around the bag to keep the polite press of white collar humanity from fracturing these bits of someone else’s past. I took a train to visit a friend in Connecticut when I was 19 years old. I sat in independent comfort across from two Yale students specializing in Ancient Languages,which of course seemed completely appropriate to train travel. But even as I kid I worried that this gracious method of travel was not going to last. A friend recently told me her mom has ridden the Orient Express. I was instantly, viscerally jealous.

    EngineThe WideEyedSpouse and I sat patiently waiting for our turn at the order box of the Delaware Ave Timmy Horton’s last Saturday afternoon (large triple triple, medium double double, and a 10 box of TimBits to sustain us after grocery errands). I heard deep thrumming thumps and rolled down my window to sniff – yep, diesel. Train nectar. A train hove into sight, glorious and large, beautiful red engines powering down next to an inglorious strip mall. Its beauty separated from us by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire as if it were something dangerous or shameful. I could see the engineer fussing with clipboards and levers inside the tiny windows. I waved. Because I really like trains.

  • It simply isn’t possible to give thanks without cranberry sauce. And stuffing.

    WideEyedSpouse and I sat in the Mini in the only remaining spot at the far, littered end of the suburban Wegman’s supergrocery last evening. The teeming swarm at the city Weg’s where we usually shopped had been too scary to brave. I figured suburban families would already have their feasting supplies and we’d be ok out here in the hinterlands. I watched a grannie yank the last grocery cart away from a hapless young man a few car lengths away. I had a bad feeling I had miscalculated terribly.

    The Spouse held up the list. I held up the grocery sack and the tire iron. We bumped fists and rolled out of the Mini in good formation. Evaporated milk, stuffing mix, jellied cranberry sauce -in-the-can, Reddi-whip, condensed mushroom soup; the critical essentials of a classic Thanksgiving. The rest of the ingredients were already at home, but without these final pieces it would just be a nice dinner, not THANKSGIVING dinner. Problem was, the ten thousand pushing into Weg’s up ahead were after the exact same items.

    We squeezed into the store and passed the fresh vegetable section, thank god we didn’t need celery. Two men were down over there, their wives standing on their bodies to reach the celery remaining on the highest shelf. I saw a roiling mass of women at an endcap about 5 meters away. I could see cans behind grabbing hands and pushing bodies so it was soup, cranberry sauce, or evaporated milk.

    I’ve got your back, the Spouse said in my ear as I handed him the grocery sack and tested my grip on the tire iron. I plunged in, yelling excuse me’s and ducking under arms. I saw stars when I took an elbow to the eye, and blacked out for a moment when a spikey boot heel drilled my left foot. I had no time to think, but I realized this situation was too serious for manners. I shoved the tire iron through a gap in the bodies and propped it on a shelf edge making a wall for me to squeeze in against. Something battered my shins, and I looked down. A toddler was down there sent in low, his mom pushing his diapered bottom to get him closer to the goods. I planted my foot in front of him, leaned on my tire iron prop, and grabbed a can of soup. I lofted it high and in my peripheral vision watched the Spouse’s long arms snag it. While he fought off scavengers in the back I snared a can of evaporated milk from a lower shelf and tucked out. I handed the can to the Spouse for safekeeping in the grocery sack.

    We trotted quicktime past the dairy cases along the back of the store. The Spouse used his height to reach into the open door above a dithering shopper. He grabbed the first can of whipped cream he could get. I checked it as we jogged up the baking aisle. Fat free. Huh. Too bad. I looked along our back trail and considered revisiting dairy to try again. Reading my mind, the Spouse took the whipped cream and shoved it in the sack.

    My foot skidded in something on the floor near the end of the aisle. It was red – cranberry sauce, we’re close I told the Spouse, pointing to the smear. He looked past me and paled. Blood, he said. I turned my head in time to see a fit woman in a Barbour jacket toss a hank of hair and scalp to the floor next to an unconscious woman in a suit. She grabbed one of the final bags of stuffing mix and a can of cranberry sauce. I wanted to send the Spouse into the hole she made in the crowd before it closed and we lost the chance at the supplies but he wouldn’t go. It’s all women, he argued, I can’t go in there hurting women, I’ll be arrested. He looked at the crowd. Besides, they’re scary.

    Fine. I bounced on my toes and limbered my tire iron arm. Best to be quick, I thought, in and out. I grabbed the back of the True Religion jeans in front of me and yanked upward, hard. The woman in them shrieked and fell back, pulling at her wedgie. I rapped a khaki-clad knee lightly with the tire iron and that suburban mom went down whimpering. I stepped over her and the shelving was almost in reach. I pushed off the ground and jumped high, coming down with my arms on the shoulders of two wiry yoginis. They should have collapsed. They didn’t. They were clearly far stronger than me and I didn’t want to get into a wrestling match with these rubber bands disguised as affluent and good-looking suburban moms. I backed off and applied the tire iron: ribs on the right, ribs on the left. Hah! Both went down! – yoga doesn’t make ribs stronger. I reached for the last bag of stuffing mix with my right hand and with my left cracked the tire iron down on the wrist of a husband who had been brave enough or stupid enough to battle women for a can of cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving Eve. He screamed like a little girl and dropped the can. I caught it on its way to the linoleum floor.

    I crouched low and backed out of the fray, feeling the Spouse pulling me along by my belt. I shoved the tire iron into my pants and we stepped out into the main front aisle, smiling and walking slow – acting normal so that the howling crowd didn’t sense the value of the swag in our grocery sack. We weaved through a jam of laden carts and I worried about folks buying 25 pound frozen turkeys only hours before they needed to be cooked to safe temperatures. Spouse grabbed a sack of frozen French cut green beans from one of the carts and held it to my eye. It was starting to swell shut and that along with my injured foot made us vulnerable in the crowd.

    We cleared check out in only 17 minutes because Weg’s had an armed officer enforcing the 10 items or less rule in the last two checkout lanes. The Spouse zipped the grocery sack inside his coat and we headed for the Mini, frowning with deep concern. These expressions were camouflage. Thousands of hostesses still flocked the entrance to the store and we had the last of two of the essential Thanksgiving ingredients. We never would have made it to the car if we had appeared triumphant and relaxed.

    The Spouse put the Mini in Sport Mode and we fled home. Now, on Thanksgiving, my eye is less swollen, the pie is in the oven, and dinner is scheduled for 5 o’clock this evening. I am smiling across the room at the WideEyedSpouse and thinking grateful thoughts about my world. Happy Thanksgiving friends. May you have much for which to be thankful.

  • Dare I wear surgical gloves on the plane?

    Would I look like a freak, or would people be jealous?

    I don’t want to touch any more crusty, sticky, or slippery patches. I’ve had enough. To prove I’ve had my fair portion of gross, I’ll share a few of my highlight ick moments from the past week.

    I was heading to the farmer’s market on Saturday and I needed cash. Evidently farmers prefer that I pay for my $1 butternut squash in cash-dollars. I hit the ATM on the Canisius College campus. It is also near the Metro entrance. My fingers slipped from the greasy ATM buttons so badly it was actively difficult to punch in my digits. And oh, the ATM foyer stank of pee and vomit. So nice.

    WideEyedSpouse and I hit the Central Library on Sunday afternoon.  I felt something chunky under the entrance door handle. The skin of my fingers tried to crawl off. I am so thankful that whatever it was had dried to chunks.

    I scooted into work on Monday. The stair railing on my way to my office floor left a sticky residue on my palm. Normally I don’t touch stair railings, but my foot slipped on something gelatinous. A goober I think.  That’s 1970s kid speak for a mass of phlegm.

    Tuesday at Target, my hand slipped off the grocery cart handle. I blame spittle. Baby spittle I hope. Although I’m not sure why baby spittle is less gross.

    Today, Wednesday, I have to fly.

    Have you read the studies? I have. Flu, cold, TB, MRSA, E. coli, lysteria, pneumonia bacteria. All normal. Skin crust, boogies, hair, chewed off finger nails? Expected. Greasy unexplained smootses on all seats? Of course! Wet spots? Annoying but unsurprising.

    Even if the booger is not infectious, even if the hairs floating around do not carry lice or too much skin crust, I don’t want them touching me.

    I just figured out my solution.

    I am hitting the Home Depot on the way to the airport. I’m getting a full Tyvek suit. Oh yeah. With gloves and a mask too. Maybe eye PPE. I know when my fellow (disgusting) passengers stare it will be out of jealousy. And I figure there’s a pretty good chance I’ll get an empty seat next to me.

  • Miss Tibbit does not care for pixies.

    Nor does she like princesses. Finds Captain America alarming. Is disturbed by tiny Spidermans.

    Chefs, nurses, steampunkers, post apocalypse victims, bees, cats, and ninjas – also Not OK.

    Miss Tibbit alerted us to her concern for three continuous hours last evening. A tiny pixie quivered and shook in fear as she selected a tootsie roll from our bowl of treats. Miss Tibbit’s gaping, toothy maw was visible and audible in the large window behind me.

    I get that it is a little weird for Miss Tibbit, having strangers tromp up onto her porch. Ringing doorbells. Yelling in high voices “Trick or Treat”.  But I had to ask her, Miss Tibbit, where were you when someone stole our middle sized pumpkin yesterday afternoon? Why wasn’t an actual perp more disturbing than 30 inch high vampires?

    Miss Tibbit had no answer for me. She sniffed my face while I asked and tried to look intelligent.