wideeyedfunk

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The meatballs are in the crockpot.

Published by wideeyedfunk

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.

SnowYard

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 bones sparkle like the snow. I figure that if I disguise myself as a Snow Sprite I’ll be warmer. I won’t mind the frigid temperatures, shocking winds, and massive banks of snow. Two years of this nonsense ran the WideEyedHousehold out of Minnesota a few years ago.

In further desperation I made meatballs in marinara sauce. A warm, meaty, herbal aroma ought to make us feel secure, warm, and content in these horrible depths of winter. They are in the crockpot now. Sure enough, their happy scent is wafting up from the kitchen. Later the Spouse and I will run out for crusty rolls and provolone cheese. Of course, we are also going to pick up snowshoe gaiters because we are going out into the cold for a hike tomorrow. Probably I should apply more Snow Sprite crystals and eat lots of meatballs in preparation.

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

Published by wideeyedfunk

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 Elmwood Avenue past trendy food joints. Nothing looked right. A kale salad at home was, I feared, inevitable. Then we saw it. Joe’s Deli, our number two sandwich take-out option and a top five regular. They’re in my phone. But this was a new location, with neon beer signs and open past 8pm. The Spouse cranked the emergency brake for a mid-traffic bootleg turn and slid into a snowy parking spot less than 20 feet from the door. At least that’s what it felt like. That’s how it should have been.

It was wonderful. A long list of crafty tap beers for the Spouse, a Dark and Stormy cocktail for me. A short list of bar snacks – not enough to baffle and just enough to provide multiple tastes. We ordered one of each. Who needs a sandwich when there are Bar Snacks? I smiled over the table at the Spouse. Reasonably decibeled music played. Kids ate with their parents. Everyone looked happy, no one was especially hip. It could not have been better.

Which is no good. Because now, instead of take out in sweatpants, glasses, and end of the day poor attitude I’ll have to decide – do I want a quick and easy sandwich or do I want to be out in the world, smiling at the Spouse over a table full of snacks…

I’m a (naked) farmer.

Published by wideeyedfunk

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.

Published by wideeyedfunk

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 farther along the beach.

Seal self and me self roll and roll in the water: the sky, the sea, the sky, the sea – shades and tones of blues and greens that defy likelihood. Somewhere else, someplace we used to be, it is grayscale. Some faintly remembered place where seal self will never be, doesn’t want to think about. We float, eyes above the waterline.

Darkest January.

Published by wideeyedfunk

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 inhabited Northern Cities by chance and happenstance for thirteen of our twenty years of marriage. None have bested the grim, dark, endurance trial that is Buffalo for sheer misery. The windows of abandoned houses and factories stare into the darkling days and pink-light nights. Heatless, roofless, they are havens for the desperately poor. The dreams of a new generation of city-builders are lost under heaps and mounds of poorly plowed snow, rock salt encrustations, and the skittering drifts of wind-blown trash. Hundred thousand dollar Mercedes purr warmly past layered heaps of used clothes that are people waiting for buses. The contrasts are starker without the greenling veneer of temperate spring and summer, or golden fall.

Maybe it’s me.

Maybe tomorrow I should strap on my Wisconsin-bought ice skates, don my Minnesota-cold furry hat and glide in circles on the new canal-side rink. Maybe I should make snow angels, feed and water some hungry birds. Maybe on the gloomiest and coldest of days I should make donations to the heating assistance fund, the electricity assistance fund, the food cupboard and hope that I’ve helped others get through.

Maybe I should rejoice in the long quiet that is a Northern City Winter and find peace.

We’ll see.

Hamish the Corgi, Almost a Person

Published by wideeyedfunk

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 is laying there, all corgi limp, and I figure that he likes the feeling of the stink bug wiggling between his cheek and the wood floor.

As we sit here in the office, me with my article draft and data tables, Hamish with his Marmorated Stink Bug, I begin to wonder about Hamish’s plans, dignity, and potential. It just is not easy to look intellectually engaged when you are laying on your side, pressing a stink bug into the floor with your cheek and a crazy look in your eyes. Try it, you’ll see.

The stink bug made it from the wood floor to the carpet (probably an epic-heroic journey through corgi whiskers and fur) and I thought I might intervene and toss the little bug out the window before its stink got rubbed into the rug. Hamish sat up and glared at me when I leaned forward from my chair. Okaaaay. I sat back.

So here we are. Détente.

I will give Hamish a moment to resolve the situation on his own.

He is holding Stink Bug in his paw corral again. Thinking.

He just leaned in to nose around in the paw corral. His mouth opened a little and, oh man, he did it, that bug is Gone. Down the gullet after some dramatic lip curled chewing.

And there we have it. Hamish is not, in fact, a person.

Not cold in the library.

Published by wideeyedfunk

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 his two books and library card out of his library sack and checking out first one, then the other book. He’d pick up the sack handles and start to move away. Pause for thought. Rescan library card. Check out one, then the other. The first two times I was fooled but I’m a quick learner and I stood patiently waiting for him to work through his OCD. I gazed into the middle distance and listened to the whir of the escalator behind me.

The OCD patron got through his cycle and I stepped up with my stack of sci-fi, romance, memoirs… I set them on the gray check out reader pad and scanned my library card. Beep. The air to my left moved in an unexpected way and I looked up swiftly but not, I assure you, like prey – “Hi. I’m Matt,” announced a youngish male-person with a dark blue stocking cap. His voice was a little breathy, he was nervy about something. He smiled and tilted his head, maybe showing me his swirly neck tattoo. He had agreeable teeth. Not at all crystal methy. So I answered. “Hi Matt, what can I do for you?”

“Are you cold?” he asked me. I wasn’t. In fact I was wearing a heavy wool coat, snow boots, and a scarf. Interesting, I thought to myself. “No. Not particularly. Why do you ask?”

Young Matt looked at me like I wasn’t super bright and said, “You’re wearing a skirt. You’re the only girl in here wearing a skirt today and it’s cold outside.” I looked at him while I thought about my answer. Maybe Matt was a young anthropologist from another time or place (in human disguise?) and he was interviewing to understand Downtown Buffalo (Earth?) cultures. Maybe Young Matt was often cold himself and just had to know how I could stand it. Maybe Nefarious Matt’s buddies were circling around to grab my purse or, longshot, maybe he was hitting on me. It was impossible to interpret from his open and cheery attitude. So I answered him, “It isn’t too bad today. It gets uncomfortable on super windy days, so I don’t wear a skirt then,” I smiled at him and gathered up my checked out books. “Oh,” he started, and then was gone. I didn’t see him leave – I looked to my right to see if he had moved around the book check station and there was the WideEyedSpouse, approaching with big booted strides, looking even taller and bigger than usual in his winter boots and coat.

The Spouse pretty clearly scared off Curious Matt. I was happy to see the Spouse, as always, but now I’ll never know what was happening in that conversation.

The benevolent dictator at Christmas.

Published by wideeyedfunk

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.

Innocents waiting under the tree.

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 think warm thoughts of my largess as you produce compost for the territorial gardens.

And my dermestid subjects, my thousands of loyal flesh eating beetles, for generations of their heritage I ’ve cared for them. Do they have oral histories of their arrival into my territories? Do they teach each new larval group of the great hand which delivers food and water under a searing bright light? When food grows scarce and all flesh is consumed from the skeletons, do they pour libations and perform sacrifice to me?

Dermestid territory, let the feast begin!

My dermestids will be pleased with any gift, but I want them to grow and prosper and be content in the coming winter for my freezer is full of specimens to deflesh and I’ll need the hungry bellies of their young. I thought long, resting my chin in hand, what will please them? Ah, it came to me…the bison head, the fine fats and proteins of the bison brain, rare and rich gifts that all can share. Feast well my small subjects!

Merry Christmas Friends. May you also have a fine day of love, kindness, and feasting.

Snow shovel is worried.

Published by wideeyedfunk

Does it have a reason to be ? I’d say so.

20141210_161412 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 carcass and moseyed past a rack of new yellow Snow shovels. Their scoops gleamed. Their blades were keen. I could hear their little bossy voices nattering at each other because they are bored, bored, bored sitting inside. They were still in China (probably) when the big storm hit a couple of weeks ago and the next one can’t come soon enough. At least that’s what I think they said – the overhead Christmas carols were a little loud.

20141210_161301 New Snow shovel is laying in the grass about 40 feet from old Snow Shovel. I didn’t want to put it too close to the old one, just in case. You know. Accidents happen.

I went to Space today.

Published by wideeyedfunk

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.