All posts tagged: Buffalo NY

Provisions

Published by

We ripped through the night in the Mighty Pathfinder, Enrique Iglesias’ Bailando thumping from the speakers, windows open, warm winds blowing. The WideEyedSpouse didn’t slow for a mad-big construction bump and the Mighty P lurched and waggled excitingly. “Bailandoooo!” the Spouse wailed. An old man on a porch swing creaked back and forth in time to the song when our crazed journey paused at a traffic light, and a flashing neon sign wanted to be on the beat but couldn’t get there –an electric version of me trying for the rhythm but never finding it. Cracked sidewalks sketchy bus stops stinky gas stations barking dogs blatting broken muffler cars – they are all better in the languid warm of long summer evening. I smiled out into the evening air, crumpling my reusable grocery sacks tight to me.  My heart felt full and light and easy. Buoyant. Which was nice because there hasn’t been much joy in the WideEyedHomestead since my pal Hamish the Corgi died a few weeks ago. It’s my big question, my conundrum again, …

Garden avatar

Published by

With a near supernatural restraint and indomitable force of WideEyed will, I did not buy new plants for the front garden this year. Ok. I did not by many plants for the front garden – only two sedum tiles which I cunningly split into a few pieces each resulting in six new plantings. Hah. Instead, I hacked bits from the Shasta daisies to fill in holes. These bits are droopy excuses for plants. I stare at them as the dogs and I stroll past them. I am distracted by them as I pull into the driveway after a long day of being Chained To An Office Chair.  They better perk up or I’m hitting the garden store down on Main Street. (Sounds charming, right? Like Main Street is some kind of throwback with interesting shops, flowers, smiling people. Uh. Nope. Major traffic artery right through the city. Lotta red lights and screaming and enormous potholes. The garden shop is nice though.) I tiled inferno weed zones with flagstone scraps and bricks reclaimed from a sadly …

Taller fencing.

Published by

When my neighbor’s daughter giggled at me, I thought to consider our situation. All I did was flap my hello-hand at her when she got into her dad’s car less than 10 feet away from me and Miss Tibbit – who was taking an eternally long sniff at something along the fence line. She found half a sandwich there about a month ago and she can’t let the memory go. Miss Tibbit found the sandwich, not the daughter. The origin of the half a sandwich remains unknown. It was 10pm walkies and the entire WideEyedHousehold was outside, except Ancient Wiggins the Cat who could be heard yowling for a snack in the kitchen. I waved my hello-hand and the daughter said hi but she said it through a sort of shocked-involuntary giggle. Weird. I pushed the side flap of my furry bomber hat out of the way and looked around a bit to see what was funny. The dogs weren’t up to anything. The WideEyedSpouse was…oh. The WideEyedSpouse was standing in the driveway in his …

Fortress of Wintertude.

Published by

Nothing is quieter than a university office during winter break. I can hear my own heart beat between clacks on the keyboard. Not much is grimmer than a 1970s, brick built state school campus during winter break. Here looks like joy is something that happens somewhere else. One wall of my office is 25 feet of glass and I perch in my little office box, gazing out at the blowing snow. It blows in a wee baby cyclone, lifting up from the ill-designed courtyard 50 feet below.  No matter how vicious the winds across campus, how bitter the air, outside of my windows the puffy snowflakes dance and spin in mad joy.

Battle the dark.

Published by

I ride to work in a late fall pocket of peace. The smooth ride shifts in tiny increments, only the push of gravity and receding traffic tells me we’ve accelerated. Through mad, alchemical witchery, phone and car share intelligence and only my favorite songs play on the sound system. The dim and grim winter days are flirting with Buffalo. Moody cloud formations flow over church spires and behind the neon bright signs of Main Street tattoo parlors and take-out shops. Pedestrians turn to moving bundles of dark coats, dark pants, dark boots. Campus is funereal: black leggings and dark jeans clad, bruised-eyed, and stressed the students approach finals week with the sick feeling that something has gone wrong. Wretched regret and infrasound wailing pollute the air of Memorial Library. I wore my sheep socks today, in defiance of the dim, the grim, the end-of-semester foreboding. Gamboling pink and white sheep ought to keep my feet light and my mind happy. But looking at them now, I think the sock-sheep might be in states of meditative …

Aimless

Published by

Yesterday evening I was lying on the front livingroom floor alongside the recently reupholstered Victorian settee. Alongside, and on the floor, because the settee was occupied by Hamish the Corgi. Hamish peered down at me happily, big ears casting wide shadow. I was staring up at the ceiling light and thinking about Hank. Hank owned a warehouse that he called an antique shop but the rest of us knew the truth. You could go in and shop, but the likelihood of leaving with anything was slim. Hank’s stuff was N.F.S., despite the inviting OPEN sign on the door. Hank sold us that light. We stood under its near eternal hanging place in the rafters of the warehouse, the three of us, necks crinked, eyes raised, and commented on its probable age. Hank reminisced about his acquisition of it. We listened. Hank talked at length about its probable value – far in excess of the modest price on its tag. We listened. Hank walked away to talk with someone else. We waited. Hank wandered back. Matt …

Flocks

Published by

Outside the fall rains finally arrive in Buffalo. The vees of honking geese that crowd our skies in October huddle in clusters of grey and white blobs today. Sometimes a vicious hiss leaks out from the mass. I give them a wide pass. Inside the campus skyways, I smell wet wool, paint from the constant renovations, and French fries. I stick to the 2nd floor of the buildings, walking windowed bridges from one end of campus to the other. I’m my own parade through the arts, humanities, and law neighborhoods. Rain slashes the skyway windows, making them cozy. I need an armchair, ottoman, and book to set up a comfy encampment. Duty calls and I keep moving: work to do, money to earn. I’m on my way back from my cross-campus errand when I hear soft, high singing coming from ahead of me – many small voices not in tune or in sync and the trample of many feet. I guess some of the birds came in out of the rain. I round a corner …

21.

Published by

You would think that the 21 year wedding anniversary gift was paper, since the sticky tab shopping list on my desk today stated clearly, in capitals, with black ink, “toilet paper.” We both would’ve missed it if Google calendar hadn’t sent an email. I reminded the Spouse and he paled. “Did you plan anything?” he asked, looking sort of like someone who smelled a storm on the wind. “No,” I said. “Should we have?” he asked still looking kind of squirrelly. I shrugged. Some years call for the pomp. Some don’t. The Spouse and I, we’re in it together and counting years is fun but they don’t matter. Not always. Not like the day-to-day love. You know what matters? In my rush to get home, to see the Spouse at the end of a day or servitude to The Man, I failed utterly to pick up some toilet paper.  

Eight inches below normal.

Published by

I think I mowed the grass once back in June.  Then I maybe mowed the taller, more resilient weeds in July. Now, mid-August, I just don’t care. And I think if I subject the brown crackly stuff that used to be my lawn to a mower, I’ll be reenacting the Worst Hard Times (dustbowl) right here in Buffalo. Lost the cucs. Potatoes barely holding on. Tomatoes are producing by sheer force of the WideEyedSpouse’s will and liberal use of the hose. The avocado tree has a few leaves left. The pear trees produced nothing. (But then, they never have except that one pear the first year, which a squirrel ate right in front of me. A**hat squirrel.) The shaded coffee trees are weird, one is flourishing (no beans yet, still young) and the other is withered and weak. I think the healthy one is stealing the soul of the poorly one. Should make for interesting coffee someday. I’ll call it SoulStealer. Buffalo SoulStealer. It’ll make you feel awake and strong but you’ll have questionable moral …

What price frugality?

Published by

I blame the following on heat stroke. And pain. (Read in the tone of drained awfulness.)   One hour, two hours, three hours, four – I really don’t want to do any more. We scrape and we wash and we prime and we paint. We dangle from scaffolding until we are faint. Tibbit is hungry, Hamish is bored. The house is still green in one corner more.   The garage lurks out back, all peeling and grim. I think we’ll be painting when the stars go dim.   Twenty thousand dollars seemed a lot to pay. Maybe, we said, there’s a more economical way? Scaffolding, scrapers, and gallons of tint – Up to the soffits and bump outs we went.   Lamentations and griping, match blisters and pain. If only, I think darkly, we’d have days of rain.   (Sigh.)   Would we do it all over? When the end is so near? Oh God we sure would. Sweat equity wins out when the cost is so high. We’d do it again, and ask ourselves …