wideeyedfunk

Tag: Buffalo NY

  • Not cold in the library.

    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.

  • Snow shovel is worried.

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

    20141210_161412There 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_161301New 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.

  • We sure class up the Park.

    That’s right. When the WideEyedHousehold hits Buffalo’s historic Delaware Park for walkies on a Sunday afternoon, the classiness level escalates. As it should. Olmsted designed this park for promenading. For nodding at neighbors. This past Sunday was cold and rainy. The wind slashed and our rain gear rustled. I made my standard comment, “This is just like weather the Aleutians!” Usually we have the park to ourselves in foul conditions, but after the Big Storm people were out running, skating, strolling like it was a sunny summer day.

    Miss Tibbit displayed her manners and deportment for everyone by hooting and baying at a big, white pony-sized dog, an ancient Golden Retriever, a large piece of blowing trash (no one has ever claimed she is smart), a brownish dog, and a yellow lab who ran past with a ball in his mouth. Each time she heaved her 35 pounds against her little pink harness and jumped around on her hind legs while caroling out her high pitched psychopathic singing yelps. “Cookie?” I asked each time. Her butt plonked to the ground. See, classy.

    I smiled at passersby, all of whom seemed particularly eager to meet my eyes. I wondered if my new mascara sample along with my bright green coat made my eyes stand out. Maybe it was my relentless good cheer despite the nasty weather. It didn’t matter, I was happy with the world and smiling like a maniac all over the park. Then, “why is your zipper down?” the WideEyedSpouse asked me as we stood in the kitchen after walkies. I snapped my eyes down to look and hands down to feel. Sure enough, below my tidily belted waistline, my jeans weren’t zipped. All those maniac smiles to all those strangers meeting my eyes…you can’t buy that kind of class.

    Hamish the Dignified and Well-Mannered Corgi found himself a French fry wrapper along the walkies. I only noticed when I heard strange snuffling noises. He had forced his nose deep into the empty packet to lick any remaining molecules away. The little french fries printed on the packet wiggled and squirmed with his efforts. Miss Tibbit crept over to get some tastes. Hamish snarled out of the wrapper and bit her. Noisily. She cried.

    Yipping, snarling, trash-eating, and ineptly clothed. That’s just how we roll here.

  • Fruit flies, a nasty old chair, and 100 years of fine art.

    CoffeeshopchairI’m sitting here in an anciently ugly wingback not quite as nice as Hamish the Corgi’s chair at home and I’m paying for the privilege. Sort of. The price of the chair is probably included in the cost of my vanilla latte and slice of spiced apple cake.

    My WideEyedButt is squashing this hard used feathered cushion as a my second choice of morning activities. First choice, oh happy happy first choice, was a bust.

    I went to the museum to hang around with Anselm Keifer’s Der Morgenthau Plan. I intended to stand in front of Jackson Pollack’s Convergence. I read a biography or two about him since I was last in front of the image and I wanted to see if it felt different. Giacomo Balla’s dachshund in Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash missed me, I think, and I intended to visit.

    None of them were there.  On loan, gone, packed up. Who knows.

    Now I find myself, sitting in a cloud of fruit flies and regular flies (a real problem this coffee shop might want to attend to), thinking about school kids on field trips to art museums around the country. Right NOW some 10-year-old’s phone is slack in his grubby kid-hand because Convergence squeezed past his texting, gaming, compulsively digitally-linked consciousness. A cackling 15-year-old girl has stopped giggling, mouth hanging open, because Der Morgenthau Plan’s vastiness and deep thrumming power interrupted her ability to be young and feckless for just a moment. And Bella’s dog, that little dog and his owner walking along a sidewalk one hundred and two years ago, that little dog is charming tiny babies in carriers, changing the snapping synapses in their little brains.

    I was sad that I couldn’t be with the paintings this morning. I was ready to sulk here in my smelly coffee shop chair that is infested with public-ness. But I think I can share them. I think my day is better and my world is bigger knowing that other people’s hearts are pounding because of the paintings. Other people are going to lie in bed tonight with the memories of them floating in their dreams.

  • The moon over my Hammie.

    No, actually Hamish the Corgi was too wiggly. He couldn’t get himself settled enough to peer through the 12mm lens at the moon. He kept trying to put his meaty paw on the telescope tube for balance and he was sort of kicking around in my arms. I know he was disappointed, but he can try again next time.

    I stared at the craters, I like the ones with the impact cone in the middle. I don’t know why. The WideEyedSpouse sort of pushed at me. “Hey, let me have a turn,” he sniveled. I took one more look and stepped back from the Celestron, immediately looking up at the now-puny moon hanging above my neighbor’s house. It was lame in comparison to looking at it with the telescope.

    Moon

    After what felt like A THOUSAND YEARS, I politely asked the Spouse to move. “Come on man,” I whined, “you are totally hogging the telescope.” He engaged the selective deafness protocol. “Come ON,” I stepped into his personal space. He put his shoulder toward me. I was outraged, “Gah,” I said. I looked around for support against this injustice but it was just me and the dogs and they didn’t really care. “Just one more picture,” he told me. Sure. Like I was born yesterday.

  • Dark energy and love.

    Yesterday evening I was reading about the form of the visible universe in my new backyard astronomy book. The WideEyedSpouse was doing something involving dinner while I sat at the awesome vintage kitchen table. Wiggins the Ancient Cat kept trying to put his butt on the page. Tibbit the Useless rested her chin on my knee. She was bound for disappointment, as I was reading not eating. Hamish the Corgi sat looking at me, learning about the universe through our mental link.

    Stars. Planets. Constellations. Yeah, yeah. Nothing new there. (Except that I discovered that I should be able to see the Milky Way directly above my house right now and all I can see is the glare of my neighbors’ anti-thief lights. Annoying, but what can do you? Cities are creepy.)

    Then, I looked at a photograph from the Hubble that captured hundreds of whirling galaxies. They face every which way. They are different colors. Big ones, little ones. Galaxies all over the place in every direction. There are billions of them. I felt a weird nerve rush.

    I didn’t know there were so many. Did you? Sure ok, the astronomers and physicists know but. I never realized. Did you know a little one is running into ours over on the other side? Holy cats.

    I looked at a depiction of the distribution of galaxies in the known universe. They cluster in strings and clots. They look like rumples of ocean foam on the incoming tide.  I sort of wondered what was in between. The astronomy book said there was nothing in between. That seemed weird but ok with me. I like a tidy universe. I guess it isn’t so simple.

    Evidently there is dark matter.

    Evidently there is dark matter-energy and it is abundant.

    Evidently we, the universe, are expanding because of this hypothesized dark energy and eventually all will be diffuse. All will be isolated and alone, beyond each other’s detection – unable to even know that anything else is out there.

    The WideEyedSpouse and I have been married for 19 years and 40 minutes as the clock looks at this moment. I’m sitting here at the desk worried about deadlines and dark energy. The WideEyedSpouse is 30 feet and 2 stories away worried about getting the racing stripes placed correctly on the Mini Cooper S. Our little bit of the universe isn’t expanding too quickly for us. I don’t think it can.

  • Trash picking for winter lettuce.

    It’s more complicated than that title makes it seem. With some in-between formative steps.

    The WideEyedSpouse and I walk the Useless Little Black Dog and the Corgi for several blocks through the neighborhood every evening. This is terrible in the winter, mostly. It is nice in the summer, generally. It is ALWAYS great on trash day.

    Because we live in a neighborhood of historic homes filled with epic volumes of historic junk, someone is always prying something out of the basement or off of the house. I scored a china cabinet that reeked of basement mildew two years ago. It is now my garden tool shack in the garage. Elegant, efficient, free. From Spode to Spades. (I know, right?)

    The trick is to get there quick. Super quick because as I’ve noted before, Buffalo has an active trash picking culture. My amateur attempts are pathetic compared to the experts.

    We moved into this house and set up the garden four summers ago. I’ve been waiting for someone in the neighborhood to replace their generously sized divided light windows for all of that time. I’m going to make a cold frame for winter lettuces. Sure, there have been windows out to the trash, lots of times. They were too small, not divided, broken, or the pickers got to them before me because they were so obviously awesome and worth something to someone. And sure, I can buy greenhouse panels to make a cold frame but why when there’s all this free stuff going out to the trash?

    This was the week my friends. Up on Summit, where the houses are big and the windows are wide, someone tore out their near perfect condition divided light sashes and put them out to the curb in a tidy unbroken stack. Hamish and I approached them first and I chased him away from his obvious intent to pee on the stack. “Cut it out,” I told him, “some of those are ours.” He looked at me like, “that was exactly my point.” The Spouse and Miss Tibbit came up. “What are you doing?” The Spouse asked in his suspicious, high toned query voice. He knew full well what I was doing and wanted nothing to do with it. “Score,” I said, “I’m coming back for these.” I think the Spouse rolled his eyes but if he did he made sure his back was to me a little bit.

    Hamish and I stepped smart for the rest of the walk. We made a veggie lasagna and tossed it in the oven for an hour. I didn’t even care, all I could think about was my windows laying all unprotected on the street. I was heading for the car when I noticed that the grass was sort of really, really long. I mowed it super quick. I yelled down to the basement where the Spouse was doing something with the fitness gear, “I’m going to get my windows!”

    The Pathfinder and I hove to the curb next to the window stack. “Yeah,” I muttered to myself, “but don’t be greedy.” Afraid I wouldn’t listen to myself, I grabbed the first two on the stack and fled.

    My new cold frame lids.
    My new cold frame lids. The white ones. The brown ones I got at a salvage reuse STORE before I understood. Besides, they don’t have windows in them. And they are the garden fence not cold frame parts.

    And there they are. Resting against the garage, the tops of my cold frames. Now. Now I am on the lookout for junky old bookcases to act as the frame of the cold frames. They always show up around this time of year when the college students move in and out. I just have to be patient. And quick.

    The garden today. Notice the grapeless vines, the pear-less trees, the unripe tomatoes. Frederico the Falcon is NOT deterring the pest.
    The garden today. Notice the grapeless vines, the pear-less trees, the unripe tomatoes. Frederico the Falcon on the Pergola is NOT deterring the pests.

  • Ten reasons not to buy a used car.

    The plan was simple. Hop in the car. Scoot over the Canadian border to hit the closest Costco and back home for lunch. What? Why Costco specifically? Because friends, they sell Kirkland Signature peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets. And our laboriously imported supply from an Alaskan Costco ran out. Needs must. No other peanut butter stuffed pretzel nugget will do.

    As the mighty Pathfinder heaved itself up and over the arc of the Peace Bridge, the WideEyedSpouse and I witnessed our doom. Cars. Cars as far as the eye could see gleaming in the summer sun, filled with hopeless dead-eyed passengers, lined up in two endless highway lanes out of Canada. On our side the border lines were short, but leaving…leaving was going to be bad. Once you are on the Bridge there is no turning back, no way home that doesn’t include two border crossings. I looked at the Spouse. “Well,” I said, “I guess we can take our time putzing in Costco.”

    What we didn’t know? Saturday marked the start of a major Canadian holiday weekend. I haven’t seen the stats but Ontario was evacuating on Saturday. And after the Costco run we would be evacuating with them, We’d be ok though because after Costco, we would have The Stuffed Nuggets. That’s what we figured anyway.

    What else we didn’t know? The St. Catharine, Ontario Costco does not carry the Kirkland Signature peanut butter stuffed pretzel nuggets.

    Depressed. Hungry. And surrounded by angry and frustrated Canadians, the Spouse and I joined the egress. The Niagara Falls Rainbow Bridge was supposed to be quicker. The line for the Peace Bridge extended for miles on the Canada side. We saw people walking along the traffic for something to do. Car doors were open. “Oh man,” I head the Spouse mutter as I piloted the Pathfinder off of that apocalyptic highway and headed for the Rainbow Bridge, “this is going to be bad.”

    Then we traveled 1.5 miles in 117 minutes of helplessly close people watching before we made it back into the U.S.

    We saw things.  Awful things. Wretched things. The Top 10 reasons to NOT buy a used car, ever again:

    10. shirtless hairy backs

    The summer sun sizzled on the asphalt. Superheated car exhaust blew from thousands of idling engines. It was hot. Some gained comfort by sitting shirtless and sweaty, cradled by their absorbent car seats.

    9. blood soaked gauze

    I watched an ancient man carefully pluck a wad of drooled-up, blood matted gauze from inside his lower lip. He inspected it closely and then it disappeared into the car depths. I watched for a long time and edged closer. I couldn’t see where he put it.

    8. hair follicles

    Wafts of hairs blew from car windows as we sat on the Rainbow Bridge, looking out at the Falls.

    1. sneezes

    So many splashy sneezes.

    6. farted up seats

    And oh, the aromas. Hot asphalt. Exhaust. Digestive gases oozing from nearby cars. “No, you go ahead,” I gestured to a car who wanted the space between me and the fart-mobile ahead in line.

    5. kid residues

    Snot. Drool. Cheerios. Vomit. So many toddlers in the vacation evacuation line, so many kinds of kid residues.

    1. skin scurf

    Dandruff. Eczema. Big heavy flakes like warm greasy snow.

    3. butt sweat

    Please.

    2. scabs

    Pick. Pick. Pick. Brush off.

    1. boogers

    Pick. Flick. Wipe.

    No more used cars. No more summer Saturday trips to Canada.

  • I dreamed of flesh eating beetles.

    I dreamed of flesh eating beetles and mortifying tissue and woke with the sense memory of the smell of decay.

    I blame the Turdus migratorius from yesterday. It wasn’t his fault, poor little robin, that one of the students found him dead on the road and collected him for the lab. It certainly wasn’t his fault that a skilled graduate student showed me how to skin and eviscerate a little songbird using his carcass. We recorded data for science and the permits, and plucked and skinned and removed blobs from inside him using forceps. We wrapped him in cheesecloth (did the cheesecloth company ever imagine such a use?) and put him in the lab fridge to dry out for a couple of days. It made me think of dry aging a nice roast. Might have to hit the butcher later.

    The dermestid tank, the flesh eating beetle habitat, was right next to us while we worked on the bird. Did they watch us prepare their supper? The larvae will creep through the cheesecloth and snack like crazy when we put the robin in there on Saturday. Just think, while you are enjoying your Saturday morning coffee and pastries before tackling the weekend chores, the dermestid larvae will be tying on bibs and settling in for the smorgasborg.

    We’ll have a nice clean skeleton in a week or so. That American Robin, number UBZA-002, will contribute to federally funded research about mutually impactful human and environmental relationships for generations. He’ll visit schools as part of a science class lecture about archaeology. He’ll teach graduate students about bird skeletons. He is transforming from performing flight with wings through physical space to causing flights of mind through ideas and hypotheses.  Is that some kind of bird rapture?

    The WideEyedSpouse won’t let me keep the dermestid tank here in the WideEyedHousehold. He says keeping flesh eating beetles in the basement is like housing a zombie. “If I fall down or something when I’m working out, next thing you know my leg is gone,” he argues. “Er…” I have no response.

  • Nuns and the Cosmos.

    I saw two nuns standing outside a condominium construction project that used to be a giant Catholic church. Back in about 1920 Buffalo was rich. Gangsta rich. More millionaires than any other city in the United States and that was back when a million was a million because a cup of coffee was about nickel and that included your lunch. The 1920s gangsta rich families built and maintained what seems like a thousand fabulously vast glories to God and themselves. The blasted, sinking shells of these vainglories litter the urban landscape. This one, the one with the nuns today, at least was spared generations of bats, birds, and urine-soaked crack mattresses. It is going straight from sins to kitchen sinks in a year.

    So, the nuns. One nun was holding a latte cup and the other had a green baseball hat on over her wimple. Both of them were wearing kicks. Sneakers. And their body postures weren’t all stiff and nunny. One was leaned back gesticulating (with her latte cup) and the other nun sort of bent forward in a laugh. I was reaching to open my car window to entirely violate their privacy by eavesdropping when the light changed and I had to go. I managed to get a look at them though – and here’s the thing. They were young. Like mid 30s. Maybe mid 30s on the outside.

    The nuns.
    The nuns.

    I parked the Pathfinder and shopped my way through the co op where everyone is slightly hipper than everyone else but I was distracted and couldn’t play the concerned hip citizen game very effectively. How do people know how to become a nun? Are there still places that take new nuns? How do people know where to look for them? Secret signs and sigils? Do you need a personal endowment like back in the Medieval day? Was there a Google search in these nuns’ pasts?

    I was stumped. Thunderstruck. Once again awed by the variety of life and the greatness of the human experience. It was too much. I came home and spent a happy 90 minutes cruising the Orion telescope website. I need a Dobsonian or a refractor scope right now to feel properly small again – to shrink humanness back into its tiny speck of consciousness. Nuns, not nuns, Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog, you, me – we are all just cells floating in the universe’s vastiness.

    Now for a glass of wine.