wideeyedfunk

Tag: Western New York

  • Rain Delay

    We lost the Mini to car fever yesterday. The WideEyedSpouse struggled heroically for months. Yesterday he succumbed. Yesterday, a bright sunny day perfect for painting a century home, we spent in the air-conditioned comfort of a car dealer’s showroom. The Mini stayed there. We left to rearrange the snow shovels in the garage to fit the new WideEyedMobile. “Tomorrow we’ll work on the house all day,” the Spouse said, staring dreamily in at his new ride.

    But. Rain. Guilt-less, feck-less, fancy-free we fled the Homestead with our Niagara Wine Trail Passports (thanks WideEyedMLB!) in hand and turned left and right for an hour or more, heading east and north into rural western New York. We crossed and crisscrossed the Erie Canal. We skirted Lake Ontario. We saw old houses tumbling down, fixing up, and hovering undecided in a state of quasi-repair. Trucks and Chevys from oldy-time hid half under tarps – rusty butt ends sticking out. Kids played in puddles, trailers huddled in clusters on abandoned farm fields. We breathed deeply of non-city air and wallowed in the joy of the moment.

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  • The ubiquitous Martha Stewart soul.

    The organized and tidy soul of Martha Stewart lives in a camper visiting Allegany State Park in Western New York. The tendencies and preferences of the Martha soul are tempered by local idiosyncracy.

    Tip #1:: An empty cigarette box will keep your q-tips clean and organized during traveling.
    Tip: An empty cigarette box will keep your q-tips clean and organized during traveling.

  • Hello Toilet, Thanks for Being There.

    I’m thinking about toilets this afternoon. Yes, I am feeling just fine, thank you – don’t be crude. I mean I am thinking about toilets, not thinking about using one. I think toilets might be unsung heroes and the porcelain joy of our lives.

    Toilets are there for us. They are always in the same place in the dark night. Toilets are a cool and strong comfort during vile, feverish retching. With their lids down they are nice perch for filing nails, watching kids splash in the tub, resting towels on during dog baths. With one simple push of a lever or a button, everything that is distasteful just disappears. Even when not in use, toilets are witness to privacies of every individual in a household – including guests.

    Toilets greet us, all clean and ours, when we come home. Have you never been happy to be back at your own toilet after some kind of sickening ex-household experience? I mourn the absence of my own toilet when living in the outer wilds. I pine for my own toilet while sharing one with a dozen other people in a field research apartment. Faced with unspeakable highway toilet horrors, I have speculated that when we do develop a molecular transporter, we’ll all use it to get home to our own toilets.

    Three days ago the WideEyedSpouse and I were cruising the country byways on the way to archery class. There, on the side of the road, an abandoned toilet. “Free,” it said.

    Toilet

    We stopped to laugh and take a picture. A few hours later the Spouse noticed the fine print on the Free sign: “to a family who will love me.”

    ToiletClose

    I just felt bad. Poor old toilet. It probably served well for years, keeping secrets, holding steady, only to be tossed on the side of the road for the sake of a fashionable bathroom. Years of use left. Poor old toilet.

    But I mean, ew.