Long Legs and Leaving

Princess Snowbell has luxated kneecaps and is short one vertebra in her spine, but I don't suspect she realizes her shortcomings. Her internal spider gps system leans towards the psychic, her tenacity rivals that of a scout earning a badge. Snowbell wants that spider badge bad.

Watching a dance show that makes my physiognomy weep, this little white minion looks up and cackles. It's that chatter that cats do when observing a victim, perhaps the cat is reciting Henry James as a method of inducing stupor, or maybe the racket is a roster of the intended portion's family history. Something's afoot, achair, aceiling, and upwards gaze reveals a healthy longiddy leggidy brown spotty spider trotting upside down across the ceiling at a fast clip. He is booking. Males are generally slimmer so this gender assumption is most likely correct, as the females are bigger bodied and mean as spit.

Oh frabjous day, croons the cat, and sproings herself up the rolled carpet which is propped against the wall behind the couch. I see her wishing her most heartfelt wish of growing wings in the next fifteen seconds, and I wish I was the fairy godmother to twing her with my wand so she can beat down this invasive bother. Using a bent curtain rod, I thwack at the minniken and it drops ninja like onto one of the wooden masks that hang from the ceiling. Snowbelle has pupils the size of nickels as she watches this ungainly, ineffective swordplay, and is unhappy that I made the spider disappear.

Since last summer, when there was a split in the screen by my bed and spiders entered willy-nilly, I became almost mechanical in my disposal of them. This is because both cats, dear Kai and Snowbelle, would nail the intruders and deposit them ON MY PILLOW. A gift. A prize. A long-legged Valentine. The first one sent me into apoplexy, the second a bit less, and the third was invited to not hog the covers. After a few spiders, sleep seems infinitely more important, and really, the thing only wants to get away and hide someplace. It does not want to bite you or make a nest in your ear. It doesn't even want to be near you.

There are a few spiders, especially the little zebra ones, that will turn and challenge you, waggling those forepaws and clicking their fangs. These endear me with their boldness. One fuzzy rust-colored one was riding on the top of my car, and I blew at it to send it elsewhere. This one, I could see the eyes. It turned to face me and made a small effort of a hop in my direction. Small, not a charge, but a stamping of a foot. I said too bad, bud, and scooted him onto a leafy tract with a paper. Pretty thing, but definite attitude.

Anyhow, the spider in the living room is still alive somewheres, and may reappear this night. This time, I will have Snowbelle harnessed to a pulley on a track in the ceiling so that I can raise and lower her for both our amusement. Really, I will do the job myself, maybe with a broom which is never a good idea for more spiders escape in the broom straws than get squished. Someone should invent a spider swatter that reaches ceilings and in corners, that has a cup to catch the thing as it inevitably drops.

The end of the day, there is soup on the stove and a pillow for my head. Good night, sleep well.

Gather close, young'ns, here is a tender bedtime story from Auntie 2seahorses about three knuckleheads and circular logic.

Prescience

Hovering in layers of clouds I view the building I live in. My vision allows me to see between the molecules of mortar and brick, through plaster, and into the kitchen where the midnight refrigerator has its door awry, open an inch, displaced by a rutabaga. A rutagabaga. A vegetable round, large, dipped in wax, and usually grown in Canada; I enjoy them mashed up half and half with potatoes, or alone with lots of pepper.

This one has decided to escape, and has noodged the door open just enough to raise the inside temperature that when I pour the milk into a bowl of cereal, it comes out in chunks. It was still okay, the souring wasn't that off-setting, and I wasn't going to toss my organic cereal. The rutabaga now has a look at the outside world as it sits on my counter. For some reason the refrigerator didn't come back on immediately, I know nothing about refrigerator languages, but the word reset came into mind.

Visions of the motor being burnt out and the electricity finding some way to set the apartment on fire scared me, so I unplugged a three prong wire from the power strip and shoved towels against the bottom. It's a manual defrost, so there was some buildup of frost. (Ha. "Some" buildup. More like the Arctic North in there. Get a Samoyed over here, quick!). When that melts it will rival a spring cascade in the Alps, salmon will leap up the rapids, and honeymooners will visit the new Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls!! Slowly I turned, step by step inch by inch...

Target had a cooler with wheels on sale to save any vittles able to be rescued, for the debacle I imagined upon entering the apartment involved stinky soaked towels and botulism crawling up the walls. Really, there isn't much worth saving in the fridge, but Martian's insulin needs to be kept cold. I walked in the door, and the towels were dry as a desert breeze. Why?

The fridge was up and running, apparently it had done the mysterious "reset" and kicked back in. What I had unplugged was the freezer, but no harm done there either, for all the items inside stayed crystallized. Good old Refrigerator! My second-hand hero! It was a hand me down from a friend. A dear friend, who I can't be friends with any further for the relationship puts me in Tizzyland regardless of how seductive and talented she is, generously bequeathed the item years ago.

Hand me downs are warriors, usually past their prime in appearances. During the first marriage, we had one that worked valiantly if you hit it with a hammer in the back when you heard the motor stuttering. Little Soldier! It worked well until we moved to another apartment that came with appliances. Can you tell that I am happy that money doesn't have to be shucked out for a new one? I did stop at Sears, which has a nice, smaller size for $600; it has an automatic defrost and is an energy saver. I so don't want to spend that much, for at the end of summer, I hope to get a iMac mini.

Everything is humming. I am not going back to hovering right now, as I want to clean out the fridge of anything else that curdled, fermented, or sprung hair. Maybe later. Later, when the evening creates a natural progression of slowing down, of coming to the end of the day. Then I shall thank the small gods of household appliances for their forbearance, as the refrigerator still breathes and vibrates.

Nothing like a diagnosis to scare the holy into you. This old blood sugar level is creeping upwards to the point where I am now considered prediabetic; runs in the family. At this degree, it is easily controlled by weight loss and Thoughtful Choices, which I am perfectly capable of making. Also stopped at the health food shop to see what's new in wackytown.

One semester of college I invested in an Alternative Medicine course taught by the fellow who patented the omega-3 eggs and is now rolling in cluckybucks. The validity of alternative med is indisputable in many areas, especially regarding plant characteristics. However, grind up a dried sea cucumber and you've lost me, as a sea cucumber is an animal related to snot, and is clearly not a solid cucumber hybrid. You go pick one up and see if I lie.

So, to me there is worth in a visit to the health food place. Like any other place, you must read the labels and compare, and take along a magnifying glass to read the eentsy print listing the amounts of ingredients. I came home with a bottle of "Glucose Helper" capsules and a large container of liquid vitamins that tastes like liquid vitamins. And a carob bar out of a bin that O Caledonia, will not happen again.

You smoosh the stuff around in your mouth, hoping for the carob to mimic chocolate and it just don't happen. It ends up a bitter, grainy paste that no matter how much you try to delude your brain that you are enjoying it, your smarter tongue quits, slams on its hat and goes out the door. It tastes like shattered dreams. So, no more carob here. Ptooey, as they say.

I am going to go feed the fish, and carve the pleco a piece of honeydew. You go find something to feed, be it your animal pal or your literature-hungry brain. Your musically divined soul. Your plants or the birds outside. Your friend. You. Put the dogs up and take a load off. It's the end of the day and city lights are outside the window blinking, glowing. I'm here, I'm here.

Uhf!! Humidity and Hair...

No matter what exotic, lusciously indulgent hair product is employed, this is what I look like by the end of the morning. All I need is the hat.

Addle-posed

A story. I want to come up with a story to tuck my dear readers into a clarifying sense of composure. I could not get to sleep for love nor money last night, so stayed up reading a while hoping the scurrying flip-flop of insomnia would call a truce and go lay down in the corner, good dog. But no. I finished David Sedaris's new book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames, and began Hound of the Baskervilles, which is a very enjoyable read. I have enough books that whoever gets hired for the next household move is going to curse Gutenberg, he should have a boil.

It went on till frustrated, I put the book down and went to the cupboard to find your poor writer a sleeptime sedative. I hadn't taken one in over a year, maybe these were stale and I only took half of a tablet, for it still took time to conk me out. This was crucial as I have to be coherent when working or the children will win, and I need to get up very early.

Not as early as if I had cows to milk, or had to do the crack of dawn report on NPR, "Good morning, this is Carl Kasell." The alarm goes off at five thirty, and I wrestle with angels until six. After the angels leave, I have cats chirruping for breakfast, breathing in my ear. I dreamt I had children in line, ready to leave the cafeteria. They were all purring. I awoke and there was Snowbelle, happy as a peach in fuzz.

I made it through the day, the kids got Twizzlers, got home to fixed plumbing (yay) and settled for a short naparoonie. A snooze. A readjustment of the old internal clock. Oh blessed horizontal sleep. Awoke slowly to the resonance of a repetitive tune whirring in my head like a mechanical wind-up toy stuck against a wall, its energy futile but ambitious. The good thing is that it was a new tune, one recently heard on a favorite radio program at Luxuriamusic.com. Simple and circular, it still peals faintly in the head sort of between the temples, but will soon dissipate as dew from the bloom.

This airy jewel has nothing on other songs that have gotten stuck, and it isn't always the crappy music that gets snagged; for example, I had a three-day on and off gavotte with Hey Jude. Compared with Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog, that's not bad.

But I am tired, I want a glass of milk, I want a story. Tell me a story to make the cobwebs weave a trance, a chimera, an ambition. Make it one of giants who are befuddled by the tiniest babe, or of charms in a basket that change potatoes into sweet brown birds, where youth has patience and age has benevolent wisdom. Throw in a talking animal, a pool in the woods, and a village where abundance is available to all and everyone is taken care of and appreciates it. Ah, I hear you. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well.

And how are your tomatoes?

This summer has been full of rain, the grass is green and I can hear mycelium growing beneath the soil surface getting ready for the fall fruiting of fungus. The tomatoes at my Dad's haven't had to be watered at all, and the growth around them is frisky and lush. The tomatoes themselves are different this year, seemingly more stalky, less leafy. Fewer blossoms have been pollinated, resulting in not so many little green tomatoes starting, I imagine from the decline in the bee population. The ones that have started are larger.

This circumstance is common all the way to the Eastern Seaboard and Rhode Island, for my friend P just returned back from her parent's home and said the same thing. Another green thumb, D, commiserated with me on the shape of her plants also. Tomato plants are to be frisky as ponies, as lambs frolicking in the sun; they simply are not the robust green pack of leaves as ever.

The Brandywines I planted are indeterminate, which means that the vine continues to grow until frost kills it, and so are able to become taller than I. Usually the element that affects growth the most is sunlight, and I don't wonder if certain necessary wavelengths are being screened out, or if too much of one is being let in.

Well, what I mean is this: think of the rainbow, which is the prismatic raindrop splitting the light into components of the spectrum; each color has it's own length, so there is separation. The color that promotes leafy growth and keeps plants compact is blue, so simply put by someone who has no training in physics, are we running out of blue light? Is it being blocked somehow? Or is there too much red being allowed into the atmosphere, which accounts for the length of the stems? Think of the french fries at the fast food place under the infrared lamps.

Still, the earliest of summer tomatoes are just coming to market, they are a commodity even better than summer corn. Wait. Maybe not, but close. I can put away a half dozen ears without butter, and no way could I eat six tomatoes. But I love a tomato sandwich, on homemade white bread with mayo, no pepper, no salt. Just red red flesh sliced sideways thickly with a bit of a squeeze to knock out some of the seeds.

With an iced tea, what are we talking here? Heaven? You might be right.

Next to the tomatoes grows a mint, and anyone will tell you how tenacious that stuff can be. This is a different one, the leaves are rounded more than pointed, and when my brother runs the lawnmower through it, there is harmony among the planets. However, did I mention that the corm from the rhubarb plant sent up another leaf or two except he ran it over again? I am going to just move the thing to a safer, lawnmower inaccessible area.

Here is Sunday evening, clear and cooler. The spiders are just starting to come out on the screened windows nine stories up. Everything is slowing, the traffic, the clocks, the desire to move about. I shall settle with a book after giving Martian his nightly shot, he doesn't mind a bit and will often come looking for me when it's time--it must make him feel better. It is a thousand times easier to give a cat a needle that to pill one. I am happy, for tonight he would win if it were a battle with swords drawn.

Sleep well, rise early, for the day is coming, the day arrives, and we have good work to do.

Dreamville

In the closet of corpus callosum, I often dream of unseen ghosts, of spirits that tip floors to a slant that sends the rooms contents sideways. Or the spirit brings a freezing atmosphere into the white attic bedroom where I sleep, surrounded by carved wooden windowsills. If the being is in my parent's house behind the plywood wall my Dad built when he actually did convert the attic into bedrooms for us kids, there is a dark sinister feeling of possession that runs through my bones and slows my hands as I retrieve a missing item, usually a glass of milk, as the invisible thing is waiting behind the door to wreak mental havoc. In the dream, I experience the same sensation of fear as I did in the dark as a child. I was a real ball of wax.

I am able to make friends with the slanted floor ghost, placate the freezing air ghost, but there is no reasoning with the spirit inhabiting the area from where I am supposed to get the milk. There are people beyond the door also, dark women in turbans that ignore me, a boy who sits on a stool with a guitar. The milk is allegedly fresh, yet years old, but it must come out so that there is nourishment for either my little brother, my son, or an anonymous, small Hispanic boy. Don't like that dream so much, but who can be choosy? You don't appreciate the good ones if you don't have a clinker every so often.

I love the candy store in the woods dream, where chocolate bunnies and dipped figs are displayed on outdoor tables. The shop is run by foreign, heavy women; usually Russians, and the store is at the midpoint of a horseshoe shaped path in the darkest part of the woods. Leaves and branches hang down over the tables, it is dusk, and the shop is closing but I arrived just in time. Jellies, chestnut pastels, maple and vanilla cremes are all dipped in chocolate, the aroma is deep and dark, the women are pulling in their wares and curling up the awning, but they recognize me and make sure I have a brown paper bag of chocolates to purchase. This vision is short and usually connected to any longer story, but I enjoy the stop.

In some dreams I own a stable of older fifties cars: Pontiacs, Hudsons, LaSalles, DeSotos. Also there are later model Fiats which break down easily but I take them to the garage that lives in this dream and they never take long to fix. Some of the cars are wildly futuristic and look like smooth oblongs with wheels, others are no more than hand-cranked carts that run on the sidewalk. Again, it is a fun vision especially because the bill is never more than $40 for parts, and I get to drive everywhere, able to get out of any snowdrift or muddy rut that exists.

I don't try to figure these out, why flying, why floating on my back down the river, why working sporadically in a restaurant kitchen, hardly showing up for work? There are kittens in the basement and immense sharks in the sea, monstrous shells to collect, and my mother as a woman in her thirties. That is the strangest of all, for in the dream it is known that she was sick, so very ill, but has now gotten better and is up and around. It is odd to acknowledge that she had died, but is now back in better health than ever. For what it is, it is good to see her.

I am ready to sleep, to thud my head down onto the pillow and drift away to some familiar place. There is a dream where a drugstore has put all their Halloween stock on sale, just up the curve from the hot dog stand near the custard place. The streetlights come on and in the early dusk, I am able to go trick or treating even as an adult, no questions asked. I see people that I know going door to door behind masks or with flashlights, some children, many adults in costume, all with bags for loot. There is excitement and blamelessness, we return to our homes bags full.

Sleep well and safe. Dreamville.

Do We Need Newer Gender Pronouns?

During a gender course in college, the one page survey that the class took revealed that I have more manly traits than feminine, not including hair growing in unwanted, unwanted I tell you, places. I was three over the halfway point of foo-foo lace and Barbies, which didn't upset me, but clarified some reasons for certain differences. I should look that paper up, and see if I feel that it still applies.

Case in point: I have never enjoyed playing with dolls, my poor mother tried with a Tiny Tears creation that leaked water out of it's eyes when fed from a bottle. There was also a hole in one butt cheek for urination, why was it so iffy not to put the plastic tubing where a urethra really is, unless that would take America too close to vagina territory? So why have the doll pee to begin with? My doll never had clothing on and was usually under the ton of other stuff I had, like the Zorro outfit Dad got me. My next door cousin loved hers, dressed it, carried it, cooed at it. Mine was fed to the invading wolves or given a toadstool bath.

I kept pet frogs, a red-bellied snake that ate grasshoppers and worms, and dragged home any object that was once part of an animal. Feathers, shed snake skin, woodchuck skulls, rabbit fur, cocoons; my dog brought home a deer leg one fall that I took to school for show and tell. We were way out in the country, no sewer, no garbage pickup, some farmhouses still had no electricity. A deer leg was news, stunk to the high, and maybe three kids brought them in that year. The teacher was gracious for a bit until she said No More Deer Parts. Me and the boys were incensed, the girls were relieved; we went back to large bugs in jars as our Introducing Animals to You Gross Out the Skweemy Kids program.

But to get back to the language of gender, I don't know how we got this far without words describing gender mixes that aren't connived as vulgar. He, she, it. Tranny, dyke, faggot. People make choices on how they want to live based on their inner gut in the best of circumstances, thank goodness society is slowly becoming aware of the false dichotomy of only two sexes. We need new pronouns, or do we not? Would that be trespassing on private matters? Does it confuse medical issues? Should it be regulated only to hermaphrodites or used as a matter of choice? I remember the derision and hoop-dee-do surrounding the introduction of the label "Ms."

If you used "Ms." in front of your name, you might as well smoke those little crooked Italian cigars. Now it's closer to a sign of independence, and there is much less notice or knowingly raised eyebrows when introduced as such. I use it all the time as it was a tough row to hoe becoming single again, and usage seems a source of pride for me.

I like the terms "heshe" or "shehe". Herm and hish? Or should it be something else isolated from the he and she terminology, for instance, "la" or "le"? Are there words in other cultures to define this notion? Let me know if there are, this world is ever growing, nothing ever stays the same. What do you think of this issue, o hipster reader?

Right now, the sun is rising to zenith, I had to get up early to let Sal the plumber in who asked, "Can this wait till Monday?" Sure can, the drip is contained, the drain is holding, I want to go grocery shopping. Sal is a good guy, almost wide as tall, he can come in with his partner that morning. I swear I am sleeping in Sunday. Crows are calling, and a cool summer breeze is lapping over the sill like wavelets. I received a card that said "I miss you more than my taut, sixteen year old ass," in the mail from the adored Scottie, the excellent photographer whose work appears above. Gosh, it's a great day.

Pots and Pans

Re: noisy obnoxious downstairs neighbor,

I came home from work and dropped onto the couch, exhausted because I didn't get enough sleep after your tirade this four a.m. in the morning. Ate an omelet for dinner and went to the computer to write. Knock at my door. "Do you have a flood up here?" It's security and maintenance. I look at the floor and realize I am standing in water.

Got the apartment underneath me pretty bad. Pipe broke loose. Now I am mopping floor. I feel badly, because crazy man below wasn't the one to clean up, I am sure the suffering no-esteem girlfriend did the work. But is this justice? Was this a subliminal action? Do I feel bad because it was them, am happier that it wasn't the sweet 93 year old lady on two?

Yep. Oh, I am a rascal.

Electrical Outage

Thank goodness I don't sleep through the night anymore, in fact, a solid night's sleep worries me not so much with guilt but as if I missed something, or my body is shutting down to a point of coma. The type of wakefulness comes in cycles, where for months I may lie awake for two hours before dropping back, or the other sort of maybe two short bursts of huh? last for maybe five minutes each.

I can sleep through thunderstorms, fire alarms, and games of cat rocket where my body is the launching and landing site, evidenced by cat scratch skid marks on my torso in the morning. Sometimes a dream or an argument from the asshole whose nouns, adjectives, and verbs are variants of the f-word and his girlfriend downstairs will wake me. Actually it can't be an argument if it's one-sided, for I never hear her voice retaliate against this adult bully. If not an argument, he enlightens the remaining tenants with brain piercing sentiment exemplifying the type of rock music played at carnival attractions. I defy him and his stupid music by falling back asleep. Defiant sleeping is art; learn it, use it, be happy in it, especially when you wake up in the morning and drop a number of pots and pans on the linoleum in the bedroom. Oops, you bastard. Crazy thing is, his mother lives with them.

Regardless, the cats come in around five a.m. for a visit during their break on their cat jobs. Hi, how are ya, feel like opening a can of loaf yet? Martian will get right up to my face and pat my mouth, like kittens do with their mothers. Aw cute. Now go away. Go. Good boy, I love you too, leave me alone, just another half hour. Get. He insists for a head scratching, he is sixteen and not destined for too much longer as he is diabetic. I know there is kibble in his dish, he just wants me up so he can hear a can open. I try to be nice, but will hide under the covers until he goes to the end of the bed and flumps down with a deep, impatient exhalation. I have the alarm set for five thirty anyway, so it's not a big deal.

Kai will also stop by around that time, maybe earlier in the four o'clock hour and ask to be put up in the window. Next to the bed is a higher window just beyond their reach and so she will sit underneath looking towards it and say up. She doesn't use the word up, I haven't gone that far, but when I ask her Up? she asserts with a short bark of a meow. You wanna go up? Rowr. I scoop one hand under her ribs, cup her back feet with the other and propel her upwards. As she goes I again say Up, and she replies: Rowr! You may next see us in the Russian kooshka circus.

It's one of those little sideways windows, so it's cracked open just enough for her to stick her head up to the screen for breezes and a view of the lake. Her fat tail hangs down as she watches the lights of the traffic go by. When the old screen let fat city spiders in, she would snatch them up and deliver them near my head. New screen now keeps them separate and safe. There are few physical experiences as intense as waking up to a crisis, for your body is moving before the brain gets back completely online. It can be painful, the synapses frantically are plugging in, neurons are confused, and the sandman has been kicked in the shins by adrenalin. This happens when a feather light brush of spider legs runs over your cheek, and by god, the arachnid is trying to escape and sure doesn't want your company but you aren't interested in justice or The Right Path, only spider certain death.

Spiders on the face end all altruistic morality, the poor creathur gets whomped to a smear, and the cat would like to know what the hell is wrong with you, that was a gift.

Anyway, it was Martian this morning patting my mouth with an orange paw, and thank goodness because the alarm clock was blinking from an electrical outage that occurred about one a.m. The neighbors said an immense thunderstorm passed through but again, I slept like innocence. I have battery run clocks around, so I staggered to find out what time it really was and reset the alarm. It was Martian's usual round of orange pestering at five, so I was happy he had appeared. I can't be late for work.

On the way out to the car in the midst of the asphalt of the lot, a young worm inched its way obviously disorientated. I can only imagine that a bird dropped it, this worm was so far away from any worm-friendly environment, with bits of small stone beginning to stick to its sides. The poor thing was trying, so I picked him/her (we don't have a good pronoun for a being that contains both genders, what's up with that?) up and took herm to the edge where moist soil and wet grass could rehydrate the senses. We need all the worms we can get, everything else is disappearing, we are in big trouble if the little things die out.

The streets were still puddled from the night storm, the grass wet and blossoms flush. Near where I park at work, there is scrap land containing a patch of sweetpeas in bloom amid the garbage. This area once held a building, and remnants of daylilies stick out between the Queen Anne's lace and blue cornflowers. Squirrels have planted black walnut trees, and an old cherry tree hangs at the edge of this lot.

Later in the day on my way to the car, there was a lifeless bump in the road just before the empty field. It bothers me that anything, once dead, should be subjected to further indignity, and cars were carefully going around it, in this tough, inner city neighborhood. Don't tell me people don't care. I walked over and picked up the small cat by it's hind legs, you could tell it hadn't suffered, the initial blow was to the head, and carried it to the field where the thicker growth was and let the taller grass be a shield for the little black and grey body.

It will go back into the earth, the minerals of iron and calcium will be incorporated into the soil where it will supply nutrients to countless beings. This cat and the molecules of chemistry that formed its tissue will break down and yet still exist in blades of timothy, foxtail and red clover. In a thousand years, those molecules will endure, some break down and release heat, others go through the cycle for how long? Science and hippies say we are made of stardust, who knows what other incarnations this cat or any of us undertake? The electricity, however, is gone.

The night is cool and quiet, the sky taking on the deep blue just before the earth's rotation takes us into darkness. You sleep well; any little Martians are sleeping also, dreaming of can openers and fields.

Hot College Girls

I am so sorry, I did send away for a book on how to do this blogging set up since the online directions were in Martian, which I don't speak. Yet. I am not opposed to advertising, but today I noticed a tab for "Hot College Girls" in Dreamville. You don't want a hot college girl, I do grad work online and so don't have my finger on the pulse of trendism, but when I was in college five years ago, the "hot college girls" had the sense of a rubber squeak dog toy. You have never seen a squeak plastic pork chop get out of the way of an oncoming train or plan a career. I sat in front of one of the "HCGs" during a difficult math class, and the main topic yammered at day after day was how many hot (squeaka squeaka) guys she got while working the ticket booth at the hockey game.

Whenever you read the word "hot" in front of the phrase "college girl" from now on I want you to substitute "rubber squeak dog toy". This apology comes because that you should even be subjected to the image of an HCG bothers me, OR THAT I AM perhaps PIMPING HCGS and I am feverishly keying commands to get it the hell off. I am not lucky at this HTML razzmatazz, but will be shortly.

Remember, "rubber squeak dog toy". It will save brain cells you didn't want to lose to begin with.

Balloon

Phobias, we all have them unless we are one of the chosen. I hate heights, that heebie-jeebie sucked into a vortex feeling starts in my calves and my joints lock. I was stranded on a boulder in the Lower Niagara Gorge because everything froze including a certain cerebellum and friends had to literally drag me off the rock. One step too far, I try to be brave and then the ahoogas go off in some foreign world contained deep within the reptilian brain, I lock up so well, you could put me in a Macy's window and drape seasonal clothing on me and I wouldn't move.

Ferris wheels. I love the horizontal view, but for Yahweh's sake, don't make me look down. The rotating sensation is panic inducing only until the car gets to the top and then if it rocks from momentum or the breeze, I lock up. Someone usually has to peel my fingers away from the bar back on earth. Funny thing is, I love an old roller coaster. Not that fricking Wild Mouse or crazy-ass Space Mountain, but a smooth coaster with a couple of anti-gravity drops. Then I talk real big when I get off, as if I just didn't finish screaming like a little girl over at the Ferris wheel and had to have an ice cream cone to calm down.

The most common thing that frightens the bejeesus outta me is an inflated balloon. I hate balloons. I'd rather let a mongoose make a nest in my hair and raise babies than have to be in a room with one balloon in the hands of another person. Balloons by themselves are okay, they are there as silent invited guests and fill space with a supposed gala charm. Then some moron gives one to a child who squishes it, beats on it, or lets it bounce against the sprayed spackle ceiling's sharp points. Or, I could be in line and a wild eyed woman is having twelve hundred of them blown up at the helium canister. As soon as I hear that whoosh, the fight not to claw a hole into the linoleum is on. Do you know how hard it is to act normal in a normal situation when the squirrels are loose?

I am one of the few who cheer when a balloon escapes, string and all, upwards, away from the owner. Yaaaay. Years ago, balloons were filled with plain air and sold on a thin dowel so it was like a grenade at the end of a rapier, and there was no way for the balloon to make a getaway. Toddlers would wave them about, bamming them against the stroller or on Dad's head if they were up on his shoulders. One of those burst, and I would do a standing backflip as if Khruschev just landed an H-bomb.

Before I was eight, one of the exciting occupations of the fifties was to save up boxtops and mail in for prizes. I got plastic rings, a cardstock Jiminy Cricket puppet, and a really fascinating selection of dinosaur balloons, stand-up shapes with cardboard feet. I loved dinosaurs, Mom had a set of Encyclopedias from the University of Knowledge with pictures of pleisiosaurs, duck-bills, stegosaurs, and brontosaurs. It was a special item to send for, as two dollars had to be included along with the boxtop. In those days it could take up to eight weeks--that's two months--to arrive, and two months in adult chronology is seventeen years to a kid.

They came and were large enough that Dad had to blow them up. I was fascinated with the process of the inked image stretching and expanding, and carefully took them to my room. The next day of course they had shrunk, as the porous rubber had allowed air to escape, becoming soft and wrinkled in spots. I undid the knotted ends and blew them back up to proper dino-proportion. A few days of this, and of course the balloons elasticity weakened until, while blowing up the duckbill, BAM! Right in the kisser. I saw stars. This must have been the event that scarred me for life, compounded by both Mom and Dad yelling about taking care of things.

All this came back to me in the adult world where I avoid balloons like the plague, but also Have To Inflate Tires On My Car every so often. People have been killed by overinflated tires. I think I might be next, the way I hop around the car giving little squirts of compressed air and measuring the pressure with the gauge. It can take up to twenty minutes for me to do this routine, for each tire is a container of it's own Black Death. I don't want to piss the tire off. The air is invisible, and you can only measure it after you put it inside the tire itself. I lead an exciting life.

I can fill up a balloon with bird seed to make a juggling ball, otherwise, there is not one good functional reason for a recreational balloon to exist. I do a balloon experiment in class, of course the children are not afraid of it, but as soon as they smell my fear they realize that they can chase me around with the balloon, and that I will run until I can safely maneuver the thing over to the sink and put a teensy hole near the stem and let the angry air out slowly. The kids laugh at me, but I tell them everybody's got something and then say surprise spelling quiz.

It is forecast to be a cool night, the regional low may hit 59 degrees. You might want a blanket near the foot of the bed, just in case. Sound sleep till morning. Love to all.

Kissing Aunt Mildred

Oh let me sing you a song of youth, when I could bounce quarters off my stomach, it was such a trampoline like structure. Now if you toss one, it is absorbed into coconut drifts. Shake me and you get change for a five. The navel used to be a vertical slit upon the concave plain of abdomen, presently it sits sideways and looks sulky. The tatts I have on my back are beginning to fold in half, and it is starting to look like a good idea to pull up from the scalp and twist tie the excess skin in a knot on top. Enjoy, enjoy, oh best beloveds, for gravity wins.

I was sassy when my first job at the Twin Fair snackbar allowed me financial whee to purchase granny glasses and granny boots. The dam broke and the years of being huddled under a rock whiplashed onto a festive Yardley and Mary Quant holiday. I put on make up for the first time in my life at eighteen. Actually, my wild girlfriend painted me up before we walked ourselves over to a local bar. I so thoroughly regret the bar days, but that's another post with a lot of self-analysis, I was experiencing a rush of independence that eventually became a rut of stagnation. No ideas, no successes, no development of critical thought. Time does bite.

My second job fomented facially creative bliss as a cosmetician at a semi-elegant department store. I worked several cosmetic lines at once, all the leftovers no one else wanted. The companies would send you an allowance anywhere from $15 to $50 so you could choose products to try. I had to be conservative at work--one matron blew me in to the office for my black nail polish (early seventies, mind)--but Saturday night was glorious opportunity to shock and display.

I was born under the star sign of Elizabeth Taylor which meant I inherited my mother's sense of movie glamour. She had the blue creme stick eyeshadow and black pencil eyeliner, white powder under the arched brow; coral lipstick and rouge. I stepped up to the plate and swung into oranges combined with purple swashes of shadow, lips painted and glossed, gold metallics on cheeks and under the eye, that pearlized highlighter stuff on the upper lip, bright green mascara worn with dark green false eyelashes. Va va voom.

I rarely wear the stuff now, what a turn of events. Blush, lipstick and out the door; as a teacher, you have more power over children and can scare them a lot more if you don't wear makeup. Put on a sleeveless top so that arm hang flops back and forth and wear sneakers so they know you can run fast after them. It provokes thought, and they will hesitate for they know if you aren't wearing make up and freely let arm flab jiggle, that you have no fear of them. Let them look, wrinkles frighten them; you think of a time in childhood when you had to go up close to an old person, it's really a lot to ask of a kid.

Not only am I wrinkly and saggy, but I have moles and I can't tell you the advantages it promotes in my favor. Sometimes I put my finger on the large one and wiggle it back and forth, using a tiny tiny mole voice to say, "Pick up that pencil and get busy, or I'll get you." The kids don't know whether to laugh or cry. If they really get nasty, I tell them that I'll put the mole in their lunch.

Adaptation

Here is a cup of water,
I say to my mother
who has turned inside herself
so much, she had curled into
a pink snail, a little pink snail
with a curved spine, and arms and
legs brought up to her chest.
She opens her mouth like
little birds open their mouths-
expectant, scrawny necks swaying
for Mama bird to pour in the water
or pureed carrots.

Her eyes, her face, are beautiful
and follow me as I enter
her field of vision;
her field of crickets and
wild strawberries strung on a stem
of wild grass in Clarence,
her clothespins and laundry
basket flung up in the air
when a crazy rat snake
curved through the grass
laughing to himself,
gitchee gitchee gotcha.

I found his poor bones scorched
after fire took the field
down to burnt stubble, with Mama
scooping buckets out the crick
to stave off consequences.
I tied them as black crossbones
and hung them from my kite,
giving the rat snake a taste
of his own medicine
as he flew up into the air.
Look, Mama, look.

She now sails by morphine winds
that come in the night,
over fields that whistle and pulse,
her coiled shell shed,
her gaze as clear as Athena's.
Come along snake, she says,
let's go. They ride
in the tossed up laundry basket,
with diadems at her feet
and the wind flowing billow
through her hair

Totems

Part of the expressway that dissects the city wends it's way through Delaware Park in meandering s-curves, I imagine to slow traffic down. Also you get to view two buildings from the time of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, one of which is now the Historical Society, placed facing a section of Scajacquada Creek that also slows to form a shallow pool before carrying on.

I am driving along the curves where a month earlier I saw a wild tom turkey hunting and pecking at the gravel beside the road. Looking past the embankment which borders the pool, I saw what appeared as a sliver of white, bright white that is rarely seen in this city of grays and greens. Like a zoetrope, the thin saplings blocked a clear view but strobed the image into compartments of vision, and this is what I saw: an egret, a crook-necked egret tall and white with a yellow bill and legs. Such things are rarely heard of around here, especially next to a thoroughfare of vehicles; we have herons and bitterns which elicit comments from us cityfolk, but this egret was a deviance of paradigmic proportion.

He or she stood in the water in front of the massive columns of the Historical building within the part of the grounds landscaped as tribute to our sister city of Kanazawa, Japan. The stone lantern and weeping cherry trees at the water's edge lent the bird an aura of mysticism, its feng-shui was rocking the town. Two years ago, that area was famous for housing an alligator that someone had dumped until the police caught him four days later. People also set their unused goldfish free into the Scajacquada and they seem to survive; if you walk through the adjoining cemetery and pause on the footbridge, you will view bright orange survivors of the toss-a-ball-into-the-fishbowl-with-colored-water-at-the-carnival crowd.

The animals insert themselves into our lives everywhere, invited or not. Humans, through fascination and attraction, have used them as icons of trait for centuries. What would you choose? Which animals could represent your history in cedar carvings? A totem, an egret, an alligator, a turkey? Truth be told, I wouldn't use any of those, my life hasn't been that elegant.

My totem would head off with a cat, no five cats, no twenty cats, twenty cat heads mooshed together like a feline hydra, each given a special charm to hold in its mouth. There would be a sparrow charm, a mouse charm, and a slice of ham charm. A scrumpled paper ball, catnip, earrings, and a squirt of Reddi-whip are also lucky. Under Hydracat would come a squirrel for the complacent, semitame Squirrelgirl that used to climb up one's leg for a walnut, representing my job and the current pay received.

Under the squirrel there could be a nice wedge of Cheddar cheese, or Swiss, or Havarti. Aw, just put in a cheese platter with some cut up apple wedges and pears. Mmm. There should be a pair of seahorses that symbolize my ocean fixation, and the bottom support animal/thing would most likely be a Whitman's Sampler of Assorted Chocolates, because I am so grateful that they map out the candy for you on the inside cover. I really don't like mysteries, they always end up hitting you over the head. That molasses one goes right into the wastebasket until later when I dig it back out.

The evening is coming, and tonight I admit the agenda includes "Antiques Roadshow" where I watch stuff that Grandma threw out as crap being estimated at a price able to get you an island off the Carolinas. Oh breezes, oh sand, oh soft nights of changing moon, neap and ebb. Sleep well.

Finger Licking Good

I forgot, I forgot, but tomorrow I may be cursing my lack of focus. On Friday I bought a tray of chicken thighs and didn't get home until an hour later. Didn't have a insulated bag with me, I was forty-five minutes away from home, the chicken was a good deal, I put it in the backseat with the air conditioner on blast.

Today is Sunday, I pulled the package out of the fridge and cracked open the plastic. It's one step beyond fresh, a bit ammoniated, just a tad. I am taking the chance, god forbid that ten dollars of chicken gets tossed. Well. Here is thought process numbah one: I have worked in many restaurants, it was an interesting job with interesting night people, transients, travelers, and transsexuals. If you ever could guess what happened to your food before plate and garnish, you would buy a plot of land and raise goats as an appealing alternative.

Believe me, for I have worked in some of the fin-eer restoorantes, bwana. It isn't true in every case, but always remember, the owner is in a business to make money, and little, little, dear reader, goes to waste unless you work the wee wee hours and witness dishwashers throwing out the bins of dirty dishes into the dumpster because they are dog tired, overworked, and aren't stoned anymore. Ergo, you also would be surprised at what won't kill you, and therefore I am resurrecting the chicken.

Thought process secundo: who on this planet truly has refrigeration? India and Mexico, for example, dress their palates in vibrant, bacteria-killing spices designed to distract your sensory systems from the fact that the basic ingredients were really fresh once, however not all at the same time and not today. Not only that, let's go beyond refrigeration. Close your eyes, but not for long otherwise you couldn't read this, brother and sister, and it's possibly relevant. Tell you what, Google "Indian toilet" to find out. After my initial reading, I went into the bathroom and kissed the toilet paper. You won't look at munjoo patal samosas the same again until you check out the kitchen to make sure it isn't a kidnapped indentured villager working off a bondage debt. Check see if their fingernails are short.

Anyway, I disbelieve that there will be an outbreak of salmonella from this one toe over the line chicken. Anything growing is now dead and mummified with a poultice of curry powder, cinnamon, ginger, garlic and onion and smells terrific. Mmmmm. Come on over! Really, the curry recipe is direct from a Vietnamese friend in Chicago who also introduced me to shrimp paste. Meat is very scarce for most people so nothing goes to waste; to cover any oddities promoted by jungle temperatures, you saute it in a mixture of lemon grass and this shrimp business. Far as I know, it hasn't killed anyone. They still sell it in the Asian markets, it's just that I'm not buying any. Raw shrimp are salted, dried, ground, rotted and formed into cakes, maybe I'll try it again later.

It's after six o' clock and other people in this building are cooking Sunday suppers. Today I visited Dad who had a conversational fixation with transsexualism, he's eighty-three and began by asking me if I knew what a blankblankblank was. He watches the Christian channel and apparently there was a report on sex change operations. I am not going into it, it was squirmy and fortunately I was able to quickly distract him with fruit on the bottom yogurt shopping questions; facing funky chicken for dinner is nothing in comparison.

You have a lovely evening--kiss someone or something, even if it's the toilet paper. Good night, good peaceful night.

Bits

This morning on the way out of the apartment, someone had put a giant plush duck doll in one of the lawn chairs. Dokey. I turned back to look and getting a frontal view saw a 16-ounce red plastic cup jammed in it's crotch, so I know it wasn't one of the neighbors. The duck is still there but without the codpiece, which is now upright on the table.

Today I found a penny in the parking lot. Then I found eight pennies next to the vacuum at the do-it-yourself car wash, as if someone threw them away. Inside the bay where the spray hoses are, there was a nickel on the ground. I made fourteen cents without even trying. Thank you, mostly people who throw away money.

Starlings are arriving on window ledges of the apartment building in search of spiders, of which there is a fat, abundant, segmented hairy leg crop this year. One young bird came close and pecked my window screen, his little brown head eye level with a bouquet of cats. Two of the cats looked back at me, seemingly worried, does the bird need rescuing? Kai is the mom cat you see on Cute Overload.com, washing the orphan bunny, parakeet, or rhinoceros calf. Tulip is also a mothering sort and will stay awake until two in the morning worrying about world hunger. The third cat, Princess Snowbell, declared dinner, murder, and chose a Cabernet. No one can get to the screen; I open windows from the top around here since we are up on the ninth floor.

The cherries are done, I have pitted eight quarts which are now in the freezer. Two years ago I ordered a cherry pitter that has a hopper and a plunger, after my older hand model that looked like a nutcracker broke its spring. That was the year I did thirty pounds of cherries by hand, but it was worth every splat. This newer edition screws to the counter, you load it up and start crucifying cherries; the plunger has an x-shaped blade to push out the pit, lifts the remaining cherry up over a plastic barrier, and you have a finished product with much less angst and no staying up till eleven to finish.

Take a look at women who do home canning and preserving, they usually have great complexions from the steam. My mom used to can tomatoes, peaches, and make chili sauce in mid-August with a hot water bath canner. You peel the tomatoes by dunking them in a pot of ever-boiling water. If you are putting up twenty quarts of tomatoes that's a heckuva lot of boiling water, and that's step two, after you have sterilized the glass mason jars in a boiling water bath first. You put the cut tomatoes into the jars with a spoon of salt and fasten the lids. Then you load them up into a gargantuan blue and spotty white tank of boiling water, throw on the lid and wait fifteen minutes. You go through all this folderol and still don't know if you made it. If the center of the lid doesn't pop down upon cooling, you have to open it, wipe down the lip of the jar, give it a fresh lid, and reprocess.

By this time you are dead tired and look like watery hell, but every last tomato ends up processed. The jars sit on the counter all lined up in red glassed bounty, you go get the husband to show him, he comes out with "Those look good, but what's for dinner?" and you would like to conk him one.

I don't really can anymore except for an occasional jar of applesauce, it makes no sense for me, but I do put up strawberries, blueberries and cherries. Nothing like a pie in mid-winter, or fruit mixed in with cereal, or the recipe for blueberry muffins with a not too sweet orange glaze. All the good news regarding antioxidants is nice, but not the impetus for storage. Maybe it's a residual hunter/gatherer instinct that makes me happy socking away wild leeks and fruits in season. I get a kick out of viewing the Home Canning display at the local county fair, where one of the goals is to demonstrate the makings of an entire meal with food you have canned. I have seen beef in glass jars and lived, but that's getting into a scary science involving pressure canners and your own cattle. You could wipe out a whole branch of relatives with one casserole.

It is night, and a wash of rain has cleared the air of humidity. The temperature has cooled, and breezes are slipping quietly over the windowsill. Sleep, when I will think of you. And pie.

Baby, It's Summer

This weekend we have Canal Fest, The Italian Festival, the Polish Festival, and Burgerfest in Hamburg, New York, all complete with carnival rides, games of chance and capital F Food. Come to Buffalo, and I guarantee you put on fifteen pounds...sure we have a few pricey restaurants, but the mainstay around here is home cooking. Best pizza in the world, char broiled hots, fish fries, beef on weck, and wings (they are so easy, I have no idea how people mess them up but they do). We lack only in seafood and I would like a good, small Greek taverna to find a home here. We do have good Greek restaurants, but if you want exceptional Greek you drive up to Toronto where geometric honey-soused pastries are born in tiny flowers and gathered by bee maidens. As I was saying, you will add more weight during summer than winter in these climes, winter burns the pounds trying to stay warm and finding the car. Not only American cuisine will call you, but this region is near enough to Canada (I can see you, Canada, if I stand on my bathtub and look out the window) so you can learn to put gravy on french fries and to prefer tea with your tourtiere. Having lived here and there, I still say this city has it hands down on any part of the country east of the Mississippi. I know, those may be considered fightin' words; just tell me your side of the menu, I am always ready for debate. But I lived in Florida where the citrus will knock you in the head as you walk down the sidewalk, big, ugly misshapen lemons that make the loveliest lemon meringue pies of which I am Queen 47. We were near penniless, but I found inexpensive lemons and eggs at Webb's. We had pie all the time. You could purchase what was called bait shrimp for cents from the Gulf, but is renamed as "$13.99 a pound" up north. Coconuts, oranges, bananas, and cheap fish held us together. I drank Donald Duck orange juice by the quart, which at the time was thirty three cents a frozen concentrate can. Directly from Florida we moved to opportunity in Chicago to work a Cafe. I made the soup of the day in immense restaurant-sized pots in an illegal kitchen in the basement. I learned to crack eggs single handed by fours for the nine-dozen salad dressing recipe, and was also in charge of the pastry case. The company ordered the pastry from Lutz's, a renowned German confectionery just to the north of Chicago. My heavens, the Bienerstich, the Schwartzwelder kirschtoffen, the Japonaise, the Punschtorte. Oh la. We were able to live in Greek Town, which also had Jewish delis where I had the best chicken livers lightly dusted with flour and sauteed in butter on toast. I have forgotten the name of the Greek restaurant, but the souvlaki and gyro sandwiches have never met their match, liberally drizzled in tzatziki and wrapped in waxed paper. The best food item in Chicago are easily the sausages sent in from Wisconsin, bratwursts, knackwursts, and frankfurters on toasted rolls, sometimes wrapped in bacon, bursting juices through their skins. Now I am going to get to the kitchen to put up the eight quarts of sour cherries purchased this morning. They are beautiful, and reflect waves of light from the individual prisms in their exteriors into a translucence of summer coral. See you later, perhaps, full of cherry nectars.

Feet, Keep Moving

Pick it up, clomp. Pick it up, clomp. That is the sound of you putting one foot in front of the other in spite of your brain which is threatening to sue if you don't sit your ass down and feed it a pack of Ring Dings. I'm not sure if that's the name, the confection is a miniature cake covered in raspberry puree, rolled in coconut with a creamy filling. The material in the filling is also used as flame retardant in jammies. Now, forget the cake, get on with making yourself move in some direction, take a breath and move. I don't care if you are cleaning out a drawer, watching traffic out a window, or writing in blood with a toothpick. Here is a secret: I once had a crush on Fred Rogers, but it was Something and it was mine. I waited for that man.

It kept me going in a small way, this one thing, and lifted me. Doesn't he ever use a lint brush? His hair is always combed, his sneakers right where he left them. Fred defined a sort of ordered universe full of deliberate blandness and not too many pointy objects. Oh sure, he had a script and a stage crew that defuzzed his sweaters and made sure his footwear was right where he wanted it. That part was reality, I wanted the calming fantasy of things in their proper places.

Yet, I couldn't have lived with him; I would have woken up one night next to Fred in Bed, and next be out in the kitchen atop the granite counter pouring hollaback words on the floor in Hershey's syrup, I'm that kind of gal. Order eludes me, the only thing in a row over here are the eggs in the refrigerator, too much order and I pop. Watching Fred do it on television was calming and held up an example that I could aspire to; and even though he didn't know me, I felt that he was rooting for me.

What do you have, what do you look for? Which routine of the day has not become a rut or a crutch but is a goal, a challenge, a movement? Lift your head and look about, you probably are already doing it without realization, this moving forwards and back, to and fro, dilly dallying, shilly shallying, progressive lollygagging or tarry-no-furthering. We're talking small here, a charm, a rune, a wish, a feather, a green light. They add up. As long as you look for them, that is evolution, that is hope, that is the desire to be.

Deedle deedle dumpling, my dear son John. One shoe off. Sleep, gingham dog, sleep calico cat.

Ocean

Ocean, O ocean. I collect sea shells, which means an animal has to die in order for us to acquire its exoskeleton, the shell. Most are ground up into fertilizer or used as food, no part goes to waste, only to pain. I cannot resolve it, everybody eats everybody else, if only it didn't hurt, if only pork chops and chicken came like manna with the morning dew. Once they come close to successful petri dish meat, I will flour and fry the shaped mounds to a well done glutinous blobbo and eat without guilt. Until then, I remain carnivorous with boundaries. No veal, for instance.

I receive a list from a dealer located in the panhandle of Florida, that catalogs shells he is offering each month. The roster names the shells within their families, beginning with the univalves Buccinadae, Conus, Cypraea, Murex, Strombus, for example, and ending with available bivalves. Univalve defines as one shell, like unicorn for one horn. A bivalve is a two-sided clam, as a bicycle has two wheels. I am basically a univalve gal, but could possibly be persuaded towards a /bi/ attraction. Ha. Thin pun, not really, I love hetero sex, if there were any lying around here. As I said, we are in the univalve world. Figure that out and don't call me.

Anyways, Ed the dealer had a listing of an oversized Tonna galea and I ordered it. All you have from his list is a print description including condition, size, and site where it was found. You can request a picture by email, but Ed has always sent exceptional specimens and also has a generous return policy. You pay after he sends you the shell and you approve. This one was enchanting beyond many, simply colored with a dull brown exterior and white inside, the beauty of it contained in the thinness of the laterally ribbed exterior, that an animal withstood current and predator and produced a whorl of calcium as its home, refined as a porcelain leaf.

It is a large one, I will post a pic on Dreamville later, maybe tomorrow. Yes, I put the shell to my ear, yes I pretend it's the ocean. When I want a quick rinse of meditation, I hold a shell to each ear, culling the sounds of the room into a spiral hum that puts me at the edge of the foam, watching the tiny coquinas dig back into wet sand as bladderwort scuds over my feet. It is a hum people have listened to for centuries, it is ethereal and logical science at the same time.

Regardless of thorough cleaning, a decent shell is imbued with ocean, salt and remnants of the snail creator. It pulls me again, away and to soothing, and I pushed my nose as far into the Tonna as I could, as if trying to crawl from whence I came, and breathed. There are a number of places that are the best for inhaling: the skin of someone you love, not necessarily erotically; the center of a leafy plant, loaded with exhalations of oxygen--you may have seen me diving my head into the begonia--no scent, but it's a cheap oxygen bar; the last best place in my compendium of smelling places is the ocean, the salt ocean where every drop of water is its own universe.

I have yet to attempt freezing ocean water so that I can puddle my senses in the winter, another alternative might be to purchase marine salt at the fish store and make that into a briny aromatherapy. The easiest is to get a sea shell with a deep curve that holds residual grains of sand and salt and animal. I asked Ed if he had a Pleuroploca, a Horse Conch, the state shell of Florida which in the old days could grow to a whopping two feet long. Yes he did, it was sixteen inches and still had the periostracum, an outer covering similar to our cuticles. This means it was extra stinky. Oh boy for me!

It arrived yesterday, an orange steeple under a dried skin of dark brown proteins, carefully wrapped and containing a operculum, the door the mollusk closes when it pulls all the way in. I have thus sat on the couch, holding this hefty monster up to my face and breathing, breathing, inhaling as if I were a hound, spinning into the sound of ocean and the womb we came from.

The cats thought I had food, checked the scene out and left, shaking their paws as if they just stepped in water. Maybe they did, maybe the ocean was there, the waves roiling, spray escaping onto solid floor; salt, magnesium, potassium, and sulfate. O ocean!

The ocean cradles life and force, tides cycle with the pull of the moon. Let the tides pull you to slumber, to sleep, as the crabs click during crepuscular time, looking for bits of detritus. Sleep and dream of rhythms of salinity, of stars reflected on dark abyssal moods, of schools of luminescent little fish, radiating. They shine for you.

Tempus Fugit

Don't call me on the phone, please don't call me on the phone, I hate phones and avoid them whenever possible. I have a cell phone, but glory be if I know the number...it's used for calling parents from class or for ordering food on the road. I am still not used to people talking as they walk.

Last night a dear friend called me and I spoke of this mild phobia. "Even with friends?"she asked. "Yes, with everybody." "With me? You don't like talking to me?" "No no no, I like talking to you, what I don't like is talking on the phone...." "But why, what do you think people are going to do to you?" "They Ask Me Questions," I said, trying to hurriedly think of something to say to clarify. "But they can't hurt you, they can't reach through the phone! And you know I'm not going to hurt you, I'm a friend! Why is this?" She tried to fix me for three more minutes. I haven't been able to do it in over fifty years. I waved the white flag and made it go away. "It's okay, it's okay, nevermind, really, I'm fine." Stop asking me questions, please.

Look, General Audience, I love you dearly, but I hate talking on the phone. Keep it short, twenty minutes is wonderful. I don't want to know what your daughter in law said to you and how you're plotting revenge when you know she's just plain nasty to begin with but nurse every slight into crisis status because it gives you importance, I know you have not had an easy life, me neither, but for god's sake get a hobby and stop overmedicating yourself and scaring the bejeezus out of the both of us. I don't care a rat's patoot what relatives stopped at the diner on Route 33 and complained about how they got gypped with not enough bananas in their pie and then Aunt Margaret said to her hairdresser's daughter's friend that it wasn't the same as in her time. I especially don't want to hear how your lover from thirty years ago had a schlongka usually found on a Palomino and what you did in the glory days and how many men you could take on because men are idiots after only one thing and your vulva had an IQ better than any of them. Those days are over, thank goodness. Your sexuality was frightening, and your vulva needed to be strapped back in every morning after it ran around the bed sniffing for testosterone. It stole your car keys and drove into the city, trying to snag homeboys from the Seven Eleven on beer runs. Lured them into the backseat with a bag of chips on a string, then made them sing the Meow Mix song.

I am blessed with wonderful friends, but there are a few that like to relate inch by inch every minute detail of conversation and by god, maybe I'm jealous because my memory is not that good. Every look, inhalation, pause, comma, and utterance is reported and I know I'm not the only one having to listen to it. The doctor has suggested that I be tested for ADHD, so maybe I am the fidgets. Forgive me. Now tell me again about the doctor, the boss, the son, the grocery person, the television, the ex husband.

Meow meow meow meow.

This Too, Shall Pass

Today was hot. I sweat. When I sweat, usually what happens is that a kidney stone tucked away in the kidney bank becomes dislodged and wends its way down the tiny tiny tubes that are a size 0. My kidney stones are usually size 12. This pain equals that associated with childbirth, with the end result a M & M shaped disc as big as a cupcake sprinkle but less tasty. My first one was in my thirties, the second was two years ago, and it feels like a third is thinking about traveling south. Fingers crossed, please.

Guy Alert: Female Emotional Stuff and Maybe Girl Bits Ahead. My son and then husband were camping, all of us had just got back from family tent camping in Florida in July. It was beautiful at Fort DeSoto Park, and raccoons jumped into our car as we unpacked. They were smaller and much skinnier than the at home raccoons which can jack your car as they grab marshmallows off the toasting stick and give you the finger. Big, like retrievers, the northern raccoons. These little ones hopped through the trunk and efficiently dug through our packed boxes of food; we knew something was in the backseat, but what? Ha ha, aren't they cute. Now scoot, you little buggers. Ha ha.

Red ibis and white egrets lounged through the warm water of the Gulf, hibiscus big as dinner plates burst open by our tent and drew butterflies artfully daubed by Matisse. We watched dolphins at breakfast from inside a screened-in awning we put up so bitey bugs couldn't reach us. We left for the day, a trip down to Venice Beach where the sand is black from the fossilized deposits of shark teeth, which are in abundance throughout the beach. It is a child's dream fantasy, at least it was Brian's, who was a ten year old shark expert at the time. His face lit up beatifically at the first scoop of sand and teeth, and I thought he might shoot straight to the clouds, his eyes were glowing that much. Can you guess how many fossilized shark's teeth were adopted that day? Many. Many, many, many. We slogged back to the car, booty in tow.

Back at the campsite, the Ha ha raccoons were having a blast investigating the vinyl tablecloth that had residue coffeecake frosting on it. I had Wiped that Damn thing off, thank you, but the glaze of factory produced Sara Lee beckoned alluringly. They had dismantled the screen and presented as little moving bumps under the plastic as we pulled up. You know, dealing with wild animals, you just have to get smarter than them, don't even imagine there is such a thing as human superiority when it comes to intimidation. Not when there is sugar involved. They left quickly, losing their Ha ha raccoon monikers, morphing into those Little Sonsabitches.

But it was hot. In the nineties during the day, in the mid-80's at night. The only way to fall asleep was exhaustion and dull poisoning by the Off! sprayed into the tent after zipping it closed. You get very friendly with chemicals when there are bugs that want to eat you. The heck with hormonal changes and cancer, you could have spread Deet on our burgers like mustard if it would keep the bugs away, meaning the buzzsaw mosquitoes. We melted into our cots for two really great weeks.

Arriving home, son and father went to Scout camp for a get together or jamboree or whatever they have. The next morning, I had a cramp in my right side, took a warm bath, hum de hum, nothing happening, thought it was a female thing. Cramp accelerated from zero to one hundred sixty and breakfast came up. Drove myself to the doctor's, and was flipped around on a metal table under the x-ray--combined with the previous week's Deet, I'm surprised I wasn't ticking--and ultimately whisked off to the hospital.

They gave me n-o-t-h-i-n-g for pain except Tylenol, which was like tossing an aspirin into the Grand Canyon, and taught me to pee into a coffee filter thing that would catch any stones that had made the journey. I was surprised, a kidney stone? Thank god that's all it was, but it knocked the sauce out of me. The doctor said the intense heat combined with sweating caused my kidneys to kick one out, it was only a matter of time, but that was a trigger.

Move on up twenty yars, I thought a bladder infection was on its way, and ended up in the hands of a urologist whose first line of action was to examine me for bladder anomalies. I had to drink three quarts of water and not pee. The nurse laid me back on a table, placed a drape over my knees and asked if I liked Cher. No. Sinatra? Okay okay, let's just get going. Next to my bottom was a tray with long, medieval looking metal probes. Pointy at one end, differently sized, they looked like they could hold a rock climber to a granite face.

I was sprayed with a numbing agent, the doctor walked in, picked up a talon, and pounced that thing into Smallville with a flourish. Sinatra yodeled, and the doctor then manipulated a fiber optic through the probe and periscoped each quadrant. He was chatty and fast, to his credit. Things were clear. I was next sent for x-rays, where it was found that another creeping kidney stone was descending. There was no way I wanted to deliver another stone and opted for the Blaster, the sound wave treatment that crumbles the conglomerate into manageable bits.

You are semi-conscious at first before they put you under, and lay in a shallow pool of water ontop a table. A thingamajig is aimed at the area of suspicious involvement and there is a repetitive booming sound before you are knocked completely out. the procedure isn't painful, but truthfully, is it better than just passing the stone as recovery includes peeing half of your spleen out along with the specks of oxalate? You pee tomato jam for over a week and creak around with sore kidneys for longer. You heal, but what on earth does it do to the surrounding organs, I'd like to keep them for as long as possible without pureeing them.

Well, it has been hot as a deuce and it feels familiarly uncomfortable, as if I have a bladder infection. This, I am told, is caused by teeny fragments, crystals, that are sifting their way out but act like sandpaper on the pink parts. You can bet that I am going to drink lots of water and pee in the collapsible screened cup I saved from the last performance. Just to see if anything turns up. All these minerals I've been taking as supplements, perhaps a cubic zirconia may pop out. Don't look too close at my charm bracelet next time you see me.

Sundown, dusk, twilight, evening. Good night, good night, good sleep.

Wild Thing (Vegans Turn Back Now, Please)

Welcome to the Forager's Corner, dear readers, where you shall entertain a list of edibles not often found on the plates of the ultra-sophisticated. Ever since a small chee-ild, the outdoors has fascinated my thoughts and palate, and I can honestly say that I have put things in my mouth not many urbanites have. You can tell me your story tomorrow, tonight we're talking about My Mouth, Not Yours.

Diet was tightly controlled by that Mom person, until we moved to Clarence, New York, otherwise called The Unknown back in the fifties. There lies beneath Clarencian soil a shelf of rock that extends up to Lake Ontario and needs blasting, so until recently, nothing needing a basement was put up. Refined dynamite techniques now create million dollar monster homes on Lanes named Clover, Candlewood, and Deer Run. All the shops are spelled shoppes and the letter /e/ is stuck onto words for an Ol' Timey effect. I honest to god know a pleasant enough person who lives on Candycane Lane. What complex architect planner names a road Candycane unless he/she were screwing the local confectioner? It's all I can figure.

Once we moved to Clarence, I was out in the fields across the crick once Mom decided I wouldn't fall in it. First find shown to me by Mom were the tiny wild strawberries, and you need a lot to make a thimbleful. Red and black raspberries grew on scrapland alongside the road, and wild grapes twined around broken stone fences. Pretty recognizable stuff.

Well, it started me on a Euell Gibbons life of scavenging where if we were lost in the woods, I'm a good one to be lost with. You go and lift rocks in the stream to catch crayfish, snip fern heads for greenery, and tiny sunfish from the quarry to fry in a pan. I was a regular Amazon Annie; a Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. I climbed trees and scooped algae out the crick to throw at my cheeseball girlie girl cousin. Still don't like her, she left her two boys with her first husband to run off to Florida with Guy Number Two, and for that you deserve algae down your back. Who's with me? She always thought she smelled better than me and was probably right as I only got a bath once a week with Spic and Span. Still, you don't leave your kids.

I learned to pick mushrooms (don't try this at home, go to the supermarket), violet leaves, ubiquitous dandelions, partridge berries, chickweed, and purslane. Never tried to catch a bird or mammal, and I soon stopped bothering the fish, they were so friendly and pretty. My aunt and uncle next to us did slaughter chickens. They had a freezer you could fit a Lincoln in, and went to the farmer to get one hundred hens to put up. I helped with the guts, which, guess what, fascinated me.

Us kids stayed away from the treacherous part, and only saw the chicken after it looked pretty much like a chicken you see in the meat department. We learned internal anatomy in five minutes, what you kept and what was tossed. The amazing part was that every once in a while, there would be an unformed egg inside, just held together by a membrane. It reminded me of the man who cut the goose who laid the golden egg open to find the source.

My aunt and uncle only did chickens once, I think it took a toll on all involved. The farms around there raised beef, pigs, and poultry, it was considered pennywise to be self sufficient. There just wasn't money, and they imagined it would feed their family, which it did. We even lived near a restaurant a few miles down that raised their own turkeys out back.

As a reward, my aunt gave me one egg. I carried it home proudly, my mother gasped and threw me into the tub. It scalded her that they only coughed up one egg for my work, what the hell were we going to do with one egg? What's with these people? Six would have been realistic, considering the chicken vestiges in my hair. My parents again chalked it up that my aunt and uncle were "funny," it took me years to realized not funny ha-ha, but funny as being in the back of the refrigerator too long to whit, "this milk has gone funny."

My son told me of a movie he had to watch in high school about the rat hunters of India. These very hungry people were expert at sling-shotting rats which were then deposited in a pile on top of a fire. When done, they would skewer the toasted rats out of the coals and enjoy rat-on-a-stick. Today I taught the sixth graders that Guinea pigs are a staple food in South America. They fainted. I have yet to eat rat or Guinea, and usually keep my adventures to the Plant World these days.

Pax vobiscum.

Lemon Yellow, Orange Orange

Just less than a mile south, a General Mills plant toasts Cheerios on Thursdays. It fills downtown with a sweet homey smell as if Giant Grandma was baking cookies for the kids. The days they bake the Lucky charms I could float right up to heaven. Drive down by the plant and birds are everywhere, the streets are dusted with cereal and grain particles. It was one of the first things noticed when we moved here, this perfume of wheat and sugar, and we breathed deeply, my son and I.

As a child I was due home at five o'clock, we had an early supper. I would trot down the brown sidewalks and since most Moms were housewives in my neighborhood, you could tell what everyone was having for dinner by the smells as you passed each house. Pot roast, spaghetti, ham, baked chicken; if someone had a late start, you would smell frying onions, the start of many suppers. My friend whose mother made her wear therapeutic shoes never had a good dinner smell coming from her house. I think they ate salads and a lot of cream cheese.

It was a particular killer if it was Friday, and the non-Catholic ovens contained succulent, stringy chuck roasts. Mom, also a non-Catholic but voted out as headed for limbo at the time, would fry up eggs and mashed potatoes for Friday repast. For some reason, this combination would appear with that bright orange squash you could buy in blocks in the freezer section. On the plate, it looked godawful. If you mixed everything together, as I had a habit of doing, the mashed, squash and egg yolk blended into pre-Warhol silkscreen colors and was easier to get down. Lots of salt and pepper on that one.

To me, if you want to mix your food, go right ahead as long as you eat it and are not planning anarchy. A good example would be my favorite, canned corn and mashed potatoes. Mom would sort of yell, but I had been such a picky eater that the school sent home notes telling them to beef me up. Since it was a battle to get me to eat meat, the doctor prescribed milkfat; I then received lots of ice cream, which was good. The other side was that at bedtime I was expected to drink a warm cup of milk from my Hopalong Cassidy mug that had a dollop of melted butter on top. This went on until the doctor pronounced me within spitting range of the lower end of the weight percentile of my age group.

I stayed thin until my son was three. After that, it's all a blur and there is no problemo these days regarding gaining weight. I could almost perform mitosis--the action where a single-cell organism divides in two--and make another person. Almost. Sigh. So I have joined Curves at $34 a month and go jump around for a half hour. Then I get to drive home through the blessed atmosphere which is loaded with the aroma of green clovers, yellow stars, and pink hearts mixed with frosted oats.

Sunday night, put your dogs up and turn on the radio. I have washed the bedding today and will dream Tropical Breezes now with Mango laundry detergent dreams tonight. Dream, my sweets.

Air

Sing a song of coolant, a windowful of sky,
BTU's a flowing, freon breezes nigh.
When the AC's going, the cats begin to sing
Now I can put my clothes back on, and dance before the king.

Oh Oysters come and walk with us along the briny beach. I hauled out the old air conditioner and slapped it in the window. Here, the complex charges an extra ten dollars each month for the summer use of one. Piled up college texts balance the machine so it's back end is just touching the window screen, not visible from the outside and then I tape plastic around the remaining side areas so they aren't open. I can't see spending $120 extra dollars a year for AC.

This machine is a hand me down about eleven years old. It has fake plastic wood on the front and still wheezes out cool air to the delight of the cats who are now flopped in front of it. I like it too. Lots. Some nights I will open the sofa bed and sleep in the living room for the sake of the cool air. Tomorrow I may break down and purchase a newer efficient model, and end up paying the extra ten bucks a month. But then, I would have Two air conditioners for rationalization of payments to the landlord. In my mind, that's winning.

Paying money for air, my relatives would have puppies. Just like they don't understand paying money for bottled water which is okay in a pinch, but I generally stick to tap H2O. I mean, this business of Fiji water. For god's sake, isn't that where atomic bombs were tested? You think that radiation has fizzled away in the past sixty-five years? Radiation that has a half life of what, a gabillion years? Your piddle could make a Geiger counter crackle like a Fourth of July warehouse fire from drinking it.

Our city is rumored to have pipes still made of wood for some of the older drains, lead continues to exist in pre-War homes and connections, and at this end of Lake Erie, we are facing every bit of chemistry dumped into the Great Lakes from Superior to the raw sewage run off a block away. Okay, so it's enough to make you crack open a cold one, but my skin does have a glossy sheen no cosmetic counter can produce, usually more often found on a 2008 Chevy.

Who is making the rules, anyhow?

Good gravy, this is the third time I have started this blog tonight. Nothing of note happened today, and I am sleepy from a great batch of rice and beans that I shared with Martian. There was a sale on rainbow sherbet at the grocery, that was a highlight. But, we are gaining an influx of African people, mostly Burundian, who also shop at this store, and it is charming to view the skirts, shawls, and scarves.

A family of six, two adults and four tiny children walked in at the same time as I did this afternoon. Most of the men and boys dress in Westernized garb, but the women and girls wrap up in beautiful, explosive cascades of color. The little girl, maybe five, wore a magenta patterned tunic paired with a pleated plaid skirt and white princess heeled shoes. I was thrilled. It was like looking at a flower. Investigate the combinations of color in nature, and most do not fit into any category of American attire. These newly arrived African and Asian folks bring a sense of the natural, of an identification with nature.

Pink blouses and yellow pants remind me of snapdragons. Maroon and orange together with a band of green are marigolds. Tell me the last time you saw a khaki colored anything, or an object tinted a solid tan that wasn't a rock. Look into a violet or pansy, and there lives purple and yellow close together with black or white in their throats. I'm all for it. My fashion of dress at work has earned me a reputation mostly because I'm rotten at matching things. To me, everything goes together, which saves a hell of a lot of time in the morning when getting dressed. I'm not colorblind, just enthusiastic.

When my son was in high school. one of the teachers would come dressed in cultural garb. She had been to Indonesia and had gotten hold of a dancer's costume with winged shoulders, turned up slippers, all in red and gold brocade. The kids were all WTF!?, but indeed, that is the point. Somewhere down the line, they may remember the angles, the colors, the reasons and reach beyond what they think they already know. Part of our job is shaping this next generation by giving them permission to go outside the lines.

I feel as if I could peel scales from my eyes, O Raphael, where are you? Bring me a fish to remove this optical thickness, archangel. I tumble.

Tatts

I got my first when the divorce became final thirteen years ago as a celebratory endorsement of single life. Everyone said it hurt like hell to get one but since going through childbirth--I don't mean to scare anyone, you will heal--a needle filled with ink is nothing like having a grapefruit sized head come out your birth canal. It really isn't; it's more like the tattoo artist digs out the area with a fork. I had to gasp, in spite of a romanticized conviction that I was joining a circle begun when men wore antlers.

The first was a seahorse on my midback, two years later another seahorse facing that one so that I now look like a violin from the rear. And, I'm done. No more body art for this little duck unless it comes in a box that says L'Oreal No. 56 on it.

I need a dose of ocean, it's been two years since, this has to be planned thoughtfully and I will never take a train again unless in my coffin. To get to Boston from Buffalo, you sit on your arse for most of the fifteen hours it takes. Fifteen hours, people! AmTrak does not own the rails, the freight systems do, so that when a freighter wants to pass, the AmTrak pulls over to the side and waits. Waaaaaiiittts. I knit a dishcloth, wrote a five page story and illustrated a journal with portraits of the cats during the time. I thought it couldn't possibly be that bad. It was.

Plane. If I take a plane to Boston, I can visit for two days, go down to DC to visit my son, and dream on girl, maybe get to the Gulfside of Florida. But that would be very expensive in boarding Marsh, who gets two shots a day of insulin. And plane fare. And food. And and and. The box of fishsticks in the freezer may be as close to seaside as I get. Last year was a broke-down year, so I vicariously went to Japan. Interesting but empty of experience unless you count the first swallow of natto, which triggered a gag reflex that brought up stuff I hadn't seen since 1975.

Well, it will work out. I have invitations to stay at each of the three points on the compass, east, south, and souther. The sky is clear, the afternoon has become early evening all up and down the Eastern seaboard, from Maine to the Keys. People are thinking of supper, maybe the seahorses are too. Swim little fish, swim.

You Want One, You Know You Do

Summertime, when one wishes everyone else were blind so that you could walk around naked except for a loin cloth or penis gourd, whichever is applicable, take your pick. I am just tossing out some knowledge that I have on penis gourds, having taken an Anthropology course from a professor who did field work in the second most savage place found in Papua New Guinea. Studying in the Most savage place would probably have gotten his head knocked off and smoked like jerky.

The people are terrific, from all accounts, yet fight to free their country from the government of Indonesia and Australian control. Instead of calling you a mommafugginger, they call you a dogfugginger. I'm sorry, I just can't type it...was it Norman Mailer that used the word fug? You fugging fuggedy fugger! Where's Carlin when you need him?

I enjoyed the images of dress, the costumes, the expanse of hair and wigs that acclaim status, the paint, the mud daubing, the seashells used for wear and money, and the penis gourd idea. Really, get over it...some tribes use thin ones, other groups prefer large ones that need to be tied. Some curl. Not only a safe place for your penis, but ample enough for tobacco and money. If you go onto the web in search of buying one for around the house, avoid the "authentic" gourdmongers who will try to get sixty of your hard earned dollah dollahs plus shipping for the shoddiest piece of mummery this side of Irian Jaya. The dogfuggingers.

And here is a first: there are no penis gourds to be had on eBay. I was surprised, frankly, and so cannot recommend any reliable merchants or traders for you to barter with. My best advice is either to grow your own or talk to the lady who has a gourd farm near Seagrove, Florida, in the panhandle. I'm sure she's not shy and would love to sell you something. Then, add a bit of string, red is great, and tie one on so to say. Just don't come near my house, I'll set the cats on you.

The jungle calls, the orchids desire to be put behind an ear. Climb into your hut after the stars are out, and bundle into the hammock. Night flowers open, releasing profuse witchery. Be happy. Be well.

Martha Go Away

A week ago I unsubscribed to Martha Stewart's emails, nothing personal, but I Have Never Done Anything She Recommends. All the entrancing crafts, recipes, beauty salon garden tips would receive my oohs and ahhs but cripes, who has the time or the money? Once I realized that I hadn't done a damn thing from her, I also didn't renew my subscription to her stunningly photographed magazine.

Lord yes, I would like to entertain friends under a canopy lit with sparkles and fireflies trapped in jars. We'd laugh and speak eruditely on current topics, or on methods of grinding wheat. Mimsy would bring his famous platter of vegetable noire, and carelessly fall into the koi pond amid the cultivated water chestnuts. Rollicking, I say. But no, never happened, and no one I know is named Mimsy Borogove.

But Martha is reluctant to let a valuable friend depart from under her wing, god knows what could happen and before anyone could get a grip, we'd have ketchup on everything. It's easy to razz on the upper layers of entertaining, and sitting under canopies sounds fun, but I do not have the memory to get all that straight. She won't leave me alone, so the next step is putting her emails in the junk folder, and it hurts.

You know a patriotic cake finished with strawberry stripes and a blueberry field with squished out whipped cream stars would get you the reputation you might prefer over the one you have now, but her persistent cajoling has become the droning note in a bagpipe recital. The flag of cake email gets dumped and you feel crummy and insufficient.

I had my day of grinding my own beef, making the pasta, and cooking down tomatoes from my garden for sauce---really really good, folks. My impetus was my family; there were home baked desserts every night, and I usually didn't get out of the kitchen till eight o'clock with all the cleaning up. "From scratch" was a family anthem on both sides, right after "I got it For Free."

Stuffing a pillowcase with feathers saved from the geese and chickens killed is something my Grandma Pearl did, but that was Those Days, and people didn't complain or they'd get hit. Chicken = dinner, feathers = free. Here in chicken wing country, there was an enterprising noodnik that sold earrings made from the drum and flat chicken bones. You may still be able to snag a pair at the Chicken Wing Festival coming up in August. Stop on over. Just don't crab about the decor, I did it without any supervision, published or otherwise.

Good night to Martha, and good night to every one of you. Let those lids drop and catch a few zzz's. Wake up and drink milk right out of the carton. You rebel, you.

Official Smather Blather

Today was the first day of summer school and one of the hottest days of the year. We are working in a school with no air conditioning or working water fountains; rather than teach the kids, the plan maybe is to dehydrate, grind, and box them into a high protein breakfast cereal. Inner City-O's. Passed Out Child Pops. Wasps Coming in the Open Window Smacks. Smell My Lunch Chex.

Now, to be fair, heat didn't kill me as a child and if you are in my age group the only public buildings that had AC were hospitals and only then sometimes. Department stores, lunch counters, supermarkets, nada. It became more prevalent in the sixties, and the public breathed and shopped even more to get out of the heat from at home. Schools, however, got the firm stare of the Puritan ethic this country has dined on for years.

It was only maybe five--FIVE--years ago that the county installed AC into its nursing home, meanwhile the prisoners up the street have been enjoying cool breezes for as long as I can remember. The squeaky wheel gets oiled. The dangerous crazies got the nice facilities, while Gram and Gramps grew all species of skin rash while sitting in what old people sit in when no one gets you to the bathroom or changes your diaper.

To alleviate the heat, the school is scheduled to get large "Air Transference Systems." Nope, not kidding. It means that giant fans are on their way, hopefully by tomorrow which is said to be another hot one. They will be welcome. And since the water fountains are not working, the city is sending in bottled water for the students, which is nice, but isn't it cheaper to fix the plumbing? There are 500 kids in the school I'm at; that's a lot of hauling AND furthermore, while I am on the soap box, a hell of a lot more plastic. The lunches, too, are shipped in from an outside corporation, I think Marriott, in clear plastic clamshell containers. Plastic is wonderful, but tell me we aren't choking the stuffings out of the ocean, out of the planet. Waxed paper didn't kill me either, back in the day. Grandma is hopping off the soap box now.

Well, even though the kids were uncomfortable, they were pretty affable, many of them good readers that didn't quite make the benchmark reading score of 125 words per minute. I think they just need a brushing up. It will be a fast summer.

Sleep will come quickly tonight, and early. Busy day tomorrow. There would be the days when it would be so hot that people would take pillows and blankets and sleep outside in the yard or the park. You know when in the night you half-awaken, and notice a slip of cool air coming in the window, cutting through the thicker, inside air? It's like water almost; the cats lift their heads to read the news from outside, enjoying the freshness as well. Sleeping outside is like that, except there isn't any thickness at all in the air that flows over you, liquid and serene.

Slumber in Nod then, where all air is clear, sweet, and celestial.