Living Flat

I have roasted a turkey breast and baked a peach cobbler; the newish air conditioner is pumping cold air into the realm, and the piece of bed I ordered on eBay arrived this morning. "Gee, it smells good in there," said the delivery fellow, right after I pulled the dry-rubbed turkey out of the oven. Maybe I should hang a roast above the door and see what I get.

The piece of bed is a pediment for the base of the headboard that Pauline and handy husband Frank repaired for me. It has a similar design, an 1880's Eastlake sort that will need just a bit of jury-rigging to get it in place. You see, for all my sleep curiosity, I have not had a bed for three years, just a hippie-licious mattress. The bed frame broke when I slipped sideways standing on the too large for it mattress while killing a spider, a large, atomic, seaweed sucker. I repaired the window screen to keep leggity visitors o-u-t, got the headboard neatly puzzled back together, and now have to find a mattress that will fit the old, old-fashioned, three-quarter frame.

I pulled the whole bed monster out of the trash years ago, and put some money into it then; necessary hardware, bed rails, some decorative wood appointments remade. The main headboard has two half-inch holes drilled into the top to hold a removal pediment. The one from eBay does not have dowels to fit them, but a curved glue line that once attached it to home base. A joining piece of walnut won't cost much, drill drill, zip zip, done. And then I will have a bed. It really looks nice.

Advantages to a mattress directly on the floor: the only one apparent is when you have pets that need meds, they cannot run and hide under the bed. This actually was very handy, for at the time, Martian was getting two shots of insulin a day, poor love. Gosh I miss him. The rest of it is a mess, no further attraction to sleeping on the floor. I know I have more than most of the people on the planet, but still find the hutzpah to complain. I want a bed on legs. It's warmer in the winter since it's less drafty, it's less likely to be hairballed on since cats generally jump to the floor when yakking, and I will be able to tuck sheets in again.

Going to bed will be easier. Right now I have to step onto the mattress, sort of fold myself down to my knees, forward onto the palms, then plop over to my bottom, and ease down. Getting up is the same thing in reverse, which is particularly damn awkward for a midnight bathroom run. So tomorrow is mattress hunting day.

To get a three-quarter, you have to special order and even then it's no guarantee that it will fit the frame you have; mattresses back in those days weren't so square-cornered, maybe even smushy and filled with oat straw. This frame actually has rounded corners, sooo, my solution is to get a twin mattress and box spring and suck it up. This will leave openings to the slats, which could present hidden danger to running cats and result in a cast for somebody. For that, I will get some sort of material to cover the exposed portions and maybe have an extra area for my happy little friend, the CPAP machine.

Gotta scrub up the wooden piece, and go over it with a dab of linseed oil. After that, more pushing and pulling of the objects inside this apartment, here and there, up and down. But I am happy in these small accomplishments, for not too long ago even one would exhaust me. Now I sleep well, soon will sleep better.

The rainstorms and winds have filled the night with voices we human can only dream of harnessing. No capacitor could capture a pulse of lightning without melting, but perhaps physics could could net the static energies as they build into a discharge; the average thunderstorm releases around 10,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy as water vapor condenses, giving off 600 calories of heat per water droplet. The measurements are stultifying to our current scientific abilities. Go to school kids, we can always use smart people.

I will sleep after the hum of the sun has gone below the horizon and the swallows are starting their night-dives for the masses of insects flitting under lamplight. The green mayflies, so pretty, are out for their brief life. Thick cumulus clouds scutter above city buildings and are headed west towards the sun to be painted delirious roses and golds. Descend to purple, as will I, when beautiful night cloaks our dreams in drowsy hope.

Disruption

Less than an hour ago, the second car accident within the week has occurred outside of my ninth floor window, living as I do next to an elevated highway. The drone of traffic continues night and day and is only totally silent when a snowstorm shuts the city down. Snow also muffles the sound of the rumble, besides which, the apartment windows are mostly shut in winter. Even then, the noise is a perpetual rough hum. The rent is cheap.

Now, right outside my view, the highway splits into a fork, the left side takes you into the south side of the city and on to shopping. The right side is a wonder of construction that I try not to think of when traveling over, for you are following a road built higher than the grain elevators, the Gold Medal mill, the tall trees, or the onetime ship's mast. This is the Skyway, which spews traffic out into the hinterlands of the beginning Alleganies, the south towns, the where-the-hell-am-I-nows. I have totaled a car on the Skyway during a blizzard by sliding sideways into a buckled semi. Mythology says a Yugo was blown over the side and into the river below; reality is that there have been many injuries.

Construction and sight lines were not made for faster cars or the hurry up life of today. Hills block vision into the dips and there is suddenly the back end of a Lincoln being driven by a grandmother on her way to Bible study (this is what caused the jack-knifed semi). The fork in the highway that I live by is a mess of poor planning, for this is where the accidents happen for the most part.

Cars merge at a point several hundred feet just before the lanes split, and it doesn't allow enough time for people to think of where they should be. People are going well over fifty mph, and are either leaving the lane to get to safety for lord know they don't want to end up traveling the length of the Skyway and end up past the old Bethlehem Steel plant, or they are trying to get into those two lanes because they live that way down the lake. It's a curve, one way or the other, and tricky.

Of the many car accidents I have overheard or been in, not one sounded as loud as those depicted in the movies. Few have involved a prolonged screeching of tires or horns blatting; for when it's happening, there really isn't time to sound the horn, both of your hands are wrangling the steering wheel in desperation of avoidance, if you are able to see it coming.

I wonder if this is why there hasn't been the tire screeching...because folks are trying to maneuver, or is it the ABS brakes?

Last week's accident was a loud crash of a smallish pickup truck into the left back corner of a supermarket semi. I can only guess they were trying to switch places without the other knowing, right past the fork where a quick merge is your only hope not to get squished into the guardrail. Not even a squeal of brakes, just a loud bang when the right front of the pickup crunched into the rear end of this double-truck rig. Hazmat had to come out for unknown reasons.

Today, it was the now familiar sound that I recognize as trouble in process. Boof. Boof skip boof skip boof with a noise of a large tin can tumbling. Maybe the boofs are the brakes, which is why the missed beat occurs between compressions. There was a black car flipped on its back in the middle lane just after the fork, and concerned people were spilling out of their own vehicles to assist. The car must have lost control a few feet before, for the rate of speed would have caused it to slide forward on its roof for several yards. Not a witness, I only heard that odd, dull resonance which now causes my heart to pause.

Within five minutes, an off-duty somebody had arrived, after ten, the fire trucks had managed to weave through the jammed lanes of rush-hour traffic. What always surprises me is how things slow down after the firemen clock in. No one runs frantically, at least in the accidents I've seen, but the emergency crews walk deliberately, almost as if they are dreaming. Everyone knows their place, the injured are taken care of, hands are on shoulders. Eyes are looking into each other, which is one of the most connective elements any living being can do.

The driver was taken by stretcher into an ambulance, and was then driven away without the alert of a siren. I watched as two men lassoed the car with the winch of a flatbed truck, and turned it so that it was almost facing the ramp leading to the bed. A few adjustments, and the winch was able to tilt the car up and then one of the crew simply bulled the car all the way over to the way a car usually sits. The fire crew had brooms out and swept up the debris and glass, dumping shards into the newly opened hole in the roof.

Poor little car, poor fellow trying to get somewhere. No one else was involved, so I wonder if it was a blown tire. Everything was finished in less than an hour, then the full rumble of traffic began again at about 6:20 p.m. I was making soup for supper, and had found that the planned broccoli had yellowed (toss), switched recipes, and found that I had no canned corn; scrounged again for vegetables to kidnap and it is delicious. Potatoes, onions, a few tomatoes, old frozen parsley, and a small bag of raw shrimp. Bacon bits. Go me.

I will see my son tomorrow, he's in town for a friend's graduation. Tomorrow will be an early rise, for obviously, grocery shopping is needed and I might go see if the sour cherries are in at the farmer's market. The plecostomus is enjoying the cantaloupe I skewered with a stainless steel spoon and plunged into his realm. He likes me. This is the sort of routine that gets tossed by circumstances when disruption hits. Appreciate it, recognize the comfort of it.

My head will be lucky enough to hit the pillow this night, so far. Cats are fed, soup is done, plants are watered. My little orange tree that has grown from an orange pip is a flourishing foot high. The plecostomus was measured today and is four inches longer than a year ago; he is now seventeen inches and if he gets any larger, I may put tires on him and drive around town.

Sleep with the hum of breath, the crinkle of sheets, the hush of a light blanket. I have companions who purr and exhale soft, wheezy sighs of slumbering delight, who come and go on silent feet throughout midnight hours. You will awake tomorrow to lovely things amid the mundane, but sleep now, sleep deeply, safely. Dreamville is waiting.

Crickets and Hooty Owls

Snowbelle conducts an orchestra of tree frogs in concert; she lifts the sound of primeval croakings to crescendo, turns, bows, then stops out for dining at LeChez FeuxFeux before going back to the loft apartment at the Hillard. Applause surrounds her every move, we wish we had her specialness, her taste, her uncanny timing. This obviously is in her delusional haid until I raise a pillow to flop in her direction with cuss words only grandpas usually know, learned by cleaning carburetors on stubborn Pontiacs. This is the only way I can explain her biting a lovely, miniscule hole in my CPAP tubing, ending in a pressure drop and me waking at 2 in the a. m.

Froggery is only what I can imagine goes on in that cat's noggin, for she sees, hears, and thinks in the sort of logic found in the religious studies department of any university. She's pure white, but not deaf; her part Siamesie-ness evident by azure blue eyes which give no clue to the popcorn carny show inside. Her spine is missing a vertebrae, and the knee caps are luxated which means out of place. Walking is a hoppity gimp with tail in a perpetual sickle shape that swings from side to side of its own barometric readings.

Who knows where other anomalies may occur? She can run, climb, and gave birth to two babies before I found her at the city shelter in a vinyl box with sores on her neck from hanging her head over the edge. But there is something living in that little white head largely unexplored, which causes electrical stops and starts sometimes resulting in bleeding tread marks on me when she bolts. Pedal to the metal, that one.

All the cats are unafraid of the CPAP business that I now employ, and try to cuddle on top of the heated hose which is slid under a blanket to keep condensation down and cats away. Princess @#%$ Snowbelle is the only one who gets that half-lidded look of love in her eyes as she nuzzles the hose and will mouth it, gently, delicately, as if she is trying to pick up the tiniest baby kitten, then chomp.

I now roust her out at earliest inclination once I figured her game, and game it is for unless I am there and hooked up to the air pump, she could care less. And she knows that I know that she knows better. She knows better, I swear. She's not stupid, perhaps it is some mission dictated to her by the brain frogs she carries in her cranial cavity. The finality is that I now have a hose with a hole.

Online, the forum recommends duct tape which is fine with me once I procure some. Surgical tape didn't adhere to the inevitable crevice this teensy pinhole is in, for the thing hissed till morning until the alarm went off. I swore at the cat. The cat didn't stay around to listen. An order through a company on eBay is cheaper than going to my local supplier with free shipping and no tax, and will be here by midweek. Equipment will be sustained by duct tape until then, with a rewrapping of the hose in the makeshift cover of cut-off sweatshirt sleeves tied together, the epitome of living cheaply.

Princess Snowbelle, or Tish, is taking her afternoon nap. She is dreaming of different days and nights, of the evening before the summer solstice brings shorter daylight hours back to the northern hemisphere. Up here on the ninth floor, she may be the only one hearing crickets in the grasses of her dreams; maybe she is catching frogs in her old habitat further down the way in Lakeview where she was named Ashley and had her kittens. She can try to terrorize the others, but now even Tulip the Timid stands up to her, laying in wait to swat her white business with a pawful of even-Steven. I don't blame her, Tish made life hell for Tulip for several years. No one gets hurt, only small things are ever broken.

I have supper at a friend's and made the ubiquitous but always welcome brownies, and there is a rhubarb cake in process. Min is next to me on the arm of the chair, Tulip is on a rug in the hallway near cooler air, away from the warm Sunday in session. I will go get ready and be home later tonight, when the real crickets are naming temperatures, and frogs in the canal near my friend's house in the Old Ward are singing for supper at moonrise.

Sleep well, my friends. There is so much to be and do, be ready, be refreshed, move forward. The cats send their love. Me too.

Seekrits of Min

That morning I felt together, alert, ready steady with a packed lunch and reached for the keys which were not there. Things were going so well, and I know that if keys are missing, it can mean a twenty minute search and rescue. Shook the purse, rechecked pockets, tabletops, dresser tops, and the coffee table in front of the sofa where black and white Min curled in undisturbed somnolence. Did not lift her head as I waggled pillows and lifted edges of papers, swearing in Northern Lights undulations, curtains of Jumping H. Jaysus rippling towards the ceiling.

Offended by vulgarity in others, Min stretched and left as I passed on to the hallway to seek the second level of disappearing things. The first time you swoop through the obvious, the second time you begin peeling away layers of sense and look in long unopened drawers, inside cabinets, where were you dusting yesterday areas of possibility. Behind furniture. Atop the fish tank. You begin to flail. Items fly.

Once through the apartment, I headed back down the hall to begin again methodically, with a flashlight added to reflect lost metal. Already I had purchased a tag that was supposed to respond to whistling with beeps. Neither I nor the tag could hear each other ever as my whistling is ridiculous and the alerting beep was hardly loud enough to startle a hamster. I happily tossed it out.

Having again passed by the living area, I noticed Minerva had left a gift, as if she laid eggs. In her place were the keys; she had been sleeping on my keys. Never have I had a cat sleep on keys, doesn't it poke tender spots? They were warm from her body heat when I picked them up. Scoundrel. I wasn't late to work.

She has never gained an ounce other than normal body weight after I took her in and cleaned her up. She is a talker, not so much as a Siamese does, but yowls and screeches while getting her favorite head rubbing. Now the oldest at fourteen, Minta Minka still rules the roost with the Paw of Little Regard for others rights. Her great love, Martian, passed on last summer; broken hearted, she called for him for months afterwards. She mourned but now is getting on with it by yowling orders or cuffing miscreants and ne'er do wells with a white foot.

Oh I know and some of you do also, that she will see him again in all his orange nonchalance just as I will. In my funny world, that means that someday you will meet him also, after time reloads and eternity folds like a sugared French pancake. If time does fall in a tumble along with gravity, mass, and matter, all we will have to do is meet each other and go over old times. I do hope there is choice, for there are some people I do not want to meet again. I don't think death keeps you from being a jerk. Maybe it's part of that Mobius strip endless loop, where we have opportunities to smooth out imperfection.

So I am going to sleep well this evening. Again, the heat of day is subsiding into a possible stormy night, the best. I love the crashes and lightning bolts from the upper atmosphere, even when electrical crackling by white hot temperature sews my ears and eyes shut. Min is one not to be bothered with a storm, she will be the only one sitting with me as I read before bedtime, when others have melted hiding into the walls. My girl, Min. Tuck into a ball, close eyes and dream of warm grass and orange romance, of midnights on the wooden porch of before, of human voices calling you home.

Cast Iron

My car is muffled, my walnut headboard is reinforced and glued, I found a penny and won a dollar on a scratch-off ticket. In the tub is an arched, cast-iron fireplace front found at the Habitat for Humanity Restore Shop to be followed by the bottom plate. As I rinse the cobwebs from the thing, amounts of fine black dust are running into the drain. Coal dust? Well, I'm excited.

I am beginning to look backwards through the layers of pre-relatives going back to antebellum Pennsylvania, and wondering what they ate for breakfast. You know, my real last name isn't Coburn, that's been bought and paid for...the maiden name was crushed into something it shouldn't represent, and the married name is still our son's, but no memory was wanted there either. Sifting through maternal archives found what has become my last name, it being the maiden name of my great-grandmother Emma, who chewed tobacco and was rumored to be mean as a snake. There are a few pictures of her tiny self next to my tall, skinny great-grandfather, George.

She came from western Pennsylvania, and was a daughter of Chester H. Coburn who, it turns out, was a corporal during the Civil War. He married Phidelia Fish, whose twin sister was named Adelia. People have been having babies since the immense herds of mammoths trundled through Babylon and before, but lord, I can't imagine the number of children women in the 1800's went through birthing and raising. There is a picture of Phidelia and Adelia and they look like hell in tight smocking and tiny ruffles. Just plain worn out, their hair slicked down with bear grease (to keep out nits, said my great Aunt Jennie), and dull stares that would scare the bear into handing over whatever else he had.

Bless their hearts. I have photos and a few tintypes with echoes of names told to me by my grandma's sister. My own grandmother didn't care for her mother and rarely spoke of her, the aforementioned Emma the Miniscule Terror. They all lived in Conneautsville, Crawford County, Pennsylvania before the tannery closed, leading to a move up into Portville, New York. Some then came to Buffalo, others went to Elmira, few stayed in central New York.

Well anyway, the digging for information has me twiddling about in the Victorian and Civil War eras, so finding this fireplace piece has me feeling all cozy and family-like, like big fat maybe relatives of mine once owned a frontpiece similar to the one now in the tub. Back in those days they used mercury, lead, and arsenic in construction of kitchen pots, paints, and mirrors, so I am generally suspect of antiques. Cast iron, I think, is plain old cast iron, nothing there to hurt me or the cats. If you know otherwise, drop me a line.

The plan is to prop it against the wall in the bedroom, and put a painting behind it, maybe a few doodads on the bottom piece that was originally designed to hold a teakettle. Now that the headboard is fixed thanks to a pair of talented, wonderfully kind friends, the Eastlake style bed will be put together, just have to get a mattress that fits its 3/4 frame. Women were generally at the five foot mark, men were about five seven, explaining this odd bed size not as large as a double but wider than a twin. Some day soon, you will find me in bed at eight with a bed cap and cocoa, the cats as well.

We will enjoy looking at the painting of the season slid behind the tasteful fireplace arch, and remark how cozy it is. All the pennies found on streets and sidewalks will have gone towards the new mattress that is our nest during evening time. I am looking forward to it, especially since sleep has become a curious, magical restorative more central to healthy living than I ever imagined.

There have been rambunctious thunderstorms the past two evenings, I do enjoy them; only one of the cats doesn't mind the noise too much. Green life appreciates the rain, and the farmers at the market today complained that everything is bolting sooner than expected because of it. Myself, I am in for the day and will putter at putting things right here and there. I know I will flop down tonight exhausted, dreaming of the bed to be. Tendons and muscles relax gratefully, lids flutter shut, darkness wraps mysteriously around bedposts and chairs, curbs and buildings, blades of grass and curled paws. Sail away, sail away, to fond memories of home and hearth. Good night. Love you so.