Keep Going

Friday morning I was able to sleep in an extra hour and get up at six instead of five; because of jury duty, zipping over to the school to make sure classwork was in place before reporting to court was necessary.  When you have a long term sub, may God bless them.  My class had a series of different teachers over the week, and from the notes on my desk, several students partied to the video games in their heads consisting of no work and falling out of your chair, ...whee!

And I know what my kids were up to, especially since the large basket of pencils that was on my desk dwindled down to a few broken sticks in two days.  What was left in it were pencils with snapped off points, which any teacher can tell because the break is even, as if done by jamming the pencil between the edges of two desks and levering a quick, painless annihilation.  Oh ye six-year-olds, where have all the pencils gone?  Monday, Viola Swamp will be back, that sort of whee is over.

But this Friday morning there was time, and the banana I had purchased was getting browner and smooshier every five minutes, soon to be useless for its purpose.  You see, there was a video about hair treatments, and the Best of All was said to be concocted of a mashed banana, coconut oil, and honey.  Well, when I was young, all sorts of fruits and vegetables would be pureed and layered on cheeks, feet, cuticles, and teeth.  A beaten egg white would be painted on my face and allowed to dry, cucumbers sliced and placed over the eyes; honey, oatmeal, avocados and more slathered on for a quick complexion fix.  Grocery cosmetics are familiar in my lexicon, so what could go wrong with a banana?

Time.  The banana would be growing blue hair in another day or two if not used
immediately, so I got a bowl and mashed it to bits, which was mistake number one.  I should have pureed it through a sieve.  But heigh ho, I gotta get to court in three hours, shiny hair, here I come.  Coconut oil is somewhere, but I did find the avocado oil, a stalwart stand-in for the requested ingredient.  A good squeeze of honey, minutes of beating, and this stuff is still sort of lumpy, but the train is leaving the station.  I applied the glop through chunks of hair, and wondered if I would smell like a banana in court.  Top everything with a plastic bag to contain the enthusiastic mess, do up the dishes, feed the cats, throw stuff in the pile for AmVets, and fold some laundry.  Bango!  It's shower time, when the hair will be turned into glistening island magic, where you can shake your head like a pony and everything falls back into place.

First, a good long rinsing, more rinsing, and then lathering, scrubbing, rinsing, lathering, scrubbing, rinsing, conditioner, super lay-the-heck-down conditioner, and rinsing, rinsing, rinsing.  The water traveling to the drain looked clear.  Gotta go.  Wrapped head in a towel, brushed teeth and then began to comb out the strands with a wide toothed comb.  Except the comb wasn't exactly going through easily, but met with a few serious snarls that ended with me losing more hair than usual.  Ow, hey, but keep going, now I gotta kick into gear so that I get there in time.

I lean over the sink, and still using the wide toothed comb, begin to blow dry, noticing that the hair is indeed shinier and smoother as the halfway dry point is reached.  Warming the hair as it dries is creating an aroma which smells like Mom has banana bread in the oven.  Maybe that will dissipate when completely done, there are products like that, aren't there?  I stand up from leaning over the sink, and what the heck, it looks like a giant Hershey bar has sneezed into the basin.  What on earth is this brown stuff?

Bits of banana were being flung by the comb as I dried, brown from oxidation and lord knows what.  I looked in the mirror and saw bits of fruit salad in my hair, then looked at the clock; no time.  I am pretty good in staying calm during stupid situations, and live in such fashion that people aren't surprised by what happens.  It's decided to plow onward and get this crap out of my hair, which is definitely showing a healthy sheen most likely because of the avocado oil.  A sacrificial brush is used to remove small bits, which to me as a teacher, look like lice eggs running through the strands.

I get 99% of it out, still smell like a fruit stand, and pull everything back into a knot with a clip, as the illusion of floaty pony hair goes the way of the dodo. Agh.  A quick spritz with eau de foof will hopefully distract from the circus peanut fragrance, a hopeful slap of makeup to make it seem deliberate, and before getting dressed, a run towards the kitchen to make sure a bottle of water is by the door to take.

However, Roger has dug into the Supreme Supper enough to move the paper plate of cat food directly to the spot where my left foot lands.  The black sock is now sporting a healthy dollop of something that could wake the catatonic, and I hop on one foot so as not to spread the godawful fish paste onto the rug. Bananas! Cat food! Swearing does not fix anything.  Peel off the sock, wipe foot with a paper towel, and hop-run back to the bathroom to wash, and hey, look at the time.

I book out the door with everything necessary, and make it through check in before any one else on the jury arrives.  As Alternate #2, me and #1 are sequestered away from those who can deliberate, and my newspaper in which I had planned on doing the puzzles is taken away.  No reading materials.  Except the book of stencils seems to be allowable, and I am able to trace the entire book onto plastic film for later cutting.  I try not to smell like a banana for the sake of everyone around me, but how do you do that?  Scrunching into a tiny ball doesn't change any aromas, all I can do is wait it out; happily, within a couple hours, I no longer waft fruity.

We are given lunch, and cannot leave the room without an escort; we two are called into the courtroom whenever the twelve jurors are, in order to have a written question answered, or to be given instructions as to breaks in the process. But then, back to the room.  At the end, there was a hung jury and a mistrial declared, with 10 not guilty votes, and 2 guilty.  I would have been a not guilty, for the first witness had an axe to grind with the defendant, and lied under oath, for her stories were not consistent with the record or the actual events.  She was the complaining party, and sort of omitted that her boyfriend on probation was at the scene where marijuana and crack were being passed around.

Late in October, my favorite month, yet the trees in the city are just beginning to change colors.  A patch of Coprinus comatus mushrooms are growing by the bus stop next to the parking lot, and it is funny to see a wild bit of nature springing up from the controlled, manicured grass.  They are edible, but no alcohol within 24 hours of ingestion or a severe nausea can set in; these Shaggy Manes were once used as a cure for alcoholism in the late 1800s.  Colonists also would pick them and leave in a bowl as they are a mushroom that desquamates, or melts, into a dark liquid to be used as ink.  It's a pretty thing, and one of the last before winter.

Come, then, dressed for colder nights, longer nights when the constellation Orion come into the skies of the northern hemisphere.  At his feet is the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, the dog star; it absolutely shimmers with intensity, flashing blue and red at a distance of 2.6 parsecs.  It appears as one, yet is actually a binary system of Sirius A, the main star, and Sirius B, a collapsed star that is now a white dwarf.  From our vantage point, it appears as the largest star in the nighttime because of it's closeness; if you watch, the twinkling seems to be furious, almost like flames.

Let the stars flicker above while you drop into your pillow, ready to give in to sleep and what dreams and thoughts arrive.  Sirius the Dog Star hangs in the southwest sky, as part of the collar for Canis Major, an illumination of stories, mysteries, of age, and change.  Trilobites came from 400 million years ago; it has been theorized that Sirius B was once a red giant that shrank to a dwarf, 150 million years back.  What was that night sky like?  How have the stars moved, the grand arms of the galaxy spun?

Here we are, you and I; stone sleeps, the house quiets, the air spills.  Sleep well. Good night.