I’yb sig

Unk. Nobe stubbed ub. Head ag. Teef hurt. Thank you for your sympathy, now to get on with it. In this town of little brain, I found a bag of lemons on sale at the Hispanic grocery for two bucks. Maybe they were sprayed with methilicone sulfide dioxide or ddt in Mexico, but with a head cold, I like a fresh lemon in my tea with honey, and prices usually range from 49 to 99 cents for One Lemon. This sale is a sign from the universe that it wants me to feel better.

Plans for the weekend include sitting on the couch, crawling to the fridge for turkey soup, and sleeping; yes it's that good. This has been coming on since the beginning of the week, and I thought that I dodged it with Neti pot therapy. I hate the neti. Yes, it cleans things out, but damn if it doesn't feel like I am pouring wasp venom in there, it stings so. Hell with that, doesn't improve my disposition.

I've already had my cold for the year, this is an interloper who'd better cycle itself outta here because there are things to do. My alternative, even though it involves sitting up straight, is online shopping, always a whee. Oh-oh, just looked out the window Which Was Clear A Second Ago.

We be having a snowstorm. Since I live downtown next to an expressway and numerous parking lots, one of the ways I can tell if it's snowing at night is that the sky turns orange from reflecting the streetlights. Is that halogen? Mercury? I dunno. My head hurts. Don't even talk to me about money in the water changing the chemistry tonight, who the friday cares. Jesus.

The degree of visibility is determined by how many lights on the buildings can be seen through the storm. Right now the giant imitation if it fell on you you would die Statue of Liberty on top of Liberty Bank is having a hard time making her blinking torch seen. This bank has two towers, each topped by a Statue. God knows how they got them up there, but the torches blink alternately.

I don't even have to look out the window to tell if it is snowing, I have the hearing of a Rottweiler and can tell how prolific it is by the sound of the snowplows clearing the raised highway. A broad scrape means they are getting ready to be clobbered by snow from the southtowns, a deeper rumble indicates piles of snow already on the pavement in amounts that will slow traffic down. Silence means a snow emergency and a travel ban is on. I like the last one, it is the only time I don't hear the semi tractor trailers going by.

I am near a ramp, which required the drivers of large trucks to blast their horns before merging. Also near is an off ramp, calling for employment of the "jake brake" in order to slow down. Brrraaappppuhpuhpuhpuh. Did I mention that this apartment is a two bedroom with utilities included?

Well, kids, I am starting to melt into a oogy but happy homo sapiensis who has had enough of today and wants to sleep. The Liberty Building is not visible at all, nor City Hall, nor the highway, nor the office building that is lit up red and green for Christmas. The sky is a brownish purple orange, the color of something nuclear and radioactive.

I see you later, bubbies. Peaceful evenings, tangerine midnights.

Wishing Well

Yesterday I tossed a pair of pants over the shower curtain bar as I changed into jammies, and a few coins clattered into the empty tub from the pockets. Like a wishing well, I thought, like throwing money into water for a wish. Where did that come from? Are we bribing naiads for favors?

This summer I went to Niagara Falls on the American side where you can get right close to the rapids in places where the roiling water eddies and slows, mere feet from the catastrophic edge. Oh, the embankment is well worn by daredevils who dip their toes in, myself, I wouldn't trust the current or the guy behind me who might push. It is a juxtaposition of calm waters and suicide. Ducks paddle amid small hummocks of sod and reeds in the little cove; not twenty feet away the water smashes against the bedrock of the cataclysm in frothing madness, rumbling the ground beneath your solitary human feet.

Really, to experience the Falls, walk on the American side on Goat Island. Incredibly terrific and there are terraces built to view the water's rush. It can be hypnotizing, but even more so is the amount of money thrown into the fray; it's found back by the ducks, in a humble dry spot near the edge of the WPA concrete construction, and in depths of the water reflecting sunlight. More that one person has been skedaddled and arrested from trying to retrieve coins in less than safe areas.

But think of it, before white people began throwing money over, natives tossed in maidens and young boys. No gold in this area, but I bet a pile of clam beads is down in the abyss. After the missionaries and trappers arrived, who threw in the first ducat or whatever the monetary exchange was at the time? Now take it through the seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds. What sort of coins are at the bottom or jammed in rocks from those time periods?

Even now, the flying eagle quarters and Mercury head dimes must weigh in at a few thousand, Indian head pennies, silver dollars, Liberty Bell half dollars included. It has to be a treasure trove for the numismatic tribe.

Because I have an aquarium and use spoons to anchor down the melon I feed Cadillac, I have learned that silver is highly antibacterial. Using a silver spoon kills all the bacteria within the tank, evidenced by white cloudiness a day later. Not good for the fish, took me a while to figure it out, stainless steel is no problem, the cleaning cycle continues.

In your water pitcher, if you have one that filters the yck out, is a bit of silver so that green stuff doesn't grow up the sides of the container. My question is, what effect is all the silver and copper coinage having on the bacterial environment of the Lower River? Without good bacteria, the gunk stagnates into an anaerobic sluice of pollution and a potential zone unable to support the traditional species of fish with ample oxygenated water.

Tomorrow I will go out and try to annoy people on street corners so that I don't bore you with this science stuff and have a really good story to tell. I am exhausted from the hurdy-gurdy of waking up at 722 this morning when I have to be at work by 755. Guess what I looked like today. Professional was not it.

So, I am finishing up my cards and whatnot, and sitting with Martian who is a bit subdued today, to my concern. Then to bed to bed to bed and sleep sleep sleep. You have pennies in your pocket, you don't have to throw them in water to make a wish. Toss them onto the ground for someone to find. Leave a quarter on a bus stop bench for a traveler. It's a bit of fun, and will come back to you two times over.

Dream on, loves.

Wauf!

I have been fouled, felled, and fella--wait, no no, that's not possible. But here is anarchy! Subdivision! Ferocious, unasked for undermining of my cherished bookmarks and files. Damn these freaking updates!!

Firefox, how can you not trust Firefox! The fritzes that I have been complaining about were in control of everything except the refrigerator and stove. Firefox conveniently offers an update that kicks invasive ass. I succumb, and today when I turn on the electronic hoodoo, my screensaver, Mr. Kitty, has been replaced by the vapid landscaping of Windows XP for crying out loud and where is this from?

I hunt for Mr. Kitty, click on My Pictures to find no one at home, nada, not one little file photo visible in a vast hinterland of white screen. Everything is gone, everything. Now why does a fifty-six year old woman have a kitten screensaver? Because just looking at his face makes me happy, unlike the open grassy supersonic meadow of Windows. That just makes me nervous, who knows what's in that grass, your horse could hit a gopher hole and the both of you would be ass over teacups.

I go to bookmarks which have also been slickered into whatever they're selling, no Reference, Science, Shopping, Animals and Companions, or Klaus Nomi. Shriek!! The saved Klaus pictures are gone! Lyrics, images, kaput. This is violation, they must be in this machine somewhere, click click click. Firefox simply lifts its leg and widdles on my demands for my stuff back. I cannot get onto MSN for email, AIM to frantically IM Brian, or find any semblance of my instilled memory.

I go to poach two eggs for supper, land them in salsa on a corn tortilla with avocado and sit and eat. One of the prepped gourds gets painted in a Keith Haring style, god knows what my son will have to go through to clean out this place once I'm gone, and I then rouse myself back to the computer, ears down, to beat my way onto MySpace and lament.

But Waht? Waht's this?! I started a scan for viruses before leaving, and find a frozen screen upon return; the way out of this is a manual restart after whose flickering screen stabilizes appears MR. KITTY!!! I AM SO HAPPY!!! Everything else is back, and the update is still in place so things are running a bit smoother. Sound is still missing, some images are not loading, but my desktop is fuzzfaced and cute, the kind of cute that washes away the injustices and whining people of the day. Go to hell, says the face, I am cute and you do not matter any further, do not bother my Susan with your emotional instabilities.

Oh yay. Yay. Sigh. It is after nine, have to get to work double early as the head pork chop of the school system is coming in for a visit to see if the seventh and eighth grade can be stuffed into our space. I am turning in. It's been a day, going into work related matters would only cause you to go out and get sterilized and we really don't want that.

December, one of my favorite months only because I think it is the most fun to say. Good night, O things that go bump in the night.

Pie

For those of you not interested in flat baked goods mounded with fillings, there will be a short entertainment at the end. The rest of us will be here in the laboratory doing science stuff with pie. The dark nights and cold winds bring out the baking gene in this northeast city, you can smell the golden crusty goodness all the way to Syracuse.

Actually, that's the General Mills plant where they toast Cheerio's and Lucky Charms. Drive by the loading dock, sparrows are rolling in the gutters too fat to fly from the spilled grains and flour. Sugar up, little buddies, that Cap'n Crunch will keep you warm in the strongest of gales.

However, I came to write to you today about pie, the preferred dessert in my social circles. Cake, yeah yeah yeah, usually dry with overloaded sugared frosting and needs a glass of milk to get it down, little nutrition, wheat, eggs, sugar, butter. It's okay, I haven't ever turned down a cupcake, but pie has no peer. Magna cum laude, is pie.

It ranges from savory pies such as tourtiere, chicken, and quiche to the light pies of meringue to the heavy workhorses such as a mincemeat which you wouldn't turn your nose up at if I made it. Make my own mince, (hitches thumbs in suspenders), and therefore avoid a lot of the icky candied citron that tastes like a lozenge from the bottom of grandma's purse last opened in 1940. Oh mince. While cooking it makes the house smell like Christmas in the European fairy stories and will drag Charles Dickens out of the crypt to sit at the table, if you are interested that sort of thing. It's that good.

I modified the Joy of Cooking recipe and leave out the suet, for god's sake I don't want to kill anyone. And the citron, a little orange and lemon peel is good, but no angelica. Ptooey. I use a round of beef ground twice at the butcher's, sour cherries, pounds of raisins and currants, walnuts, a bit of the aforementioned candied peels, brandy, apples, and a concoction of spices in amounts that could mummify a small animal. Here kitty kitty. My gosh, this is exciting.

The crust is made of flour and butter, salt. I heard on NPR that adding a titch of vodka to the crust in lieu of a portion of the H2O makes a finer, crisper crust, as the flour gluten reacts only with water, the alcohol evaporates and etc. Can't recommend it, went to the liquor store for a cheap bottle of vodka and my god what on earth these prices, could rubbing alcohol be used instead? No no no. But the science teases me, I know eventually I'll cave and buy a bottle and then I'll let you know if it works.

I do make a good crust (snaps suspenders, chews on a wheatstalk). Julia's recipe, and if you have to ask Julia who, well, get with the program. My apple peeler and I could get a pie inside the oven in twenty five minutes at one time. In Florida I squeezed those gigundo lemons for juice, mixed it with eggs and we lived on lemon meringue. Rhubarb custard sweetened with strawberries and oranges. Woof. Blueberry, straight laced sour cherry, raisin pie, Canadian butter tarts. Key lime. Coconut cream. Banana cream. Amish lemon.

The only disaster I came up with was from a southern gullah churchified pamphlet for cantaloupe pie. I'm sure it was my fault. The texture was too weird, the flavor sickish sweet. I'm sure you've had better luck. Let me know.

Well, of course all this pie talk has me a hankering for a wedge (spits---ding!), and I'll go dig out a bit of that mince I was caterwaulin' about prior to this here discussion. Oh, for all of you that stuck through this that really were not interested in pie, here is the promised short entertainment: 3.14. 22/7 (hyuck hyuck).

See you later, gators.

Sleep well, Charles Dickens. Sleep well, all.

Hoot

One of my ears is lower than the other by only a quarter of an inch. A smidge. Therefore, any reading glasses on my visage tilt as if I am straight from Woody Woodpeckerville, or a ladies' luncheon with punch. The solution is to buy inexpensive frames from the dollar store and bend them to fit my crooked little haid. This however, throws off the balance of the nose rests, and there I am, back at the beginning of the problem. So spinach, I say.

I have started this paragraph over five times, each subject less interesting than the other. All I can say is, send me your addresses and I will mail you a holiday card with a small, flat prize inside once the prizes arrive. Just ordered a gross of them from my new favorite store on Ebay, and they should be here in a week. No, no clues, you just have to wait and see.

You could send any addresses to my emergency backup email addy, cakebythelake@gmail.com. unless you have my homebase addy or send me a note via MySpace whose security I trust like Russians at KMart. I have basis for this.

When son Brian was in high school, American Field Service offered an exchange program with Russia, during the time Moscow was being invaded by tanks. Our American kids went there, and the Russian kids were to come the next year which they did with Irina, the adult chaperone. Apparently in Alexandria, all stores keep goods away from the customer, behind glass, out of reach. Here, everything is out in the open, which to the Russians seemed like sheer wide-eyed Amehrreekan stoopitness.

One portion of the field tripski was shopping at a locally giant mall, where Irina the adult sat on a bench with open shopping bags on either side of her. Instructions to the students were to steal anything they could lay their mitts on, and drop it in the bag. Sneakers, cameras, batteries, toiletries, it was holiday pillaging with Jingle Bells in the background. They were laughing at the naive Eenglees (English) while tossing Bic razors into Irina's loot bags, probably to later shave her chest, no lie.

They. Had. No. Idea. Regarding. Camera. Technology. and that they were on every security video channel while being followed by plainsclothesmen, detectives, security guards, ticked off store clerks, and K-9 dogs. Oh ho ho. Security surrounded Irina and told her to round up her gang, and the Cheektowaga police were called. All swag was returned to the stores, and all stores but one dropped charges. The one department store called their lawyers in NYC, and would have turned it into an In-ternational In-cident, except local authorities from American Field Service dissuaded that idea in a gesture of sanity.

"That eesint us'" spouted Irina as she watched the videotape. "And besites, noh bahddy beleef you, I vill deny effreetink" and she was correct. Communication was at the time so poor, that it took up to half an hour for a phone connection, and then you weren't sure who was on the other sputtering end. They could care less what the Rooskies stole from the Eenglees, more power to them.

In Russia, if you could get away with something, it was a badge of honor to hornswoggle the government. Same rules applied for them here, and the incident didn't stop a similar foray into KMart, where the Russians switched their old sneakers, walking out of the store wearing new.

It made some of our kids from the high school embarrassed and sad that the students they came to know in Russia would come over here and steal. But what was interesting was that none of it was high-end stuff. Like I said, the bulk of it was sneakers and toiletries like deodorant, make-up, soap, razors, and ointments, things that weren't easily gotten in Russia. When Bri lived with his foster family in Alexandria, there wasn't any dish soap for dishes, nor hot water in the apartment as the government hadn't turned it on yet. Just a rinse in cold water and that's it, for body and bowl.

Well there, plenty of paragraphs describing Chreesmoose cheer, let the balalaikas play.
I am going to start a list of things to do, and will cross off maybe six of them as reality slides into home plate. I talk to you tomorrow, my little hedgehogs, it is dark, the wind still whistles, and the last of fall blows down the street.

Good night, peaceful quiet.