vhat eez thees?

The last two weeks have provided me with new experiences; fodder for blog posts.

Things I have seen recently:

1. a $24.95 sandwich
2. sparrow in an airport
3. pigeon in an airport (these were both in JFK - what is it with birds and Kennedy's?)
4. zippers on hats. why would you ever want a zipper on a hat? what would you possibly stick in a hat?
5. random shoes in a hole in the wall tailor shop . i suppose the idea is that you know how high the shoes are going to be that you're going to wear for the occasion and then put them on in case you hadn't brought any. that seems a little weird. and slightly unsanitary.
6. motel room with a tile entryway
7. whitecaps on a lake
8. snow on mountains, making it it look like a giant petticoat, with the plateau as the waistline
9. times square. why you ever would drive through there is beyond me. a. traffic is terrible and b. the signs would be so distracting!!!! likely you'd have a fit of epilepsy just traveling through and cause a crash
10. statue of liberty!
11. the frick collection
12. part of the met
13. central park
14. broadway
15. the subway. turns out if you paint something black, chances are it feels/looks black.
16. no evidence of bedbugs!!!!!! yay!!!!!
17. my whole family dancing together

The Pickle Song

by Arlo Guthrie.


I don't want a pickle/ just wanna ride on my motorcycle
And I don't wanna die/ just wanna ride on my motorcycle

I feel crunchy. Like a pickle. Not a sweet pickle. Or even a yummy baby dill pickle. Just an in betweener pickle. Sweet pickles make my face contort in an "I'm going to die if I swallow this" manner, so I try to avoid those. Dill pickles, I heart greatly. The little crunch squeak, crunch squeak as I munch is a joy to my "oral auditory ear", as Michael Jackson would say. (Here's a shout out to all the people who watched that part of This Is It).

I feel kind of like a Wild Ginger pickle. I was there on Saturday for lunch, and I had some with the lovely duck with the most excellently flavorful plum sauce on the side. WG pickles seem a little sweet and a little sour. I ate one. It made my salivary glands work a little and my face scrunch a little because I couldn't figure out if I liked it or not. But it's a pickle, so I was bound to try it unless it's super sickly sweet like relish. ** I considered a bit and let my mouth carry on the conversation that I had started while in the back of my mind I mulled over the value of the pickle. I decided I didn't know what to think of it, so I tried another, with the same disconcerting result. It was kind of like eating a ho-hum strawberry and so you try another to see if by eating the next one you will be able to remember what strawberries are really supposed to taste like. In such a situation, before you know it, all the strawberries are gone. Similarly, before I knew it, all the pickles on the plate were gone and my luncheon partner had to fend for himself in the pickle department. But it bothered me, because even though I had eaten all the pickles, I still hadn't figured out if I liked them or not.

I am in a period of my life where I am eating Wild Ginger pickles. I am getting sick of the crunch and of the inability to tell if I like the taste or not. As I work my way through the pickle, I hope I figure out if I like it or not. Life is just one big pickle - you don't have the ability to just eat one little hole, like in Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. You have to keep going, even if it feels like the cop in the Pickle song (see above) wrote you a ticket, put the ticket in the pickle, and shoved it down your throat. (Luckily, I am not feeling that way at present. Just to be clear.)

Here's hoping I figure out my pickling recipe and get out of this crunchy, disconcerting Wild Ginger pickle phase and make all the rest of my life's pickle a yummy baby dill.

**(I am usually really good at telling a pickle's sweet factor from ten paces. I have had to develop this art because usually when I take pickles I take a lot of them and it looks exceedingly wasteful if I am someplace and I have a pile of pickles on my plate, with one that has a big chomp out of it and a rather queasy look on my face. [Yes, my face can look queasy. Do not quibble with me on grammar today. I am in a pickling mood and you would get nowhere.])

i got change in my pocket goin jing-a-ling-a-ling

There have been a lot of changes in my life recently.

Almost exactly a year ago I moved across the country. I transferred with work, and so while I reported to the same person, my coworkers, workspace, commute, and general responsibilities all changed, too. I do a lot more administrative assistant stuff. I would say more about it, except my blog is public. :)

Climate change is real. I'm here to tell you all about it. Going from mostly sunny to often rainy is an adjustment. Walking to work is different than driving in famously heavy traffic. In my last residence I rarely walked anywhere except for pleasure. Now I do out of necessity. (I have to keep my Scrooge status so I walk to a. exercise b. get there faster and c. save on parking. Though we all knew that c. was really the driver in the first place.)

I've also realized this year that confidence is healing. I'm not sure if healing is the egg or the chicken, or if confidence is, but both are needed in life to succeed. Just like you need chickens and eggs to have a chicken omelette.

Physical therapy is tiring. Really tiring. I've made some changes to my daily routine to accommodate the stretching, etc. required to get my body a little stronger.

Eh, this post is getting boring. I'm going to have to reboot and try again later.

Happiness Hotel

Anybody who is a Muppets fan and who is in my family probably automatically thought something along the lines of this when you read the title of the post:

"You have three payment options: 1. cash 2. check 3. sneak out in the middle of the night.

"We'll take 3."

"Very popular choice!"

Yesterday was one of the happiest days I have had in recent memory. A little poignant at times, but very happy nonetheless. I can't exactly pin it down - the reason(s) why - but I do know it was happy and that I am glad.

Perhaps it was a sequence of events. Or a chemical surge. Or a miracle. Doesn't matter what caused it, just that I felt it, and it made me hopeful that a happy life is not just random incandescent slivers of unmitigated joy amidst sunshine, clouds, and rain, but that there's the possibility of non-random incandescent swaths of unmitigated joy amidst sunshine, clouds and rain. With the occasional snowstorm, ice storm, hail storm, and all other sorts of storm, accounted for by climate, geography, time of year, and other such scientific factors, all of which I cannot be bothered with to think about right now. I am concentrating on my sliver now, and not thinking about the what-ifs and maybes of storms that will inevitably come later.

So. Burst of song. Acceleration on the highway. A weed-free garden. No dirty socks in the laundry pile. All library books returned on time. Waking up without an alarm. Think of whatever it is that makes you happy (all of these things clearly make me happy), and wish, as Ceci and Gabina did in Nine Days to Christmas, and come dance in my sliver of joy with me while it lasts.

Sounds Like...

Who's good at Charades? Who's even /heard/ of the game Charades? Who knows Babette's Feast? (spelling?)

This song kind of hit me out of nowhere. I listened. I thought, hm.. this reminds me of something. It sounds old, but I know it's new. Who sings it?

Challenge you to click the link, close your eyes, and tell me who it reminds you of /without looking/! No cheating. I want to see if your mind is like mine...

the song

Fleetwood Mac

I love Fleetwood Mac.

Perhaps because with this band, more than almost any other, I think, "Hm. This is a good song. I wonder who sings it?" Only to find out....it's FLEETWOOD MAC! Seriously, it's FM a ridiculous amount of the time. I think it's because they had so many songwriters and so many good leads in their group.

I've been on this overtime 70s kick lately. Until I emerge, there will be much fleetwood-ing and not so much fleet fox-ing. Either is good, I'm just in a Mac phase.

On another note, even when life is hard, life is good. I'm going to write this now so that later when I'm not so sure I believe it I will have hardcoded evidence that at one time I thought so, and perhaps re-reading it will remind me of all the reasons why life is good and things will get better almost immediately.

Lastly, I went to the library and checked out Where's Waldo and did it today. I had forgotten how much fun picture finding books are. Everyone, I recommend revisiting this particular avenue of childhood joy. If you never indulged, I encourage you to do so now. Perhaps it will lessen your chances of Alzheimer's by .000001%. And it will be slightly entertaining if you look at the stories between the interaction of people on the page. So just do it.

Okay. I'm done with my two shameless plugs. (They really were shameless, too...)

12 Blogs of Christmas

a follow up to a friend's blog

So, I read a blog post a friend wrote about our junior high school Spanish teacher, Senora Showalter. Her post reminded me of so many things about that class, but I will just name a few:

1. There was a lone ninth grade boy in my class. I won't name him here. I had just read Gone with the Wind and he looked exactly like Rhett Butler would have to me. He had to put up with all the little seventh grade girls mooning over him. Hilarious.

2. She wore these flowy printed pants that were always a little bit too short. Often they had a white background with some sort of flowers on them. She always paired them with tennis shoes, mostly black. And she usually wore white socks. This is perhaps why I am okay with wearing white shoes with black pants, but not black shoes with white pants.

3. She would grit her teeth together when she was mad, just clicking her teeth together in a very distinctive way...any of you that had her know exactly what I'm talking about.

4. She was always late. I had her for first period and I was so conscious of time back then - I am a little more relaxed now - so I was always worried, but it turned out just fine, because often we were waiting for her.

5. She made Matthew M (can't remember the last name, and even if I could I wouldn't put it here) cry the first week of class. I remember, we were learning the alphabet, and she had one of those big red-orange plastic baseball bats...the kind that are way too fat and if you actually threw something really hard at it, or someone swung excessively, it would develop a big dent in it that never quite would come out.

Anyway, she wanted to make sure that we could say the d/th sound. I had grown up hearing it because my mom went to Spain on a semester abroad once, so I had no problem. Showalter went around the room, a cagey look in her eye, requiring us to say a word with the d/th in the middle. Her glasses hung on a string around her neck, and they would bounce as she took the baseball bat, which she hid behind her back, and bopped poor kids who couldn't say it correctly on the head. Hard.

Poor Matthew, he had a slight speech issue, and saying the word she put to him was very difficult. She hit him two or three times. I was absolutely stricken; I don't think I had ever seen a teacher strike a student before, and I didn't know what to do. I went home and told my mom. I'm not sure she believed me, but apparently enough other kids told their parents that she got a reprimand (deservedly so). Fear is not the best teaching method.

6. Around Christmastime, Showalter decided that she had a voice problem, and needed to have a microphone on her all the time to be heard, not to wear out her voice. Which was fine - after so many years of talking loudly over kids, I would probably have voice issues, too. She would use it sometimes, and not other times, but there didn't seem to be very much consistency for when she would utilize it and when she wouldn't. One time, she went to the bathroom and forgot to take the headset off. Bad idea, in a class full of seventh-and-eighth graders. Eeps.

7. We had an assignment to make a pinata. I made a gold pear, from some poem. It was Mom's idea to do the pear. I was at an absolute loss. It was easy though because all I had to do was use a balloon and paper that, so I was good to go.  I remember I spent hours with a little eraser, cutting the crepe paper in tiny strips, putting the end of the paper on the eraser of a pencil, and then gluing it. In retrospect it would have been so much easier just to roll the yellow paper around and around it but I wasn't sure if that would have passed muster. Plus, manual brainless labor like that is good for the soul every once in awhile. I don't think I got a very good grade on my pinata. Matthew M did show everybody up though by coming with a TIE fighter done in blue and shiny silver and black.

 

Good old Spanish class. Too bad I don't remember much of what I learned. Does that mean I never learned anything?

Stand in the [Grocery Aisle]

I went grocery shopping by myself today - a hated task. Although I love to eat, I don't so much love to shop for food. Especially as I don't have access to my world-class grocery anymore. Waaaaah.

I couldn't resist - while I was walking by the yogurt/dairy, I looked at prices. Yoplait was 10/$5 - as low as it gets. It reminded me of when I lived in a certain complex when I was at University and six girls shared one fridge. At least two of them would buy about twenty individual yogurts when they went on sale and then there would be no room in the fridge for anything else. These were girls who had seen their mothers buy on the economy scale for their entire lives - at what other university would you see an industrial sized bottle of minced garlic on the door of the fridge? I ask you.

The overcrowding due to the yogurt required every person to shuffle her foodstuffs. Some girls took more than their fair share of fridge space. For the first few days after the yogurt trip was made, when you first glanced in the fridge all you could see was gallons of milk and Key Lime Pie yogurt all over. In the morning I had to play the "milk game" which was like one of those puzzles that has one empty piece and the rest are numbered and you have to get 1-8 all in a row by moving them around. Heaven help you if your milk was in the back of the fridge for too long, because it would get frozen. But I digress.

In the aisle, I stood, looking at the choices left to me. At school, Key Lime was all the rage, with the occasional Orange Creme, or on a decadent day, chocolate whip. When you went to the grocery store, all that was left was blueberry and harvest peach during the yogurt megasales. Here, there's no harvest peach, just blueberry and Key Lime Pie. It made me laugh - the culture I'm from really does love its sugar. Just goes to show that there are still regional differences. But in some cases, the more things change, the more they stay the same: blueberry yogurt still comes in last place. I took pity on it and bought two servings. Just so I could be reminded of the old days when fridge space was at a premium - to make me grateful for all the things I have now.

So thanks, blueberry yogurt, for being a constant. So long, Key Lime, you're out of favor. Harvest Peach, you're always imitation, so I'll leave you for the cleanup crew.

Baby, it's Cold Outside

I didn't really know that song until I watched the movie Elf for the first time. That's my favorite scene in the movie. My second favorite is where Buddy says, "There are four major food groups. Candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup!" as he's putting syrup on his spaghetti noodles instead of sauce. It kind of makes me shudder in sugar horror even thinking about it; I don' t know why I like it, but I do. I would never do such a thing, and the rest of the movie is pretty lame, as far as I'm concerned, but I do like those two parts.


This week it was record cold. It snowed and sent the city into shutdown mode. When I woke up on Wednesday the thermometer read 19, feels like 10. Brrr. I was a little ice box all week. My little feet were frozen at work. I wore a scarf, hat, gloves, and big winter coat, not to mention boots with fairly good tread as I made the trek to work. There was no way anybody without those little tire tread makers hooked on their tires was going anywhere.

The nice thing about snow is that when you're a little kid and you don't have to worry about going anywhere, it's actually romantic. Little individual ice crystals falling from the sky that you can go play in, make snowballs with, go sledding on, and do snow angels in - what could be better? Especially when you can just go inside and have hot cocoa when you're done with five little marshmallows on it (ten if mom's feeling generous).

Apparently my neighbors are small children inside, because a snow day was announced, and since there was 2" of snow on the street, they got their sleds and snowboots on and slid down the street again and again, shrieking gleefully at the tops of their lungs until almost midnight. I thought it was kind of cute and a nice background noise until I started imagining what would happen if someone in a Range Rover decided to come down the street going too fast, and the possible ramifications and lawsuits, and then I kind of tried to block out the sound. Oh, how quickly I have become a negator!*

For a few days everything was minimally staffed - hardly anyone was at work - and staying warm and traveling safely were all anybody thought about. It made me think, hm. If I were still down south, I wouldn't have thought about weird weather in the north at all. Weather's one of those things where unless you're in it you just don't care/understand. "Oh, poor you, you're having a snowstorm. Guess what? It's 55 and sunny today!" If you're not in the place with the weather, it doesn't affect you at all. But if you are in the place with the weather, and it's bad weather, it consumes you. I never even looked at weather.com before....not since I moved. But you can bet that every few hours I'd refresh the page to see what it looked like.

It was cold outside. It's warmer now - and for a few weeks, people will be careful, and try to keep a few emergency items on hand. But after a few weeks, it may snow again, and we will replay the situation over and over again. It's like a broken record: snow. panic. cleanup. remember. forget. snow. panic. cleanup. remember. forget. All the way until spring, and then the "forget" becomes the rut until next winter.

Yes, I did just compare weather to a record. Hopefully anyone who reads this knows what a record is. Oh help for those who don't. If you haven't, you're missing out. But you can miss out less...you can experience the cold just by putting on "Baby, it's Cold Outside."

Negator: Professional wet blanket.

Goodwill

Dear Goodwill in the Warehouse District:

I appreciate your presence. Although you have limited parking and your concrete steps are hollow, at least you are handicap accessible and you *have* parking. And it's free. So kudos on that.

The signs on your bathroom scare me, and the fact that your employees  need to wear gloves that can withstand Clorox and masks that could potentially ward off h1n1 makes me dubious about your success.

You do carry a variety of plastics, which I like. And while I would not buy a stuffed animal for a small child from you, or dig through various bins of debris to find the lid to the perfect sized salad spinner that I was eying but then realized there was no lid (I could just hear my mom saying, "look with your hands, not with your eyes"...but sorry, Mom, I just couldn't do it. Not without industrial strength gloves.). So I am salad-spinnerless.

However, the shapes of some of the composite furniture you had on display was fairly impressive, and the sewing machine that didn't have a presser foot was really amazing...at least 70 years old. That's how you know the oldies but goodies brands. And the pricing scheme you came up with was unique: 49 cents per pound of housewares. I don't think I've ever seen wholesale plastic cups and old pans by the pound before. And someone with good taste donates to you, because I saw at least 5 Roger Whittaker records for sale. But let me share a secret with you: you're a bit short on books.

I'm glad I visited you. It made me hope that I will never by pure necessity visit to purchase shoes or any other accessories or even need stop by again. But every time I want to feel gratitude, I may stop by. It won't be a pity party. You're strong, even in this economy. You have options. People need you. I need you. Even if it's not for the same reasons that some of the other people do.

So here's to you, Warehouse Goodwill. Keep up the good work.

Songiment I

It's safe to say that I love naps, and the world could use more love and more naps. But you'll never catch me  snoozing in a field of gold or sleeping in the flowers. What if there was clover, and I rolled over and landed on a bee, and got stung on the lip, and it started to swell and look like a red rubber ball? Then I'd really be a lady in red.   (When I was younger, [so] much younger, I thought that song was about me all the time because my hair's red.)

To make myself feel a little better,  I'd probably have something sweet - probably vanilla ice cream - with peaches, if they were in season. That reminds me of the time Uncle Dan got stung by a bee and ruined by a little bird within thirty seconds of each other. As long as I don't have a not-so-fine day like that, I'll be all right. But if all that did happen, at least I'd have something to talk about.

Okay. Give me a break. Some of these are a little reachy, but they're what popped into my head. A true sequence of songs and I wanted to link them together. The story is a little weak, but I'm going to do a series of these, and hopefully they'll improve as I go along.

Little Bird/ He-art

brush your grey wings on my head / say what you've said / say it again / they tell me I'm crazy, but you told me I'm golden


sometimes it's hard to tell the truth from a lie / nobody knows what's in the hold of your mind

Something about this song just struck me. It was my song of the week about three weeks ago. I was searching desperately for a different song- one that I thought was by the Weepies, but was actually Regina Spektor. Fidelity. What a good name for a song. So you can guess what my song of the week was as soon as I found it. I kept hearing the "ha-ha-ah-ha-ha-ah-ha-ha-eart" line over and over again in my head, which is kind of funny, considering the lyrics of the song: "i hear in my mind all of these voices / i hear in my mind all of these words / i hear in my mind all of this music / and it breaks my heart".

There's just something about it - going back to the Weepies song - the fact that it's 3/4 time, the softness of the song, the odd harmonies, the words of the song, the mood I was in when I heard it for the first time - that really made an impact. I think I listened to it about twenty times. The chorus, especially, got to me. brush your grey wings on my head like, it's okay, all the bad stuff is gone now. You were confused but you don't have to be any more. Just let me comfort you and everything will be all right. Keep telling me it will be all right, and I'll believe you.

The way she talks about how it seems like nobody knows you, but if you just look for the good things, and don't let the regular mundane everyday minutiae get to you, you'll see how good life is and how much better it can be if you let it. Sometimes life just stinks. It's true. But if you listen to the little bird inside of you, maybe it will gradually get better. 

Every person needs a little bird. The wings don't need to be grey, and the bird doesn't have to have a Weepie voice and it doesn't need to sing in three quarter time. I don't even like birds...but I like the little bird in this song. So little birds everywhere, keep singing. Keep comforting. You never know who will need a brush of wing or a hug from you.