One year my mother and I made cordials out of everything imaginable. We slaved away at that all summer.
That Thanksgiving I had one of two bizarre feed-the world-type Thanksgivings my then-boyfriend and I put on. We invited everyone who'd asked us to dinner at their house during that year and everyone we owed entertaining to attend an an "in-training" dinner the Sunday before Thanksgiving. We called it an "in-training" dinner because the idea was to stretch one's gut for overeating the following weekend.
We did four 20 pound birds that year, 2 hams all the fixings, including 5 different dessert options. We even made coffee and tea.. All people had to bring was a plate, their own cutlery and drink receptacle and whatever beverage other than coffee or tea they wanted, including their own wine or beer. Over 70 people showed up. Folks were eating in shifts, in every room in our 2 bedroom apartment, the balcony, even on a couple of tables set up outside our front door. People were milling around, there was a lot of hilarity instead of any awkwardness that can occur among those who hadn't met before. The neighbors were also invited and they brought extra folding chairs, etc. One HELL of a party. I had more fun at the second than the first, because I finally blew off trying to get all the food "just right" and took time to have fun instead of hovering over the table replenishing items the second they ran out.
People discovered my cordials after the pig rumps and birds had been decimated. That began a cordial-tasting which decimated what should have been many years' supply of the stuff for one household. We ended up pouring 25 or so folks into cabs after confiscating keys. No one drove home drunk, but there was at least one inebriated person in every car leaving our place.
That summer I'd made cherry, apricot, lemon, almond, peppermint, coffee, chocolate, chocolate-cherry, raspberry, blueberry, cherry-vanilla, orange, lime, ginger-lemon, mango, anise, cardamom-cinnamon, vanilla-honey, vanilla-cinnamon, basil and tomato (YES, with simple syrup.. .haven't you ever had candied tomatoes?); a wierd herbal thing from a recipe of my great grandmother (which we originally used as a base for home made cough syrup along with other healing herbs, honey, and raw lemon juice with cayenne). hat doozy which has in it thyme, basil, marjoram and summer savory (yes, it's sweetened also, and it's delicious with cheese and crackers).
No one got sick drunk, but you should have had to take the "no thanks for the hangover" calls we got for the next few days. Apparently some people had headaches and felt weird clear up to Thanksgiving.
This all began because Mom loved to make her own brandied cherries. Ever the kitchen chemist, I got involved in my 20s when I had my own place. As things were wont to do when Mom and I got a burr under our saddles or a wild hare up our snoots, things just got out of hand the summer before this dinner. We not only brandied over 12 gallons of cherries (I had stained hands for 2 weeks pitting all those bloody cherries), but I took it into my head to make cherry liqueur. At that point is where we both went pretty close to ga-ga. Things went from obsessed to silly.
I spent weekday evenings, and entire weekends either in her kitchen or mine, stirring pots, washing out bottles, begging bottles from everyone I knew, making trips to the liquor stores and buying a case at a time of "high test". One liquor store manager called me asking me if I wanted to buy four cases of a particular brand of vodka because the distributor's rep was in there and offered him a deal. He wanted to know how much extra he should order and offered me a price break. What a pip.
We went through a whole pile of cheesecloth, stained our hands, turned both kitchens into laboratories and had the closets in both dwellings full of bottles from back to door, on the floors. Relatives and friends that year accused us of trying to kill them off.
It's no wonder that completely slipped my mind for 30 plus years.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
It's okay to laugh at my boobs when I'm dead, so who gets to light the match?
I see a lot of my mother's family in my brother's face and body type. I used to see a lot of my father's family in my face and body type. The older I get, the less I resemble any but one aunt in my mother's family. She was an unattractive old maid. At death, her breasts were so long that the family who took her clothes to the undertaker remarked that if one could have put mink skins on her long saggy fat breasts, they could have been used to create the appearance of a mink stole. They decided on a closed casket funeral.
The undertaker got into the act. He said he was reminded of those suede bags of buckshot, some of them quite long, used to weigh down blueprints to keep them from curling when one was making modifications. My relatives started it, not the mortician. I think he went along with the flow out of embarrassment at first and then because he got tickled by the black humor.
FWIW, they made her face up, my mother, my grandmother and one of my aunts. The other aunt was in Colombia at the time, as she was most of my life growing up, except for visits to renew her US passport and to shop.
So there I was at the funeral home with a person who hadn't liked me in life and whom I hadn't been old enough not to not like her back. At 12, I was the one who tied her shoes (she wore those ugly square heeled raised one-toned black shoes that laced over the instep), buttoned her best navy print rayon Sunday-Go-to-Church dress and turned down her collar and pinned her jet glass broach across the top button, and threaded her belt and buckled it just the way she did. I found her hymnal and Bible and put them under her hands, too. She detested me. I've often wondered what she'd have made of the respect, and the fact that I choked down my fear of handling a dead body to do it.
She thought I was snippy uppity, too forward (though I seldom spoke, when I did it invariably irked her), too bookish, too pretty, too "polished" thing. I didn't look down when she glared at me. I'd stare right back at her. Her best oldmaidschoolteacher glares did nothing to me, and that pissed her off. She *was a school teacher for 41 years. The city's school teacher had to force her into retirement. She didn't go gracefully. She was angry to be thrown away. She never forgave the school system for that, either. She lived to break up her sisters' and brothers' marriages, made her inlaws lives hell because no one was good enough for them, in her opinion. Not that her siblings were good enough for her, either.
One of my aunts had a cat named (like mine was decades later) Kittipuss. Mom and the other sister used to take this poor cat and dress him up and put rouge and eyeshadow on him because, like a dog, he'd go to the bus to meet his beloved human every day after school. Of course it embarrassed her to have this snow white cat sashay to the corner smeared with rouge and bright blue eyeshadow, wearing a floppy cloth doll's bonnet, oblivious to the smutsch on his phiz, waving his luxurious plume in complete welcome.
My aunt Neil HATED cats and hated Kittipuss in particular. Whenever she came into a room, Kittipuss would get up from wherever he was lolling, stroll up to just out of kicking range, look up at her, glare, put his ears back, then turn slowly and stalk slowly out of the room, with his tail erect and his ears
forward.
Of course Kittipuss was 15 years dead by the time I was born. I wish to hell I could have seen that. I can vividly imagine it. But I didn't dislike Aunt Neil. I think she was a product of her box, her limitations the times, whatever. I stared her back, but I acknowledged her as a complete human being, which is more than she did me. Had she lived into her 90s, by then I'd have been fully adult and my *projection is that we'd have come to an accord. Maybe that's why it occurred to me to insinuate myself into her burial preparations. I can't
remember how I came to be there, only that I *was there, and that the women involved hadn't wanted me there, because they thought it might be inappropriate for a child to be involved in preparing the dead.
I never caught Aunt Neil's eyes twinkling, but there are times when I think that she used to shut herself into her room and have a quiet laugh at some of the things people thought offended her. I could be wrong, though.
My mother was appearing in dreams to me all last month. In every dream she was telling me "Don't forget to...." and I never remember what she was telling me not to forget or forget to do when I'd wake up. It's odd because the dreams are about things here, not in Texas; and she flatly refused to be here. She never came to visit, though she was invited many times. When we were flush, I'd offer to go down, help her pack and fly back up with her. No dice. Never came. Never witnessed that I was happy. Had to remain in denial about it, I think.
I let her ruin the happy, too, sometimes. More than sometimes. She made it clear in a dozen ways, small and large that she detested that I'd married, whom I married; that I chose someone to be with over her. It seems to me that in her books being courted and having beaux was one thing, but marrying someone was a betrayal of one's momma.
And we weren't close when she passed.
By accounts she was well cared-for and gently handled and kindly treated as she deteriorated and died. By that I mean she probably wasn't impersonally handled, not as she drifted toward death, nor in extremis. No one, out of their mind, who dies well-coiffed, with both a pedicure and manicure, without bedsores or a bruise on her, other than that of her post surgical hip and bruises from an IV for the period before she died -- and even dabbed daily and on the morning of her passing with her favorite Chloe is likely to have been "disrespected."
My great aunt Neil wasn't in her shell after she passed. Neither was Mom.
Neither is anyone's anyone when they're dead.
So what if the mortician got a bit silly. The relatives started it, no one was standing around pointing at her remains and laughing uproariously. People say uneasymaking things when someone close to them or close to someone they care about dies. For all that Neil was abrasive on all of us, no one replied to her with equal nastiness when she was breathing and no one handled her body flippantly. I keep remembering how Mom and I were the day Dad died and my brother chose to sit in that house guarding it from the cop who was guarding the body from "interference" by people he was *ordered to suspect having murdered him, while we went to pay cash, to get him picked up, and transported to the funeral home and were bullied (unsuccessfully to some extent) by the young ass at Restland to spring for an expensive coffin when he was being cremated not viewed, and to buy a plot he didn't want to be locked in. He wanted his ashes scattered. Mom and I came up with leaving them in the Caribbean so they could drift under sailboats going from island to island with the currents and wind. He loved sailing and boats as a boy and a young man. He often said if he hadn't married he would have been a boat bum. His words, not mine.
And we were giddy over that choice coming home from the bury factory. We were drunk over our choice to drop him overboard from a boat into a sea he said he didn't get to sail enough when he was young. We were giddy about his joking for years about Aggie funerals with only two pallbearers, one for each handle of the Rubbermade trash can. And of course, under that we were torn up with grief.
And we still had the fucking PO-lice to deal with coming home. That's another story, however.
When Neil died, according to her wishes and because it wasn't illegal in the early 60s in Texas, the mortician took her to embalm her and then brought her back to the house in the coffin for a viewing. That's what she wanted. The
service was held IN the house, then she was transported to the cemetary and buried. She did not want to be prayed over in the church she'd attended all her life because the only pastor she liked had retired (told to leave and he retired) the year before. She was literally laid out in the dining room, on the old mahogany dining room table in that oak coffin with the brass handles, in her Sunday best, viewed then interred 11 miles away.
I figure that since the family went through all that, and it wasn't cheap all that extra haulage and arrangements, and she had a TINY pension and no savings by then, and everyone chipped in, if there were some giggles, it was understandable.
I'm reminded of that Mary Tyler Moore episode (entitled "Chuckles Bites the Dust") in which everyone at the TV station is telling Chuckles the Clown jokes the day he dies and up to the funeral and Mary's furious with everyone at WJM for their horrific puns and wisecracking and laughter. The day of the funeral however, she breaks into giggles at the service and when singled out to stand up and "laugh for Chuckles" she bursts into loud uncontrolled sobs.
There's a reason that episode won an Emmy for best writing the year it aired. Humor after a death, even at the expense of the dead, is very common. It doesn't always denote disrespect, even when it's "disrespectful" humor. It's lighting a match in the dark.
The undertaker got into the act. He said he was reminded of those suede bags of buckshot, some of them quite long, used to weigh down blueprints to keep them from curling when one was making modifications. My relatives started it, not the mortician. I think he went along with the flow out of embarrassment at first and then because he got tickled by the black humor.
FWIW, they made her face up, my mother, my grandmother and one of my aunts. The other aunt was in Colombia at the time, as she was most of my life growing up, except for visits to renew her US passport and to shop.
So there I was at the funeral home with a person who hadn't liked me in life and whom I hadn't been old enough not to not like her back. At 12, I was the one who tied her shoes (she wore those ugly square heeled raised one-toned black shoes that laced over the instep), buttoned her best navy print rayon Sunday-Go-to-Church dress and turned down her collar and pinned her jet glass broach across the top button, and threaded her belt and buckled it just the way she did. I found her hymnal and Bible and put them under her hands, too. She detested me. I've often wondered what she'd have made of the respect, and the fact that I choked down my fear of handling a dead body to do it.
She thought I was snippy uppity, too forward (though I seldom spoke, when I did it invariably irked her), too bookish, too pretty, too "polished" thing. I didn't look down when she glared at me. I'd stare right back at her. Her best oldmaidschoolteacher glares did nothing to me, and that pissed her off. She *was a school teacher for 41 years. The city's school teacher had to force her into retirement. She didn't go gracefully. She was angry to be thrown away. She never forgave the school system for that, either. She lived to break up her sisters' and brothers' marriages, made her inlaws lives hell because no one was good enough for them, in her opinion. Not that her siblings were good enough for her, either.
One of my aunts had a cat named (like mine was decades later) Kittipuss. Mom and the other sister used to take this poor cat and dress him up and put rouge and eyeshadow on him because, like a dog, he'd go to the bus to meet his beloved human every day after school. Of course it embarrassed her to have this snow white cat sashay to the corner smeared with rouge and bright blue eyeshadow, wearing a floppy cloth doll's bonnet, oblivious to the smutsch on his phiz, waving his luxurious plume in complete welcome.
My aunt Neil HATED cats and hated Kittipuss in particular. Whenever she came into a room, Kittipuss would get up from wherever he was lolling, stroll up to just out of kicking range, look up at her, glare, put his ears back, then turn slowly and stalk slowly out of the room, with his tail erect and his ears
forward.
Of course Kittipuss was 15 years dead by the time I was born. I wish to hell I could have seen that. I can vividly imagine it. But I didn't dislike Aunt Neil. I think she was a product of her box, her limitations the times, whatever. I stared her back, but I acknowledged her as a complete human being, which is more than she did me. Had she lived into her 90s, by then I'd have been fully adult and my *projection is that we'd have come to an accord. Maybe that's why it occurred to me to insinuate myself into her burial preparations. I can't
remember how I came to be there, only that I *was there, and that the women involved hadn't wanted me there, because they thought it might be inappropriate for a child to be involved in preparing the dead.
I never caught Aunt Neil's eyes twinkling, but there are times when I think that she used to shut herself into her room and have a quiet laugh at some of the things people thought offended her. I could be wrong, though.
My mother was appearing in dreams to me all last month. In every dream she was telling me "Don't forget to...." and I never remember what she was telling me not to forget or forget to do when I'd wake up. It's odd because the dreams are about things here, not in Texas; and she flatly refused to be here. She never came to visit, though she was invited many times. When we were flush, I'd offer to go down, help her pack and fly back up with her. No dice. Never came. Never witnessed that I was happy. Had to remain in denial about it, I think.
I let her ruin the happy, too, sometimes. More than sometimes. She made it clear in a dozen ways, small and large that she detested that I'd married, whom I married; that I chose someone to be with over her. It seems to me that in her books being courted and having beaux was one thing, but marrying someone was a betrayal of one's momma.
And we weren't close when she passed.
By accounts she was well cared-for and gently handled and kindly treated as she deteriorated and died. By that I mean she probably wasn't impersonally handled, not as she drifted toward death, nor in extremis. No one, out of their mind, who dies well-coiffed, with both a pedicure and manicure, without bedsores or a bruise on her, other than that of her post surgical hip and bruises from an IV for the period before she died -- and even dabbed daily and on the morning of her passing with her favorite Chloe is likely to have been "disrespected."
My great aunt Neil wasn't in her shell after she passed. Neither was Mom.
Neither is anyone's anyone when they're dead.
So what if the mortician got a bit silly. The relatives started it, no one was standing around pointing at her remains and laughing uproariously. People say uneasymaking things when someone close to them or close to someone they care about dies. For all that Neil was abrasive on all of us, no one replied to her with equal nastiness when she was breathing and no one handled her body flippantly. I keep remembering how Mom and I were the day Dad died and my brother chose to sit in that house guarding it from the cop who was guarding the body from "interference" by people he was *ordered to suspect having murdered him, while we went to pay cash, to get him picked up, and transported to the funeral home and were bullied (unsuccessfully to some extent) by the young ass at Restland to spring for an expensive coffin when he was being cremated not viewed, and to buy a plot he didn't want to be locked in. He wanted his ashes scattered. Mom and I came up with leaving them in the Caribbean so they could drift under sailboats going from island to island with the currents and wind. He loved sailing and boats as a boy and a young man. He often said if he hadn't married he would have been a boat bum. His words, not mine.
And we were giddy over that choice coming home from the bury factory. We were drunk over our choice to drop him overboard from a boat into a sea he said he didn't get to sail enough when he was young. We were giddy about his joking for years about Aggie funerals with only two pallbearers, one for each handle of the Rubbermade trash can. And of course, under that we were torn up with grief.
And we still had the fucking PO-lice to deal with coming home. That's another story, however.
When Neil died, according to her wishes and because it wasn't illegal in the early 60s in Texas, the mortician took her to embalm her and then brought her back to the house in the coffin for a viewing. That's what she wanted. The
service was held IN the house, then she was transported to the cemetary and buried. She did not want to be prayed over in the church she'd attended all her life because the only pastor she liked had retired (told to leave and he retired) the year before. She was literally laid out in the dining room, on the old mahogany dining room table in that oak coffin with the brass handles, in her Sunday best, viewed then interred 11 miles away.
I figure that since the family went through all that, and it wasn't cheap all that extra haulage and arrangements, and she had a TINY pension and no savings by then, and everyone chipped in, if there were some giggles, it was understandable.
I'm reminded of that Mary Tyler Moore episode (entitled "Chuckles Bites the Dust") in which everyone at the TV station is telling Chuckles the Clown jokes the day he dies and up to the funeral and Mary's furious with everyone at WJM for their horrific puns and wisecracking and laughter. The day of the funeral however, she breaks into giggles at the service and when singled out to stand up and "laugh for Chuckles" she bursts into loud uncontrolled sobs.
There's a reason that episode won an Emmy for best writing the year it aired. Humor after a death, even at the expense of the dead, is very common. It doesn't always denote disrespect, even when it's "disrespectful" humor. It's lighting a match in the dark.
Crazy Alone
Most people learn at an early age to reach out to other people. We do it from the cradle. We reach for something with a pulse before we can even focus our eyes.
We do it at first because we're hungry, we're too warm, too cold, we're wet, our bottoms are dirty or because we need some kind of comfort.
I think we reach out from the very beginning because it's goddamned lonely locked in one's own skin without the contact, the touch of something with a pulse that doesn't quite match our own pulses.
I think that when the fear isn't driven away by repeated and continual touching that's when babies go crazy and grow up into really crazy people.
Anything less than totally crazy, there's usually some way to get or remain in contact with other people.
Maybe that's not such a good thing sometimes.
Maybe sometimes alone and and crazy is better than touched and hurt for having reached out.
Maybe not.
We do it at first because we're hungry, we're too warm, too cold, we're wet, our bottoms are dirty or because we need some kind of comfort.
I think we reach out from the very beginning because it's goddamned lonely locked in one's own skin without the contact, the touch of something with a pulse that doesn't quite match our own pulses.
I think that when the fear isn't driven away by repeated and continual touching that's when babies go crazy and grow up into really crazy people.
Anything less than totally crazy, there's usually some way to get or remain in contact with other people.
Maybe that's not such a good thing sometimes.
Maybe sometimes alone and and crazy is better than touched and hurt for having reached out.
Maybe not.
Friday, February 15, 2008
There's a Pussy in Your Pants
We have a cat who, the moment a man is seated on the facility, climbs into his underpants puddled in his trousers between his feet and parks there, grooming herself. It's the only time she has any interest in clothing.
No use shutting the door on her. She'll muscle her way in.
She's impervious to and uninterested in feedback. This is simply part of What This Cat Lives To Do.
No use shutting the door on her. She'll muscle her way in.
She's impervious to and uninterested in feedback. This is simply part of What This Cat Lives To Do.
Postit Past Tempus Done Fugit
Half a century ago my mother and brother developed a fondness for those itty aquatic frogs one could buy in aquarium shops selling fresh water tropical fish and supplies. I thought they were cute. They didn't grow to more than an inch long.
No matter how the tank was lidded, those little buggers would get out of the tank clamber down off the table the tank was on and crawl off.
I once found one dead in the middle of the living room, a little smudge of soft gray clinging to a frond of cream carpet pile, his tiny forleg over one eye as if he were searching for a break on the horizon of a vast sea of wooly dry arctic. Another was found on the dial to the telephone in the back hall. He was on his back, draped over the hole to the number 8. One expired clinging to the outside of the toilet bowl in the bathroom off the back hall. Others escaped and were never found.
There had been both male and female frogs in the aquarium, so they didn't wander off because mates were unavailable. The aquarium was always clean. The frogs were well-fed. The habitat had dozens of inviting crannies to hide in, varied textured pebbles and plantings to climb over and through, neat gullies to explore, lots of hiding places under the water and fronds to peer through. They weren't too warm or too cold.
However, nearly all of those those frogs seemed to compelled to make break for the Great Beyond. Most of the time, they were caught and gently returned as they climbed over the lip of the tank or were slime-slithering down its glassy side. Everyone did a frog count and a recce every time they came into the den or even passed through it. Yet, escape they did. I always wondered what those little amphibian Vascos were searching for. Maybe they required a change of scenery. Maybe they were suicidal.
Of course their little corpses stank. It was never an overpowering reek. Their decay process didn't pervade the entire room they died in. Some got as far as the kitchen. Often the smell of death was so imperceptible, so transitory, that it went unnoticed or its source was never located. Frog-passage was no more than a secretive little whiff of something rotten somewhere, an invisible exclamation mark that would appeared under one's nose as one walked down a hall or past a closet door. One didn't really become aware of it until one had passed the point at which the whiffette had entered one's olfactories. Often backtracking failed to pick up a repeat of the exclamation.
After a few years my mother and brother got tired of finding corpses and schlepping to the Fish World to purchase spares. When the last one died in the habitat, possibly of loneliness or boredom, the tank was converted into a terrarium for my mother's never-ending campaign of orchids and rare or difficult to grow hairy plants with exotic colored leaves.
My mother passed away in February, 2007. The following September I went to Texas to pick through its remains, after other relatives had ransacked it. All the plants in the house were gone, except for a few dying condiment jars of ivy, which she was always rooting, though she'd run off everyone she could have given them to.
I was emptying the three closets in the den. At the very back of one, wedged between the round molding on the wooden floor and a junction in a corner, was a tiny mummified frog.
There was that leathery little frummie in the farthermost corner of its universe, a closet that hadn't been emptied out for 3 or 4 decades in the room in which the aquarium had been thousands of froggy life cycles before.
The purpose of that closet hadn't hadn't changed in 5 decades. I have changed in five decades. I left my habitat 15 years prior to that trip, only visiting 3 times in the interim.
I went from 59 years of age to 13, in a split second.
That entire week was a series of what could only be compared to acid flashbacks. Finding the frummie was a mild one.
No matter how the tank was lidded, those little buggers would get out of the tank clamber down off the table the tank was on and crawl off.
I once found one dead in the middle of the living room, a little smudge of soft gray clinging to a frond of cream carpet pile, his tiny forleg over one eye as if he were searching for a break on the horizon of a vast sea of wooly dry arctic. Another was found on the dial to the telephone in the back hall. He was on his back, draped over the hole to the number 8. One expired clinging to the outside of the toilet bowl in the bathroom off the back hall. Others escaped and were never found.
There had been both male and female frogs in the aquarium, so they didn't wander off because mates were unavailable. The aquarium was always clean. The frogs were well-fed. The habitat had dozens of inviting crannies to hide in, varied textured pebbles and plantings to climb over and through, neat gullies to explore, lots of hiding places under the water and fronds to peer through. They weren't too warm or too cold.
However, nearly all of those those frogs seemed to compelled to make break for the Great Beyond. Most of the time, they were caught and gently returned as they climbed over the lip of the tank or were slime-slithering down its glassy side. Everyone did a frog count and a recce every time they came into the den or even passed through it. Yet, escape they did. I always wondered what those little amphibian Vascos were searching for. Maybe they required a change of scenery. Maybe they were suicidal.
Of course their little corpses stank. It was never an overpowering reek. Their decay process didn't pervade the entire room they died in. Some got as far as the kitchen. Often the smell of death was so imperceptible, so transitory, that it went unnoticed or its source was never located. Frog-passage was no more than a secretive little whiff of something rotten somewhere, an invisible exclamation mark that would appeared under one's nose as one walked down a hall or past a closet door. One didn't really become aware of it until one had passed the point at which the whiffette had entered one's olfactories. Often backtracking failed to pick up a repeat of the exclamation.
After a few years my mother and brother got tired of finding corpses and schlepping to the Fish World to purchase spares. When the last one died in the habitat, possibly of loneliness or boredom, the tank was converted into a terrarium for my mother's never-ending campaign of orchids and rare or difficult to grow hairy plants with exotic colored leaves.
My mother passed away in February, 2007. The following September I went to Texas to pick through its remains, after other relatives had ransacked it. All the plants in the house were gone, except for a few dying condiment jars of ivy, which she was always rooting, though she'd run off everyone she could have given them to.
I was emptying the three closets in the den. At the very back of one, wedged between the round molding on the wooden floor and a junction in a corner, was a tiny mummified frog.
There was that leathery little frummie in the farthermost corner of its universe, a closet that hadn't been emptied out for 3 or 4 decades in the room in which the aquarium had been thousands of froggy life cycles before.
The purpose of that closet hadn't hadn't changed in 5 decades. I have changed in five decades. I left my habitat 15 years prior to that trip, only visiting 3 times in the interim.
I went from 59 years of age to 13, in a split second.
That entire week was a series of what could only be compared to acid flashbacks. Finding the frummie was a mild one.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Que tal, quetzal?
From when I was born until I was 3-1/2, we lived in NJ and got FEET of snow in winter. My parents hated it. I was confused by it. Why did they hate that pretty stuff?
Snow was just a fact of early life. I "unlearned" that fact after my folks transplanted us to Dallas. Growing up in NE Texas, snow was the enemy, and ice was a more common enemy than snow. Both were dangerous to drive on and people acted like idiots when either precipitated and remained. Winter in Texas was mostly after Christmas and it was mostly dry nasty cold or wet nasty cold, but not that much ice or snow nasty cold. I liked the cold, but everyone else in the family thought cold was nasty. Thanksgiving and Christmas in NE Texas were, as often as not, crisp and chill, but not cold. They were at least cold enough that decorating a tree or wearing overcoats and a winter wardrobe weren't out of place.
For a couple of years during highs school, I was living where Christmas comes at a warm time of year. Both of those years, my aunt and uncle took us to the Llanos for Christmas. Bogota Colombia is high in the Andes and even "summer" isn't particularly warm. For Christmas, my uncle liked to go to the lowlands, to a town called Fusagasaga because there are these hot springs there which are reputed to be very good for what ails one. One supposedly both drinks the mineral water from the hot springs in Fusa and one sits in the hot springs, boiling like a knockwurst in the water which is even hotter than the humid tropical air of the town itself.
I didn't like Fusagasaga except for the hotel in which we stayed.
It was the first hotel I'd ever been to in my life in which you had to keep the toilet paper on the dresser, because you could sit in the toilet and have a shower at the same time. The showerhead was in the middle of the room. The bathroom light was a bulb encased in an outdoor style fixture which didn't allow water to get into it. The beds were saggy soggy thin mattresses on thin metal strips, with spotless sheets and worn out cotton pillows, BUT there were hammock hooks and a hammock slung on one of the two hooks which one could use instead. And boy those hammocks were comfortable, airy and a lot easier to sleep in than the beds!
However, what made the hotel spectacular were the parrots. The owner of the hotel had a few dozen macaws at the hotel. I think that originally they had been captured or hand raised and kept with their wings clipped, but they had the run of the joint and they flew, so they were no longer "captives" birds.
And they were both pestiferous and wonderful!
That first Christmas in Colombia -- and the next -- I sat in 119 degree sulphurous water in that resort in the Colombian lowlands outside of Bogota, drinking Fanta or cold beer. The air outside of the springs was 103 and humidity outside of the baths was 85%, so there wasn't much difference between being IN the springs or out of them.
I fed most of my breakfast to the macaws at the hotel every morning, and spent most of the day with the parrots chewing up everything of mine they could get their claws or beaks on, happily yelling at me in Spanish, and joyfully soaring from perches to my back or waddling around after me, when they couldn't hitch a ride on a forearm from place to place, because they knew I'd cadge fruit for them from the kitchen help... and I did. I fell in LOVE with 1 to 3 pound birds in loud vibrant feather suits with even louder voices, distinct personalities and a surprising range of behavior.
I siesta'd with macaws. I lunched with macaws. I sang Christmas carols to macaws. I got groomed by macaws. I had macaw crap in my hair. I lost a sandal to macaws. I had enough dropped feathers from macaws to make a full fan.
I shared my salad, bread, fruit, fruit juice, lettuce, fried plantains, potato chips, peanuts and yucca with macaws. I showered with macaws if I let them in the room, and I did. Macaws pulled things out of my purse, gnawed holes in letters, dented and punctured post cards, and snapped pencils in half. Macaws climbed the juke box and sang along with selections people made of music in it. Macaws clung to the nets on the tennis courts, chewed up the pingpong paddles and fought one another over pingpong balls.
Macaws unwrapped my Christmas presents. Macaws were my Christmas presence. For years afterward, I'd think in vivid blue and red and gold, when Christmas came around, not in red, green, gold and silver.
You haven't lived until you wake up in a hammock on Christmas morning with a one macaw on your chest shitting on the sheet and trying to pull it off your arms and another hanging upside down clinging to the mesh your butt's in flapping his wings and yelling "hola! Que tal, quetzal?"
Snow was just a fact of early life. I "unlearned" that fact after my folks transplanted us to Dallas. Growing up in NE Texas, snow was the enemy, and ice was a more common enemy than snow. Both were dangerous to drive on and people acted like idiots when either precipitated and remained. Winter in Texas was mostly after Christmas and it was mostly dry nasty cold or wet nasty cold, but not that much ice or snow nasty cold. I liked the cold, but everyone else in the family thought cold was nasty. Thanksgiving and Christmas in NE Texas were, as often as not, crisp and chill, but not cold. They were at least cold enough that decorating a tree or wearing overcoats and a winter wardrobe weren't out of place.
For a couple of years during highs school, I was living where Christmas comes at a warm time of year. Both of those years, my aunt and uncle took us to the Llanos for Christmas. Bogota Colombia is high in the Andes and even "summer" isn't particularly warm. For Christmas, my uncle liked to go to the lowlands, to a town called Fusagasaga because there are these hot springs there which are reputed to be very good for what ails one. One supposedly both drinks the mineral water from the hot springs in Fusa and one sits in the hot springs, boiling like a knockwurst in the water which is even hotter than the humid tropical air of the town itself.
I didn't like Fusagasaga except for the hotel in which we stayed.
It was the first hotel I'd ever been to in my life in which you had to keep the toilet paper on the dresser, because you could sit in the toilet and have a shower at the same time. The showerhead was in the middle of the room. The bathroom light was a bulb encased in an outdoor style fixture which didn't allow water to get into it. The beds were saggy soggy thin mattresses on thin metal strips, with spotless sheets and worn out cotton pillows, BUT there were hammock hooks and a hammock slung on one of the two hooks which one could use instead. And boy those hammocks were comfortable, airy and a lot easier to sleep in than the beds!
However, what made the hotel spectacular were the parrots. The owner of the hotel had a few dozen macaws at the hotel. I think that originally they had been captured or hand raised and kept with their wings clipped, but they had the run of the joint and they flew, so they were no longer "captives" birds.
And they were both pestiferous and wonderful!
That first Christmas in Colombia -- and the next -- I sat in 119 degree sulphurous water in that resort in the Colombian lowlands outside of Bogota, drinking Fanta or cold beer. The air outside of the springs was 103 and humidity outside of the baths was 85%, so there wasn't much difference between being IN the springs or out of them.
I fed most of my breakfast to the macaws at the hotel every morning, and spent most of the day with the parrots chewing up everything of mine they could get their claws or beaks on, happily yelling at me in Spanish, and joyfully soaring from perches to my back or waddling around after me, when they couldn't hitch a ride on a forearm from place to place, because they knew I'd cadge fruit for them from the kitchen help... and I did. I fell in LOVE with 1 to 3 pound birds in loud vibrant feather suits with even louder voices, distinct personalities and a surprising range of behavior.
I siesta'd with macaws. I lunched with macaws. I sang Christmas carols to macaws. I got groomed by macaws. I had macaw crap in my hair. I lost a sandal to macaws. I had enough dropped feathers from macaws to make a full fan.
I shared my salad, bread, fruit, fruit juice, lettuce, fried plantains, potato chips, peanuts and yucca with macaws. I showered with macaws if I let them in the room, and I did. Macaws pulled things out of my purse, gnawed holes in letters, dented and punctured post cards, and snapped pencils in half. Macaws climbed the juke box and sang along with selections people made of music in it. Macaws clung to the nets on the tennis courts, chewed up the pingpong paddles and fought one another over pingpong balls.
Macaws unwrapped my Christmas presents. Macaws were my Christmas presence. For years afterward, I'd think in vivid blue and red and gold, when Christmas came around, not in red, green, gold and silver.
You haven't lived until you wake up in a hammock on Christmas morning with a one macaw on your chest shitting on the sheet and trying to pull it off your arms and another hanging upside down clinging to the mesh your butt's in flapping his wings and yelling "hola! Que tal, quetzal?"
Nutterbutter's offerings
Every morning, there's a new cat toy on the rug in front of the fridge. Nutter's doing.
She has no interest in cat treats. OTOH, even with seasoning or gravy or marinade on meat, if offered a stringy tidbit, pork, beef, chicken, fish, from the table makes her no nevermind, she's there. Never takes more than 2, doesn't try to get ON the table, either; and doesn't demand every night.
However, during meal preparation, she'll stand, not sit in the kitchen, tail up (often it's down when she's not wanting to be noticed, which is a lot), head raised, whiskers back a bit, ears forward, SNIFFING. So, I take the pot off the burner, lay it on the rug in front of the fridge and let her SNIFF. That's all she wants.
I get something out of the fridge, she sniffs. So, I let her see and smell every ingredient. Same with spices.
Both are all over the fabric bags when I've been grocery shopping. I let them sniff every item as I empty the bags. If I don't, they go a bit nuts.
Having sniffed, they're done and they move on.
Unless of course, it's tuna.
She has no interest in cat treats. OTOH, even with seasoning or gravy or marinade on meat, if offered a stringy tidbit, pork, beef, chicken, fish, from the table makes her no nevermind, she's there. Never takes more than 2, doesn't try to get ON the table, either; and doesn't demand every night.
However, during meal preparation, she'll stand, not sit in the kitchen, tail up (often it's down when she's not wanting to be noticed, which is a lot), head raised, whiskers back a bit, ears forward, SNIFFING. So, I take the pot off the burner, lay it on the rug in front of the fridge and let her SNIFF. That's all she wants.
I get something out of the fridge, she sniffs. So, I let her see and smell every ingredient. Same with spices.
Both are all over the fabric bags when I've been grocery shopping. I let them sniff every item as I empty the bags. If I don't, they go a bit nuts.
Having sniffed, they're done and they move on.
Unless of course, it's tuna.
THIS is baggage!
Best line in a television drama in 2007. "She doesn't have issues, she has a lifetime subscription." Heard last night on a rerun of something from this year.
Deja Eau
For a minute, I almost smelled the hollyberry air freshener that Mom used to order from Fuller Brush and use to gas the house at holidays.
Misperceptions
Having been accused of wishing dead someone I loved dearly and who broke my heart in more ways than one, when I wished that person release from being trapped in a body that would not obey and being at the mercy of people who were paid to care for that body but NOT for the person IN the body, I'm leery of wishing anyone ill.
It's not about the threefold law, but because I can't even publicly breathe a sigh of relief when some truly shitful individual kicks off. It's simply perceived as "additional malice."
It's not about the threefold law, but because I can't even publicly breathe a sigh of relief when some truly shitful individual kicks off. It's simply perceived as "additional malice."
Chinks
We *all* have vulnerabilities. That comes with caring about something, even one's own self.
The response to discovering a vulnerability isn't to stop caring. A kinetic response is to accept and acknowledge one's vulnerabilities and plod on.
The response to discovering a vulnerability isn't to stop caring. A kinetic response is to accept and acknowledge one's vulnerabilities and plod on.
Practical Partitioning
I want ALL religious institutions out of ALL contracts and ALL civil and criminal law in this country. ALL of them.
Period.
No exceptions.
Amend that. On this earth. Anywhere.
Period.
No exceptions.
Amend that. On this earth. Anywhere.
Tourism
Sometimes it occurs to me that if we come into this earth for a purpose, it may be some people's purpose in this life encounter interesting people and focus some attention on them.
It's really immaterial whether or not a "supreme" being or any kind of invisible friend really exists. Nevertheless, I do think that we need to find something within ourselves to impel us positively and productively, to inspire us to be part of a caring, inclusive and mostly humane and respectful community every day that we live.
If coming across people like that is one's purpose in life, then what?
Does one lose oneself in the general noise promoting them, or simply appreciate them as a casual tourist?
It's really immaterial whether or not a "supreme" being or any kind of invisible friend really exists. Nevertheless, I do think that we need to find something within ourselves to impel us positively and productively, to inspire us to be part of a caring, inclusive and mostly humane and respectful community every day that we live.
If coming across people like that is one's purpose in life, then what?
Does one lose oneself in the general noise promoting them, or simply appreciate them as a casual tourist?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Hamsters
I'm right up here less than 200 miles as the crow flies from the Canadian border and people go completely ape at the word "snow" if they live on Puget Sound. The Sound prevents snow from falling much or accumulating much along its shores.
Yet if one drives only 15 miles inland, particularly since the Cascade Range literally lines the Eastern edge of the Sound, in some of the area, (it's a huge fat aneurism of slightly-less-salty-than-the-Pacific-Ocean water with an openings to the Pacific only at its northwest and southwest mouths, the most violent being the former -- the strait of Juan de Fuca) -- and you're in snow up to your armpits. The Cascades trap most of the moisture in the air and snow falls and falls and falls off and on all winter. However, the biggest concentration of human population is down out of the roughest parts of that range and in the foothills and the valleys, all of which pour into Puget Sound.
I live at 1,000 feet altitude, in a town south of Seattle. Parts of Seatle are nearly 1,000 feet altitude. However, drive 14 blocks west of those parts, and you're at the water's edge. That's a thousand foot drop in altitude in under 2 miles.
I'm literally 20 feet below (in altitude) but 200 feet in actual distance from the top of this little ridge.. and here -- for 3 blocks of town property -- we're on the the last ridge of the mountain before the land slopes down to Puget Sound, some 2 miles as the crow flies from our bathroom wall or a right and then a left turn from our front door.
I've been stuck in here on black ice and snow when one can literally slip slide a block on black ice and get onto dry or damp but thawed streets.
I'm right at a point where we can get snow and a block away it'll be raining.
Still, behind me, the ridge drops off into the Green River Valley, and you have to drive another 8 miles before the ridges are back to back going up into the body of the Cascades. There are 3 towns, all surburbs of Seattle, counting the town in which I live, between the Sound and the body of the Cascades.. which are 70 miles dense, before they drop off into Eastern Washington, which is dryer and in summer hotter than the Western part of the state.
In Seattle and suburbs, when people hear the word "snow" on the weather on any Seattle TV station, they react like a huge cage of hamsters into which someone has dropped a pit bull.
Idiots. Squeaking squealing stampede.
When there's going to be snow in Snoqualmie or White pass (the two most travelled high passes inland from Seattle, where there are quite a few ski resorts and thorugh which are the main roads to E. Washington and farm country if one goes DUE east, instead of going south and then turning East) the TV jerks mention it as if it's going to fall IN Seattle and in all these towns right on and along Puget Sound. They posture and mug for the cameras as if it's going to accumulate and stick *in these towns and imply that everyone's going to lose power and -- OMIGOSH, STARVE!
::eyeroll::
Hamsters.
People dash to their cars, haul ass to the nearest stores and empty the shelves; batteries, canned goods, milk, bread, crackers, soup, and toilet paper. Forget lamp oil and wicks or candles or fireplace logs. Those are gone already. They'll buy those huge 24- and 36-roll bales of rolled toilet paper because some talking head on TV said "snow".
Frakking hamsters.
Yet if one drives only 15 miles inland, particularly since the Cascade Range literally lines the Eastern edge of the Sound, in some of the area, (it's a huge fat aneurism of slightly-less-salty-than-the-Pacific-Ocean water with an openings to the Pacific only at its northwest and southwest mouths, the most violent being the former -- the strait of Juan de Fuca) -- and you're in snow up to your armpits. The Cascades trap most of the moisture in the air and snow falls and falls and falls off and on all winter. However, the biggest concentration of human population is down out of the roughest parts of that range and in the foothills and the valleys, all of which pour into Puget Sound.
I live at 1,000 feet altitude, in a town south of Seattle. Parts of Seatle are nearly 1,000 feet altitude. However, drive 14 blocks west of those parts, and you're at the water's edge. That's a thousand foot drop in altitude in under 2 miles.
I'm literally 20 feet below (in altitude) but 200 feet in actual distance from the top of this little ridge.. and here -- for 3 blocks of town property -- we're on the the last ridge of the mountain before the land slopes down to Puget Sound, some 2 miles as the crow flies from our bathroom wall or a right and then a left turn from our front door.
I've been stuck in here on black ice and snow when one can literally slip slide a block on black ice and get onto dry or damp but thawed streets.
I'm right at a point where we can get snow and a block away it'll be raining.
Still, behind me, the ridge drops off into the Green River Valley, and you have to drive another 8 miles before the ridges are back to back going up into the body of the Cascades. There are 3 towns, all surburbs of Seattle, counting the town in which I live, between the Sound and the body of the Cascades.. which are 70 miles dense, before they drop off into Eastern Washington, which is dryer and in summer hotter than the Western part of the state.
In Seattle and suburbs, when people hear the word "snow" on the weather on any Seattle TV station, they react like a huge cage of hamsters into which someone has dropped a pit bull.
Idiots. Squeaking squealing stampede.
When there's going to be snow in Snoqualmie or White pass (the two most travelled high passes inland from Seattle, where there are quite a few ski resorts and thorugh which are the main roads to E. Washington and farm country if one goes DUE east, instead of going south and then turning East) the TV jerks mention it as if it's going to fall IN Seattle and in all these towns right on and along Puget Sound. They posture and mug for the cameras as if it's going to accumulate and stick *in these towns and imply that everyone's going to lose power and -- OMIGOSH, STARVE!
::eyeroll::
Hamsters.
People dash to their cars, haul ass to the nearest stores and empty the shelves; batteries, canned goods, milk, bread, crackers, soup, and toilet paper. Forget lamp oil and wicks or candles or fireplace logs. Those are gone already. They'll buy those huge 24- and 36-roll bales of rolled toilet paper because some talking head on TV said "snow".
Frakking hamsters.
The Food Cop
At present I live in the Apartment Complex From Heck. Mind you, it's not Slum Central, but it's pretty dismal -- even after the baby diaper combo color paint job effected on it by its slumlord owner this past fall.
It used to be a pretty cute little place, tree shaded, where tenants were encouraged to plant their choice of flower gardens around some basic landscaping which had a LOT of rhododendrons, cream buildings with cute white shutters, a place where we had quarterly yard sales and used the proceeds on a tenant party, where most of the folks there had lived there a decade or longer and everyone got along and looked out for everyone else.
Well, no more.
The first week after the property was no longer in escrow, the property owner brought in an unskilled crew and a flatbed and logged out THIRTY full grown Noble firs, which paid her first year's entire mortgage on this 84-unit complex. Without permit. MATURE straight trees, none of which was in danger of damaging the buildings, none of which was diseased or aslant. There went 90% of the shade on some of the buildings. FEW apartments in this state are air conditioned. Now all the upstairs apartments which used to be livable in August will be hell in June, July, August and September. Then she had all the healthy plantings landscaping the buildings ripped out. It's just dirt now. Ugly.
Everything that was previously done somewhat on the cheap to maintain this little complex in the past is now done on the REALLY cheezy cheap. It's all about maximizing her income and putting as little as, or next to nothing, into the property. For example, the management thugs she uses, illegally raised our rent more than 10% and forced us to sign a lease or, if going month to month, we would pay 25% more than we had been paying (and that could be done only for 2 months. Sign lease or move.) So while we went in to sign a 9 month lease a month or so ago (I wanted to make sure we had a good window in order to build without being forced into another lease or huge bucks going month to month for maybe 3 or months while the house was completed and I effected our move) -- I raised hell about the garbage condition of our place, mostly wanting ONE set of new blinds in our bedroom. I mentioned the refrigerator ran at least 12 hours a day which meant IT was worn out, but I didn't expect a replacement.
The next day, the doorbell rang well before we get up (Hubs telecommutes and works an after-hours shift), and there are these two Russian or Ukranian guys who work for the management company with a refrigerator on a dolly WAY too small for it.
We scrambled to box the contents of our fridge and freezer, and they wheeled the old one out. Underneath the fridge was goo, scum. I I refused to let them wheel the other in until I used a commercial industrial warehouse degreaser in order to get the crap up and scraped off. They were pissed about having to wait for that. Remember, we didn't get a phone call, this is hours before we normally wake up, and no one consulted us about whether or not wanted a replacement.
Tough.
Next, wheel the new fridge in, forget to take the plastic off the coils on the back. I had to make them wheel it back out and get them to take the plastic off the back. I had to make them take the plastic and foam out of the interior -- and it was everywhere. They INSISTED it didn't need levelling and left with the old one.. which held MORE than the new one does.
They didn't leave us a manual for this Hotpoint (GE) bottom of the line piece of crap with 2 less shelves than theother had and NO ice maker, and it had no ice tray in it, either.
Erek and I monkeyed around and figured out how to level it, more or less.
I filled it and discovered something.
It skreeks every time one opens or closes it. There's NO place to lubricate it, and no way to get the door off the hinges to do so, either.
We've had it a month now. The cats are in heaven. Now they know immediately if there's something going on in the kitchen. They're EXTREMELY fond of the thing.
Me, I HATE it. It SCREAMS if I'm getting milk to make us a latte. It SCREAMS every time I open or close it making a meal. It SCREAMS UUUUUUUUUUP and then dowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn, like a whiney four year old pretending to cry in pain, but really crying for attention.
Forget to get out an onion? SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeammmmmmm.
Putting away groceries?
SKREEEEEEEEEK. SCREAM, screeeeeeeeeeeeeeam! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!
Ad nauseam.
I've discovered every one of these damned things makes the same noise and there's frak-all anyone can do about it. Every neighbor with this model of "new refrigerator" in all the "retrofitted" apartments has the same complaint.
And we're all losing weight.
About Luggage
Sometimes people refer to their lives' history as baggage; as if it were something they should be happy to put down or discard when it gets to be too heavy. Of course it's impossible to do. Short a lobotomy, all that you've experienced is a part of you and will you or nil you, it's going to pop into the present.
In terms of some kinds of therapy, "baggage" is the stuff one brings with one's experiences. It's learned emotional patterns. It's the junk that keeps one from making progress in life, setting or achieving a goal, adjusting to the inevitable change in one's life that comes with existing. It prevents one from being or becoming the "most" or the "best" which a one can be. Its the burden of circumstances which are less than ideal or which prevent something desired from being accomplished. "If you find your hands are full, drop the baggage and pick up that thing you desire," etc.
Everyone has baggage. Everyone sees what everyone else is carrying as baggage at one time or another.
We come into the world with a piece of luggage. By the time we're aware of ourselves as volitional creatures, there's stuff in that luggage. As we grow and age, we accumulate more luggage. That luggage is self-hood; self-history, chronicity, experience.
Somewhere along the line, some of that luggage becomes baggage. It becomes weight, excess, burden. A lot of baggage is externally applied and acquired. Luggage is mixed in with the baggage. Usually people sort things out and can discriminate between which is their luggage and which is their baggage. Some people go to therapy to learn or further refine their discrimination, and maybe even to learn how to put the baggage down and carry the luggage as if it were full of helium instead of chronos and self-awareness and experiences.
Everyone has to carry some kind of self around with them. That's luggage, even if it's only a wallet or a fanny pack. However, the baggage, the stuff that pulls one down. that can be put in a locked room in the warehouse. It can even be stored next to luggage.
This is the stuff that's come over the baggage counter and I'm throwing it here, to decide now or later what's luggage and what's baggage.
In terms of some kinds of therapy, "baggage" is the stuff one brings with one's experiences. It's learned emotional patterns. It's the junk that keeps one from making progress in life, setting or achieving a goal, adjusting to the inevitable change in one's life that comes with existing. It prevents one from being or becoming the "most" or the "best" which a one can be. Its the burden of circumstances which are less than ideal or which prevent something desired from being accomplished. "If you find your hands are full, drop the baggage and pick up that thing you desire," etc.
Everyone has baggage. Everyone sees what everyone else is carrying as baggage at one time or another.
We come into the world with a piece of luggage. By the time we're aware of ourselves as volitional creatures, there's stuff in that luggage. As we grow and age, we accumulate more luggage. That luggage is self-hood; self-history, chronicity, experience.
Somewhere along the line, some of that luggage becomes baggage. It becomes weight, excess, burden. A lot of baggage is externally applied and acquired. Luggage is mixed in with the baggage. Usually people sort things out and can discriminate between which is their luggage and which is their baggage. Some people go to therapy to learn or further refine their discrimination, and maybe even to learn how to put the baggage down and carry the luggage as if it were full of helium instead of chronos and self-awareness and experiences.
Everyone has to carry some kind of self around with them. That's luggage, even if it's only a wallet or a fanny pack. However, the baggage, the stuff that pulls one down. that can be put in a locked room in the warehouse. It can even be stored next to luggage.
This is the stuff that's come over the baggage counter and I'm throwing it here, to decide now or later what's luggage and what's baggage.
It's perception.
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