Friday, September 30, 2011

The Bernstein Advantage?


Does anyone else in the Detroit Metro area feel that they know entirely too much about the Bernstein family?  They love each other so much.  Yes, they want you to know that their whole firm feels like a family, but are you yet convinced that the true magic at the core of the Sam Bernstein law firm is the Bernstein children?  We don't see the "Call Sam" commercials much anymore.  Sam is clearly passing the torch, and so now we must know the children.  Every couple of months the siblings film a new tribute to each other.   We meet Beth Bernstein, posed confidently in her conservative feminine professional costume: a crisp pencil skirt, fitted suit jacket, long hair and pearls.  Mark is there too, hair freshly clipped, suit a bit too big, earnestly telling us that yes, he and Beth play their parts, but allow him to tell you about his brother Richard. Richard is blind, a triathelete, was voted Michiganian of the Year by the Detroit News, and oh and did he mention that Richard is a lawyer too?

No big deal.  That's just how the Bernsteins roll.  They've got a mountain of accomplishments, and a great big love, and they're going to fight for you with that power.  Here's what they want you to know: You trip and fall on a sidewalk, we're going to unleash our undying, utterly devotional love for each other on the bastards that didn't fix that crack.  Did you know our brother is blind?  And a triathelete?  Those sidewalk-neglecting mo' fo's are going down under the weight of our family's total amazement with each other.

I'm concerned that these commercials will increase in awkward intimacy.  Soon we will learn that Beth, in addition to having been elected Co-Vice Chair of the Accident Victims Rights Alliance, recently survived a less than amicable divorce.  She's not only the representative for Michigan Women's Law Association, but she completes her son's homework for him each night because she cannot bear for him to receive anything less than an A on schoolwork.  Mark flosses three times a day because he is compulsive about his dental hygiene, and he regularly stays late each night at the office, browsing profiles on Match.com.  And Richard, did you know that he can tie a maraschino cherry stem into a knot with his tongue?  Did you also know that he is blind? 

Look, the Bernsteins seem like nice people.  I just feel I know more about them than I should.  It is a lopsided relationship. Plus I miss their dad.  Where's Sam been?  And where are the accident victims who've been rescued by him?  I miss their stories.  Bernsteins, it's not you, it's me.   Maybe with a little time, I'll be ready to learn more about you, but for now, I just need a little space.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Our Tiniest Roommates

Every year around mid-summer, our house gets kind of campy.  It's not so much that we're making s'mores all the time or cooking hot dogs on a stick.  It's more that there's just a lot of grass and bugs in the house.  The other night, Hubs had had it with the situation.  Walking into the living room with his snack, a moth fluttered into his hair, and he frantically scrubbed his head while taking the Lord's name in vain.  He sat down in a huff and declared definitively, "I know they aren't doing any harm, but there are too many bugs in this house and they need to be vacuumed up!"

A shocked silence hung in the air.  No bug dared move.  Amused by the specificity of his plan for their demise, I took inventory of the bugs among us who surely feared the Dyson at that moment.  A couple of moths hanging above us on the ceiling, a firefly clinging to the curtain, and a run of the mill housefly trying to creep away unassumingly along sill of the window.  The idea of exterminating these bugs via a vacuum hose gave me the giggles.

Now, if you've ever been in our living room, you know that we are surrounded by magazines at all times.  I love me a good dose of life-improvement advice.  I find that reading magazines full of health and home styling tips gives me an escape and distracts my mind from the weight of relentless stress that plagues most working mothers like me.  It does that by seamlessly replacing the stress of reality with the equally heavy but novel and exciting anxieties caused by knowing that you aren't doing a fraction of the shit you could be doing with your life.  Why should I dwell on my inefficiencies at work when I have never even attempted to complete a triathlon or make a patio lantern out of repurposed fountain drink lids?  I digress.

My point is, the most efficient of bug murder weapons was all around us, and Hubs' go to weapon was the vacuum.  Downright ridiculous.  Anyway, it was all bravado.  He didn't end up getting out the vacuum just then, because an atheletic competition of some sort was on the TV, which quickly lulled him into the complacent state known as "Sports Trance."   And I didn't pick up a magazine in arms against these creatures, because I try to avoid all violence in the tradition of Ghandi.  Adhering to one religion seems like a major commitment to me.  Rather, I like to pick and chose the best morsels from each faith, and this is one I like from Hinduism.  Plus, when I forget about trying to be like Ghandi and I do splat one dead, it is so unpleasant.  Little bodies smeared like grapes, full of tiny spurts of juice and legs.  Go-ross. 

Thus, in our house, it is live and let live most of the time.  Now the one exception is fruit flies.  Those little bastards are just irritating.  Their sense of entitlement in the fruit bowl is obnoxious.  What's most maddening about them is how blatantly they lounge around on my plums, not a care in the world as I hover near, because the second I bring my thumb near one, they are gone into the ether, lightning fast.

So I was complaining about this once to a friend of mine.  She had a tried and true solution.  Pour some apple cider vinegar in a bowl with a few drops of dish soap and set it out on the counter, she instructed.  The smell attracts the fruit flies.  They dive in and meet a soapy vinegary demise.  Simple.

So I tried it.  I filled a bowl with the death trap mixture and laid wait.  Two hours in, a cloud of tiny gray bodies hovered around the bowl, and a couple loitered on the rim, but no casualties.  By morning, there were a couple of small corpses bloating in the vinegar, but the party scene around the bowl had exploded.  Twenty flies at least sat perched just on the edge of the bowl as their more energetic friends, drunk on vinegar vapors, swarmed wildly about them.  Clearly, my extermination plan had morphed into an Irish wake.  Plus, the kitchen smelled like my daughter's feet after long day in sockless shoes.  (This may be something you don't know about Little D.  She's only 6, but she can bring the stink with those little trotters, which is why she has lovingly earned the nickname "Vinnie" in our house, short for "Vinegar Chips.")  Determined to end this party right now, I swiped harum scarum into the crowd, trying to catch these vagrants with a series of barehanded grabs.  When that didn't work, I tried to clap them dead in a nonrhythmic flurry of attacks.  I didn't get a one.  Defeated by my lack of success, and embarrassed by my violent outburst,  I dumped the vinegar down the sink in disgust.

Collecting myself, I rinsed the bowl clean, took a several deep breaths, put my plums in the fridge, and reflected for a moment upon Ghandi.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Road Trip!


There is a giddy excitement at the beginning of a road trip that cannot be duplicated by any other experience, and, as deemed by the laws of the universe, cannot possibly last more than an hour and a half. On this trip, that’s when we hit the rainstorm. 

Driving out of two weeks of sunny summer weather toward four days in Chicago,  Hubs happily drummed along to the beats of LCD Soundsystem on the steering wheel as our six year old daughter, known here as "Little D," sat strapped into her booster seat behind me, surrounded by a DVD player, a Nintendo DS, a CD player and a sack full of enough library books to last her through the end of 1st grade.  I had the luxury of being Front Seat Passenger and Snack Coordinator, whose job was to read my new book and pass a Gogurt behind me now and then.  An hour into the drive I was slightly startled to look up from my book and see random ploppings of giant rain splattering the windshield.

I realized with dismay that I hadn’t checked the weather for this trip.  I asked myself, What kind of idiot doesn't look at the forecast before they take off on a vacation?  I found solace in the realization  that there were two of this kind of idiot in the car, me and my husband, who was now no longer tapping out beats, but holding firmly to the wheel at ten and two.  Much like misery, stupidity loves company too.  Unwilling to waiver from the emotion known as "early road trip optimism," I imagined us driving through a cartoon rain cloud on a map and coming out the other side, rounding the bottom of Lake Michigan into a stretch of highway looked down upon by a smiling sun.  I turned a page in my book.

A few minutes later, the beat of the wipers turned frantic and Hubs turned down the music (the universal signal that this is some serious shit we're about to drive into).  I looked up to see sideways sheets of rain obscuring the view in front of us.  Wind gusted against the side of the car and Hubs said “Whoa” as he corrected for the 6 inches the car was just blown against its will.  I closed my book. 

The rain poured down in thick sheets, blurring the tail lights of the car in front of us.  All cars around us slowed down to a crawl, every driver no doubt having a conversation about whether to forge on or pull over.  Our conversation lasted three seconds.  The wind swept up again and a bucket of rain battered the windshield.  “Pull over,” I said.  Hubs was on it.  He put on the hazards and pulled in behind the car in front of us. We were stuck in Michigan’s first hurricane. 

The car rocked back and forth.  Leaves and sticks smacked the window.  I was pretty sure I saw Almira Gulch fly past the passenger window on her bicycle.  Despite my deep breaths, my heart was pounding, and I turned around to reassure Little D that everything would be okay.  She was hunched over in back, wearing her giant DJ headphones, sucking her thumb, eyes glued to the DVD player.  She hadn’t even noticed we had stopped moving. 

After five minutes of watching the tree next to our car bending in the wind and repeatedly estimating the distance from the base of the tree to the top of the tree and comparing it to the distance from the base of the tree to the roof of our car, I noted the GPS said it was only .8 miles until the next exit.  Hubs had announced a half an hour before the storm got bad that he had to pee.  I suggested that maybe we try getting to the nearest gas station so we could stretch our legs and go to the bathroom (and avoid being whipped into the imminent funnel cloud that I was sure was tearing a path straight toward our Prius).  Hubs was game.  He put his signal on and bravely pulled back on to the highway.  We made our way to the Marathon station in Paw Paw, which had the privilege of being attached to "Nibbles Cafe."  Little D finally looked up from her movie as we pulled into our parking spot.  “It’s over,” she announced. “What are we doing?”  We told her that we were stopping to stretch and wait for the rain to let up.  We dashed into the store as quick as we could, but were drenched within two feet of our car.  Shaking off like dogs once inside the door, we surveyed the scene.

“Do you have to go potty?” I asked her.  “No,” she said, like she always did.  “Well we’re going to try anyway,” I declared, and led her by the hand into the bathroom, which turned out to be quite instructional, with lots of handwritten signs, like: “Do not flush anything other than toilet paper down toilet,” and, once inside the stall: “Turn handle and push hard to open door.”  I wished I had some Post-It notes so I could add a few of my own "mom-oriented" signs.  Next to the door handle: "Don't touch anything you don't have to" and next to the toilet: "Do not even let your legs touch this seat."  I think it could have saved other traveling mothers a lot of time. 

At the Marathon station in Paw Paw, you can buy a t-shirt advertising the Road Kill Cafe (“You kill ‘em, we grill ‘em”) or a strawberry scented dream catcher to hang on your rearview mirror.  You can get a baby blue vanity plate for the front of your Camaro that says “High Maintenance” in sparkly cursive.  Everyone in that place was a nervous wreck and unusually happy to be there.  We exchanged stories with strangers.  A trucker coming from Oshtamo lamented in an accent that was a 20/80 mix of Midwest and Southern Ozarks that this was the second storm he and his wife had banana(?) today.  I realized I was going to need to listen much more intently to be able to follow his story.  Apparently, his wife was gonna have to travel on to Squinoma without him to get their grandkin home to their muddle, because he had to get back to his rig to carry a load of cheese to a hearse in Georgia.  I know in my heart that’s probably not what he was really saying, but that’s the very best translation I could come up with.  Hubs and I smiled, nodded our heads in fake understanding and wished him luck.

Little D was delighted with the sculpture section of the store, and I enthusiastically admired the motorcycle figurines and skull mugs with her, oohing and ahhing, because going on a trip is all about seeing new and amazing things when you’re six, and I was in charge of helping to create this experience.  As we browsed,  a frazzled woman named Barbie wearing a neon pink baseball cap paced in front of a display of ceramic wolf clocks, explaining into her cell phone that she is shaking like a leaf and she will be terribly late for her (electrolysis?) appointment.

We watched the lady behind the cafe counter slide foil-wrapped sandwiches down slotted rows in the deli case, announcing to no one in particular that “We got hamburgers made fresh.” We shuffled through the thick cloud of fried chicken vapors up and down the snack aisles for about 10 minutes, pretending like we were shopping, but really just waiting out the storm.  We selected a few items to purchase in exchange for the shelter, including a sleeve of honey roasted peanuts for Hubs and cracker and cheese food sandwiches for Little D, because I ran out of veto steam halfway through the second aisle.  After about twenty minutes, the rain finally died down and we felt secure enough to say goodbye to the safe haven of Marathon Gas and Nibbles Cafe.

Pulling back onto the highway past the screaming emergency vehicles headed toward Paw Paw, I felt a new lightness that can only come from the exhilaration of still being alive.  As I munched on my $5.99 box of Wheat Thins, Steve Miller’s “Come on and Dance” came on the only radio station that played music in Southwestern Michigan.  I knew with a confident sense of buoyancy that the smiling sun on the map was not far away at all.  “This is a classic,” I said, turning it up.  “You can’t deny Steve Miller.”  Hubs agreed, newly rejuvenated as well, commenting that Steve Miller’s “Greatest Hits” album is one of the only albums in the history of rock and roll that lives up to its name.  (When you’ve just cheated death, you can confidently make pronouncements like this.)  We got Little D set up with her mixed CD of pop hits, and we were back in this thing. 

It was smooth sailing for a long stretch until we were almost there.  Little D sang "Whip My Hair" loudly with passion, oblivious of the fact that we could hear her through her headphones, I read my book, and Hubs kept fruitlessly trying to strike up conversations to prevent himself from drifting off the side of the road.   After her CD was over, Little D found an entertaining game in which she tried to pull my hair with her bare toes. Apparently there were extra points for going back in for a toeful of hair approximately three minutes after I had been driven to final threats through clenched teeth.

When she was sufficiently scared (or more likely bored) from the results of that game, she asked me to play Star Wars with her.  She handed me a tiny plastic Jedi and, after a few half-hearted swipes with his light saber, I promptly laid him down on my shoulder and informed her that he was tired and wanted to take a nap.  (Have I told you yet that imaginative play with action figures is one of my greatest weaknesses as a parent?)  Just as I was gearing up to defend the fact that napping was a legitimate Jedi activity, Hubs announced that he could see the city! 

Coming up through the South Side of Chicago, we read signs aloud, and pointed out the L train stops.  Little D noticed how close some of the houses were to each other.  "I know what those are called," she proclaimed proudly.  "Cond-O-s," she said, with a cute little extra stress on the O. "My friend DJ lives in one, and his house touches another house," she said.   Hubs gently corrected her.  "Actually, hon, that is called the 'Ghett-o.' It's kind of like condos, only not quite as nice." 

As we cruised up I-90 past the architecturally star studded skyline of the Windy City, I couldn't help feeling like I was driving straight into a John Hughes movie.  It was like we were Ferris, Sloan and Cameron, coming in to play in the city.  Only in this car, Ferris and Sloan were thirtysomethings, and Cameron was six.  Like Cameron, Little D, truly is always the skeptic, half-convinced that we're not going to see anything good today.  We had our adversities, yes.  Our rainstorm, our minor irritations, our mind numbing stretches of nothing to see, but we had arrived.  We were in the city, and I just knew that we would have the time of our lives.  That feeling lasted, according to the laws of the universe, about an hour and a half.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Wallowing and Wavering




This has been a humbling month.  My father, who is healing cancer in his throat, has completed his 7th week of chemo and radiation.  For two weeks he effectively stopped eating because the burns in his throat from the radiation made it too painful, and with a strong push from the doctor he agreed to have a feeding tube put in so that he can get the nourishment he needs to heal in the next couple of months.
The same week that happened, my closest friend in the world found out her mom has cancer.  Uterine probably.  Her dad was just  planning to start round two of treatment on his cancer when they found out.  To complicate matters, they just sold their house after four years of trying and were looking forward to moving across the country to be in the same place as their children and grandchildren.  They had planned to finish up her dad’s radiation treatment and then hit the road.  Her mom’s body had another plan.
Other friends of mine gave over their infant son over to the trust of a heart surgeon.  The doctor sewed up five tiny holes in his heart.  He is off his breathing tube, recovering like a champ, and going home tomorrow. What a tsunami of fear, hope, dread and relief to survive.  


In the last month, a friend at work lost her nephew to a car accident, one of my students lost her father to lung cancer, and another student's father died suddenly in his sleep.  I also found out one of the most heartbreaking stories I've ever heard about a new student who recently joined my class.  This young woman, fifteen in 7th grade, has faced more trauma than any human should ever have to bear.  Because of that, she lacks the emotional, social or academic skills to be successful in middle school.  


While holding space for all of these dear people, I also can't escape financial fears at home, as our school board fights to drastically reduce my pay next year.   I will be embarking on the experience of picketing at 7:10 am next week.  To add to the disappointment, the Nia class that I teach on Wednesdays is being cancelled due to lack of attendance.  It was the class I chose to keep a couple of months ago when I decided that teaching two classes was too much for me right now.  I gave the other class to a friend.  Oh yeah, and both of our cars died this month.  One required the replacement of the entire engine.  


It's not too often that I feel completely overwhelmed.  In fact it hardly ever happens.  But lately, it seems it's been one dumping of horrible after another.  I'm starting to feel the pull toward a generally bleak outlook.


I've been throwing a raging pity party, but the chips are all gone and it's getting a bit boring with no one else in attendance.  So, I'm in search of a new attitude.  Normally in this situation, I remind myself to look for the positive. Only, I gotta throw myself into it now.  Really make an effort.  I'm scrounging for the joy hiding in the cracks of all of this rubble.  I've got to get in the garden.  Moist dirt and green leaves are one of the most soothing combinations on the planet for me.  I've got to keep making stuff.  Lately, it has been bags and felt flowers and headbands and stuffed critters.  I've always found comfort in cutting, stitching, gluing, painting, designing.  Making stuff makes me feel better.  I've also got to remember to love the people around me and get out of my head.  After all, there will always be tragedy around me.  Maybe just not so front and center.  And there will always be time that passes and perspective that shifts.  Yesterday, I wallowed in it.  Today, the best I can do is this:  my dad is on the path to healing, I'm four and a half weeks from summer vacation, and I am so thankful for the people who can sew up the holes in our babies' hearts.







Wednesday, April 7, 2010

O' Pioneers



A new era is upon us at the homestead.  We woke up and realized we needed a budget.  Embarrassing to admit?  Yes.  Even harder to think about the frivolous flow of cash that trickled steadily out of our paychecks for years on fleeting impulses.  Magazines, several a month, at $5 a pop.  Clothes that sometimes never got the tags taken off before they went into the garage sale.  Videos that may have been watched once. Books that are still on a shelf waiting to be read. It hit a symbolic critical point when we made this realization surrounded by empty pints of Pelegrino.  That's right.  Sparkling water.  It was bad.


Anyway, we got a hold of ourselves.  HD cable?  An unnecessary luxury for our current financial state of affairs.  Unlimited monthly cell phone plans?  Didn't make sense for the 60 minutes we each used each month--we went to pre-paid, basic phones.  Family YMCA membership?  Cancelled.  We just weren't using it enough.  So, the budget is in place, rules have been laid down about spending and accounting, and strategies have been planned.  We have become resourceful, and it's kind of fun.


The major realm of change is our food budget.  That was our biggest area of denial.  We do a lot cooking at home, but we had been buying whatever we wanted without a plan.  Cadillac ingredients on a whim.  Take out too.  Mostly Whole Foods prepared meals.  Ironically, Hubs runs the very department that makes the meals, yet we would thoughtlessly pay a premium to buy meals he made (or supervised) at work rather than home.  Stupid.


Since our wake up call, there has been a revolution in our kitchen.  As much as we can make ourselves, we do.  Salsa, pita chips, tortilla chips, guacamole.  Pre-made tubs of hummus used to be a non-negotiable on the grocery list.  No more.  I'm making a weekly batch on Sundays, from dried chickpeas no less.  Instead of late night runs to the store for $3.00 pints of ice cream, our treats are now homemade cookies and fruit crisps.  I even made my own Wheat Thins.  I need to try again though.  They were tasty, but crispy enough to cause a dental bill.  Today the family plans on take-two of making our own mozzarella cheese.  Little D will learn about the science of food, as Calder's whole milk plus a little rennet and citric acid magically turns to curds and whey and then to a stretchy rich mozzarella log.  If all goes well, it will top a pizza tonight with homemade crust.  The only homemade element that will be missing is tomato sauce.  Sadly, we used the last jar in January.


It is probably no coincidence that since we've put the kabash on recreational spending, I have thrown myself into sewing.   I got a machine for Christmas, and from the moment I finished my first pair of P.J. pants for Little D, I've been fascinated by the fact that you can create really useful and cool stuff out of fabric and thread.  Mostly I'm just impressed with the fact that I can thread and operate this machine, so I keep trying projects to confirm to myself that, yes, I can sew.  Amazing.  I've made fabric tote bags for groceries, purses, several pairs of pants, a dress, and a stuffed animal. I've also gotten sucked into a world of felt.  Did you know that when shrunken in the washing machine, a wool sweater turns into a thick felt that can be cut without fraying?  I've hand stitched about 40 felt flowers for pins, barrettes and headbands since I found that little discovery.  Before Christmas, the only thing I had ever sewn was a stuffed animal in 7th grade home ec., a few buttons, and a hem on some curtains.  I'm not sure what's come over me, and I don't know whether to be embarrassed or proud, but I've become down right Martha Stewarty.


Last week, I looked up and realized it was spring.  The garden demands our attention again.  Kale, spinach and some various herbs are already planted.  The raging yellow flowers on the forsythia are telling us to plant the peas today.   The dandelions are already making a run for it in the perennial garden. Creating flowers and vegetables will be this season's obsession.


I used to spend unaccounted amounts of money on entertainment.  A date to the movies with popcorn and drinks, visits to the pay-to-play jungle gym germ pits with Little D, going out to eat or shopping at Target just for something to do.  Now I find endless entertainment in creating.  It's much more rewarding, and healthier for my wallet and my spirit.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Things Fall Apart

The last couple of weeks have been an action-packed grand finale leading up to today, my birthday.  The latest little fiasco in our lives here at the homestead is the sudden death of the laptop due to a reckless urge to push my daughter toward adulthood by giving her an open cup of milk (as opposed to the lidded variety).  As soon as the cup was tipped and the milk pooled around the back of the laptop, a memory flashed of not two months ago when my daughter (who will, from this point forward on the blog will be referred to as "Little D") knocked over my cup of coffee and drenched the keyboard.  There was only one noticeable malfunction after this, but it was one we couldn't live with.  The poor thing was sent away for three weeks, and came back with the a new fully functional right shift key. 

And here we are again, I thought.  I closed it up to wipe it down and found milk running out the back of the screen.  When I opened it up and hit power...nothing.  So, Hubs and Little D promptly transported the coma patient to Geek Squad urgent care, and we were told we will get it back in 2 to 4 weeks, good as new--literally, with all of those pesky photos, word documents, and videos we had saved on it wiped clean.  We had to decide if it was worth a hundred and fifty bucks to save this stuff.  People always say they'll run back into the burning house for just one thing: their photos.   I found that I'll sell mine down the river for $150.  Ah, the adventures of self-discovery.

In other developments, my car has decided to start freaking out.  Nothing structural, just fun electrical quirks.  Like one recent night, I was leaving school, exhausted and still riding high on the adrenaline of parent teacher open house, when I got in the car to find the electric panel telling me that I had 2000 miles left on this tank of gas.  When I toggled over to the "current miles per gallon feature," imagine my delight when I found that my car was now getting 240 miles to the gallon.  Unfortunately, as I barreled toward home, it slowly transitioned from spontaneous super hybrid back my predictable German work horse.  I sadly watched the numbers fall as I sped down I-275.  190 mpg,  165 mpg, 110 mpg, 55 mpg...28 mpg.  And that was that.

This week, it's fun with the turn signals.  It's my fault, because just before it started, I was silently cursing an old man who drifted about in front of me several times, never using his turn signal.  What, you never heard of turn signal, I thought.  Then I righteously flipped on mine.  After I executed my turn the blinker stopped, but the clicker went haywire.  The normal, steady rhythm of a turn signal is a non-assuming "click click...click click."  Well now, after my turn is made and my blinker turns off, the sound effect of the blinker likes to play a little avant garde jazz number after.  "click click click click click click click click...clickclick.......................click" it might say, or some variation on that theme.  It might bust out into a solo, three, six, even ten times over a period of five minutes after I make a turn.  Sometimes, it likes to surprise me with a spontaneous serenade when I haven't made a turn in miles, just to remind me of it's skill.  If it weren't so annoying, it might be funny.

And the adventures don't stop with technologies.  My body is keeping it real too.  First, it was the dilated eye.  One morning a couple weeks ago, I woke up with a red and itchy eye, some allergic reaction to cat dander or spores of some sort.  I dropped a couple Visine allergy drops into the eye before I walked into school, so as not to scare the children with my bloodshot teacher eye.   The morning began with a staff meeting, in which I noticed the presenters getting progressively blurrier.  I kept rubbing my eye, wondering if I accidentally switched my contacts when I put them in.  Talking to a counselor after the meeting, she asked me, "Is your eye okay?"  She informed me that it was almost completely dilated, "like the meth patients I'd see when I worked in intake at the drug rehab clinic."  

"Call a doctor," my colleagues told me.  "We'll cover for you if you have to go to the ER," they said.  

I went straight to a mirror and found my eye looking like this:





Had I unwittingly done meth this morning? Was I having a stroke?  WTF, I worried.  After a long time on hold with the doctor's office (while I tried to teach my first hour tethered to my phone table), I found out that this is a side effect of Visine allergy drops.  They sell these things at Rite Aid and this is a common side effect?  "Give it time," the nurse told me.  "If it isn't improved by tomorrow, call us."  So I went on teaching, no doubt disturbing the young people with my freakish meth-addict eye, and the next morning it was mostly back to normal.

Next, I came down with the never ending cold from hell, which ebbed and flowed over a couple weeks, but culminated finally in the almost complete loss of my voice.  At school, I struggled to explain figurative language techniques. As my voice gradually eroded, I went from Harvey Fierstein impersonator in the morning to a squeaky mime by afternoon.  I took the next day off.  

But the adventures didn't stop there. A few days ago I woke up with a pinched nerve in my neck.  Again with a staff meeting in the morning.  In this one, I discovered that if I turned too sharply to the right I would receive a crippling jolt of pain to my neck.  I had to hold myself very still with my head cocked slightly to the left, which resulted in me seeming extra interested in the presentation on ESL learners. Back to the classroom with a fun new quirk.  This time as Frankenstein, I enlightened my seventh graders on the difference between alliteration, consonance and assonance, periodically stopping to wail and wait for a paralyzing pang to pass.  "This is a pain in the assonance," I told them.


Leaving school that day, on my way to emergency appointment for a massage and a chiropractic adjustment, I turned to look over my shoulder to back out and was jolted with a bolt of pain to my neck.  At the same instant my blinker started going nuts again.  This time the radio decided to join in, rhythmically beating a duet of static every time the blinker clicked.  The ridiculousness of my life at that moment hit me and I burst into a fit of giggles, tasered by waves of pain as my shoulders shook with laughter.


I turn 35 today.  I want to believe that this series of unfortunate events was a test of will, an individually designed rite of passage into my late 30s.  I finished this entry once already...yesterday.  It was my last day of being 34.  I awoke early, got my coffee and sat down to write.  I banged out a decent end to this sad tale.  Satisfied with it, I got into the shower and got ready for work, glad that I had finally finished my first blog entry since returning to school.  When I got home yesterday, Hubs informed me that the desktop had crashed and I discovered that everything I wrote that morning was lost.   

Today, the first day of my new age, so far...so good.  I've picked up the pieces and tried to recapture what I wrote yesterday, tried to make it better, even.   Yeats wrote, "The center cannot hold; things fall apart." But could he have ever have predicted the invention of Superglue?  Things can be put back together.  We can march out of adversity stronger for having faced it.  I am choosing to believe these tests of my will are complete, and I've passed dammit.  I can laugh at myself.  I'm older, wiser and ready to reap the rewards of my resilience.  Bring it on 35.  Bring it on.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

She saves. And shoots spirals.


These are the conversations I will miss. First of all, I imagine it is only a matter of time before my daughter is no longer talking to me from the toilet, with the bathroom door open. There's a short window in each child's life when they're young enough not to care about that, but old enough to have an insightful conversation such as this.


Tonight, as I'm sitting in the dining room checking email she calls out with excitement, "Hey mommy--you know what would be a great super hero?"


"What?"


"Spiral Girl!"


"Spiral Girl. I love that. What does Spiral Girl do?"


"She saves.  And shoots spirals."


Of course.


"I can't believe they didn't put her in the super hero book," my daughter says with a mix of wonder and disgust.


"Well, you could make her yourself."


"Yes!" she exclaims. "I'm going to make her right after I'm done."


A moment later, she streaks out to the dining room completely nude and proclaims, "I know another one. Booger girl! She shoots boogers at bad guys."


Unfortunately a mom can't really laugh at Booger Girl, though it is kinda funny. She tries again.


"Or how about Pentagon Girl?


"What does she do?"


"She only shoots pentagons....She's kind of a stinky super hero. Well, her work is kind of stinky. Her name is not. "


This is the point in the conversation when I realize she is punctuating her thoughts by casually waving around a wet wipe. There is undeniable evidence that she ran out of the bathroom with the Booger Girl idea mid-wipe.


Horrified, I bust out first-middle-last-name. Sometimes you gotta mean business. "...do not leave the bathroom or the toilet until you are finished wiping your bottom."


She races back to the bathroom, and calls, "Okay, girlfriend! Geeze!" A moment later she adds, "And don't start saying bottom."


I don't know why I said "bottom." I never say "bottom." We usually just call it like we see it at our house. A butt is a butt. But for some reason in this instance, I chose bottom. Maybe it was because I used first-middle-last-name. I felt I had to be more formal in my decree. Anyway, I wasn't getting away with it.


"And don't even think about calling it a toushie," she adds. "I hate that name."


"Really, now? What name do you prefer?"


"I prefer bootie and butt." Extended pause. "Actually, bootie is the goodest."


Bootie is the goodest isn't it? So wise, so honest. Out of the mouth of my babe.


In the words of Billy Joel, "These are the times to remember, 'cause they will not last forever. These are the days to hold onto, 'cause we won't although we'll want to."


This is the time!


The time is going to change. :(




Saturday, August 15, 2009

She's Choppin' Broccolay



Not many paradigm shifts begin with a bean salad, but for me it did. Because of a simple bean salad recipe with fresh ingredients and a zippy vinaigrette, I am astonished to admit that I am now a cook.

After a recent vacation which stretched the limits of indulgence, even for me, Hubby and I decided to eat a "cleansing" diet for a week. This was a little dietary experiment suggested by a friend in which you eat from just four food groups: fruit, vegetables, nuts & beans. If it sounds a little familiar to you, it's because it's also the diet of a squirrel.

We decided that olive oil, herbs and spices, and a little seafood were also allowed. Since I am currently on summer vacation, and Hubs works a full time job, I took on the responsibility of figuring out what we would eat. Where did I turn? Bean salads. I figured they were filling, full of protein, and they were cheap. (Did I mention that after this vacation we were not only fat, but also poor?)

Little did I know then, but the bean salad offers a vast palate of flavors, textures and health benefits with which to experiment. My first attempt was a black eyed pea salad with a dijon vinaigrette. I happened to be flipping through a cookbook looking for recipes with ingredients we had, and there it was. Looked simple enough, so I got out the supplies and followed the steps. If I may toot my own horn (no pun intended), it was delicious. I was so surprised with myself as I willingly took bite after bite, savoring the delicate blend of complex flavors and textures. I marveled at the fact that this dish that I had made was not only somewhat attractive, but it was downright tasty.

This was a momentous revelation! A little history: Up until this point my culinary repertoire included spaghetti (from a jar), eggs, microwave burritos, broccoli and cheese, oatmeal, and oven nachos. To my credit, I also knew how to chop vegetables and fruits and put them in a bowl to assemble a salad. Still, this is a pitiful list for a thirty-four year old woman with a family and working appliances. But Hubby is a professional chef. An enabler. Why learn to cook when you don't have to and you don't have a clue what you're doing? A conclusion drawn of laziness and fear.

Thus, I embraced the legume and set out on a mission to explore it's possibilities. With Internet recipe databases as my compass, I forged onward into a week of bean dishes. Kidney beans & corn; chickpeas with garlic & parsley; curried lentils with cashews; white bean dip. Some were better than others, but amazingly, they were all edible, and most delicious. To add to my amazement, for some reason, all of a sudden cooking was fun to me. I enjoyed figuring out the secret formula that each recipe had in common. With the bean salad, it seemed that the common denominators were some type of bean+some chopped fresh veggies & herbs+some type of vinegar+lemon or lime juice+olive oil+salt & pepper.

After the legume, I moved on to fresh local produce as the centerpiece (preferably as local as my backyard--still broke at this point, but we have a big veggie garden). Now it was raw kale and chard salad with grated carrots, rutabaga & avocado; a red cabbage sweet and sour slaw; roasted beet and feta salad; and a lentil salad with cherry tomatoes, lemon thyme, fennel and roasted garlic vinaigrette (my favorite creation so far.)

Then it got crazy all up in this place. I'm talkin' pressure cooker, homemade pizza crust, tzatziki (that's right, t to the zatziki) with homemade pita chips and greek potato salad (what what). And it all tasted good! I'm on a downhill roll people, and nothing but a lack of tupperware can stop me.

And here's the weirdest part: cooking is not hard. You find a highly rated recipe on the Internet for something that sounds good to you, and you follow the directions. I don't know why this process seemed so out of reach to me before now, but I'm glad I finally figured it out.

Now, if you're picking up on the you-can-do-it-too subtext of this post so far, I will fess up to a couple advantages. Like I said, I live with a professional, so my kitchen is nicely stocked with most of the secondary ingredients and seasonings in recipes. This makes spontaneous whims to cook possible when I've found a recipe that looks good. Also, we have a good set of knives, and cookware that doesn't suck. This is important. And a final key to my success: really good olive oil.

My Aunt Sharon (also a professional chef--see why I've been intimidated?) bought us a gallon of this fantastic extra virgin olive oil from a mediterranean market. It comes from Lebanon, it's got very little English writing on it, and it's so rich I've had to stop myself from drinking it straight out of the bottle. Seriously, it's intoxicating. Since then, I've done a little research, and it turns out most olive oils in American groceries are made to taste more mild for the "American palate." This, in my opinion, is a subtle form of terrorism. Never again will I buy that thin, acidic olive oil. Olive oil should be thick, buttery, and, well, olivey. So my last piece of advice is get to a mediterranean market near you and buy a mass quantity of olive oil from the Middle East.

So that's the big news. I'm a cook now, that's all. Take a moment to digest it, and then let me know when you're coming for dinner.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Mission Control

There is nothing like parenting to expose you for the control freak that you are. Let me share with you an example. Whenever I take my 4 year old daughter to the toy store, because she earned the right to pick herself out a little reward for accomplishing something momentous (going a week without hitting, completing her first swimming class, wiping her own butt, etc.), I find myself sinking to the lowdown dirty deed of toy store politicking.

What am I lobbying for, you ask? Well, any number of factors. Ideally the toy I want her to choose can't be too expensive, too big, too noisy, too cheaply made, too likely to be covered in lead paint, too suggestively violent, too surely never to be played with after today, and--due to the hundreds of plastic eyes that peer down at me from the shelves when I walk into my daughter's room--for god's sakes, not a stuffed animal.

Instead, I usually try to steer her toward a toy that is both educational and unique; maybe one that teaches reading or requires logic; perhaps a fair trade toy, hand-made by a blind artisan from a poverty ravaged third world country. The problem is, even though I can't seem to stop myself from doing it, this politicking, it feels wrong. It's manipulative, it's undignified, and worse, it's prone to backfire.

Recently, we were visiting friends out of state and we gave my daughter a little money to spend on a vacation toy. We stopped into a toy store on a tourist strip in a Swiss chalet riddled little town in the mountains. As she browsed through the store, I trailed behind her dropping ever so subtle comments. "Whoa, that one is expensive." "Doesn't Amelia have that one? She never plays with it." "Hmm...that one...kind of creepy."

Suddenly, she spotted the Beanie Babies, and before I could object, she plunged her hand into the bin and pulled out a Melman, the clumsy but lovable giraffe from Madagascar.

"I want him," she informed me.

Game on. I began to blather through a littany of excuses: "...so many stuffed animals...," "...already have a giraffe...," "...so many other cool things to choose from...," blah, blah, blah. I gently steered her around the store, pointing out cool arts and craft kits, Playmobile sets, and my piece de resistance: a real wooden ukelele. To no avail. She wanted Melman. Our friends were already outside the store waiting for us. It was time to play hard ball.

I launched into my most passionate anti-stuffed animal tirade, estimating the number of currently owned stuffed animals (approximately 242), the relative non-excitement of a stuffed toy, and various pieces of past evidence that pointed to a pattern of quickly fleeting enthusiasm for said stuffed friends, but it only made her cling more fiercely to her convictions. Suddenly, she had an idea that she sincerely believed solved everything. I didn't want her to get Melman? Okay, then she would choose this guy:

(incidentally his name is Buck, and he hails from Ice Age 3).

"He's perfect," she explained to me. She listed the reasons why: he's kind of cute, wears a funny hat, and she definitely didn't have a one-eyed dino-hunting weasel in her collection. I examined this little creature, wondering what it was about this prehistoric varmint with a freakish underbite that appealed to my daughter. At that moment, I saw my friend peek in, wondering if we were just about ready. Awash in regret and defeat, I sulked my way to the cash register, envisioning our future life with Buck: the shopping trips, the car rides, the fruitless scouring of the house looking for this weasel before we could head out the door. Wishing that I had just shut my trap and welcomed the much cuter Melman, I paid for the little rodent.

I reflected on the incident as I watched my daughter contentedly play with her new toy on the ride home. I realized that there were lessons in this for me about open-mindedness, letting my child make her own decisions, and relinquishing control on issues that don't matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

That night, my daughter and I, and Buck, snuggled in bed after storytime. Feeling ashamed of my petty attempt at ruling her world, I tried to admire this little toy and see him through her eyes. As I searched for the perfection that she saw in him, my daughter sucked her thumb and gazed thoughtfully at her new friend. "I hate his teeth," she said. "Will you cut them off?"



Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Six Weeks Left to Live


Right about mid-July it happens. Teachers, you know what I'm talking about. The panic-stricken realization that summer has taken a turn, that you are now closer to the end than the beginning.

Up until this point, you have lounged, unconcerned, through your days, leisurely drinking coffee until 10, spending hours at a time drifting around on Facebook, or even turning the pages of a real book, feeling no need to plan ahead more than a few hours. There is a sense of giddiness in those last weeks of June as the rhythm of summer vacation sets in. Hanging in the background of everything you do is the thrilling tinge of excitement that comes from getting away with something.

But then, on approximately July 27th, you glance at the calendar and realize that you are just days away from flipping the page to August. You think about what you've been doing up to this point, and realize you haven't accomplished a damn thing. So, much like someone who has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, you make a list of the last things you want to do before your summer dies. You write down things like: paint the office, go blueberry picking, get to Lake Michigan, visit Greenfield Village, clean out closets, redecorate sun porch, visit renovated art museum, go rollerblading, take a mini-trip to Chicago, and for good measure, lose ten pounds. (BTW, this is the real list, so if anyone wants to join me in any of these endeavors, I'd love to have the company.)

Of course if you're not a teacher, you have no sympathy. And if you are a teacher, you have learned to keep your mouth shut about it at weekend barbecues with "year-rounders," for fear of being stabbed in the eye with a kabob skewer. People who get 2-4 weeks of vacation a year get pretty testy when you start complaining that you only have 6 weeks left until you go back to work. Of course, if you do slip up, you can try the "I pack a year's worth of work and stress into 9 months" defense, but no one really believes that, except maybe you. You can also try to slip in some sort of subtle comment on the importance of your work, implying that you deserve 12 consecutive weeks off simply because the work you do is a saintly contribution to humanity.

The truth is, teaching is damn hard work if you care to do a halfway decent job, and the work we do is important. And let's face it, not everyone has the patience to do it. Don't believe me? Here's a list of things I must do in my job on a regular basis:

-Answer at least a thousand questions a day, and despite the encouraging adage, most of them are indeed stupid.

-Make phone calls to tactfully inform parents that their child cheated, keeps falling asleep, bit someone, isn't a certified genius, made an obscene gesture, has a 12 percent in my class, etc.

-Say things like, "Please get out of the garbage can."

-Explain to your own child that you can't play with her right now because you have to spend your Saturday reading, editing and making encouraging comments on 150 essays at about 10 minutes apiece.

-Tell a pubescent girl that she needs to call home to get a different outfit because you're pretty sure none of the boys have heard a word you've said, and you now feel the need to disinfect her seat.

-Wait 45 painful minutes in order to be able to go to the bathroom because you had to sign 5 notes home to parents and missed the break before class.

-Break several traffic laws and cheat death twice on the way to work in order to be on time for a staff meeting, which you were sternly reminded will start at 7:40 sharp, only to arrive to find that the first 30 minutes have been set aside for everyone to enjoy yet another tropical themed breakfast. Resentfully, you don a lei and gnaw on your pineapple muffin with contempt, remarking to yourself that no one on earth should be subjected to Jimmy Buffet before 8 am.

Admit it. Not everyone could survive these daily challenges. On the other hand, I also fully acknowledge that I am lucky as all get out to have an entire season each year to decompress and get back to myself--to remember that I like to write and paint and cook and drink a glass of wine with a good meal on a weeknight. And it is a complete luxury to be a working mom and still get three months to hang out with your kid and cram them full of fun.

So now August is officially here, meaning I really only have five weeks left. Those five weeks are a little tainted, due to the fact that obligation hovers in front of me. Activities must be created, lessons must be penciled in, paper must be stapled to bulletin boards, and new pens in an array of colors must be purchased. I try not to think about it too much and remind myself to live in the moment and enjoy these last few weeks. It's a tendency of mine to live in the future while today passes me by.

So whether or not you're a teacher, join me in doing your best to savor these last weeks of summer. When your armpits are sticking together or you're feverishly scratching at a mosquito bite between your fingers, be glad that you are here now, because in a few short months you'll be chipping ice off your wipers in the dark of morning. Enjoy the fact that you don't have privacy fencing, because you may have just seen your neighbor watering his lawn in only his gold chain, chest hair and jogging shorts for the last time this season. Luxuriate in the feeling of grass between your toes, pop a warm cherry tomato from your garden, and please remain seated until the ride comes to a stop.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Good Riddance to Mad Rubbish


Please remind me of this at Christmas:

A nine by nine foot cube of junk collected from around our house was disposed of last weekend. Another 6 cubic feet remains in our garage waiting for the Purple Heart truck to pull in, load it up and take it away. Memo to myself: Never allow this much crap into my life again. Having gotten this load of garbage out of my house, I've been doing some strategizing about how to keep it lean and clean around here, and this is what I've come up with.

The approach is two-fold. 1.) Stop bringing in new stuff and 2.) If you do bring it in, get rid of something else, and recycle the new item as soon as it's lost it's appeal or usefulness. I have faith that this is an easy enough plan that I can follow it. I ask for the reminder at Christmas, because most of the time I am sensible about my consumption of goods, but sometimes, I lose my freaking mind. Christmas is one of those times.

I am particularly vulnerable to the ambiance of Christmas. The cozy sweaters, the smell of cookies baking, Judy Garland's sweet encouragement: Go on, Erin..."Have yourself a merry little Christmas." Don't mind if I do, Judy. Each year, I dutifully trek out into the snowy morning and return hours later with bags and bags of gifts and holiday supplies. Mostly it's since we had a child that it has gotten really bad. My heart strings just get plucked the second I walk into a toy store and before I know it, I'm wrapping a mountain of gifts, feeling sick and gluttonous, and realizing I have to hold some back for her birthday. What is it about "it's for the children" that makes us particularly susceptible to buying more stuff?

I was reminded of this after the garage sale, as I bagged up the $200 crib bedding set I had to have, in the name of "the baby," and threw it on the donation pile. I folded up piles of barely used tiny clothing, some with the tags still on. I scrubbed up a hundred dollar high chair we used only a few times because the travel booster seat worked just fine and didn't block an exit. I wish I had been a smarter mother-to-be. My own garage sale made me realize how ridiculously accessible and cheap so many of those goods could have been. My neighbor and I had duplicates of almost everything.

A few days after the sale, my neighbor tried to donate her crib, a crib mattress still in the plastic, and a car seat that had never been used. No charity would take it. Not one. And these were perfectly clean and useful items. It's not like she walked into the Salvation Army and said something like, "Look everything's in almost new condition. Sure the crib nearly strangled my daughter, and she did shit herself several times on the mattress, but what kid doesn't? Also, the carseat's in great condition, but I did snip the straps just a little to make her a little more comfy." I'm telling you, this stuff was still in wrappers, in boxes, barely used. They all turned her away in the name of safety.

On one hand, I understand their concerns. Safety standards change, products get recalled, yada yada yada. But these items were clearly no more than a few years old. It just made me sad, thinking of how many solitary piles of baby waste each family in America must contribute to landfills. And I'm not even talking about disposable diapers. Think about it. Most mothers-to-be have a baby shower for their first child. At every shower I've been to, the expectant mom receives a car seat, stroller, pack and play, bouncy chair, swing, baby gate, high chair, plastic baby bath, and lots and lots of blankets, clothing, and stuffed toys. Every single one! Most families also buy a crib, a rocker, and a changing table, along with various decorations for "the nursery." Most of this is used for a year or two. A few items might be given to trusting loved ones, but other than that, most of is is destined for a landfill because resale shops don't want it.

There's some message buried deep in the American psyche that tells us if it isn't still in the package or if it doesn't have tags on it, it's tainted. A friend of mine came to our garage sale, and half-jokingly asked if he might find anything for an upcoming baby shower we had both been invited to. Later, at the shower, as we watched our friend unwrap her own mountain of new baby goods, he commented on how he halfway considered getting something at the garage sale, but felt obligated to buy something new and to spend a socially acceptable amount of money on the gift. Nevermind that there was a perfectly good, working baby monitor on the table for $1. He felt compelled to put a larger chunk of money toward our friend's collection of new baby goods. I did the same.

Well, the remains of ours will soon be gone. In the unlikely event that I have a second child, I've decided I will not go directly to Babies Backward-R Us. I will personally set out on a campaign to collect back these necessities through second-hand sources like Craig's List and garage sales. Assuming I can find everything still in the package with tags still on, of course.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Garage Sale



It's a four year cycle, apparently.

Four years ago, after having lived here about four years, we had a huge garage sale, made some cash, emptied out our basement, and then brought about 30 percent of it back into the basement. Next weekend, we'll put that crap back out...plus more!

A lot has happened in four years. Our formerly 6-month-old is now 4 1/2. Last time, we were selling an extra infant swing and we let her do a live-action demo while our shoppers browsed. I amused myself by sticking a tiny "Not for Sale" sticker to her head. Last time, we sold things from our pre-parental years. CDs, ironic toys (the "Albino Bowler" action figure, for example), thrift shop furniture from our college apartment, and my small inventory of "hey, I'm going to start a business on Ebay" funky vintage wares.

Now, four years later, we're selling toys, unnecessary kitchen appliances, and various baby apparatus(es?). Now the child is aware that we are selling her things, and each item requires a little sales pitch about her average frequency of use and the probable profit that could be put toward newer better Big Girl Toys! Now, we are faced with a pile of terribly mundane and no longer useful items, reminding us that for the past four years, we have pretty much just been parents.

Looking back on your life from the perspective of all the garbage you want to get rid of is not the only awkward part about this ritual. Another one is when your neighbors parade through and examine your discarded household items. To them, your life up to this point is already viewed through the tiny sliver of what happens outside of your house. They know what time you leave and return from work, how frequently your barbecue, that you don't go to church or fertilize your lawn. And now added to this list is the fact that you read Danielle Steele and you actually ordered the "Magic Bullet."

And when it gets really good is when your relatives show up to find all the gifts they've given to you for the past...oh...say, four years. It happened last time, so I'm going in with an arsenal of explanations at the ready. How does this one sound? "Yeah, unfortunately I decided I had to sell the motion-detecting dancing poinsettia. That thing is so gosh-darn funny! Right after Christmas this year, there was about a week when I started missing work because I just couldn't stop walking by it, giggling and singing along with "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree" every time. I almost lost my job! I love it so much, but it really must go."

Then there's the pricing issue. Each time I must decide on a price, there is an little war between my inner cynic and optimist that goes something like this:

Who the hell do you think you are, asking two dollars for that DVD? Those are B-list actors! No one's even heard of that film.
But it is an independent movie...and it's got a Sundance endorsement. This is a college town. Maybe I could get three.

If you ask three dollars people will think you're out of your mind and they'll walk out of here in protest without buying a thing.

I mark it a dollar and move on. Then there are questions such as: Should you even offer up your child's used potty seat for sale? Should it be free, or is that worse? How much do you ask for your mother-in-law's jewelry box that your father-in-law gave to her but that she gave to you because they're now divorced? And where do you stash it if she comes to the sale?

You see, before you actually commit, a garage sale always sounds like a great idea. What could be better? You open up your garage, put some shit out, people come and hand you cash, and haul your shit away. You get to meet new and interesting folks, drink some lemonade, and chat with the neighbors...

But once the signs are made and the newspaper ad has been placed and you've told all of your friends, reality sets in. You have to organize this thing. You have to clean out the garage, face spiders and mouse turds, and quite possibly the mice themselves. You have to set up some sort of configuration to display your junk. You must clean much of this junk, because c'mon--you don't want people thinking you have scummy junk.

So, as I find myself in the midst of this ordeal once again, I can only hope that all these useless items I am digging out and shining up find new homes and new uses. I mean, when you think about it, a garage sale is the ultimate act of recycling. Yeah, this is actually way bigger than rinsing out some cans and setting them out on the curb. This sacrifice I'm making, it's for the good of the planet, dammit. It's so that these items don't end up in a landfill, so that someone who can't afford them new can enjoy them now. I can do a little manual labor and a little soul searching in the name of saving the earth. And if I end up with a little extra cash in my pocket at the end of the day, that's irrelevant. A mere side effect of this act of selflessness.

I do think I could get three bucks for that DVD though.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Strawberries Unplugged


Here's how these strawberries ended up on my ice cream.

On my way home from up north this weekend, my aunt sent me on a little adventure to pick up a cheap flat of delicious strawberries. She called them Amish strawberries, and I couldn't help but to visualize little strawberries in black hats and suspenders growing solemnly in a horse-plowed field. Not to worry. The strawberries were unadorned, but they were indeed grown by Amish farmers, which means one must go to "Amish country" to get them.

With U2's Joshua Tree as my anthem, I floated over the rolling hills of this beautiful farmland, passing a yellow road sign depicting a horse and buggy. Soon after, over the hill in front of me came a real live farmer sitting tall atop one.

What an odd intersection. Me, driving like a bat of hell trying to get a good deal on some fruit and escape back to the city, and him, journeying purposefully through his homeland, within which he is firmly planted because he consciously chose to live a modest and hard-working life .

I slowed down a little.

When I found the farm, I saw that there was another customer at the stand. A woman. As I waited in the car for her to finish, I checked myself in the mirror to make sure I didn't look too...whorish, I guess. I caught two young girls in bonnets peeking out from where they sat on wooden boxes beside the little produce stand, and I was glad I wasn't wearing makeup. I tucked my bra strap deeper under my sleeve and headed up the drive. As I approached, the woman who was at the stand turned to leave. Her lips were painted up like a Cupie doll and she sported a sequin-encrusted American flag tank top. I felt a little less self-conscious.

It was an awkward transaction between me and the Amish man. First of all, I thought my aunt said it was $15 dollars for the flat, so after I told them that I had a flat of strawberries held for Sharon, I asked, "Is it 15?"

He shook his head. "It's 16."

Great. Now the Amish man thought I was trying to lowball him.

I counted out 16 dollars from my wallet, glad that I had a ten, a five, and a one. Simple and crisp. He took the money and scooped up the flat, pausing as if to wait for me. I thought maybe he planned to take the strawberries to my car for me. I turned to lead. But then I balked. What if he was just trying to hand me the large box and I, the entitled, arrogant city snob, appeared as though I expected servitude?

I reached out for the box.

"Can you get it?" he asked, betraying nothing but polite respect.

"Oh yeah, I can get it." I said. "Thank you!"

I took the box and walked back to the car. I was pretty sure that now he was thinking I was a blasphemous feminist.

After I loaded the berries carefully into the car, I pulled away slowly, so as not to kick up too much dust as I drove off. Why did I care so much what this man thought of me? The truth is that I had formed some pretty strong assumptions about him and his way of life. So, why was I so afraid he had done the same about me?

The important thing is we can find a common ground. He's got berries, I like jam. Who cares what we think of each other? We both got something out of the encounter.

The berries were beautiful--crimson and juicy. A little on the tart side though. If it were me, I personally would have waited for them to get a tiny bit more ripe before I picked.

I hope he doesn't take offense to that if he ever reads this.



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