du jour

Tomorrow. The Assault on Georgetown University Hospital: Take 2. This time we mean business. Well, at least we mean to get in on the Wyeth vaccine trial, if all goes well with the screening. I’ve been diligent in recording Jeff’s blood pressure once or twice a day so we can demonstrate that he does indeed suffer from white-coat syndrome, and that his normal bp is pretty much under control. Will he get the Magic Juice? + Booster? or just one or the other? Or nothing? Who knows? It’s all a part of the game called Contributing the the General Pool of Knowledge. I have the avoid-the-Washington-beltway-at-all-costs route all mapped out. I better not hate Piney Branch Road.

Today I ate chicken. For the first time in roughly 15 years. Just a bite actually. Enough to determine that it was not tofu (as ordered) after all. The striations were the real give away. Happily the chef at Pad Thai was quick to send a replacement, um, pad thai, and I finished roughly at the same time as Jeff, which was remarkable.

Olivia is downloading Christmas songs to her iPod. I can hear Perry Como singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town upstairs. Gabe is ensconced in the computer room. Tomorrow he gets to take a bike to carpool, just in case I can’t pick him up on time. Not a bad thing for a kid of his ilk.

Rachel wants a send-a-sheep to a wool-weaving lady, sponsored by Oxfam, for Christmas. I’m good with that.

Today, in Annapolis, I realized how I’m not going to bother to live there unless they can put in and sustain a good walking-distance grocery store.

I'm cool.

Yesterday we got a catalog called Free People. I’ve seen clothes with that label before--kind of a fusion of Sundance chic, bohemian, and Himalayan socio-eco-consciousness. And here's the collection all in one place. I almost like them but can’t quite get beyond my impression that the garments appear designed to fit something other than a human form. Even on the models the bodices cinch at mid-boob, or sport sleeves that end awkwardly at the elbow joint. One striking image features a model posed pigeon-toed in front of a temple. She seems to be wearing hip-waders, a disco-ball dress, and oven mitts.

I feel certain the prices are high, but I can’t tell you for sure as the text is printed in a tiny wispy white font against mottled backdrops of anything from busy tapestries to rocky deserts. There should be a disclaimer printed largely somewhere on the catalog: If you can’t read this then get the heck out of here you old fart. This stuff’s not for you!

I guess the warning should be self-evident. Though not spelled out explicitly, that’s the clear message I get when I walk into any number of contemporary Annapolis Mall boutiques. If you cannot make informed clothing choices by the light of three 20 watt bulbs, go away. If angst-ridden background music blasting at 100 decibels scrambles your ability to remember where you are, go away. In general I handle this confusion by going away. But as long as you have no particular agenda--you are, for example, merely accompanying your 17 year old--modern marketing can be an interesting thing to observe.

There’s a new wing in the Annapolis Mall full of all sorts of new design schemes. The UnderArmour Store sucks you down a cavernous gray tunnel toward steps glowing with cobalt blue floor lights. Inside you’re greeted by the hulking form of a gargantuan athlete about to drop dead of a ruptured vessel. You hope he won’t topple on you as you look around for the rollercoaster you’re almost certainly supposed to get on next. But there isn’t one. Just athletic clothing.

Further down the mall corridor you come across a brick facade suggesting a London gentlemen’s club in the time of Jack the Ripper. Tiny windows, wrought iron grillwork...and a barely discernible brass plaque from which you might conclude that the name of the store is Ruehl. A saleslady stands just inside. You expect her to lead you discreetly to the private card game in the back room, but instead she points through the barely lit gloom to several strangely subdivided areas containing $200 handbags, and tissue-thin camisoles at $90 a pop. You say “thank you,” and back out, fearful that you might lose your husband who almost certainly will not remember how to find his way back to the mall entrance next to the McCormick & Schmick Seafood Restaurant--the one with the the giant inflatable tick on the roof. Well, it’s supposed to be a crab, but it looks like an engorged tick.

I may have given the impression that I really don’t like the mall so much. And you’re right, I really don’t. Not so much. But it is interesting in its own way. And I did succeed in tracking down a couple of acceptable pairs of blue jeans--as had been my goal. I did not try on the jeans at the Lucky Brand store, despite the saleslady’s assurances that they were expertly made by a factory right in the United States. At $120 a pair I would want them to be made at the lunar station, with moon-metal rivets, and shipped back to Earth via shuttle. No, I bought some at J. Crew who--several years ago--I would have lumped with the trend to try to scrape me off as yesterday’s news. But it seems they’ve been trumped by the next generation of über-hot shops. The jeans were $73. On sale from $98. It’s still a little hard to swallow.

what I do.

Ok. So I am plodding along at my 4th book--this one about a kid mixed up in the world of corporate research tampering, and....sheesh. Well, yeah, that sounds pretty ponderous, I have to admit, but plow on I must in hopes of injecting enough froth that it will make soufflé.

Meanwhile, I’ve realized with definity (is that a word? no. but it should be.) that I absolutely cannot write after 7pm. Hence this blog dross. Because it doesn’t count. I did not click the link for you, now did I?

Olivia is eating apple pie out of the pan. I would not let Jeff do that. In fact, I would try to prevent his cutting the pie with a spoon, which is his preferred style. Cut (well, dig,) with a spoon and plop it in a coffee cup. If anyone ever wonders why I didn’t turn out to be a traditional kitchen mom, well...here is but one clue. Some ducks line up in a row. Some don’t.

Gabe is watching anime cartoons. The computer, running XP, had its regularly scheduled conniption yesterday, refusing to play videos. I asked it to please forget everything it had learned after October 1, and it worked again. I reset the PC while helping Jeff get logged onto Investors Business Daily on the Mac so he could agonize over a recent Lululemon/Athletica stock acquisition. Periodically I utter the following line: One moment please...another customer filed a complaint ahead of you...

But, most happily, I got roughly 2 paragraphs completed on the work of great ponderosity today. It does move like a slug, sometimes not even leaving something as interesting as a trail of shimmering slime behind, but I know from experience that even at such a pace, a book gets written.

Oktobersmalltalking

It’s a great Oktoberfest. Our neighbors, 3 doors down, host it every couple of years, and do a phenomenal job of it at that. Yesterday I felt more than ever like I was reconnecting with people whom I’d almost completely lost contact with as our children have grown and done their own things--no more swim team, no scouts, no school activity gatherings--and we’re missing the socializing that such regimented schedules forced us into.

One person-whom-I-never-see characterized this time in our lives as “weird.” Things begin, more than before, to change in ways that we knew might be coming but didn’t really have to think about before.

And this is what I noticed--that there’s much that goes unsaid at a social gathering of this sort. Maybe, 10 years before, most of what impacted our lives in turning-point ways were things that were easy to throw out in casual conversation--I’m expecting my 3rd kid, Frank got a new job, we’re buying a house in Round Bay. Now, a lot of it isn’t that banterable. I wondered just how many people are holding secrets that they won’t so casually toss around. One long-time acquaintance is expecting a 10th child. (I know...wow.) It wasn’t until I saw her interacting with a friend who knows her better that I began to suspect that maybe something about this pregnancy is not as expected. Maybe something you wouldn’t just toss out there at an Oktoberfest. I can’t be the only one presenting a pretty, but slightly inaccurate, picture.

Much of what we talked about went like this: Person to Jeff: “How’s the hardware business?” Jeff: “Actually I’m out. I sold my half to my brother.” Person: “Retired? You lucky dog. Let me shake your hand.” I suppose it’s fortunate that that’s as far as Jeff tends to think of it these days. Sometimes I think that, as far as he can recall, that is all there is to the story. Certainly I would be unlikely to volunteer more. “What’s new with us? You mean besides the degenerative neurocognitive disorder? Not much!” Hardly peppy Oktoberfest banter, and I’m sure that anyone else whose lives hold darker aspects--not known by all--would probably, smile and nod along with the assumption that retirement was a lark and a luxury as I do.

Where slasher directors get their inspiration...

It was our typical circuit--down the sylvan lane to the bog...through the bog-hemmed nature trail (a frequent spot for bunny sitings, and yesterday a snake...) and today, a brief stopover on one of the beach benches. (One assembled by myself, no less.)

It was one-third of the way up the heavily wooded beach road that something went plop five feet in front of us. And a rather heavy and sudden plop it was, from the treetops high above to the road at our feet. Freddi the hound took an instant interest though I instinctively pulled her back from that which had plopped.

It was breakfast. Not for us, and (sadly for her) not for Freddi, but that which lay sprawled before us was the scrawny legs and the carcass, roughly from the wings down, of a bird, stripped of feathers and skin.

I am not among those who like to examine such things too closely and diligently, but Jeff and I speculated as to what might have dropped a carcass on what would have been, five seconds later, our heads.

A further clue emerged another 15 feet up the hill. Bunches of white and gray feathers, pulled out in tufts, and a major wing bone still attached to a few. Clearly, much of the early damage had occurred here before the winner--it had to be a bird of prey--had flown the remainder into the treetops before deliberately or accidentally dropping half in our path. Sharing, I guess. We declined, with gratitude, but never caught a glimpse of the raptor.

please pass me the burnt sienna...

I liked when my kids were little. Sometimes, the only thing to do was color in coloring books with them. (I do like crayons. Really.) Sometimes the only thing to do was work on a block stacking project.

Those times do change. Soon you get to the crazy years of school events, sports, birthday parties--a schedule that can drive the most energetic of us utterly wacko.

And now, in that way life has of giving you another appetizer when you thought it was time for dessert, I’m back to coloring books. Well, not exactly. But I am back to having a helper at the grocery store, gearing my plans toward being there to help someone else with the basics, and just sitting around--not quite coloring, but we might as well be--because we’re back to a season of someone else’s agenda being hitched to my own, regardless of who’s the pony and who’s the cart.

There is an upside: This type of phase shoehorns me into putting serious effort into my writing projects, and that is good. At least there’s sure no point in arguing with it.

katzenjammered plumbing.

Project #1 du jour: Get a 2 x 4 for the cat. No, we’re not going to swing it at her, though sometimes something needs to be done, and that’s where the 2 x 4 comes in.

Hazel likes to prick at window mouldings, and she (being a standard issue cat) loves to claw. Her favorite house construction phase was before all the oak trim went up and there was plenty of exposed pine to sink her nails into.

It is likely that the 2 x 4 segments we are about to affix to the corner by the basement door, and to a wall accessible from Jeff’s dresser would not be everyone’s idea of cutting edge decor, but I’d prefer that Hazel never have to decide that hardwood is better than nothing.

Meanwhile, the new laundry tub, of pristine poly, has acquired its first layer of sewer-line back up sediment--an unidentifiable collection of black crunchy stuff which washes in with the water the drain line has rejected, and settles evenly across the tub’s surface. Somewhere below the tub, in the fittings I mucked around with in installing it, is a connection that is allowing some of that rejected water to squish its way through and form geographic patterns on the basement concrete. Fortunately (I guess) the crunch is filtered out by the pvc and makes it to the tub. I have tightened the connections as much as I can by hand, but I’m afraid the time has come to replace the 60 year old cast iron with pvc so that, henceforth, we can try to blame all ensuing back-ups on the county. We are awaiting a quote and a commitment from the plumbing guy.

With a name like Potash, it has to be good.

Jeff asks for a colored pencil.

”Do you want orange or green?” I ask, rummaging through the drawer that holds compasses, cell phone chargers, and 1/4” scale house plan templates, in addition to numerous semi-functional writing implements.

He picks green, and proceeds to draw indecipherable markings on the pages of a book called Stikky Stock Charts. When he picked up the book at Barnes & Noble, I assumed the word “stikky” had some arcane link to stock chart interpretation, but in fact it is merely the name for a brand of books--like The Idiot’s Guide to [whatever makes you feel idiotic.] There’s the Stikky Guide to Trees, the Stikky Guide to Rock Formations, and very possibly the Stikky Guide to Scraping Gum off Your Shoe.

Jeff is trying to learn how to interpret recent performance stock graphs, and thusly buy and sell prudently. He’s taken an interest in anything that is both doing well (according to the chart gurus,) and has an unglamourous, and unlikely niche, such as scouring powders for subway tunnels, or commercial ash-tray sand embossers. I must confess, he did rather well with his small pot in the course of a week with a company that makes oil-drilling equipment. He then sold it on cue as advised by one of his book authors. Then floundering about the question of how to reinvest, he rejected an early favorite with a name that sounded like Bigfoot’s hearth-sweepings, and instead--with my backing--settled on Apple. For now. With luck I won’t be the only one waiting to make my move when they release the new Leopard operating system in October.

Due in small part to uncertainty, and large part to the capriciousness of a faulty memory, Jeff will assuredly announce a wish to sell Apple before I think the plan has had time to work. But I do serve, fortunately or not, as the gatekeeper here. We review the steps for logging onto the stock-trading website daily, but it is, for him, an utterly unacquirable skill. In truth, it would worry me if he could do it himself. I seem to have broken him of the habit of phoning the company headquarters every time--because it’s resulted, more than once, in their resetting his password to something new of his choosing which he invariably can’t remember when I go to help him the next day.

“Hey Gabe-O!” I say. (I’ve just noticed it’s 10 pm.) “I KNOW” he bellows. “Make sure you...” I say. “I KNOW” he bellows. “Brush your...” I say. “I KNOW” he bellows. “And wear rubber bands,” I say.

No Robin Hood

Today we sat in the window seats at Yin Yankee Café, eating a Panang Tofu noodle bowl and a tahini chicken wrap for lunch. A young man strode into view--clean cut, in a t-shirt and shorts. If anything, you’d have expected him to accessorize himself with a lacrosse stick, or maybe an iPod. But as he sat on the bench on the sidewalk in front of Yin Yankee, what he pulled out was a pipe. A regular old smoking pipe with a curvy stem, and a pipe cleaner to start things off. He sat on the bench, the whole time we ate lunch, casually puffing away while reading Moby Dick. He also had a Langenscheidt pocket dictionary. I recognized its yellow vinyl cover, and the way the center front edge of the white pages gets smudged to a dull gray with frequent use, just like my Langenscheidt French and Spanish dictionaries. So what language, I wondered, in addition to reading Moby Dick and smoking a pipe, might the kid be studying? When we left, I peeked over his shoulder. It was just an English dictionary.

As for Annapolis--Yin Yankee and everything else--it will be fine to just visit downtown for now. My urge to flee has subsided for the moment. I keep thinking of Olivia, as a toddler. Here is what would happen when she fell down and scraped her knee: She’d run shrieking in the opposite direction--away from the house, away from me or anyone else who might provide comfort. And I’m seeing myself in that vignette. Stress or pain=urge to flee. Run away from the dang bad thing, bad place, bad whatever it is. Maybe it doesn’t hurt over there. Funny--after 3 undergraduate schools and a couple decades of childrearing, you’d have thought I would have lost that impulse, but evidently I did not. Still, and fortunately, the itch has subsided and I’m able to view here as okay.

Drat. I’m ready to watch Robin Hood--the Errol Flynn version--and Netflix had to have it sent from Cleveland instead of locally. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be eccentric. It’ll be here Thursday.

Tights & other tuffstuff

A peppy saleslady came to the door today.

“You’ll remember me from last year! I bring the TuffStuff", she said, pulling an unidentifiable spray bottle out of an unidentifiable pouch.

”Actually, I don’t,” I replied honestly.

”That’s ok,” she continued, without missing a beat as she segued into a demo of how she could scribble blue ink onto her washcloth, then spray it clean with nothing more than TuffStuff and a toothbrush.

Of course I should have run in to fetch my washcloth and my ink--just to remove any possible sleight of hand that may have been occurring. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to waste her time. I especially didn’t want to waste my time.

She persisted.

”What’s your most difficult cleaning job?” she demanded.

Naturally I thought of the right answer two minutes after we parted company.

Blood, of course. We try to keep the salespeople on the front porch...but sometimes you get this awful splattering...

But instead I tried, as tactfully and pleasantly as possible to explain that I just didn’t buy my products door to door.

”Why not?” she demanded peppily, in her valiant but futile effort to keep the lines of communication open. And I can’t even remember what I replied, but I went in grumbling about fire-bombing the “Keep the Customer Feeling Like a Clod School of Peppiness.”

Last night I watched the ending two-thirds of Captain Blood on Turner Classic Movies. Errol Flynn sure was pretty. I was especially impressed with Captain Blood’s way of dispatching the sleazy Captain Lavasseur without mussing his pretty hair. I wasn’t worried about Lavasseur’s cheveux, as I was too impressed about his abysmal french accent to mind his hair.

Now there is no getting around it. I must put Robin Hood in my Netflix queue to see if Errol always looks pretty in tights, and if Olivia deHavilland always looks like a cute little muffin-face.

Specs

I picked up my “progressive lens” glasses today. At my optometry appointment last week the optometrist, who was roughly 14, told me that 45 is the “magic age” in Severna Park--meaning that even though “progressive lens” really means bifocals, at least I have lots of company.

Jeff said, “You look straight out of the 50’s,” and I said, “Well...that’s good. I always wanted to look like Mary Sue Higginshaw, the ‘smart girl’ in your junior high math class.” Although, to be fair, I’m Mary Sue with a little mileage on her. Although, to be really fair, Mary Sue managed to have that middle-aged air even at twelve, so maybe I’m not that far off.

My observations about the specs so far: They’re trying to cram way too many corrections into a couple little lenses. In particular, the part that's supposed to fix my astigmatisms tends to make everything I look at go from square to rhombus with a slight turn of the head. It’s a trip. The techician lady said “your eyes have to learn all over again. Fine. I hope my eyes are smarter than the rest of my head, if not as smart as Mary Sue.
I wonder though...would I have been just as well off with homemade pipe cleaner glasses?

Bryn Mawr College. July. Those are the magic parameters. So to speak. Yes...for one week in July, Tannen’s Magic (some outfit in NY...no connection to Biff as far as I know) holds its magic camp for 11 to 20 year olds on the campus of beautiful Bryn Mawr, and Gabe is actually interested. Not that I really thought he wouldn’t be now that he’s in the mode of ambushing random people to show them card tricks. Every conversation this week, on the ride home from carpool has been about how easy David (one of the other riders) is to hypnotize. Apparently several kids at school are too. I’m waiting for the call: “Would you please ask Gabe to stop hypnotizing everyone during social studies?”

But this means 2 good things: 1)Gabe doesn’t watch anime all day that week, and 2)Jeff and I can go somewhere. I’m thinking about Maine. Maybe Acadia. Maybe a quick trip to Nova Scotia. It’s a small segment from the middle of our 2 week honeymoon in 1984. I may skip L.L.Bean this go-round. And I will insist the snobby lady at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor acknowledge my presence instead of addressing the pair of us as “Mr. Clement.” “Please show Mr. Clement his room. Please take Mr. Clement’s bag.” I’m not sure where I got the invisibility cloak that day. Maybe this time, if I wear my Mary Sue Higginshaw glasses, she’ll pay attention to me.

Like Elwood P. Dowd, I'll just keep Harvey.

Just for today, I’ve hit a quarter-note rest in the staccato rhythm that the writing project mamba has been thumping along in recently. Scallywags has gone to NYC for what will certainly be its 14th “thank you very much.” Remarkably though, 2 of the 13 publishers requested second, then third looks, and dialogued with me to the extent that I can’t convince myself it’s a waste of time to keep shipping it off (with the latest round of revisions.)

Meanwhile, Dewey (whose real name--for the moment anyway--is Hunting the Rose) has left the building on its maiden voyage in the hopes that one of the aforementioned dialoguers will take a gander at it.

And in that moment where I have shipped and can now do little but wait for the SASEs to find their way back to me, it’s time to pull out another blank slate, so to speak. It’s a banana paper, eco-friendly spiral notebook with a parrot on the cover--a cover which came slightly pre-mangled from Office Depot, but which I bought anyway because it was the only one, and it’s my personal idiosyncrasy that I must plan in a notebook that in some way inspires me. Plus, the mangled edge strikes me somehow as a karmic advantage, or a positive omen. Dang, anything to stay inspired. The parrot notebook is blank today, and will stay that way while I breathe for a bit. Then I must brainstorm in the way that I always do, and gradually patch together something--whether good or bad--from the strings of nonsense which float around, completely undisciplined, in my cranium.

There are times--many time actually--when I wonder by what ridiculous conceit I consider this continued pursuit of publication a calling. Because, in truth, the only conviction I have is that I must continue to write and continue to present the finished products to publishers. I feel no conviction whatsoever that I will succeed in the classic sense. So, yes, if I die having spent the rest of my life trying, I suppose I will have answered the call.

I may be every bit as deluded as the tone-deaf auditioners on American Idol who wail, upon rejection, that singing is the only thing they could possibly do in life. And if so, so be it.

I am particularly conscious of this possibility when I think about my sister and sister-in-law who rightfully should not have tushes at all if one considers how hard they work. I have voiced this, and been kindly reminded that “nobody would want my gig, anyway”(not referring to the writing life.) And I’m sure that’s true. So, perversely, I take a swig of comfort from that thought.

And anyway, I have a date with a banana paper notebook.

not Eleanor

Yesterday the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. We no longer have a proprietary connection to Clement Hardware. Oh, we have a connection to be sure, and will continue to for some years. In fact, I’m now a director on the Board (rather small board though it is--3, I think,) and we certainly have a vested interest in the business continuing to prosper.

So, all in all I guess I should feel good about getting that ironed out, particularly in light of the fact that the settlements which should wrap up the last of our landlording obligations are just around the corner. Actually, what I felt yesterday--and continue to feel (and, as a matter of fact have felt from the moment we put the houses on the market, and began the divestment from the store process) is a little queasy.

Of course I’m glad, in the sense that I’m glad it has gone reasonably efficiently (though hardly cheaply in terms of legal and professional fees to hammer out the store details,) but Jeff’s passivity is sometimes hard to read, and I’m not sure he could explain it even if he wanted to. It’s part resignation, part a peaceful letting go, and part the usual fog of not being able to sort it all out anyway. My ambivalence stems from realizing that none of this is what he would want, were he in a position to carry out what he would want, were things not what they are. (gads. I sound like Jack Sparrow.)

If I were Eleanor Roosevelt maybe I could have carried the store and real estate jobs out on my own power, and Jeff would not have had to see himself as having to give them up. Ok, so I’m not Eleanor Roosevelt.

96

I now have, as of 3:15 this afternoon, clipped into a blue binder, the 96 page first draft of a manuscript which still--most unfortunately--goes by the working name of Dewey.

Dewey is, by no means, a suitable title for the story. It’s merely the name of a minor, if pivotal, character, and for some reason is how I’ve been filing the work on my Mac all this time. Dewey.cwk in Appleworks, and Dewey.doc in Word.

On a bright note, I can now switch working formats--from trudging through the story on the iBook to trudging through the story in hard copy, scribbling what notes and changes I can fit in the margins. It’s good for people with short attention spans to switch. Helps keep us stoked.

Trudging may be a poor choice of words there. I certainly hope the reading of it would not be as slow a process as the writing, but sometimes it’s hard to get a sense of that at any given point along the creation of a 24,000 word piece. Imagine if I were Leo Tolstoy. No. Let’s not imagine that after all.

Of course, I may have nothing more than another unmarketable white elephant on my hands, but as I’ve mentioned before--these efforts are an offering to the universe. The universe does not, as far as I know, have an editorial staff, and I’m sure will absorb my offering with the appropriate graciousness. Whether or not any editors, or sub-editors, will feel similarly is still an unknown longshot.

And I’ve still got much tweaking to do.

But now, on the eve of the release of Harry Potter 7, I’ve plunked the period at the end of page 96, and I can immerse myself in Harry’s world for a few days without feeling negligent.

bad bad lights

I’d like to narrow myself down to one grocery store. At the moment I have 3 1/2, which include Giant, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and sometimes Safeway.

Today I went to Giant. We sorely needed cereal. Why, I wondered as I pushed along from cat food to Lactaid, do I always discover, halfway through Giant, that I’m feeling sorry for myself? And, I’ll tell you what, I really hate that feeling. Not so much because--well, who wants to feel that way?--but because I neither admire nor aspire to moods of that sort. It occurred to me that it doesn’t happen in Whole Foods. It doesn’t happen in Trader Joe’s. In fact, I usually leave those venues feeling pretty good about life and how I’m doing with it.

I think it’s the light. I think it’s all the nasty fluorescent lights which gives the place an overly-bright, garish feel.

The Holiday Inn Express we stayed in in Abingdon was fully lit with compact fluorescents. It looked bright. It looked clean. But it still gave me the unsettling sense that I was in a weird place between asleep and awake where images are stark and soap opera characters wielding brightly-colored, cheaply made, carnival prize stuffed animals might charge into the room at any moment just to weird me out. I don’t like that feeling. Animals that rip at the seams after you whack your brother one mere time should not be.

But Giant and its ilk have that affect on me. Icky seasonal yard figurines--bleck. Endcaps of blue and pink cereal--bleck. Circular racks of books with titles like He Has Long Hair and My Blouse is Too Small or Word Search Fun for Christian Wives--bleck.

It may be true that Whole Foods is overpriced and--at least around here--peopled with well-coiffed women Doing the Right Thing for their families. But there are at least enough Earth-mothers to keep it almost in balance. As for Trader Joe’s...Sure, you have to watch those expiration dates. If you buy a pie with a last-sale date of 3 days ago, well caveat emptor, and if you can’t tell that those cherries are past their prime then you probably should stick to frozen. But, when they’re good, they’re good, cheap, interesting, and not horrifically illuminated. But watch out for that place in the frozen aisle where you can so easily get wedged between a structural column and the taquitos. And watch out for the lady who shops in pantyhose, thinking that they’re leggings. And try not to be standing next to the ship’s bell when someone calls for a price check. Otherwise...I think I may be due for a trip there.

jetsam

In a weird process that kicks in unexpectedly, the few remaining chapters of my current project are begging to be written. I covered more ground today than I probably have in the last 3 months. In fact, I’d be working on it right now, but it’s 9:30 p.m., and I only dare approach the job with a fresh brain.

Current bathroom reading material includes a “Select Registry” book of Inns and B&B’s bestowed on us by the hosts of the WhiteGate Inn in Asheville. It is easy to want to travel when such delicious looking lodgings are featured for anywhere on the continent. On the other hand, my teardrop travel trailer (well, the one I’m imagining,) is waiting anxiously to take me on a more rustic voyage from town to town and I’m not sure how I’ll resolve the conflict.

tune in next season

I was set to truck to Georgetown U. for Jeff's MRI in prep for his first dose of V490, aka Merck's new Phase I Alzheimer's vaccine. I was determined to try heading south on Wisconsin Avenue. Downtown D.C., even not at rush hour, is harrying, and there must be a better way.

But it will wait until November. Evidently, a bungled communication between Merck and the testing sites (ours, of course, being GU,) has resulted in there not being a slot for Jeff in the "first dosing." In November though, we will be choosing between "second dosing" of the Merck, and Phase II of a Wyeth vaccine which has already done the rounds in Europe. I am inclined toward the Wyeth. If you don't have to be one of the first 70 humans to serve as test subject, then why be one?

So off we'll go again--in the Fall I guess. Yikes. There'll be the whole school schedule parameter problem. Maybe Gabe will have to take a bike, and ride home from his carpool dropoff point...

road trip

I remember what a fine thing it used to be to either drive (with a navigator riding shotgun,) or navigate (with a driver.) If there’s an advantage to doing both--the current necessity--it’s that I get plenty of photographic memory practice. At any convenient (or at times sketchy) roadway stop, the technique is this: Scan the map and lock the current location, destination, and directional trajectories into visual memory. Then, as we pass the exit for Oopsie Caverns I will be able to reassure myself that Oopsieville is 2/5 of the way from exit 731 to the Tasty-Snooz Inn where (you’ll soon learn) they’ve switched all the room lighting to compact fluorescent, and your eyes will go bonkers accordingly.

Trucking south on highway 81, you pass a sign promoting some Cavern or other every 5 minutes or so. Although I don’t think I’ve succumbed since an official girl scout trip in the late 60’s, I felt it was high time to expose Gabe to the tourist kitsch that surrounds these geologic marvels. “Why do they have so much weird stuff made out of wood,” he asks naively. I am somewhat chagrined to realize that all the parks and playgrounds we stopped at when our children were small deprived them of the sensuous delights of hundreds of cedarwood knickknacks stamped with the words Shenandoah Caverns. Still, he is not tempted, being more interested in the “lab-manufactured” unrealistically-hued polished stones. I buy him a tee-shirt.

We do not try to lose Jeff on the Cavern tour, but I know what happened. It was right at the entrance to the “Short-man’s Revenge Grotto,” when we pass another tourgroup. Gabe and I notice a couple of rooms (caves) later. While I’m fairly certain Jeff will find his way out with the other group, our teenage tourguide, who generally exhibits the enthusiasm of a sedated turtle, is concerned that it will not look good on her resume to lose a person in the cavern, so she and I scamper back a ways to retrieve Jeff while our group waits. And I am glad, when I see his befuddled expression, that we did.

We manage two days in lovely, hippie-chic Asheville without major incident. Gabe allows as how a tour of the Biltmore Estate could be much more fun if it occurred in a post-apocalyptic world and involved periodic battles with zombies.

But we collect Becca from her 6-week counselor stint at Camp Cheerio, and only get vaguely lost in Roanoke looking for dinner.

Of greater importance is that I successfully nab several bottles of Cheerwine at a roadside gas station/grocery store where the proprietress sits in a rocking-chair surrounded by cases of beer, and the young man cashiering addresses me as “mai-yim.” The Cheerwine was requested by Olivia, who got a taste of this North Carolina specialty on last month’s church-youth Habitat for Humanity, house-building trip to Iredell County, N.C. Based on one sip of the stuff I’d say that you could make your own by adding soda-water to cherry cough syrup. As we leave the convenience store I shush Gabe, who I believe is about to say something tactless. Instead, once we seal ourselves into the car, he says “that was the smallest gas station bathroom I’ve ever seen. It was also the cleanest.” And I am surprised. Not by the small part.

I love this

At the moment my mac’s desktop wallpaper features a teardrop travel trailer by Camp-Inn of Necedah, Wisconsin. I want one, you see.

People think I’m a little crazy. “Where’s the bathroom?” they ask. “Where’s the shower?” Jeff says, “does that thing have air conditioning?” (Answer: If you buy a special ac unit for it. Or you can opt for the ceiling fan/vent.)

Now I’m not supposing that just everyone would relish the notion of hitching one of these cuties to the back of her Subaru and hitting the blue highways, but I do. Oh, in case you didn’t know, it has a queen-size bed in the main compartment, built in birch cabinets, and then--around the back--once you pop up the hood, is your traveling kitchen. I’d plan on tossing a couple of pop-up chairs, a shade, and a folding table into the back of the Soobie, and I’d be ready to roll.

The shower, you see, is conveniently located at the campground, so you would want a nice thorough ready reference to good camp parks en route. The other place the shower is located is in the occasional hotel when you’d decided to splurge for the night and stay at the cute historic inn in town.

Many afficionados, as I understand it, get a kit, or directions, and make one of these things themselves. But I do not know that I will ever want to make my own dwelling, of any sort, again. I’ve pretty much gotten that out of my system, so when it’s time for my trip to Necedah, I will be buying my teardrop pre-made and pre-outfitted with all the niceties that I want.

Do not ask when this trip to Necedah will take place. The answer to that question is as nebulous as the answer to this one: When will you sell a book and actually start making money Em? Answer: When the time is right.

degunkification

Surfaces collect junk. Junk collects dust. Both are natural functions of entropy. My aversion to entropy and all its insidious functions grows in steady increments each year. People are the right hand of the demi-god Entropopo, and my people in particular make strewing things about a daily ritual.

But I’m decluttering on many levels right now. It seems to be one of the karmic features of the year and, as inpenetrable as the job looked, I’m making gratifying progress.

Houses are clutter. Mortgages are clutter. Tenants who call you on Christmas Eve because the furnace broke? Clutter. Two down, two to go in that department.

Jeff chops up miscellaneous lumber scraps in the back yard, then hauls them to the dumpster. He leaves a random, unused window in the kitchen. One step back, but two steps forward. No complaints from me. I can reassign the window myself.

By now, the basement has burped up sacks of decent used books, and numerous outgrown clothing to the Salvation Army. A second burp sends moldy, water-damaged books, and an amazing assortment of “why-was-I-keeping-that?” to the dumpster. And now it’s time to deal with the couch. We’ll chop it in half with a sawzall if necessary to fit around the basement door, but out it will go. This week. Katherine? You want that sewing machine? Best come soon. No, I’m kidding. It can stay ‘til you fetch it.

Someday--reasonably soon--I will look around this joint with the confidence that if and when the time comes to abandon ship...or house, that is...I can do it without the hours of agonizing flotsam sorting that so often characterize an empty-nester coop fly.

Oh, to be sure, more stuff will attempt to creep in. Entropopo is a demanding demi-god, and will prod his minions to collect far more than will fit in a standard dorm room. And then they will leave it on their bedroom floors. But, as long as they keep it there, I can view the future as a dumpster run here, and a dumpster run there. But a run. Not a year’s worth of shoveling out from the aftermath of an Entropopian bacchanal.

Now, it may be a while before I can realize my ideal of a trim Scandinavian cottage with a stick of furniture per room, but I do believe that--with a lot less goonk around here--I can shoulder life with more aplomb.