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Wednesday, December 29, 2004
My Cold Remedy
When you hear the words "staple items", you think of flour, sugar, salt, etc. Right. But Campbell's Chicken Soup is another of those items which you always need. I don't mean the kind like Chicken Stars or Chicken Goldfish, or Chicken Double Noodle.
You just need to keep on hand about half a dozen little cans of the regular Chicken Noodle kind. This is for the same reason you never want to run out of Puffs Plus Tissue...or aspirin...or anhistamine. You need these things because if you are a grandparent, every time a little preschool scholar pops into your house, along with the baby who is teething, you will get the sniffle that the children have. Only, since you are old and falling apart, you will become very sick and need to go to bed for a few days. So, next time you visit the store, stock up because winter is just underway. When you feel miserable and know you should eat but don't want to, that little can of Campbell's Chicken Soup is just the ticket, along with a chaser of aspirin/antihistamine and a side order of tissue. Oh, and you also need an ongoing supply of diet Coke. All these things are staple items, if not major food groups.
Optional but nice are your cable TV subscription and a little pile of grocery store books which is resupplied each week. When sneezing, coughing, and blowing your nose, you need distraction from the prevalence of mucous in your life. These are the times when you will happily turn to TV shows that would otherwise not appeal to a stone moron...things like Gomer Pyle reruns, reality shows about people who trade families for a couple of weeks and get into big fights, old western movies, ghetto movies starring foul-mouthed rappers making fools of themselves, shows where people are fixing up rooms in each others' houses, etc. You stare dully at the screen through runny eyes, mouth hanging open so you can breathe, blurring through dumb show after dumb show. It's soothing. When your eyes aren't quite so dim, you can turn to that nice little pile of new grocery store books. Grocery store books are those super fat paperback volumes available in the ...duh...grocery store. They involve situations entirely foreign to your life...sensational stuff. Grandma joins the CIA and they send her to do dangerous stunts in a Balkan country where no one speaks her language. She prevails, leaving behind her a trail of dead and injured persons who wished in vain to interfere with her mission. There's a whole series like that. Then there's another series all about deep sea adventures where the action is so hectic you can count on a life threatening situation every other page. There's a series about an Indian detective and his fellow inmates on the reservation in the American southwest. There's one about a coroner who describes in pitiless detail the autopsies she performs and the condition of corpses arriving at her place of business. There a series about a black psychiatrist who works with local and federal police groups to apprehend extra sicko criminals. There's a series of stories revolving around legal problems in small towm Mississppi and other spots in the backward south. There are so many series about CIA-like operatives rushing around the world from glamor spot to glamor spot taking advantage of IQ deprived women and killing someone on each page...I couldn't begin to remember them all. Anyway, all of these books are a fine distraction from the fact that you can't go five minutes without blowing your nose. So...cable TV, grocery store books, aspirin, antihistamine, diet Coke, Puffs Plus tissue, and Campbell's Chicken Soup. Keep these staples on hand because if you didn't get a cold yet this winter, your grandchildren will surely give you one soon. Properly supplied, you can ALMOST enjoy poor health.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Stay Off the Streets!
A "live" reporter out on the street just said, "If you don't absolutely have to go out today, stay home. This is dangerous, Jim Bob." Around her is no sign of snow, none at all, zero, zip. This warning comes because the merest whiff of white, not enough to measure, just a hint of snow until the sun comes up to melt it, stingy frosting lies on top of the grass in my yard. Across the bottom of the TV screen a list of closings scrolls endlessly...all the schools and universities, service groups like Meals on Wheels. If there's any evidence of winter, apparently, old people have to go hungry. All over Hampton Roads, bridges and tunnels closed due to a high volume of traffic accidents. Winter in the south. In southern Virginia if a bird sneezes on a cold day, everyone rejoices. Snow day!
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Ghetto Christmas Parade
This morning I went out onto the porch to get the paper and found warm temps and neighbor grandkids on the sidewalk chasing each other with Supersoakers, kids in shorts and t-shirts. My yard guy was down the street where residents do not ever cut their grass. He said the other day that he might cut those yards at Christmas "for Jesus". Hm...looks like he meant it. So I got the paper, came in, made coffee and sat down on the sofa to read. Suddenly I heard a rumpus outside. Now, this is not new. Across the street those drug freaks rumpus early and often. I heard but did not look up. Then it got louder. And louder. And began to sound like chanting. That got me off the sofa and out on the porch. Was some kind of urban protest underway? The whole neighborhood soon emerged onto porches or sidewalk looking in the direction of this mightily increasing noise. Gracious sakes! Here came a parade. The street was full of teenagers carrying signs and yelling their heads off. The line of bodies stretched for at least a block. I couldn't make out what they said and my bad eyes couldn't figure out the signs at a distance but soon I saw the lettering, "WELCOME, JESUS, PRINCE OF PEACE!"
As the parade roared by I figured out what they chanted. It was, "WE LOVE YOU, JESUS!--Prince of Peace, Prince of Peace--WE LOVE YOU, JESUS!--Prince of Peace---etc./etc...." Most observers beamed at them and waved. They waved and smiled back and stomped noisily on, up to the corner, turned, and marched on. I could hear until they again turned and went two streets down, probably onto 36th Street. Apparently they zigzagged through Kensington neighborhood.
How about that? In this drug and poverty infested place, that many teenagers willingly advertised that they love Jesus in a sort of Christmas parade. Meanwhile the neighborhood yard guy in his raggedy clothes and using his old rusty equipment, did lawns "for Jesus", knowing he would not get paid, a Christmas gift to God. Across the street, residents of those drug houses looked on silently.
Friday, December 17, 2004
A Good Bad Situation
Here I am sick, sick, sick again. So sick so often.
On Wednesday Lydia/Benny/Sadie were here all afternoon. Poor little Benny was sick, with a cold so I was trying to take his mind off his trouble. I had everything ready and laid out in a way to make it handy for him to make gingerbread cookies. He is such an in-the-game little boy that although he was completely wretched, he eagerly did all the steps and made the cookies. Then I gave him a popsicle and he sat down. I had part of his Christmas present here unwrapped, a Nintendo Gamecube with two wireless controllers and three games. Lydia rigged it up for him and he got comfortable on a squishy chair and played enthusiastically. He loved it, said at going home time, "Mom, let's take it with us." She, of course, told him it's for when he's at Ahno's house. Anyway, I was busy with Lydia and the kids on Wednesday and didn't have time to think about myself, but when they left at about 6:00 P.M., suddenly I was sick. Soon I was coughing and throwing up and on and on and on that went all night and through Thursday until after midnight last night when it began to taper off. Now I'm sore and weak. Even hurts to breathe. Oh, boy. What a life. I was sitting here feeling pathetic when it occurred to me that there may be a way to avoid some of this chronic sickness...I need to find something to do that I CAN do and that someone needs and expects me to do, depends on me. Something that keeps me from thinking about myself for part of each day. Here I sit in my crazy but comfortable house...with nothing that I have to do. If I feel like doing something, I can. If I don't feel like doing something, I don't need to. I'm a spectator of my own life. Don't need to lift a finger. As I type, the yard guy is out there edging every last smidgen of turf that touches a sidewalk. He even weeds! I don't need to do anything. Because I was so sick yesterday, I just left all the mess from cookie-making. Nobody cared or minded. This morning I started the cleanup because I felt like it. Had I still been too sick to function, that would not have been a problem. I could leave that stuff in the sink until the Fourth of July for all anyone minds about it. I think that whether I feel like working or not, I'd better find something to do. Much more of this life of luxury and I could be dead very soon.
I saw on the news the other day a report about that fellow in West Virginia who won the super lottery and got $349,000,000 a couple of years ago. He's in terrible shape. His wife cried and said she wished he had not been a winner because the money was killing him. Since he had no need to work and be responsible, he had turned into a drunk. He's been picked up drunk and disorderly numerous times. Before the big win, he was a highly respectable character. Now he looks like a derelict, disheveled and unshaven, messy clothes, hair too long and all crazy, eyes rheumy, unfocused. Having all the time in the world to think about himself, life has got him down in spite of his advantages. He needs to be working. Today there's no work for him to do and he's falling apart. Lesson in that. I think I'd better get something to do. With all the time in the world to think about myself, I'm likely to cough up a lung. On Wednesday I was just fine until the kids went home and there was nothing to keep me from thinking about the yucky gluck going down the back of my throat. Soon I was off again on another nightmare of throwing up and coughing and crying and gagging out of control. There has to be something I can do and I'd better get busy finding it. Maybe I could read to blind people. Must look into that.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Brutal Cold
Coming as I do from a place closer than this to the North Pole, I feel we now are kind of in the middle of May weatherwise. Temps hover in daytime 60'/70's. Nights go into the 50's. Flowers everywhere look great. An excellent example is at the Abyssinian Baptist Church around the corner and about a block away. Big, huge, beautiful, bountiful begonias just bloom on. Like it was August! Imagine lushly blooming begonias on December 14. Yesterday was warm and beautiful, People everywhere ran around in shorts and sandals. The guy next door, engaged in their family's perpetual carwash, wore light summer stuff. I saw a new yellow dandelion out on the driveway area which is going to be paved whenever that paving guy actually arrives as promised. New iris stalks are up about 10" high. The yellow rose in front of my porch has grown two inches/day and is now a foot above the porch rail and headed for the roof. Sounds like the month of May in Michigan, right? Nope. Not according to local folks. The guy on channel WAVY last night intoned, "I warn you that tomorrow is going to be BRUTAL!!! Be sure to bring any pets inside. Temps may drop as low as 47 degrees by midnight." I liked that about bringing pets inside. The other day on my way to the ghetto grocery store, I passed a woman on the sidewalk wearing a heavy parka and beside her a little dachshund toiled along under a dog coat heavy enough to get him through night at the South Pole.
Brutal cold. MMMmm!
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Want to Go to the Dogs?
Night before last those sporting spirits across the street had another pit bull fight. No secret. You could have heard it at your house if you had been outside. Unbelievable noise from dogs and spectators. How the police just don't ever hear this and interfere is a mystery known only to them. Police are past here at least once every hour of the day and night. As often as these dog fights occur, and as long as they last, you'd think it inevitable that police would simply notice and yell, "Come out with your dogs up!" I argued with myself about should I call the police. Against: I'm the only white person on the street; it seems like a black person should ring down the curtain on this stuff. Also, I do not want in any way to attract the attention of those characters over in the yellow apartments where they shoot one another recreationally. For: Although I do not like pit bulls, it is cruel to get them fighting because at the end of each fight, one dog has died a horrible death. So, I didn't call the police.
Now at the other end of this block, the house on the corner is for sale for a million and a half dollars. The people living there spent the summer and fall rehabbing it and now it's on the market for a huge price tag. Whoever buys that house will have come to pit bull fight land, to an area where natives shot the phone company guy who ran off from my house in mid-job, where grown men on kids' bikes door-to-door deliver drugs all night long from their emporium across the street, sitting in kitchen chairs out on the sidewalk between orders, cussing and yelling and occasionally fighting, yakking and taking orders on their cell phones, occasionally shooting and killing one of their business partners. Sound like an environment you would pay a million and a half dollars to inhabit?
Somebody will. The house right across the street from that one on the opposite corner...it went for almost a million. And it was only on the market for a week. The new people moved in on Wednesday. Beautiful, beautiful house in a very dynamic neighborhood. Somebody will quite likely spend a lot of money for the opportunity to go to the dogs in that location. Could be you. It hasn't sold yet.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Electronic Cheer
Here I sit typing and listening to the Westwind Emsemble Christmas CD...A Christmas Tribute to the Manheim Steamroller. This is electronic music, digitally recorded and singing to me via my computer. Music provided by the combustion of fossil fuels. No, I don't regret expending the irreplaceable. I love this music. You should buy the CD. It's at all the grocery stores...like other nutrients. Yum. Just delicious.
Friday, December 10, 2004
Discretionary Time and Money
Which is true, that old people are rich and have a lot of time on their hands or that they are pathetic and needy? During the last election it sounded to me as though seniors in the USA were all pretty much huddled under bridges protecting the artifacts they archived in stolen shopping carts. Now the Norfolk paper claims that seniors are the backbone of local economy, gambling, going on cruises, and shopping at all the area malls. A woman almost as shockingly decayed as I, was pictured with her lips planted on a slot machine, trying to kiss it into yielding more tokens. Jolly gangs of old people tottered around the pool on a cruise ship. (Norfolk is homeport to the biggest cruise lines.) Somebody's grandma had several shopping bags from high end local emporia. Rich old people with discretionary time and money! Come to think of it, the other day I did see a homeless person and he looked to be about 35, not an old person. What's wrong with old people having advantages? Maybe nothing. On the other hand the same paper told that Norfolk area schools are in dreadful shape, except for a privileged few. Seniors were solicited to spend at least 60 minutes/week at their nearest public school, doing things for which the teachers have insufficient time. Supposedly if every able-bodied senior in this area would do an hour per week of public service in the schools all the local school problems would be moot. Hm...do I see a hoard of old people descending on the schools? Not at all. Schools are too scary. Maybe not for me, though. Maybe I should do this.
Thursday, December 9, 2004
It All Gets Done Eventually
Do I actually like anything about this house? Yes. I love the bathtub. It is exactly right, although needing to be reglazed. It is a great big old clawfoot tub and I love it. Also, I like the fact that, although this is a small house and what there is, is in terrible condition, it is quite easily big enough for me, comfortably so, not crowded, about 1,700 sq. ft. I began to look at it differently when the plumber made me an offer for it. He said it's bigger than his house and he really likes it. The electrician said, "This is a darling house," which sounded odd coming from the mouth of an extremely large unkempt workman. I thought, "It is? This wreck is a darling house?" I like that the laundry is conveniently located and works efficiently now.
I like that there are plenty of very comfortable places to lie down/sit down. It's a good house for someone always tired and never really well, a perfect sick-person house. I like that the stairs are broad with short lifts so they are not taxing to climb. I like that my driveway is big enough so I can turn the car around and go into the street nose first. That, by the way, is pretty much unique in this town. Many, many homes in the $500,000-$1,000,000 range have no driveway at all. I like the front porch which is quite big enough for furniture. Sometimes I have breakfast coffee out there while reading the paper. Mostly I appreciate near proximity to Lydia/Dan/the kids. So nice to be close enough that I can call Lydia and say, "After Benny's karate lesson would you stop here for a minute on your way home?" I like that the garage is so big, with storage space, and dry. Really it is disgraceful that I have this much house and this nice a house when so many are homeless. I'm learning to like the place and I am grateful for it.
Monday, December 6, 2004
Tree
I have a crazy excuse for a house, but my Christmas tree exceeds the outside dimensions of those semi's over on Hampton. There are only four ornaments on my tree, compliments of Lydia, four little gold bows. The rest is just tiny white lights. Last night I lit it at night for the first time. It is so beautiful that I am not going to junk it up with ornaments. I ran outside to see how it looks from the street...fabulous. And this street needs some fabulousness. Next door they have some holiday lights up but have not turned them on. Way down the street in the Colonial Place area, some houses have lights...over-the-top junky lights like National Lampoon Christmas. Across the street on an empty house a string of old lights around the porch keeps company with the American flag and a bit of faded plastic roping. Someone is rehabbing the place and I saw him one day come out on the porch, finger the American flag, take it out of its socket, reach for that tatty roping, then change his mind, put the rags of former occupants back and walk away. It all goes with the trash strewn weedy yard. Not fabulous at all. Then just a house away from that, the yellow apartments are getting a rehab in part. With two tenants out and gone, the owner has somebody over there who yesterday all day threw trash out the windowns and down onto the sidewalk and street. No, not fabulous. Worse than it has ever been during my shared tenancy of this environment. Then one house over from me on my side of the street, the owners have not cut their grass all summer and it is just hideous, a snarl of gigantic weeds and wind-blown junk. I don't know what's their problem. My yard person told me that they hired him to put together a new lawn mower and then told him that would be all. The new mower has never made its maiden voyage and that was in May. Oh, it's a long, long time from May to December and the weeds grew long back in September. Not fabulous. So, you can see that my tree is a major contribution to the beautification of 38th Street. Some people with pretty Christmas trees live in neighborhoods where those trees disappear in the overwhelming Christmasness visible everywhere. My tree is the only nice thing at all. It is the best tree on 38th Street.
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