Monday, March 14, 2005
Pork Chop Moves In
While determined not to be ruled by this liitle scrap of mutt, I am, on the other hand, trying to accommodate her habits and likes as much as possible. Does that sound like a long way around telling on myself that the dog already runs the house? Uh-huh. The first rule I made was that the dog sleeps on the floor. Didn't happen. The dog squirrelled out a comfortable nest on the bed and I had to sleep on the periphery. Why didn't I yell, "Hey! Get on the floor!" ? I didn't because...I don't know why. Then I went to sleep and woke up in the middle of the night and found that Pork Chop was snuggly weaselled in next to me with her nose on my elbow. I laid there for a minute thinking, "This has got to stop now," and then Pork Chop began to emit tiny sounds and tremble a little bit. I thought, "Gosh, the dog is having nightmares, can't kick it to the curb while that's going on," so I decided to put up with the status quo. The second I made that decision, Pork Chop stopped trembling and making noises. It's like she was listening to me think.
The only good thing I can say is that she is really housebroke and didn't make me get up and take her out during the night. Well, alright. The other good thing is that this is a very cute-looking dog.
Pork chop seems to think I'm either a chair or a dogmobile. The second I sit anywhere, like now, she's up on my lap turns three times, and lies down in a little circle, seemingly asleep. When I take her out to go potty, the instant she's finished, she tries to get me to pick her up.
Have I been tough about anything? Yes. Food. Pork Chop has been on a diet,but she weighs eight pounds still and needs to go down about three more pounds. The foster care person told me to strictly limit her to one fourth cup of dry kibbles twice/day and no treats. Yesterday on the way home, we stopped for burgers and fries. She sat on my lap power-staring at my fries and almost had a heart attack while I ate my burger, finally...in despair...tragically burying her nose under my elbow. I didn't even give her a crumb of fry/burger. She WILL lose the lard. Lydia cried and begged for the dog to get some McDonalds, but I was tough.
Also, I haven't carried her. When we go out, she walks, and that's that. In the house, too.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Going To The Dogs
I have not had a dog in the house since Lydia was still in school and her little dog Bugscuffle died of cancer. Why not? Well, after a perfect dog dies and is buried in the yard wrapped in its favorite blanket, no dog would be an adequate replacement. Nothing could replace Bugsy. I said, "That's it. No more dogs." Then the rules were changed in my town house complex and dogs were banned. I could have had a dog, but in order to do that, I'd have had to move. Now it's been about 15 years of doglessness and tomorrow we're all going down to North Carolina to pick up a new dog. A chihuahua is moving in. Is this a good idea? Probably not. Soon find out. The only dogs in this block are pit bulls used in illegal dog fights over behind the yellow apartments. If you had to bet which type of dog would prevail in a sidewalk confrontation...chihuahua or pit bull...which would you back to win? I have been told that 'Pork Chop" is a doggy diva with outrageous attitude. She will, I hear, rule my home with an itty bitty paw of iron. We'll see, we'll see.
Thursday, March 3, 2005
Good Stuff
I am just now risking my health by eating the last of a fabulous grapes, beef, and walnut salad made three days ago. Not a good idea to eat something that geriatric containing mayo. However...it is so good. I mean just far, far too delicious.
I remembered it as made by Nancy, called her, got the directions, and set to work. The worst part was cutting up all those grapes. In case you want to try it, here's what you do. Cook about enough steak for three people. Do this in the oven, slowly, with lots of soy sauce. Put the meat into the fridge to get it cold. Cut up two kinds of grapes. How many? Um...let's see...I did two whole packages from the produce department of the ghetto grocery. A lot of grapes. Seed them, cut them in half. Sprinkle Splenda on the grapes twice as you work...that's two little packets. Add shelled, of course, walnuts. Cut the COLD steak into tiny little cubes about like 1/2 inches per cube. Add the meat to the grapes and nuts. Now in a separate bowl, put about half a chubby jar of mayo. Mix in another packet of Splenda. Add a cap and a half or so of vinegar. Get the mayo mixture thoroughly tossed through the chewables. If you like them, here's where you also add about a cup of cut up sweet pickles. When everything is nicely combined, cover and leave in the fridge. This makes around three quarts of salad. It's a food providing a great deal of 'chew' and it is very tasty and satisfying so you won't need too much per serving. You're looking at enough salad for a lot of people so be generous. You know those cottage cheese or Cool Whip containers you wash and save? This is a good time to find a few of those, pack them full, put on the lids, and surprise neighbors and friends with a delightful ready made supper. You are still going to be eating salad for quite a while.
Although the temp was chilly as I just now dragged my garbage to the curb, spring is here. All the Easter flowers are out and looking great. The grass is growing...as I went to the ghetto grocery, I saw a crew cutting grass around the parking lot. Outdoor cheeriness makes me think about different food from that eaten all winter...salad meals. Yes, it is possible to make potato salad in the winter, but I don't. Going to do it now, though. This will be a spring salad fest. The friend who supplied the grape salad recipe also shared her directions for shrimp and crab salads. I'm going to do tuna, potato, shrimp, and crab salads for sure. If you know of some other great salad, please e-mail the directions.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Splish, Splash
My tubs of blue and white pansies are stiiiiill doing well. They bloomed all winter. Since planted last fall, they have only had to be watered twice. Rain, rain, rain... particularly the last couple of weeks. We have not experienced a winter like the ones I was used to up north. However, we've had -plenty of chilly, rainy days and I'm tired of them. This morning I did the usual Monday A.M. things: vacuumed, loaded/unloaded/folded laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, and bundled weekend newspapers for the recycle bin. The papers still sit by the door. Too sloppy and wet to go out by the garage. Very ungrateful of me to resent this fairly mild weather considering that right now in Michigan is still winter up north...and I'm not there. However, I'm tired of the rain. I want sunshine and warmth so that I feel like going out to plant seeds and set out flats of flowers. A few more days of this rain and I might require an ark. Yes, this is pretty flat coastal territory, but with all the rain, the streets have been running full of water. I have begun to take seriously claims that polar ice melt may inundate places like Norfolk. This winter scientists who make their lives miserable roosting at the South Pole have seen bare ground where previously never before imagined. This has been summer down there below the Equator and it has been a remarkably warm one. All the melted ice has to go somewhere and no doubt is even as I type, creeping up from Chesepeake Bay to create an extension of the Intracoastal Waterway on 38TH Street.
Benny Sees The Circus
Last night we went to Ringling Brothers Circus. Let me just say that circus tickets are expensive. Knowing this, I assumed that I would have plenty of time to buy tickets. Wrong again. The circus is so much fun that a kid has to be brain dead to fail to enjoy it. By the time I eventually got around to going online for tickets, the only ones available were in peanut heaven or at the final performance. We chose the final performance in order to have ring side seats. From the moment we walked into the arena, Benny slipped into a circus coma. He stared in round-eyed awe. At intermission, he came up for air and noticing confetti from the confetti canon, began to collect it in handsful. These he entrusted to me because I had a large bag. I was a good sport and crammed it all into the bag. After collecting plenty of the stuff, he picked up one more little piece of paper, solemnly handed it to me, and said, "This is for at your house, Ahno." Presumably for my nonexistent museum of stuff from happy times. That was one funny Bennyism. Getting into the van after the show, Benny earnestly piped up, "Mom, wasn't I a good boy at the circus? Was I good enough to stop for ice cream? Was I, Dad? Ahno, tell Mom I was good." Funny Bennyism number two. I had a hard time not laughing. Like he distinguished himself from all the other little boys at the circus who were awful, and by a great effort he behaved in spite of being bored to tears. Needless to say, we stopped for ice cream.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Assigning Weight
At my back fence are two tropical bushes of some kind that flowers year round. One bears gigantic pink flowers; the other is white. These flowers, except in the worst of January, cover the bushes. They are so beautiful as to seem unreal. Across the street from my house are two apartment buildings full of the worst specimens of humanity you might imagine. Year round they broadcast ugliness, stupidity, and hatefulness on a daily basis. They are so awful as to seem unreal. Now, supposing I were able to put those people on one side of a balance beam scale and the flower bushes on the other side, and supposing the scale were to measure real and lasting impact...not weight. Which would 'mass out' more heavily? I suspect that this involves a decision on the part of anyone affected. All of which reminds me of verses in the Bible, Philippians 4:8...Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy- think on these things....and the God of all peace will be with you. For my own peace of mind, I must concentrate more on the flowers than on the human flotsam across the street. I must choose to assign greater weight to the flowers.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Lions, Tigers, Elephants, Rhinos, Gorillas, etc.
How often does some Discovery Channel-type labor to make us guilty about extinction of dangerous species in Africa and Asia? You know the shows I mean. A rich voice sorrowfully intones, "Surely a way must be found by which man and beast may co-exist on this planet because when the great beasts have all died, this will be a poorer world by their absence."
About then I always tell myself that those selfish Africans and Asians ought to show a little more flexibility, allowing elephants occasionally to rampage through their useless little farms, allowing tigers to eat a few huts full of overpopulation... You shudder. Right, but you, too, have felt the same way without, possibly, enunciating those thoughts so explicitly. My feelings always run toward exotic endangered animals and against little, scrawny, third-world, way-too-many-of-them-anyway people.
Now, upon reflection, my hypocrisy is apparent to me. I'm wrong.
What has turned me around re. this issue? Answer: the yellow brick apartment residents. They are the local rampagers and eaters of huts full of populace, so to speak. They are the exotic specimens of 38th Street. And I want them locked up.
A Discovery Channel special about yellow apartment dwellers might go like this...
******
They live crowded into shabby, filthy little yellow brick dens on 38th Street, bitterly controversial. Neighbors want these apartments torn down and their inmates sent to jail or, maybe, to Mars. Does this issue allow room for compromise? Tonight Discovery Channel investigates....GOONS ON 38TH STREET.
All they want is the right to prey on those not like themselves. They simply and naturally need to feed off other life forms in their territory. How? Why, they must receive housing, medical care, education for their children, food, transportation and entertainment without working and paying for these things themselves...because that's the way they are. Unless others do all the paying as they do all the playing, they may cease to exist. The closest approach they make to traditional work is to participate at a bottom-feeder level in the drug trade, selling about enough to finance their own needs. These unique and special creatures are not designed with daily jobs in mind. They are predators... some say parasites, bit of a taxonomy issue there. Surely a big world affords room for them, too. What is the point of blaming a subspecies for being what it is? Haven't we learned enough about ecology to realize that each life form has an important place in maintaining life as we know it? The fact that we can not see the value of a life form simply means that we have not done adequate research. Better science someday will lead to explanations unavailable to us now.
They feel themselves entitled to noisily rampage at will. What does this look like when happening? It looks like nightly noise fests/fights such that working people around them have no opportunity to sleep. It looks like random strewing of trash that blows all over this area to be picked up by people who had nothing to do with introducing it into the environment. The day does not go by when little old neighbor, Joanna, is not forced to detrash her yard. A few minutes ago she was out in the cold rain setting her trash containers at curbside for pick up. Before coming back indoors she noticed and picked up piles of pop cans, fast food wrappers, etc. She has never in her life thrown onto the ground a pop can or a fast food wrapper. Every day, however, she picks up after the rampaging beasts of 38th Street. She feels very cranky about this daily chore. She feels that the behavior of the 38th Street rampaging beasts is unfair to her. What she fails to understand, though, is that she and they are different, created for divergent purposes. She was born to pick up others' trash and the great beasts were born to introduce an element of excitement into a world otherwise safe but bland. Unwilling to accept this point of view, she wants all the beasts either removed to fenced game parks, or caged in zoos.
Please, those of you not immediately threatened by yellow apartment dwellers and therefore sympathetic to their future, please support Keep Our Streets Safe For Goons, or KOSSFOG. KOSSFOG advocates work tirelessly to shackle police and community efforts to silence forever the inconveniently exotic among us.
After a commercial break we will frankly and fairly address the issue of rogue specimens which kill. Do they exist and if so, what price is paid by allowing them continued free range?
>>>>>>>>>>break<<<<<<<<<<<
Legends persist of the occasional rogue 38th Street specimen killimg for entertainment, not for survival. What about old stories of murder, child molestation, domestic violence, drive-by shootings, cruelty to pets?
After reviewing many hours of police footage and tons of court files, our investigators conclude that, yes, residents of the yellow apartments have shed blood and have caused terror, grief and every kind of physical harm. However, what statistics fail to reveal is that most violent confrontations occur between members of the yellow apartment community and have nothing whatever to do with outsiders. Where their behavior impacts a broader population, in each instance, that population invaded yellow apartment territory during the residents' waking hours. An outsider on the sidewalk near the yellow apartments between 2:00 P.M. and 4:00 A.M. finds himself in their little remaining area of control during their time to feed and has therefore brought upon himself whatever the nature of apartment dwellers indicates to them that they should do under these circumstances.
No one, though, has been able to document incidents of violence arising from contact between an outsider and a yellow apartment resident between 4:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. During this period, they sleep and are therefore no problem to passersby. KOSSFOG works diligently to make the Kensington area aware of possibility for peaceful co-existence with apartment residents. If only enlightened neighbors could avoid apartment dweller territory during a mere 14 out of the 24 hours/day. With a little understanding, a little flexibility and planning, violent confrontation might all be avoided. Give them their space. Respect their right to be themselves while awake, and stay away. Is that too much to ask?
And ask yourself this question; do you want your children to grow up in a world where the last remaining yellow apartment dwellers have been relocated to fenced and guarded promises? Must children of tomorrow peek at them through the bars or see them only in photos and police videos from a former time? Are these creatures not like the canary in the coal mine, indices of what real freedom is still there for the entire human race? 99.9999% of the human race are passive rule-keepers and as boring as dirt. Let's keep some of the inconvenient, violent, predatory subspecies alive and free, reminding us of the full range of what it means to be human.
*********
Yeah, well, that's how The Discovery Channel would position this problem, but I say, "Crap, crap, crappity crap on all that nonsense." I have seen the light. I have found solidarity with Asian and African villagers threatened by tigers and lions and elephants and gorillas and rhinos.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Viewing With Suspicion
Yesterday was my usual walk-to-the-ghetto-grocery day. When I woke up, rain poured down in buckets, but by 9:00 A.M. that had cleared. So I dragged my collapseable shopping cart out to the sidewalk and away I went.
I worried about everyone I passed all the way to the store. This has not happened before. The difference yesterday was that I passed so many young adult men behaving oddly. On other trips I have passed just a few men and none of them particularly scary, not even the drunks. These people scared me because they all seemed to be anxiously looking around for potential attackers, hunching and slouching along,nervously licking and licking their lips, furtively darting their eyes, left/right, left/right. All of them expensively dressed in new-looking hip hop attire and big-bucks sneakers. Each of them had the demeanor of someone ready in a split second to duck, dive, or dash behind protection. The frightening part of this was that the only explanation for seeing so many young men like this in a small area, all of them anxious as they were, the only explanation I could come up with...there had to be some kind of gang thing or drug war underway...and I did not want to get hurt in the middle of it.
The only way I ever get up nerve to walk to the store is the knowledge that I am walking along a very busy street, cars and trucks buzzing by all the time. I like to hope that should I be robbed/beaten up/shot, some passer-by would at least use their cell phone to call the police. Yesterday I reminded myself several times that many people would see if something bad happened to me.
As I reached the store's parking lot, a man was putting his purchases into his car. He called out, "Hello," to me. That was kind of odd since he was at a distance, but OK. Then he closed his car door and stood with his back to the car watching me go into the store. From inside the store I saw him still standing there looking my way. I went on into the store and was in the produce section when he came back into he store. He stood on tippytoes in the entry bouncing from foot to foot, looking around. Seeing me, he dashed through the checkout and into an aisle. As I went down a different aisle, he went down the next one and at the end, he peeked out of the neighboring aisle as I emerged from the one I was in. Then he jumped back. Now is that crazy or what? It was like he was scared to let me see him, but at the same time afraid to let me out of his sight. This happened three more times and I can honestly say, I was creeped out. I am a little old lady with white hair up in a bun. Anyone seeming to be terrified at the sight of me has to be a lunatic.
Why didn't I go to the manager's desk at the store front and complain about this person? Well, what was I going to say? "Some man keeps acting afraid of me?" I don't think so. The manager would wonder if I had excaped from a home.
I decided to admit that I had lost my nerve and call a taxi to come and drive me home. Having made that decision, I felt better and finished my shopping. Happily I saw no more of the peek and jump fellow. Through the checkout and into the foyer where the phone is situated, I saw that the his car was gone. Apparently he had tired of playing "I'm scared of that old lady." So I summoned up my determination and walked home dragging the groceries. The trip home was fine, no nervous drug guys, no crazy people.
Finally I rounded the turn at the Post Office, getting close to home. Here came the biggest man I've seen in a while, not just tall, but wide, too. He was wearing two hats, large hats. The hat next to his head was bright green. The one on top of that was bright yellow. The top hat had some kind of stick-out decoration on the sides which sort of vaguely gave an effect of little Dutch girl. Also he wore a heavy lumberjack-type jacket. The hats and jacket were peculiar because this was a very warm day. The strangest thing, though, was that his eyes were shut and he walked along with his hands out feeling around in the air.
My first thought was to jump off the sidewalk and give this fellow lots of room. Then I thought, "No way. I can't jump the cart of groceries, too, and I don't want him to knock the cart over." So in a very loud, firm voice, I barked out, "Good morning!" He walked around me without reply busily feeling the air ahead of him.
Another morning on 38th Street. Whatever else may be said of this place, it hasn't bored me yet.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Volunteer Dog, Etc.
The longer I live here, the more I believe that there is no limit to the craziness possible to see here on 38th Street.
Yesterday began in a not-at-all crazy way. Benny was here all afternoon. We had a wonderful time. We made peanut butter chocolate bars. Then we played video games. Then we drew for a long time. I love to draw with Benny. He approaches it with all the intensity he brings to everything else. Now and then he jumps up, grabs his paper, and dashes all over the house making little noises...clearly he has taken his drawn things into an imaginary activity only visible to himself. Yesterday he drew vultures and gnorcs from the video game.
Since it was a bright, sunny day, we made many, many rainbows with my crystal paperweight. Lucky I did not succeed in giving this away. It is engraved to note my 39 years of teaching at Clintondale. On retiring I determined to accept no junk like clocks, etc. However a number of items came my way. I firmly gave them all away. Funny thing. Those to whom I gave them, managed to smuggle most of it back into my possession. When I unpacked boxes here, after the move, there was the megaton crystal vase from Tiffany's, the crystal bowl fron Lenox, and the crystal paperweight. The crystal bowl and vase are fish bowls and the paperweight is Benny's rainbow maker.
While making rainbows in the office upstairs, I noticed an old thermometer left on the windowsill. Aha! Benny and I began a temperature pilgrimage all over the house. Up in the office, the temp was 80. Downstairs in the unheated laundry, it was 60. In the kitchen, it was 72. Out on the front porch, Benny by now was madly into measuring temperature. Holding the thermometer, "It's going DOWN, Ahno! Still going DOWN," leaping and shrieking for joy. Soon he was rushing from place to place making the red mercury go up and down and calling the score back to me resting on the sofa. After a while he calmed down enough that we could draw thermometers and make each other guess where the thermometer was, based on it's temp reading.
Finally it was time for Benny to go home. He had been wrestled into his shoes and coat and was actually in the door way when the first crazy thing happened. Lydia, carrying the baby's bag of stuff, and also carrying the baby, was in the doorway behind Benny and she seemed to be fighting something. She yelled, "Look at this DOG!" I crowded in to see and sure enough, a dog was trying to get into my house. I mean it was madly struggling to get in past Benny and Lydia. Lydia managed to yank Benny back indoors behind her and, holding the baby high, tried to force the dog out of the doorway using her legs and feet. I pulled the door open a bit more so that I could get out and help her. The dog took this as a gesture of welcome and forcibly mashed it's nose and neck in past my legs. Lydia yelled at me, "STOP! Don't let it in." There we all were squashed into my front doorway; Lydia and the baby, the dog, me, and Benny trying furiously to get back out where he could see what was going on. It was a squirming, yelling mangle of flesh there for a while until Lydia succeeded in getting herself and baby and dog all the way out the door and closed the door behind her. The dog gave the dog equivalent of a shrug and an, "Oh, well," and ran on up the street. Whew! Lydia has been taking karate and said, "I didn't want to hurt an animal, but that dog was about a second away from getting a roundhouse kick out into the middle of the street." In no way did the dog appear to be pathetic. It was chubby, had a shiny coat, wore a collar with a bunch of tags. I have never before seen or heard of a dog that tried to force a strange family into adopting it. Crazy.
The second crazy thing happened after dark. I am developing an ear for 38th Street noise. Since the residents of the yellow brick apartments make a lot of noise at all hours of the day/night, I am reaching a fairly accurate filter for what is a really bad thing going on, and what is just noise. Yesterday evening I heard some really special screaming and yelling. Going to peek through the blinds, I saw something frequent on TV, but never before personally seen by me. Two men beat up a third man. They just hammered the daylights out of this fellow. After a while the victim was on the ground. Then the assailants jumped on him repeatedly and kicked him in the head and chest. Eventually the fighters stopped. To my surprise, the victim managed to scoop himself off the sidewalk and shuffle away. Why didn't I call the police? Have I become a person completely without compassion? Well, having seen those monsters publicly shooting one another, selling drugs, having various forms of sex, assaulting the police, spitting at me as I tried to walk to the store and buy milk, etc., etc., etc...I do not believe that I should ever in any way get into their game. One neighbor actually warned me, "Don't you ever call the police about them. If they ever do something so bad the police need to come, I'll do the calling. If they ever learned that you had told on them, you might not live much longer." So I just let them half kill a guy. Probably one of their own fellowship anyway. The fight began on one of those porches. Crazy. You know, when you see violence on TV it just seems like part of an entertainment. I never feel that I'm looking at something a real human being would do to another person. That is probably true in most of the world. On 38th Street, it's just another crazy thing waiting to really happen.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Garbage Revisited
Yesterday just before the garbage and recycle trucks showed up, wearing plastic gloves up to their elbows, two women came out of their yellow brick apartments. First they wrangled all but three of the tubs out to the curb. Those three tubs were the blue ones overflowing with regular trash...but only supposed to hold recycleables. The women took all the dreck out of the three tubs, one handful at a time, and sorted it into the tubs at the curb. Then they swept the entire area and picked up stray bits of trash. Judging by the fact that they wore plastic gloves and used new brooms, I am guessing that management paid them to clean up their own mess. Better that, I suppose, than leaving the mess where it was.
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