|
Monday, June 20, 2005
Seeds, Paving Stones, And Ants
I just returned from a trip to the ghetto grocery and I state for the record that growing vegetables is not only the tasty way to go, it is cheaper. Earlier this A.M.....at 5:15 A.M. to be exact, as Porkeee and I finished our early detail around the neighborhood, we went once around the back yard and I decided it's time to stop pretending that the summer squash are still too young to die. I picked as many as I could carry. Coming indoors, I plunked them into the vegetable bin in the fridge. Then at the store a few minutes ago, I learned that those squash are worth $2.29/lb. Wow, what a deal. I paid fifty cents for the seeds that produced all of those bushes which now are loaded down with squash.
So far this summer I have used the lettuce and tomatoes...every day I send a washed bag of beautiful, green lettuce home with Lydia..and, of course, I eat it too. Lydia uses it for salad, puts it under the main course salads I have been trying to invent. I break it up, add a cut-up tomato plus feta cheese and dressing and that is extremely GOOD!
About tomatoes, Lydia has limited use because Dan hates them. However when she's here, I try to find a way to serve her something with real, home-ripened tomato because that kind is soooooooo good. My plants literally bow down with fresh, ripe ones.
Now we move on to paving stones. This A.M. I watched TV and learned that streets around here were originally paved with quarried "stones" of solid granite. Stones such as these have entered the homeowner vocabulary as either "that heavy stuff I can't grass-clip around" or the ultra-desireable flower-bed border. My flower bed borders are all made of antique granite street-paving stones...incredibly heavy but lovely.
Today I decided to organize the kitchen cupboards..such as they are. Only one cupboard had a trail of ants leading to it...diminishing, I admit, but still there. One cupboard still had no ants as of this A.M. I have kept a couple of cereal boxes in the car trunk. They have the spoon 'light sabers' so desired by Star Wars fans. Today I decided to keep these boxes in my house for a couple of weeks until everyone has a chance to see the newest Star Wars movie. I stood on tippy-toe and delicately teetered the two boxes onto the top shelf in my kitchen. Less than fifteen minutes later a solid line of ants proceded from and to this cupboard. AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Father's Day
Dan has a ferocious bark, as wrong-doing business associates might grimly attest. However, when it comes to the kids, he has no bite whatsoever. Putty in their hands about sums it up. At Benny's recent recital, Dan took care of Sadie since Lydia was having her usual violin recital nervous break down. Most of the time, Dan and Sadie were on the move; at the back, outside, wherever. Briefly, however, they roosted beside me and I thought this picture was good Father's Day material, showing, as it does, a dad who really cherishes his little people. Dan's business associates will never see this particular version of the Netzer persona. They probably would not believe that it exists, but here's the picture... Just don't anyone tell Dan it's here.
Sweet Little Pork Chop
Here's a teensy movie clip of Porque. She's wearing her lovely new blue batik ribbon bouquet.
 Little Porkee
No Appetite For Grim Statistics
Yesterday I spent eight hours listening to presenters drone-on about the percentage of mediation clients who arrive for their appointment enraged and ready to go bananas. Hour after hour, story after story re. men who went crazy. Wild tales about individuals on-site to mediate a domestic abuse situation, and they did not handle the pressure appropriately. How to identify trouble early in mediation and how to divert hopelessly troubled people back into the court system. How to avoid ugly wars, how to keep self and female client safe. Awful things that men have done to women in the past...war stories of how and why people become crazed beasts. Then several hours of practice mediation, role play with imaginary domestic abuse clients.
All shocking stuff, but after the first hour, I tuned it out. Just could not make myself listen. Partly I felt overwhelming exasperation with the abused women whose stories we heard. A little voice in my head repeated over and over throughout the day, "You wouldn't have tolerated a second of that. That man would not have lived to go out the door. You'd have killed him with a chair/ball bat/ skillet." Endless pictures of women dripping blood, black and blue, faces swelled up like a giant yellow and purple sponge, broken limbs, bullet holes, long jagged knife cuts...and every one of those women said something like, "I had an accident. I ran into the door. I fell downstairs..." Some of them confronted with the facts, defended their abuser, "But I deserved it."
Very soon I couldn't listen anymore. Too terrible and idiotic.
One reason why abuse continues to be a problem is that so many think like I did, "What kind of idiot would put up with that?" We blame the victim. Those of us not so humble and lowly as a typical abused woman, we think of her as less than human, some kind of worm. It's her fault she keeps getting beaten and threatened.
The thing is, I'm a human chihuahua, a small person with a ferocious attitude. With Porque, the bigger the dog, the louder she barks and the more she strains and pulls, wants to go get him and chew him up. She actually stands up on her back legs so as to look bigger, and walks forward on two legs, barking savagely. That's me. If I'm frightened or threatened, I do not cringe and get quiet. I go right after the threat. For years my mother said again and again to me, "Someday you're going to get killed." Nope. It works the other way. Those meek women are the ones beaten and damaged, sometimes killed outright.
Yesterday I was reminded of the many times I've witnessed an abuse situation during the years I lived in a town house. Lots of times after sufficient alcohol, a neighbor's boyfriend would go off the deep end and the screaming started, "Help! Help! Oh, God!! Someone please help." I'd just get on the phone to the police and let them handle it. One night, though, the running and screaming, sounds of crashing and falling , it all sounded like someone was about to get killed. I knew that police were on the way but decided that I'd better go to the rescue in the meantime...HA! The man was a huge Detroit police officer. The woman was young, strong, very athletic. I was small, old, sick, bad heart. In my flannel nightgown, I ran over and pounded on the door. The man answered the door completely naked and drunk out of his tiny mind. I didn't give him a second to say anything. I tore into him so loudly and so fast that he was completely bewildered. Then I heard sirens approach and figured the woman should survive the remaining seconds. I ran back to my house, leaving the abuser standing naked in his girlfriend's doorway, his mouth hanging open. Police took him into custody and took her to the hospital. Next morning, she came to visit me and said, "Why didn't you mind your own business?" The previous night she had desperately screamed for help. Now in the light of the next morning, she wished that I had left her to her fate. What a mutt. After that, every time their performance repeated, I let her scream, ignored her bruised and broken face the next day.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Silly T-Shirts
Yesterday Benny stayed with me while Lydia and Sadie shopped for Fathers Day items. When Lydia returned, she wrapped Dan's gifts. Several of them were funny t-shirts. Then, surprise...she handed ME a shirt. It said, "KEEP STARING...I might do a trick." The first-impression 38th Street possible meaning of that aside, I love it and mean to wear it to class today. Then this morning I got up at the cranky crack of dawn to walk Pork Chop prior to going to class, and a silly t-shirt idea occured to me. I must spend all day today listening to info re. domestic violence. That thought plus Lydia recently telling me that Benny is nearly through with Suzuki Book 1. Here it is....STAMP OUT DOMESTIC VIOLINS. Alright, you didn't die laughing, but it amused me. Of course, at 5:30 A.M. the start of a long day of dreary statistics, any little joke helps.
Friday, June 17, 2005
How To Qualify For Village Idiot
Yesterday I did a mediation. The situation had me so nervous that I locked myself out of the house. Crazy. I rushed around to get ready so I would arrive early with time to read the file. Then I thought, "Oh, dear, Porque will be home alone for a long time, I'd better take her for a good walk before I leave." I struggled the little mutt into her harness, and charged out the door. The instant I closed that door, I knew...I'd just locked myself out. There were no keys in my hand.
Frantic thinking like a scurrying rat, rushing around in my mind from option to option. Then I realized that Lydia has a key and she might still be at home. I grabbed Pork Chop and ran across the street to the construction site. Many times I've seen workers there talking on their cell phones. A man looked up and I said, "Yes, I know that this qualifies me for village idiot, but I've just locked myself out of my house. May I please borrow your cell phone?" He laughed and handed me the phone.
Lydia answered immediately and was at my house 5 minutes later opening the door. Happy, happy, joy, joy all around. Porkee did get her walk. I arrived at the mediation center a bit later than intended but it was OK. One of the mediatees was half an hour late.
In order not to maintain my standing as village idiot, I guess I'd better do what everyone else does and hide a key somewhere outside so if I lock myself out again, I can get back inside without calling for help. I bought a hollow plastic rock, but everyone knows about those things, so I suppose that's not the best idea. Must give the matter some thought.
All Better Now
Whew! It was ugly. My yard was in danger of earning me a letter from the city. That does happen. Yesterday the city mower did the vacant lot diagonally across from me. That owner will now get a letter with a fine enclosed. Anyway the condition of my property was demoralizing. I felt like the local lowlife. Then yesterday about 6:00 P.M. two lawnmowers showed up, the yard guy and his brother. With two men operating two machines, it all went quickly. They had all the weeds and grass under control in about an hour, edged around flower beds, bagged up the clippings. What a relief. Now Porkee can go out into her own yard once again.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Fed Up
I am so sick of the way my yard looks! All those weeds. All that long grass. My yard guy still has not returned with a fixed mower. I can't take Pork Chop out in her own yard any more. Really. She disappears in the foliage. I'd fire the guy, but he needs the money. Also he does the properties on either side of me and it might make those people angry if I fired him; they like him.
On Sunday morning he came with his son-in-law's truck and took the mower out of my garage to return it to the store for repairs. I am not a patient person and I just seriously want to kick his ridiculous, down-south butt. It would not be fair to say that everyone in the south is exactly like him but there is for sure a down southness, a slow way to be, a yawn-kick back-scratch-grin-shuffle your feet way to get almost nothing done and to take a long time about it. Plenty of people here I would not hire to breathe. They'd fool around and let it go until too late.
Size Matters
Just now I dropped Porque off at the doggie beauty salon for her hair and nails appointment. They know her there and always make a fuss over her. All the girls come out to reception and ooh and aah, "Porkee Choppee, baby, OOOOOH, kisses, " and all that dog-lover rhetoric. She gets this smug, self-satisfied look on her face and blinks her eyes as if to say, "Yes, I am great. Worship me, all you fortunate people."
So that was going on when one of the girls said, "Wow. Look at that." I turned around and here came the biggest, blackest, most determined not to go to the salon Great Dane I've ever seen. A monument of a dog. It was wrangled into the salon by two handlers, each holding a strap attached to opposite sides of the dog's wide and substantial collar. Both handlers were those bulked-up, shaved-head United States Marines types, or they could be the people in the movie who wear black-tinted glasses and stand behind some mobster who ventures out into the public eye but who wants to survive the experience. Dog was giving those men a workout. Clearly it required an enormous effort to keep dog moving forward in the desired direction.
Silence in the salon except for yipping from the back room. Dog presented at the reception desk. An ultra-deep voice said, "This here is Daisy." Still silence. I think all the girls were stunned speechless. I know that I was. And Pork Chop had nothing whatsoever to say, a rare instance of good sense. The ultra-deep voice added, "You don't have to be afraid. She won't bite. And we're staying to move her around for you. The boss says we can't come home until Daisy does." Big guy smiled.
Receptionist says, "OK, girls. Who wants to groom Daisy."
Immediately every girl spoke at once, all together, "I'm doing Pork Chop." Then they had to laugh because it sounded silly but no one, seriously, wanted to groom Daisy. Lot of foot shuffling, and eye avoidance and finally one girl said, "Alright. I'll do it but somebody has to help me. And you guys," she looked at Daisy's handlers, "you have to keep her facing away from me. She doesn't ever turn her head toward me. Understand?"
"No problem," agreed deep voice.
I remained frozen in place until the Daisy entourage disappeared into the back of the salon. You know, Daisy might be a real sweetheart of a dog, but just the sight of her scared me...which doesn't take much since I am a nervous little old lady. However, the sight of Daisy also scared the staff of a salon which works with all kinds of dogs all day every day. And in my opinion, the most significant index of scariness is that Daisy was so scarey that even Pork Chop had nothing to say. Ordinarily, the bigger the dog, the louder she barks, but not this time.
Monday, June 13, 2005
The Hero
In each of the umpteen books I've read over the last months you find a hero. The individual author's concept of hero distinguishes these books from one another much more than does the plot, setting, time, etc. A book I read last night showed off a hero who said to another character, "You don't want to make an enemy of me," and later the hero shot that character between the eyes...cold-blooded execution, but he was the hero. Another hero refused to complete his assignment which was to shoot a man who certainly deserved to be shot. Then there is the hero who rigidly applies the law to one and all and for whom the law is a religion, but whose wife is a vigilante killer and he looks the other way. In another book the hero is a muddle-headed type who never really gets down to it. He doesn't act so much as he angsts. He's the hero because of the effect of his emotional upheaval on all the other characters. Another hero is a practically robotic fellow, a creature of great intellect but no appreciable reactions and interactions. He's the hero because his analyses decisively influence the plot. No females come quickly to mind as heroine other than Stephanie Plum in the Evanovich books about her career as bounty hunter. She's the heroine because no matter what, she's still standing when the dust settles. Nothing can extinguish a person with her combination of neediness and brainless elan.
In my opinion John LeCarre creates heroes with the greatest complexity.A LeCarre hero is the heart of everyperson, all of it, good and bad and in between. No one should close one of those books without feeling found out. The worst are good, the best are bad, embarrassing, depressing, hopeful, grim, completely, painfully real and worth knowing. My guess is that future generations will consider his thrillers the greatest writing of the second half of the 20th century.
Newer | Latest | Older
|
