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Wednesday, August 24, 2005
F Is For Fat
Just now on TV someone cited a new statistic re. health in the USA and we're all shockingly, obscenely, morbidly obese. Fat, folks.
Then another round of statistics...somewhere not far away, out of 400 kids in a local school, 67 are pregnant. Fat and fertile.
More statistics showed that the average American experiences difficulty getting up out of a comfortable chair. Fat, fertile, and feeble.
I must extend props to Dan and Lydia for their excellent counterculture, anti-fat effort. The way I understand it, each day Lydia enters their calorie consumption and their time on task w. various activities into a software thingy Dan produced. This tells whether or not each of them is going to lose weight for that time period, and how much...or whether all is lost and somebody's going to be fatter. Result...Dan looks like Skeletor and Lydia can now get into outfits she wore pre-Sadie.
Great work. I support this. How? Mostly by unselfishly allowing myself to be their designated displaced matter repository. Huh? It's a law of physics. No matter is ever gained or lost. Whatever Dan and Lydia lose, flies over here to 38th Street and attaches itself to me. I, generously, am happy on their behalf. However...they're killing me.
Here's what I think...we Americans need to negotiate this thing with some wretched, tired, poor third world place with too few calories going on. For a fee, they would absorb all our extra lard. They'd chub up, get a little richer, and we'd slim down, get a little poorer
Oh, wait. Even better idea. We inflict fat on terrorist-supporting states in the Middle East, Africa, Asia...all hungry places. They'd become fat, fertile, and feeble. We'd have a chance to recover our edge. If only.......
New weapon, THE PLUMPATRON 3000. Americans get their draft notices and line up at designated locations. "Step into the Plumpatron, Ma'am. Did you bring your skinny clothes with you? Good." A minute later, a newly slim american steps out of the machine, puts on her 10-sizes-smaller clothes and returns to work. Meanwhile a Palestinian bomber somewhere on the other side of the world suddenly bulges out, popping the waistband on his formfitting bomb vest, feeling like he needs to sit down, blobby, contented, no longer fiery and dangerous. Where is this technology?
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Good
Last night, another in the endless series of marathon grocery store book events, concluded with me reading the first in a series by Alexander McCall Smith. These books take one to Botswana through the eyes of the most unusual heroine for a grocery store book. I read The #1 Ladies Detective Agency and now I want to read the other five books in the series. Just completely delightful. Light and funny, but profound, too. How did these books get past me? I thought I'd read everything.
New Who
In my no-prestige position as the nosiest person on 38th Street, I have been anxious to see the move-in of those new people, the ones who bought the just-constructed house across the street. Wild stories went round and round our little circle. The new people were one gay man. The new people were a big family of white people. The new people were a half-way-house-full of mentally disturbed persons transitioning from an institution...on and on. Then I saw them...I think. It was six people in a small van. Driver was a mountain of a woman both horizontally and vertically. That was a lot of person. In her age bracket was a man who came up about to her armpit. He is one of those people who have had their voice box removed in a cancer operation...and they speak through a tube. An extremely skinny younger woman with a small child appeared next. Then came two teen-aged boys. Then another vehicle pulled in and a large man about in the age bracket of the skinny woman...he hopped out. They all trooped up the steps to the front door and went in. They stayed for about 20 minutes. They came out, got into the van, and left. Finally the man from the extra vehicle came out. He stood looking up and down the street. Here came a truck from a plumbing company. The man and the plumber went back inside. They stayed in there for about half an hour. They came out and the plumber left. The man locked up and he, too, left.
This A.M. a delivery truck arrived at the same time as the large man. He accepted delivery of a washing machine. The truck, left and then returned and unloaded something else...I couldn't see. Then a truck from a company that custom makes leather furniture. They unloaded something into the garage. They left.
As all this happened, I took Porque out for a potty trip. Mr. Jorday came home for lunch and waved hello to me. He got out of his van. The new guy ran across the street yelling as though seeing a dear friend. Mr. Jordan greeted him joyfully. They clasped hands and exchanged loud greetings. The new guy said, "No, It's just me and the boy for now."
Well...progress of a sort.
He Volunteered To Be A Baboon
Nothing is too awful for Benny to try. If he lives to grow up, he will have survived a lot that would kill better-behaved little boys. Yesterday was a good example.
Lydia dropped by early in the A.M., announced that she and the children were on their way to the zoo...did I want to go along? NO. I didn't want to go. Already it was so hot out that had you dropped an egg in midair, it would have cooked prior to hitting the pavement. Besides I had a sack of new stories and planned to spend the day in air-conditioned comfort reading my grocery store books.
I reminded her, though, that I was making dinner for everyone, so she needed to drop by at about 6:00 P.M. Cheery, Bye. Wave, wave. They were off. I went indoors to my cool air and my new books.
Time flew by and soon it was 6:00 P.M. and there were Lydia and the kids on the porch. Lydia was exhausted, looked like she had spent a long, hot day at the zoo. All trooped in and Benny headed like an automaton for the freezer and my supply of ice-cream bars. Lydia was so tired that, knowing she was about to take him home to a dinner he would not eat, she allowed the ice-cream. She slumped onto the sofa and told about the zoo day.
Benny, apparently had been impressed with a new baboon, one with an improbably colorful butt. Approaching its cage, he stared through the bars. Lydia look away. She looked back. Somehow, by twisting his head just right, Benny had managed to get his head between the bars and into the cage. He didn't mind at first, not realizing that he wouldn't be able to get out the same way he'd gotten in. Then he did realize it and was afraid because then the baboon, hearing Benny crying and panicking, headed for him. Baboons have really incredibly, long, sharp teeth. The closer the baboon came, the more Benny panicked.
Lydia, meanwhile tried every which way to get Benny's head back through the bars....while hanging onto Sadie with one hand. Desperation fueled the enterprise and Lydia succeeded.
The day ended happily wih Benny having so much fun running through the eight fountains that soon all children onsite did that, too...it was like a stampeding herd of children rushing around and around through the water again and again. At this point in the story, Benny broke in to tell me, "It was a race, and I won."
Extra Dose Of Sermons
Well, on Sunday, I got my wish and heard two sermons, each of which would have been sufficient. This is my usual Sunday practice.
The first sermon arrives via cable TV. I have actually attended this church...once. That experience will suffice for the rest of my life, I think. Too, too exhausting. The service there just really gets going after a couple of hours and the ongoing decibel level is immense. It's all very emotional and regular attendees seem to handle it cheerfully, dynamically, energetically. I, on the other hand, was absolutely wrecked down to zero by just that one time. Took me about a week to recover. So I'm not going back there in person. However, the TV show is great. It's all just the sermon, which runs for an hour and is ALWAYS, without exception, a masterpiece of religious rhetoric. Richly entertaining, funny, witty, brilliantly original, stern, a hard dose of good sense, touching, inspiring...it is too wonderful to be, as it is, free. I do look forward to it from week to week.
The core of this week's message was two stories; the first, of Elijah and Elisha, one being taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire and leaving a double portion of his power to the other, but also exposing him to harrassment by 50 troublemakers from the School Of The Prophets. The thought, illustrated by this story, was that things always get hot for a person who is trying to do better. You no sooner resolve to clean up your act than all hell breaks loose.
The second story was the one of the three Hebrews thrown into the fiery curnace where they walked around unscathed by the fire and God was visible in there with them. The thought being that when things do go south as a person tries to be right, this is merely the prelude to wonderful supernatural support...you have to be willing to do the right things which will lead to your being thrown into the fire, but once there, God meets you.
Need I say, that I was convinced; by the end of the hour I was fully in the correct frame of mind to do right and to get tossed into the flames if necessary. Then I took a bath and got dressed. Lydia picked me up and drove me, herself, and the kids to Christ And St. Luke's Episcopal Cathedral. There she and the kids disappeared. I went into the sanctuary to have an experience at the entirely opposite end of the religious spectrum from the one earlier on TV.
Now, this place is the essence of gothic cathedral. The ceiling is so high that I can't see it to know if bats cling unside down to the stonework way up there. The pews and kneeling stools are so uncomfortable that they have to predate the United States Constitution. Olde and awful. The organ and music are glorious. The congregation have that onsitpated look found on the faces of citizens embarrassed to discover themselves assembled on a religious occasion. The sermon is a throw of the dice. Last Sunday it was unspeakably idiotic drivel about yin and yang from a man who clearly had no dlue what he was talking about. This Sunday the speaker was a young woman headed for seminary. She's planning to become a priest. Her homily was magnificent, so much so that it surprised one and all...particularly, no doubt, those who remembered the ghastly swill from the week before. As she concluded, I heard murmers of, "Wow!" and other whispered recognition of a good job.
Her text was something about looking to the rock from which you had been quarried...and the idea was to stick with what you have always known to be right.
So there, on a day when I needed to get the elbow, I did receive full measure; two sermons, both of them good. As an unlikely candidate for goodness, I do take a lot of inspiring, but if I don't improve this week, it won't be for want of the word in season.
At the conclusion of the sermon at the episcopal cathedral, the children come into the sanctuary to be with their parents through communion. This means that the mausoleum atmosphere disappears completely as babies cry, children drop books on the floor, prayer stools crash up and down, kids talk out loud and annoy their parents while entertaining everyone else. It was a good day for Benny who behaved with amazing propriety. On the way out of church I asked Lydia how things had gone in the children's service. She said that it had been a good story and Benny behaved. When they lined up to return to the adult service, Benny, not fist in line and mad about it, announced loudly that he needed to punch the little girl at the head of the line...but he hadn't actually resorted to hitting...so it was all good.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Whatever
Sometimes I just give up. As in fail to feel any sort of raison d'etre. I lie in bed at the crack of dawn and have less energy than is required to groan. Can't think of anything I would like to get up in order to do. Know all about my advantages and do not care. Exist as a useless lump..to the extent that amounts to existence. Today, for example.
Then I remembered a reason to get up and carry on...I have a dog who needs to go out and go potty. Without adjusting my appearance by so much as an iota, whatever that is when it's home, I grabbed the itty bitty leash and halter, slid my feet into my sandals, and flumped out the door.
Early Sunday A.M. No one whose opinion I need cherish would be out scouting for the next top model...would they? So I'm dragging down the sidewalk with small dog on the end of the leash, self looking like a disaster victim who hadn't completely expired...yet. Small dog realised the purpose of my sacrifice by urinating five times in five separate and distinct locations, vomiting twice in one place, and defacating over a short stretch of turf. So I'm not entirely without merit; I facilitated the cycle of life by a fraction.
Overhead in a pink dawn, the full moon from last night, it was bright silver, details clearly outlined. All around me, the myrtles bloomed prolifically, from deep maroon to pale pink. Steam drifted up from the already hot as a firecracker pavement. Scenic environment in which to experience that out-of-gas feeling.
So I came home to make tea and peanut butter toast, picked up my newspaper, set a new cushion on one of the porch rockers, sipped, munched, and read headlines. Porque woofed mutedly at the neighborhood stray cat who stood in the middle of 38th Street, daring traffic to take one of its nine lives.
Good thing this is Sunday. I need a sermon. A really hellfire and damnation kind of sermon. One of those which make a person ashamed. In a world of people who have almost nothing, I have almost everything and, today, I do not give a rat's little rear.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
My, My
An article in today's paper sent me to the computer. A mother claimed that all children who walk to school should be shown the Virginia State Police website where photos of sex offenders are displayed. So I went to the site she mentioned and typed in my zip code. Now, that would include a very small area. Lydia lives less than a mile away and she's already in another zip code. Let me just say that the listing of sex offenders in my little neighborhood was nine pages of TEXT. When you click on a name, the photo shows. Under the photo is some text with more detail about the crime and the address and appearance of the perpetrator.
It's all very well to have this website, but how effective is it in helping potential victims avoid these characters? I certainly wouldn't remember any of the faces I saw on that site. A couple of things I noticed, 1) only two of them have jobs, and 2) most of them are fairly short in stature. Quite a few were 5'6" - 5'8" tall. I don't suppose I'd remember the faces I looked at, but if I were walking to the ghetto grocery on a work day and if I noticed a short man just sauntering along as though he had nothing to do, given the density of sex offenders in this community...hm....
Recently in the news was the silly situation of a sex offenders' counselling service going into business right next to a preschool/day care center in Virginia Beach. The businesses share a parking lot. This happened because the name of the counselling service was deliberately generic and obscure...in order not to embarrass their clients. It also happened because those sex offenders are generic. They just look like ordinary people. Only someone with a remarkable memory for faces would be able to suddenly say to his/her companion, "Oh, look, Mabel. See that guy over there? He's on the convicted sex offender list. Don't say, 'Hi.' He might follow us home and hurt somebody."
Friday, August 19, 2005
Predatory Poke Weeds, et al
My yard person is truly rare and exotic. He is so thin that it seems there could be no actual muscle tissue to propel his professional equipment. His face is so Jimmy Walker, the tall, skinny TV comedian from the 70's/80's, he looks so much like Jimmy Walker that William could BE Jimmy Walker grown up and gone wrong. William does all the houses on my block except for the military people who dance around their fire pit in the full of the moon. Last fall and this spring, William's reliability and competence were all and more than one could ask. This summer, though, something isn't right.
William lets things go until Mrs. Edna gets after him. Mrs. Jordan, also, gives him 'what for'. She, in particular, takes the gloves off and goes right after the hapless William who has no lauguage with which to rebut charges of laziness and dishonesty and so forth and so on.
My policy with William is to pay him more than anyone else does and to tell him what a great job he did whether that is true or not. The result is that he does my yard first, gets tired, heads to the liquor store, and leaves the yards of others until the homeowners are about ready to knock him upside the head.
First William excused his dereliction from duty by telling horror stories of his other job...he does summer fix and clean work up the street at Old Dominion University. When people got tired of trying to believe those stories, he claimed that all of his equipment is broken beyond his own ability to repair and he had to send it 'out' to somewhere far away and hard to reach where bad people didn't get going on the repair effort yet. After that story got old...(His equipment was, as everyone knew, in my garage.)...he began to whimper vaguely about this and that physical aliment that made him unfit for work. This got him by the critics until one day he claimed to have some of his "medication" in the bag he had in hand. Mrs. Edna sternly demanded to see that medication and, yes, you know what it was...a 45oz. bottle of malt liquor.
By this time, you could have hidden elephants in parts of my back yard. The poke weeds were and are especially luxurious, stems a couple of inches thick with long, fat tendrils reaching out farther each day, grabbing up all the dog-walking space behind my house. Under tremendous pressure from Mrs. Edna, William showed up and mowed my front yard and hers as well. Then he showed up at my door, smiling and bowing and holding out his hand. I paid him and he turned to leave. Those poke weeds are just immense. Not wanting to cause trouble, but voicing a feeble protest, I said, "William, can't you get back soon to do something about all the weeds and whatever in my back yard?" Yes, he could, he promised. He was going to be back before this weekend. My property would be the envy of the Botanical Gardens. Un-huh...Yeah. Right.
Meanwhile I have given up walking the dog in the back of my house. Those poke weeds seem way too alive. If they aren't alive, why are they bigger each time I look out the window? Rank, outrageous jungle growth. Shudder. The needle palms are higher than my house. All across the...formerly... lawn part is a tangle of deep vines which in another setting would be ornamental. I don't know. Maybe WIlliam is just plain scared to get into combat with all that viciously vigorous vegetation.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Dawgs
I have always looked askance at those women who adore their dogs, who hug and kiss them, who carry them around dressed in little dog outfits, who talk about them. Now I'm one of those idiots. Yes, I am ruled by the iron paw of a tiny chihuahua. How did this happen?
My head tells me that this dog is of questionable value; she is EXTREMELY high maintenance, she does terrible things...like leave tiny, rock-hard doggie doo-doos beside the tracks of Benny's train upstairs, like eat inappropriate things and then throw up on upholstered furniture and carpets, like require walks on 107 degree days, like bark and snarl at grandchildren who corner her and grab at her, like refuse to allow me to sit or lie down anywhere by myself, etc., etc., etc.
Somehow, though, Porque Choppe worms herself into the most dog-resistant heart. The other day Lydia told me that Dan inquired anxiously if he could have her when we go to the farm. Imagine someone like Dan secretly succumbing to that Porkee charm. At Dan's house, Porque committed the unforgiveable sin by having bloody diarhea on his beloved new carpet. Instead of hating her, he wants her to come back when we leave town. How I would like to see a picture of tall, stern-faced Dan walking itty bitty Porque on her little pink leash...something he did several times/day while we were at the beach.
My theory about how Porque Choppe exercised her dogge fatale' powers is this; she is just always there and always insanely cute. I never have to wonder where she is, she's either on my lap or beside my feet. She's sad to see me leave and happy to see me return. She's polite about the small things...like if I am eating something, she doesn't look; if I clear my throat, she stops whatever it was she did to annoy me. Besides NOT doing annoying things, Porque does goofy things...for example she makes nests, has to scratch up a pile of afghan and then slither underneath it if she's sitting on a sofa. Since she's so small, she can't really hoist the weight of even a bit of an afghan and her attempts to squish up a pile of fabric are funny to watch, Porque throwing her tiny body at the blanket in mad, furious abandon again and again and then giving up and crawling underneath. Another cute little thing she does is to climb under the covers with me when I go to bed. She sticks her head out and onto a pillow and her little sleeping head with the paws folded over the edge of the blanket just looks too darling as she sleeps trustingly beside me. When I take a bath, Porque waits on the other side of the bathroom door and if I make a noise, she woofs; if I take too long about it all, she woofs in a questioning sort of way as if checking to see that I'm still alive. The little dog is irresistible.
Every day in the USA many tiny chihuahuas are bought by people with more money than good sense, people who don't know that these little mutts require a lot of training and care, need attention 24/7, 365days/year, are extremely delicate and can be fatally injured just by jumping off the bed. People with a new little chihuahua are entertained by their new pooch for a few days and then get fed up and so many of these dogs are abandoned, turned out onto the streets with nowhere to go, left tied up in an empty building, taken to the pound and left to be euthanised. Statistics on the website of the Los Angelos, California, Chihuahua Rescue organization shocked me. Over a thousand chihuahuas/year are abandoned at the pound there. This doesn't included the homeless ones and those left tied up. Poor little, cute little dogs.
I can not too strongly recommend that anyone reading this who would like to have a dog...don't go to the pet store. Go to the petfinders.org website, type in the kind of dog you want and all the dogs like that within driving distance will be available for your inspection...that is, the ones lost, abandoned, or taken to the pound. Each dog is carefully screened and all it's good and bad traits are set forth honestly. People who are willing to give one of these dogs a home must allow themselves to be investigated, but then they will have a very fine pet, one grateful for a good home. Each dog comes with up-to-date health care, each is micro-chipped and spayed or neutered. I found Porque Choppe on that site after checking it again and again for many months. One day last week I rechecked that site and over 200 little chihuahuas are available for adoption right now in this area. They aren't all as nice as Porque...one bites everyone including the woman who feeds her...but these negative factors are all stated up front. If you'd like a little dog, do, please check out the petfinder site. You won't be sorry.
Monday, August 15, 2005
A Faux Toe
Little Benny, the ultimate beach toy fuss budget. If he mnade a sandcastle increment, and turned it over to find that some part was not quite perfect, he had to flatten it and start again. Oh, the concentration....
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