Month: November 2016

Fronting

Fall evening with a streetlight illuminating a tree and a grey and blue sky.

November had been pleasant, so far. The leaves had been doing their job since October, turning gold and orange and bright red until they fell to the ground and transmuted to brown and tan and crunchy. 

A front came in yesterday, swapping out a sunny warm day to an afternoon that had us scrambling for Toto. There wasn’t a twister, but the clouds were dark and heavy and the wind pushed the shopping carts across the parking lot, launched the plastic grocery bags into the air and chased the people into their cars. That great idea to grab a Novemberfest at the pop up biergarten was blown away. 

Tonight the sky was blotchy with more dark, heavy clouds. Night hadn’t forced out day. The sky to the north east was still robin eggs blue. The sun was almost dropped to the west. 

I zipped my jacket up to my chin and arranged my cabled infinity scarf closer. I had warn gloves one day last week, but it was almost for show. Tonight it was for necessity. I tucked the cuffs into the sleeves of my coat to protect my wrists from the elements.

The wind went from a low moan to an angry growl and back to the moan. It lifted my hair and whipped it around in front of my eyes, trying to blind me. I should have grabbed a cap before I left.

While this town cycles through weather patterns and we can expect another set of warm days, the season has definitely flipped. Winter is coming. 

I fished my gloved fingers into my pocket. I flipped a treat into the air. The Beast captured it before the wind could change its trajectory. He wasn’t crazy about the cold either. We hustled around the corner as the blue seeped out of the sky. It was warm in the house. I had a turkey in the oven. The Boys were both home. I left the chill outside as I closed the door behind me. 

Posted on by docthink 1

Eye Seventy Five

A potted plant with a leggy herb of some sort sitting on a potting bench.

She carefully took the paper out from the bottom of the secret shoebox. She handled it with care because she’d touched it many times. She was worried that it was becoming fragile. Sometimes she simply opened the box, moved aside the things on the top and caressed the parchment with her eyes. Just to make sure it was there. And to remind herself.

Other times, like today, she unfolded it. There were many folds and there was a specific order. She always enjoyed folding it back up. Matching the up grooves in the paper, seeing where the breaks were. Opening and closing when it didn’t line up right, triggering more study. It was a silly puzzle, but one that required just enough concentration to make it seem important.

Unfolding, on the other hand, now that was an exercise in revealing. The first open was like a book, really more like a pamphlet. Then she released it like an accordion, or, maybe, a fan. She used to pretend she was playing an instrument and pull the folds open and closed. She didn’t do that anymore. Mostly because the creases lost their spring over the years, and increasingly because she thought she should be more gentle.

After she spread out the panels, she unfolded it from the bottom, doubling the size in her hands. She could start to see markers appear. She unfurled another layer and it was spread out all in front of her.

She ran her finger along the long red line. There were other red lines that were parallel, others that crossed, but there was only one that followed from the top all the way to the bottom. From the beginning to the end.

She lived near the top of the line, relatively. One time she got very close to the top, crossing over the Mighty Mac for a family trip that began with such hope, as they always did, but ended in a worn down cottage and standard issue disappointment. The bridge was impressive, though. And a little scary.

But the most scary, and the most wondrous, was the endpoint of that long red line. One thousand, six-hundred and twenty-six miles away. But she only knew about 175 miles away, personally. The possibilities of more than a thousand miles away was exhilarating.

She only knew from TV. Palm trees. Alligators. Salt water. Hurricanes. Coconuts. Shrimp. Black beans and rice. Spices!(!) Waves. Rocks. Bright blue water with concrete pylons and a road connecting rocky islands.

She was from the world of cars, of motoring. And yet she took her beat-up green short bed truck only within a sixty-mile radius of her home.

When she took out her map, and opened it up, and laid it out, the entire world was in front of her. At least a world that was near the 1-75 corridor. That road that would take her to paradise.

She opened up the map and imagined her adventure. She swore she would take the road herself, one day. But she had to finish high school. She hoped to make it to the next stop, maybe along that corridor. She wanted to see a bigger world. That kept her in school. Kept her working to make some grades. Kept her from messing with the boys that called her cute, after they called someone else out.

She heard the argument getting louder downstairs. She very very carefully refolded her map. She put her dream back in the box under her bed. But in her head, she was trying to push the accelerator down with her right foot. As hard as she could.

Posted on by docthink 3

Tastes Like Metal

Leeks, garlic, parsley, yams, sweet potato and parsley, beautifully photographed still life.

There were many many many many and many ingredients in the Magick Mineral Broth. Of course there were carrots, onions, celery and potatoes. But that would not be very magic.

The recipe calls for leeks and garlic, too. Not only that, but sweet potatoes (preferably Japanese) and garnet yams. The spice mix included the standard bay leaf and peppercorns plus the flavor and medicinal value add of juniper berries–just don’t substitute gin. Added to the boil, just so you really had to go a fancy grocery, was kombu–also known as seaweed sheets. It adds a bit of fullness of flavor, like saltwater with fish.

You can drink it warm for breakfast. You can add noodles and an egg and eat a bowl full of soup. You can use it as a base for another soup. You can put it on your cereal.

Seriously, I might as well have.

The technique is simple enough, throw everything in a big pot of water, boil the hell out of it and add salt to taste.

I got this recipe from a cancer cookbook I ordered. The idea was to use this combo of beautiful, healthy, colorful foods to prep my body for chemo and to make myself less unwell after treatment. To be honest, I think that the real purpose was to give myself a mindless yet mindful project. Distraction from the unknown. You’ve heard about an idle mind?

You don’t know what chemo does. And different combos have different impacts. And those impacts will be different for different folks. Will you be puking? Hair falling out? Just generally feeling gross? Will your feet and hands feel like sand? Will you hurt? Get sores in your mouth? Will you be cold? Hot? Exhausted? Couch or bed bound? And, behind all those unknowns is the real question, the one you don’t want to ask. Will this poison cocktail work?

Preparing the broth, the rich golden elixir full of antioxidants and magical minerals, was a step into something knowable. I could cut and cook. I could control that part. I could calm–or at least distract–my active imagination.

So, I chopped and I boiled and I added salt. It topped off my 12 quart stock pot. I disposed of the spent vegetables. Then I strained it into a many large jars. The magical mystery broth makes a ton of soup.

Later, I used a cup or so and made the noodle bowl. It tasted very good that day. I think I tweeted about how awesome it was.

And then I never touched it again. The jars sat in the fridge for a while until I made the Spouse spill out the contents into the sink and wash it away.

To this day, three years later, when I think of that magical broth, the smell, the taste, even the color, I feel a little sick. As I’m typing the words that described me eating it, that described pouring it into tall Mason jars, my stomach is getting queasy and I’m swallowing thickening saliva.

That liquid that extracted all the flavor and benefits from the ingredients tastes like chemo to me. The drugs are pumped into a port in your chest, but the scent and the taste get in the back of your mouth and violate the tastebuds at the back of your tongue. I think of the golden soup and I think of drinking something made from cheap metals that would turn your finger green. The minerals tasted more like slate and pencil shavings and solder.

So I had it that one day and I couldn’t take it again. I decided that I hated that book, too. The Cancer Cookbook or some stupid name. It did have some great advice–to avoid eating your favorite foods on the days surrounding treatment. They said that chemo could ruin them for you. Forever.

Chemo sucked, but it didn’t ruin my taste for dark chocolate with hazelnuts–or dark chocolate anything. It did, however, turn me against that awful veggie broth. Oh, and two months ago I left the cancer cookbook in my local Little Free Library. I hadn’t opened it again. Not since I cooked up that nasty broth three years ago. Maybe someone else can use the distraction. Me? Not looking back.

Posted on by docthink 0

There’s No Place Like Home

I texted the Baby Bear this morning.

Don’t miss your plane.

I included that smiley face emoji with the hearts for eyes. It was mostly to annoy. Our children get very annoyed when us Olds use emojis. It’s best–regarding maximum annoyance–when I use them inappropriately, like using the pile of shit emoji as if it’s a beehive. But even appropriate emoji use is an affront. You know, parents trying to be hip. They hate that. So I do that for my amusement.

Seven hours later I texted him again.

You on a plane yet??

I wasn’t thinking that he was late, but there was no emoji.

We had to change busses on the way delayed us a bit. In security now.

Seemed on target.

Thirty-five minutes later my phone rings. Guess who was standing at his gate with the door to the jetway closed in front of him and no Southwest staff to be found? Yup. Our hero. As I was telling him to find an open counter, I switched from the primary conversation to talking to myself as he engaged a guy. It was like when you get butt-dialed from someone in a bar and all you hear is muffled words and clinks. Until the line goes dead.

I went online to see what was coming out of Denver into one of the three Washington airports tonite. Yeah, it’s good to have options. That said, it’s less good to be looking for afternoon options when you’re flying east.

Baby Bear swore that he left with enough time to get to the airport. He knows exactly how to miss a flight, and those hard lessons have prodded him to always take the earlier bus. I believe him. The problem was the early bus was driving into a blizzard.

Of course, the first snow in Boulder would occur as he’s trying to get to the airport. The roads were a mess and they were further delayed when they had to switch buses. The security lines were long at the airport and he was getting antsy. He texted.

Wish I could barge to the front

That’s where I lost contact. Adding insult to injury, when he finally made it to the security screening area, the puffer picked something up. He was moved to secondary screening. Mild panic was beginning to seep into the corners of the reptilian part of his brain. No reason to get huffy with TSA, though. That never goes well.

The Bear offered that he was pressed to make his flight as the burly man came up to him. The agent explained that he was in training and they needed to wait for his supervisor for the grope. Baby Bear was deflated and nearing distraught.

Can’t your boss just do it?

Of course not. The agent took off his blue gloves and pulled on a fresh pair. As he snapped one rubber glove on–latex free mind you–it broke. He removed that pair and walked over to get another pair. The clock in Bear’s head was ticking at greater and greater volume.

The agent pulled on another pair of gloves. He once again snapped the left glove on and broke that one, too.

C’mon, man!

Third time being the charm, he started the pat down.

Sir, I am going to put my hand along the top of your pants.

Fine!

Sir, I am going to touch the inside of your leg.

Really? The guy is going to insist on getting affirmation for each step in the process? YES! YES! YES! Said Baby Bear who simply wanted the guy to hurry up and pat his junk so he could make his flight.

Of course, his flight was in C. Translated that means the far end of the large airport. He hustled to his gate–risking breaking his swag–to that closed door. He could see the plane. So close. A man opened the door and told Baby Bear that he lost his seat ten minutes ago to standby.

But there is an empty seat on that plane!

There was indeed a seat on the plane. And, also indeed, the plane door was secured. They were not going to open it up. No way. No how. No matter the pleading of a young man who was just trying to get home. No matter that his solution was just beyond a closed door.

Sheesh.

Baby Bear pulled himself from the abyss of his disappointment that was flirting too closely with anger as he walked to the counter to see his options. He relayed his disastrous TSA delay to the airline staffer who nodded vehemently.

I don’t know what it is, but they’ve been really bad.

Baby Bear got rebooked through Nashville, which has the nonsense airport code BNA. He’ll be an hour later than originally scheduled, but, most excellently, he still comes into DCA versus IAD or BWI, two options much further from headquarters.

Call it National. We don’t call it Reagan in this house.

What a day of travel. Blizzards. Bad buses. Security delays. Poor customer service. And a door slammed in his face. I can’t wait to see him!

I’m thinking that Santa may put some TSA Pre-√  in somebody’s Christmas stocking.

Posted on by docthink 1

Bully Pulpit

A school playground that looks inviting. And fun.

Kyle was the biggest kid in the school. The school itself was small, with just three groups, pre-school, pre-k and kindergarten. Pre-school was in the front room with the guinea pig named Piggy. Pre-k and kindergarten learned together in the next classroom over, on the other side of the kitchen where the littlest kids opened the huge refrigerator door to store their lunches.

Kyle was the oldest. He may have waited an extra year before enrolling, as was the fashion for boys then. Their parents thought it would give their sons, especially the ones younger or less mature, a better start.

Kyle definitely took advantage of his advantages. He was taller and stronger than the other kids. He was more coordinated. He had more words. And he was more aware of the way the world worked, or at least the ways he could work the world.

His mom and dad were full professors at the university. They were old parents with graying thinning hair, knees that sometimes popped and less patience. Their short patience span was manifest in letting Kyle be Kyle. They saw no reason to fully resist him. He could regularly wear them down without too much effort, so why not skip the struggle and just let him be? They were happiest when he was happy. Whether that was an occasional ice cream bar for breakfast, watching more TV than was allowed or skipping his bath some nights, they’d go along to get along.

The school was focused on letting the kids be kids. It wasn’t a free for all. No, not at all. The teachers and their assistants were well in control. They let the children lead their learning via their activities. This worried some parents. They wanted worksheets and homework so that their offspring would be “ready” for big-kid school. The faculty resisted. They guided lessons through the curiosity of the kids. The success of their approach was evidenced by ten years’ of kindergartners leaving their tutelage reading books. And asking wonderful questions. And taking responsibility for their learning.

The kids would make up their own games, build forts under blankets hung from cubbies and publish their own books with stapled spines. Sometimes, when the teachers weren’t looking, Kyle would walk by a classmate and push off of them with his hand. Or, you could say, he’d walk by and shove a kid. If there was any resistance, he would claim that he was misunderstood. If it was an extremely egregious hit, he would sheepishly apologize. His physical outbursts weren’t frequent.

More frequent were his exclusions. His parents thought that he was a natural leader. He would provide value–usually his attention–to some of the kids in order to isolate another. This was a rotating position, the one of outsider. One day you’d be out and the next day you would be part of the group barring someone else. It was fair, in a weird way. Except if you were Kyle, because you were never out. Kyle was always in. Everyone loved him, despite the hitting and despite the emotional manipulations. Kyle was the oldest and the biggest and the best.

There was at least one mother who noticed the dynamic. She noticed even before the day her pre-k son, a year or maybe two, younger than Kyle came home sad that he was sidelined. When her boy told her that he couldn’t play the game around the tree and that he felt left out, she felt left out, too.

“What stopped you from playing the game around the tree?”

“Kyle said that I couldn’t play.”

He needed some tools. They role played and practiced. Sometimes she was Kyle and sometimes he pretended to be Kyle. They sometimes played out their script in the car. There were no further incidents.

The mother brought him into school late one morning, after snack and before lunch. He had a doctor’s appointment. The school was adamant about taking the kids outside everyday, rain or shine, hot or cold, snow or wind, but today the downpour was too much. Some kids were playing “fort” near the cubbies. There were blocks stacked to protect from intruders. Her boy approached the “entrance” to the fort so he could drop off his backpack and hang his wet jacket in his cubby.

“Stop!” It was Kyle who stepped out from the group huddled in their “fort.”

“You aren’t in the club. You can’t come in here.”

The mother drew in a breath and felt her hand tighten on the handles of her satchel.

“Kyle, you aren’t the boss over me,” said her son, just like they had practiced. And he stepped over a block to his cubby.

Kyle didn’t miss a beat as he stepped aside. “You can be in the club.”

The boy hung up his coat and stepped back out of the fort. “No, I’m going to paint over there with Emily and Christine.” This second part was a freestyle. Not bad.

The mother’s heart was beating faster. First, because she was afraid, and now because she didn’t need to be. Her lesson was to let him find his own way with her guidance. Perhaps the school was teaching her as much as they were teaching him. They both had a lot to learn.

Posted on by docthink 0

Boiling Points

A tea tin, filled with bags of tea. English breakfast.

He filled up the electric kettle with water to the half-mark. No reason to waste energy on boiling extra water. It doesn’t stay hot.

The kettle was a very good addition to the ridiculously small and poorly laid out kitchen. There was a general dislike of kitchen appliances. Among some. Okay, among one. He minded less than she. There was paltry counter space for starters. The kettle, however, was used at least once each day, and very frequently two or three times. It earned its real estate. Its place was in plain site.

They used to have a stovetop whistling tea kettle. That took over a burner for the first part of their marriage. They went through four or five. A few burned out. One wore out. Most lost their ability to whistle during their tenures.

While traveling, he stayed in an apartment with an electric kettle. It reminded him of an old girlfriend’s mother. She emigrated from England and brought her love for tea and the efficiency of her electric tea kettle. He missed the mother much more than the daughter. It’s like that when you get older. Old girlfriends hold less meaning than their families who embraced you as one of theirs. He saw the kettle and was immediately attracted to it. He thought about the flaky crust of the fruit pies that the mother used to make.

The following Christmas–as they did before, one year when they exchanged toasters and another with pillows–they bought each other an electric kettle. They both did research and came up with two different models. He either took one to work or returned it to the store. She didn’t remember, but was happy that they did not have two additional small kitchen appliances. One was likely too much, anyway. Except it wasn’t.

The kettle was remarkably fast. Much faster than the whistling stovetop type. Even the direct flame from the gas burner could not compete with the magical kettle. You would think that the warming up of the carafe would take a long time, but just 60 seconds after flipping the switch the water starts to hiss. The hiss drops a few octaves before hitting a silent lull while it gathers enough energy to burst through the surface of the water and burp the first gurgle of the boil. Click. It automatically shuts itself off. Perfect safety for a flaky family.

After the 4.5 minutes of boiling, there is 5 minutes of steeping.

There is a small, well-curated selections of tea. The herbal choices include pure chamomile, pure peppermint and usually one lemon mint or lemon hibiscus or some hippie flavor mix. The black teas normally included English and Irish breakfast teas–the English is richer and the Irish more flavorful. There might be loose Earl Gray and Darjeeling. And a jasmine green tea. He can’t drink tea that might keep him up at night. Caffeine has no power over her.

She likes her after dinner black tea with a little milk and a little sweetener. He drinks his herbal brew straight or, occasionally, with honey. Sometimes she nods off before she finishes her tea, with her fingers resting on the keyboard, neglecting her writing. And sometimes he nudges her to finish up, brush her teeth and come up to bed.

Posted on by docthink 0

Nothing

Street sign on a deserted highway that says,

I surveyed my family for ideas for today’s post.

The Supermoon. I have nothing to say about it. It’s a hot topic, but not one to scratch out one hundred and fifty words to.

Curses. Another weak idea for a post.  Is this supposed to cover magic-style curses or to focus on the oppositional views that become corrupt? I have nothing more.

Bill Belichick. Although he looked like an oversized garden gnome at tonight’s game, that is about all I could muster about him.

Writing every. stinking. day. Sometimes just stinks. Sorry, Loyal Reader. It’s me, not  you.

Posted on by docthink 4

Sky’s the Limit

Infinity symbol. In lights. And messy.

Numbers. They aren’t things. But they seem like they’re something. They are a something that you cannot touch. But you can count with them.

Counting is an activity. It describes an attribute of a group. It talks about size, in a way. Counting is only one thing you can do with numbers. You can use them to make something bigger or smaller. You can use them to quickly multiply–make more–or to divide–cut a whole into pieces. You can never finish dividing something.

Numbers can be used for descriptions that are not about size. They can talk about more or less. They can be used to demonstrate something that cannot be broken down, like a prime number. They can be used to pinpoint how long it takes for two trains that leave a station traveling at different speeds to be 262 miles apart.

You do that by further abstracting numbers, by swapping them out with letters that stand in for numbers. Seriously, can it get any more weird?

By abstracting, smart people and machines made by smart people, can search for answers to the questions of the universe. Numbers can be used to explain how our little blue planet hugs around the sun and how our gray rock of a moon stays away, but not too far away. It can express the minutia of the atomic world and provides a sign to a subatomic world. By using numbers and measures that are based on numbers, some of those smart people realized that there are parts of the universe that we hadn’t accounted for.

I wonder what’s in that part.

All this, and numbers aren’t even something.

Posted on by docthink 1

Dust to Dust

Three adorbs baby bunnies, brown, white and gray. They look very soft. And not dusty at all. Did you get that they are DUST BUNNIES? Alt text humor.

The light spills into the dining room from the middle window. It hits long and low at this time of year. It has an orange tint. And it’s moving.

The light isn’t solid, but it is full of tiny bits of dust that boil around in the stream. There isn’t actually a rhythm to the movement, but there is flow. The specks float in the sunlight. They come together and then, seemingly, repel each other. They float away to meet and then be repelled by a different, nearby dust speck.

An air current criss crosses the do-si-dos inside the beam. The draft air is cooler. Some of the dust tries to drop, but on the way down hits a hot spot and bounces back and rejoins the sun dance.

The strips of light have a terminal point at the opposite wall where another batch of dust lies. This dust is much more obvious than its hidden, moving in the light, cousins. The dust on the floor simply sits next to the wall, snuggled into a weave of dog hairs and punctuated by the crunch of some crumbs that were brushed off the table at breakfast.

A passerby disturbs the air, creating a breeze that makes the wall dust roll a little. Just a little. It mostly sits and waits to be joined by the dust that falls as the morning sun that held it up moves across the room and disappears. Some may join the dance if it’s sunny again tomorrow.

Posted on by docthink 1

Mandate? We don’t got no stinking mandate

Off stage rigging in a theatre. I think it's an opera house.

First things first, Donald Trump won the 2016 election. He won according to the rules that were set out at the beginning of the election cycle. Even if he didn’t like them himself at times, he won according to them.

Now some people are saying–not everyone, but some–that this election is a mandate for one of the parties. That the victory by Trump combined with Republicans maintaining control of both the House and Senate means the people have given the party a mandate.

To be honest, I don’t think that word works in this context.

Let’s start with the dictionary definition:

mandate
noun 1. a command or authorization to act in a particular way on a public issue given by the electorate to its representative.
example: The president had a clear mandate to end the war.

Okay, if we can agree on that as a starting point, I have three reasons why there is no mandate.

First, and this is very important, Clinton won the popular vote.

Let me repeat that. Clinton, the loser–not Trump, the winner–actually had the most votes cast. Like, as of right now, 200,000 more.

Two-hundred thousand

That’s maybe 1% more votes than the winner got. Trump wins because of the Electoral College, and I am too tired to go into that. So you can look it up if you want.

Second, Trump did not receive the MAJORITY of the votes. He’s currently hanging around 47% of the votes. That means that less than half of the people who voted, voted for him. There were third party candidates that fouled that up for him, but it’s hard to claim a mandate when you didn’t get most of the people to vote for you.

Third, I don’t even get how people can say that Republican majorities in both parts of Congress equals a mandate. We have this thing called a representative democracy and that means that the 500,000 people in Wyoming have the same number of Senators as the 39,000,000 in California. See, that’s not equivalent.

And then, not everyone votes for all the candidates. So you can have a state or a district that has mandated their jurisdiction, but that’s it. It doesn’t cross over to the neighboring district like a bad smell. Now if all the districts elected candidates from one party, I would have a hard time saying that wasn’t a mandate. But that didn’t happen. Anyway, if a gerrymandered district votes the way it was designed, I’m just not down with that being a mandate. This point needs more work, but I’m running out of steam.

Last, there were 287,000 voters in the District of Columbia who cast zero votes for Congress because they are not in a state. Not part of anyone’s “mandate.”

Mandate in this case just sounds like disenfranchising a hunk–and a big hunk–of the electorate. The idea that Americans delivered a mandate to the Republicans is just poppycock.

That’s a funny word there, no? I always wanted to use it. I did. And now, after only sleeping two and a half hours in the past 44, I’m going to bed. I really can’t make any more sense today.

Posted on by docthink 1