Author: docthink

no one of consequence

Pressured and Cooked

mmmmm. black beans and rice.

Pulled my hand out of my coat pocket to put the key in the door and get out of the cold.

Dog needed to go out, but I had a plan. Didn’t care that it was late and a long day. Did. Not. Care.

Fact is, the mantra that kept going through my mind–and occasionally out of my mouth–had to do with the few number of fcuks that I was giving today. Very few. As in NO fcuks.

But I had an idea. And it was a good one. First, though, to the dog and his duties. No reason to take off my coat, and scarf, and mittens, and hat, and boots. Hang the key next to the door, release the kraken, I mean dog, and let the business be done. Done! Next.

So let’s feed the beast. He needs to eat, too. And he’s likely hungrier than me.

I’m eyeing that pressure cooker in the pantry as I’m scooping the kibble. It’s next in my sights. It won’t get away. Just have to feed the dog.

The best part about cooking is the physicality; the chopping, the stirring, the crumbling, the spicing, the shaking, the dicing, the washing. The can of tomatoes and two cans of black beans that I open. I love catching the opener on the lip of the can and turning the crank. It’s an amazingly smooth mechanic. I would never use an electric can opener when I can turn a handle and watch the can spin around as the blade penetrates the lid and slices through the metal.

I get the pressure cooker out of the pantry and place it on the stove top. I proudly look at it’s shine since I Bon Ami’d it last time. I love it when it shines. And when it steams.

It’s 8:50 pm and I start. I grabbed the olive oil, but remembered that I have some cheap OO in the pantry. No reason to use the EVOO when I have a just OO. Switch on the gas and put a few swirls of the cheap OO in the pan. I reach in the fridge for the red pepper and gleefully find and grab a celery stalk. This is gonna be great. Chopping the celery and pepper I hold the large onion for last. It seemed a little squishy so I wasn’t looking forward to peeling.

Turned out it was perfectly healthy. In moments it was peeled and chopped. Dumped the cut goods in the pot and turned to the garlic cloves. I smashed them and cut them. I don’t know why the recipe said to mince. They end up flavoring the oil and then dissolve under pressure. I do it the easy way.

I add the bay leaf and measure out the basmati rice–only to realize that I’m about a third short of a full cup. Seriously? I thought there were three bags!?! I guess we ate it. I have some volcano rice, but that takes longer to cook. I’ll just use the remains of that box of short grain abrioro rice. Still a little short? Okay, a few tablespoons of that volcano rice will make a cup.

This entire rice drama took about 35 seconds.

Rice in the pan, stirred and coated then add the thyme and pepper and pour in the water. Okay water and some old cooking sherry. I’m on a roll now emptying the random containers in the pantry and filling up the recycling bin. More flavor and more space. Winning.

Top it off with the can of fire roasted tomatoes, set the top on and up the heat to high. Wait for the steam. It teases me–not sealing tight but still spewing from the regulator. I shake the pot a few times. It seals up, and I lower the heat.

Next it’s chopping up those pimento stuffed olives. I take the last three olives out of a jar that gets tossed in the recycling bin and find a second opened jar in the fridge. Winning again on that shelf space.

It’s been five minutes so the rice is done. I turn off the heat and let the pressure release on its own. Five more minutes and I remove the top and stir in the beans and the olives. Fill a pretty red bowl, add a little hot sauce and sit down to eat at 9:20 pm.

Just in time to catch up with the errant spouse.

A good night.

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Already Gone

The Eagles. A long time ago. On The Long Run tour.

Seeing live music used to mean listening to the radio to find out when tickets were going on sale. You could look in the paper, but radio was much faster, since we were always listening to the radio anyway.

This was a cash economy. No teens I knew had access to a credit card (!!). There were no phone order, no secure websites. You had to go and buy the tickets at the arena. For a big show, you had to camp out.

If it was a Dead show, you’d see DeadHeads from hither and yon (mostly New Yon) a few weeks out. Outside of the Dead, though, lines would form a few days, maybe a week before tickets went on sale.

In fairness, there were ticket limits. Each buyer could purchase like twelve or twenty tickets. This created a fairly small aftermarket.

If you didn’t get your tix on the day of sale, you could scour the classified section of the local paper and call The Guy on his landline listed in the ad in the paper that you had to buy from the store. Last option, you could go day of the show and usually get tickets from a scalper. There could be a big or a small markup. There had to be a physical exchange of paper cash for paper tickets. No Venmo. No PDFs.

I got my Eagles tickets using this last method. I was poor and pretty scheduled with school and work, but concert tickets were more like a necessity than an extravagance. I was limited by the money I had in my pocket. Definitely kept me on budget.

Scalpers were easy enough to find within a few blocks of the venue. Nobody would bother you–despite the illegality of the transaction–if you were decently subtle.

We stopped and furtively spoke with a few “vendors.” We found A Guy with tickets in our price range and, surprisingly, in a lower tier. Made the exchange and went into the arena.

Our seats were not obstructed view. Except they were behind the stage. In dozens of shows, I’d never seen seats sold with a view of the asses of the band. The norm was a wall of speakers behind the band and 60 or 80 foot long drapes billowing from the ceiling.

I felt so stupid and so conned. UGH! And bad word. There were no jumbotrons for The Long Run tour. At least the stage was clear, and we could make out the backs of the musicians.

About 2/3rds into the show the band stopped and, jumping in unison, turned around to perform Take It Easy for us. Best. Song. That. Night. After performing two songs for us suckers in the bad seats they turned their backs on us.

That’s rock ‘n’ roll.

Yes, I’m already gone
And I’m feelin’ strong
I will sing this vict’ry song
‘Cause I’m already gone
Yes, I’m already gone
Already gone
All right, nighty-night

Godspeed Glen Frey.

 

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Stars in Reach

Pegasys constellation. In the sky.

My astronomy TA was a really nerdy guy. At least to a few of us political science/history type undergrads taking a summer class to fulfill distribution requirements. One short class looking at the stars, and we had three natural science credits including lab toward that bachelors’ of the arts degree.

I’m sure the TA had one of those classically 60’s name like Steve or Dave or Mike. He would never go by Steven or David or Michael, and certainly not Caleb or Liam.

Steve?Dave?Mike? had oversized heavy aviator glasses that barely held his thick lenses in place and not-on-purpose disheveled hair. The most remarkable thing about him–and remark about this we frequently did–was the embroidery on the back pocket of his jeans.

They were constellations.

We found that amusing in that snarky, look at the nerd way.

We had class in the morning twice each week. Sometimes class would be in the planetarium so we could study the location of the stars in the sky. We learned by looking at the ceiling filled with an image of the sky filled with stars.

Steve?Dave?Mike? would point to different groups of stars and in the dark as we leaned back to look at the “sky” he told us stories. Stories about Pegasus, the great winged horse (see the big box there?), and about Cepheus (that house over there), and his wife Cassiopeia (the “W” on the other side of the sky) trying to protect the maiden, Andromeda (less distinctive, but you can see that line on the horizon).

Sweet Steve?Dave?Mike? was an astrophysicist kindly sharing his love for our universe with us not worthy of what he knew. He’d take us out on the roof at 9:30 pm (the sun sets late during a Michigan June). He’d set up the telescopes so we could see the moons of Jupiter. It was remarkable and humbling.
I fell in love with the sky.

I still look at the stars to pick out the belt of Orion. I squint to see the stars of Draco between the Little Dipper and it’s Big Dipper sibling. I follow the permutations of the moon and text my family when it is especially noteworthy.

I remember the time I first saw the Milky Way on a moonless night far away from the light pollution of the city. And shooting stars. And sometimes when my family is away from me, I’ll look to the sky and take comfort that they can see the same stars.

We found out that his wife held the needle and thread and stitched the stars on his jeans. This was shocking to us twenty-year olds because the only people we knew who were married were our parents. He had a wife, someone who loved him. And we loved him a little bit, too.

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Beds

I can’t really remember the beginning of this story. There have been so many versions of the beginning that I can’t quite place the proximate cause. And the initial what really isn’t important.

Where my memory–and this story–starts is driving up to Henry Ford Macomb Hospital on 19 Mile Road. It was dark, but that doesn’t mean too much in mid-December Michigan. If it was dark it could have been 5 pm, but I think it was closer to eight.

I don’t know if I checked into the hotel first, but I must have so I wouldn’t be distracted by that personal logistical detail of where I would sleep.

Although she’d been at Henry Ford Macomb before, I hadn’t. She had been abulanced to the ER the day before. There was confusion about whether she was getting admitted so I flew in to see what was happening.

I walked into the hospital to find her room. She didn’t have one. Somehow she was still in the ER and had been for 36 hours. The nice lady at the desk told me to get back in my car and drive around the hospital to the ER entrance. I asked if I could walk and she looked at me like I didn’t realize that I was in the Motor City where people do NOT walk when they could drive.

She was in an observation bay at the far end of the ER, a little bitty lump underneath a bunch of blankets that doubled her silhouette. She was asleep so I brushed a kiss on her wisps of white hair. Her skin was gray. I followed the IV to see that she was getting blood. To counteract that gray, I supposed.

There was a bunch of untouched food on the tray next to her and some empty blood bags.

This joint was a disaster. Patients in ER limbo for days. Improper biohazard handling. An impotent patient advocacy process. (Why would an organization create multiple ineffective avenues for remediation? You only need one ineffective procedure.)

She was surprised to see me when she woke up, except she really wasn’t. Waking up in a hospital bed is accompanied by a through-the-looking-glass haze, and, while I didn’t belong in this scene neither did she.

Her smile was weak, but it was sunny and I was so happy to be there: to advocate for her; to make the nurses really see her; to argue about a room with the moronic patient advocate; to steamroller through to the hospital president; and to get what she needed.

I was there to watch the miracle blood bring back the color in her cheeks and watch her lose her wilt. I sat with her for a few days. I held her hand. I made sure she ordered food and that she ate it. I positioned her poinsettia so she could remark again and again on how beautiful it was. I held her hand again, and rubbed her back. And she melted at the touch. I sat next to her with my computer on my lap so she would wake up and see me. We chit chatted about pretty much nothing.

I did this, I thought, for her. But when she peacefully died in her sleep in her own bed a short few weeks later, I knew that I had done it for me and that it was my hand melting when I touched hers.

How fortunate that the hospital was such a shit-show. I am grateful for a last intimate connection. I am happy that I was present with her and she with me. It was a good-bye that I didn’t recognize in that moment. But it was good.

Thinking about you, Mom, especially today, the anniversary of that last time you snuggled up in your bed and went to sleep. Sweet dreams.

Posted on by docthink 0

Guided Style

big comma

I fancy myself a writer.

Obviously. I am doing this writing thing. Every. Stinking. Day. For. This. Entire. Year.

I write. I publicly put it out there. And, you, My Loyal Reader indulge me.

Wait. Damn.

Do I refer to you as “my Loyal Reader,” or as “My Loyal Reader?” Consistency counts!!

I need to check my style guide.

Wait! Oh no. THERE IS NO STYLE GUIDE!!!

Oh crap.

Do I use the Oxford comma? Is email one word or is it e-mail? Have I settled on website? Dateline cities?

One certainty, I never, ever, ever allow a colon prior to any bulleted list. ESPECIALLY wrong on subheads.  That just pisses me off.

Should I go back through the past ten years of this madness and make sure I am consistent in what I call things?

Am I Doc Think? DocThink? Dr. Think? This is becoming existential.

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Lavender’s Thursday Dilly Dilly

Bottle of Mrs. Meyer's lavender dish soap

Standing over the sink, washing the dinner dishes, I couldn’t think of what day it is. I knew what day I wanted it to be.

I switched to lavender scented dish soap two or three months back. It started with lavender candles, went to lavender counter cleaner and settled in with lavender dish soap.

The dish soap is my least favorite of my lavender infatuation, mostly because it smells like soapy lavender, and I have an irrational fear that it tastes like it smells and that the smell won’t rinse off. Irrational because I still think that thought after months of zero evidence that there is any residual taste or even smell of lavender. It rinses off just fine.

I made an amalgamation of leftovers in a bowl for dinner, so the dishes were primarily containers from the leftovers and some dishes and silverware. There were two round containers with screw on blue tops, one large cube with a snap blue top, and a glass rectangle with a clear top that you need to slap the edges hard to seal. The glass rectangle is heavy. My plan was to switch from the eventually disposable plastic containers to all glass, but the size options don’t meet my food storage needs. Also, they don’t stack as well.

I don’t know why I was so confused about the day, but I definitely struggled to tease it out. At first I thought that it was Thursday, but quickly realized I was a victim of wishful thinking. Yes, I wanted tomorrow to be Friday. Nope, today had to be Wednesday. I was pretty sure. I looked at the container lid in my hand and smelled the lavender smell. I counted the days I remembered this week and Wednesday seemed mostly right. I rinsed the lid. I volunteered to wash the dishes tonight because I wanted to have my hands in the warm water.

I took a step back and leaned toward the calendar. I looked and saw that Wednesday was the 13th. It seemed like today was the 13th. Was that right? Maybe it was the 14th?

I put the next well-rinsed container in the dish drainer. I picked up the plastic encased sponge and the next dish and strained my brain for a clue of what day it is. There was nothing–absolutely not one thing–that I could come up with that was routine, that was a marker for this day, whatever day it is. The water ran from the faucet as I put more soap on my sponge.

What day is it today?

My brain turned to my Mom’s trips to the hospital over the past few years. The nurse would lean in on her and say [loudly because my elderly Mom was hard of hearing and didn’t listen anyway], “HONEY, DO YOU KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS TODAY? WHAT YEAR?”

I used to think that was a dumb and unfair question. In the hospital one day is like another. There weren’t markers of time other than when meals are brought. If they wanted to know if she was confused, there would be fairer questions. Of course she’d get it wrong.

I stood there over the sink, sponge hanging off of my hand, brain starting to smoke as I turned my day over and inside out searching for an elusive cue. I looked into the running water and pushed fog away. I remembered that I cancelled our regular Thursday meeting today. A marker! It’s Thursday.

Which means tomorrow is, indeed, Friday.

I finished the dishes and wiped down the counter, grateful that there wasn’t a test today on today.

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Bam Ba Lam

Old lady singing into a large microphone

“Oh, God!” said my high-school boyfriend.

Me: What?
HSBF: You know that song, ‘bam ba lam’?
Me: Yeah?
HSBF: It came on the radio today and MY MOM WAS SINGING IT!!!

Oh. The, Horror.

It was a little funny, except that I never met his mom. So I didn’t have much perspective. Come to think about it, I never met his dad. Or his brothers. In 30ish months of “going together,” with our ancestral homes separated by about a mile, I never met his people.

My mom introduced me to the Beatles. She would play Meet the Beatles and Introducing The Beatles. She had a bunch of old records we’d listen to, like Limbo Rock. I grew up with people listening to music. People had records and also listened to music on the radio. And sang along.

My folks gave me my first AM radio when I was about seven. I used to listen to CKLW [the motor ciiitttttyyy] like church. Detroit radio introduced me to the Stones, Supremes, Little Stevie, Smokey, Aretha, Clapton/Cream/Stevie W/Traffic, Zeppelin, The Who, Kiss, Prince, George Clinton and GrandMaster Flash.

When I was ten, I got my first turntable. It also had a radio that included FM! I bought my first LP–Elton John’s Greatest Hits. In high school I had a job in a record store. I always had music on–in the house, in the car, via my portable FM radio and eventually on my boombox.

On school mornings, I’d get up, pad into the kitchen and turn on the radio to eat breakfast. We’d listen to the AOR station (I’ll be the roundabout). I guess my Mom listened. She didn’t turn it off or tell us to turn it down. She’d be in the room, so I guess she listened or at least heard.

So, like who cares that your mom knows your song?

Maybe that’s why I didn’t know his mom and family. He cared that his mom knew his song. As if only we teens owned the public airwaves. As if it was unacceptable that his mom was part of that public. What if he was embarassed of his family? I didn’t know them so maybe they were embarrassing. That said, they couldn’t be much worse than mine, and he was over our house all the time. What if WE were the embarrassing ones–lacking even the most basic self-awareness that we were embarrassing?

I know that I resemble an embarrassment to my spawn. Rolling into the Boys and Girls Club after summer camp with Get Low blasting from the minivan is certainly cringe-worthy. Or when a millennial colleague caught me on my headphones and asked me what I was listening to. Don’t judge an old book by it’s cover, I say.

So I’m thinking about HSBF’s mom, enjoying music. And hope that she looked like this:

And for the record, these Black Betty induced memories were triggered as the Big Guy blared it from his phone, followed by some Creedence. He ain’t no fortunate son. He came by it honest.

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Fresh Grass

white smoke with a hand coming out from it

Legalized marijuana in the District stinks.

D.C. voters passed a ballot proposal that “legalized the limited possession and cultivation of marijuana by adults who are 21 or older.” It became law about 11 months ago, and while there are limits to folks lighting up in public, police are pretty much letting smokers be.

This has translated into the pungent smell of weed imposing itself on me with increasing frequency. It was a bit jarring at first. Walking to work, smell pot. Driving down the road, smell pot from another vehicle. Walking to the dog park, same thing.

And it stinks. Plain and simple, it does not smell good.

It smells like skunk. It’s our city skunk sachet. Ugh.

Today I was getting off the subway and was shocked by the smell of weed. Shocked that it smelled like the weed that scented the halls of East Quad in Ann Arbor many decades ago. Cheap weed that filled a ziploc sandwich bag for $5. Weed that was full of seeds and stems and nary a bud. It didn’t have a name (other than pot) and had the simple effects of making people giggle, paranoid and hungry.

For a second there, I smelled a familiar smell, like fresh mown grass on a late spring day. Not like it smelled like grass, but it smelled like grass. Man.

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Not Again

Tap Alarm to snooze

Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I hate the Internet.

Seriously.

I get up this morning and do what I have avowed to do. I am NOT looking at my phone first thing.

Okay. Well I always technically blow that vow since my phone is my wakeup device. In truth, first thing, I “tap to snooze.” That’s looking at nothing so I’m not breaking my rule.

After ten minutes when the clarion revives, I swipe right. But I’m not looking–other than to verify that it is indeed time to get up. I grumble. The numbers are big, so I’m not engaged. Therefore, I maintain that I’m not looking at my phone first thing.

I used to immediately look at email, glance through Facebook and hit up the @Twitters. That translated into significantly wasting much of the activity part of my morning. Time when I should be walking the dog, prepping breakfast and making beauty. So, I stopped the morning Internet.

Except since summer has passed, I look at the weather.

Oh, come on! Don’t be so exacting on my pledge. You know that the weather has been crazy. Shorts on Christmas Eve? Followed by sixteen degrees for the dog walk just one week later? Who would know what to do absent a quick glance. I maintain that doesn’t count as looking at my phone first thing, either.

So I get up and check the weather and pad downstairs. I bundle up against this morning’s sub-freezing temps and take the dog for a working walk. It wasn’t so bad and there was coffee.

I check my phone and I see an email headline about David Bowie. Not a surprise given all the noise about his new LP and freaky video released last week. Except it actually was a surprise. He moved on to the next world after an 18 month bout with cancer.

And I hate the Internet for all the RIPing posts. And I hate the Internet for interrupting my just fine morning with news that another part of the soundtrack to my youth is gone.

And then I love the Internet because I found this.

“I,
I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins,
like dolphins can swim”

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Feelings Behind

plane flying in a pretty sky

Dear Mom and Dad,
I remember leaving. I was 18, and so glad to be on my own. You two were already grown. I didn’t really give you any thought. As if my next steps would have any impact on you–my parents. I was about me.

Today I was at the airport. I watched Baby Bear walk away from me to get on that big metal bird to the mountains. Where he lives.

So, Mom and Dad, I have some questions. Did your heart break when I drove away? Every time? Did you wonder if I was going to be okay? Were you conflicted by your amazement of your spawn functioning without you and your worry that you couldn’t protect me?

Did this ever stop? These feelings of an ever-alert, yet redundant, guard dog? Was I always your kid? Your baby, in your heart? Did you whiplash when conversing with a grownup while stuffing protective impulses back inside you before I noticed? I know you know that I would have insisted, again, that I was an adult and didn’t need anything.

Did you wonder if you were doing enough? Too much? Did you worry about respecting my autonomy? Did you worry if I was paying my bills? Drinking too much? Breaking a heart? Getting my heart broken?

When I was starting out and job hopping, did you think I was making mistakes? Wonder if I was carrying health insurance? Saving for retirement? Paying my mortgage? Getting up on time for work?

Did you think that I was able to balance being a parent and breadwinner? Did you look at me looking at you in your hospital bed and think about how you being in that bed was affecting me?

I never thought about how you felt about me. Not from the point of view of a parent. Not until today. I’m sorry for not seeing this. It’s crazy love.

Thanks, Mom and Dad.
xo,
Your (grown) Child

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