Category: Oh shit Joe!

when you desperately publish something

Outside In

There’s a tree in my house. Like INSIDE my HOUSE.

It is tall, way taller than me. It is green. It has thousands of tiny needles, which is its version of leaves. It has little, browned leaves hidden in its boughs. It stands upright in a small red metal vase filled with water that it thirstily drinks. It smells of winter, of cold, of outside.

It will be in my house for the next few weeks. Tomorrow it will lose its wildness. I will string bright lights on its branches, pushing some deep inside so that it glows and leaving some on the outside so that it shines. I will hang a hundred or so trinkets on it, some are as old as me, some as old as the boys and some even younger than The Beast. I will top it off with a star.

It will scent the house with pine and outside. It will hit us square for the next few days, then it will be the background smell, taken for granted. It will cause us to change our paths through the room, walking around its fat bottom, bumping into it and making the bells that I hang low jingle.

It will protect the boxes and bags that will be stacked underneath it on Christmas Eve. It will watch over us as we have parties, imbibe, nibble and feast. It will hear our secrets, our disagreements, our barks and our love.

And then, after the New Year, it will be gone, leaving an invisible mass that we will walk around for a few days, until we forget. It will hide a few needles in a corner, between the floorboards, camouflaged in the pile of the rug. And I will pick a needle out of the bottom of my sock sometime in July and remember that there was a tree that finished it’s own time inside of my house.

Posted on by docthink 3

In Case of Fire

A fire hydrant at night.

It stood watch over it’s corner, counting the flurry of commuters passing it by. The brick and asphalt that it sat on was coated in water mixed with oil and fuel that reflected the light from the street lamp above.

The bricks were being forced up by the roots of the tree. They were only set in sand, and were susceptible to upheaval. The bricks were spotted with pock marks and the remains of chewing gum. A few leaves were held in place by the suction of the surface moisture.

The hydrant itself had been painted and repainted over the years. It was currently a muddied green. It’s base was thick and topped by eight heavy bolts. The bolts had to be heavy to hold back the rush of water that pushed to get out.

This hydrant hadn’t been used in case of fire in decades, but wore a brooch that certified that it was in good working order per this summer’s test. It was an especially important hydrant that was ready to protect the three-story red bricked box on the corner. The old school building was one and a third centuries old. Its huge double hung windows were topped by another arched pane. They had been bricked over with newer bricks that looked pink in contrast to the deep red of the old bricks. Better bricks than broken glass.

Nobody wanted that old building, despite it’s prime location across from a swanky hotel and even swankier retail. Any new owners were subject to the heavy hand of its immediate neighbor, the U.S. Secret Service. The fire hydrant stood vigil for them, too.

In the meantime, late at night and early in the morning, big city rats would cross the same paths that pedestrians scurried over during the day. Sometimes a wayward conventioneer would steady themselves on it before they crossed the street back to their hotel. The occasional meeting between the city rat and its country cousin would be exaggerated to monstrous proportions over a coffee, cheese omelette and headache in the morning.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

Brakes

Empty bike share in the evening

“Do you know Jesus?”

It was both loud and muffled. A budget bullhorn.

“Do you KNOW Jesus? Watch where you’re going. Look up.” He started to quote some scripture, I think. It was a little mixed up. He started singing a Christmas hymn.

“God rest you merry gentlemen, a child was born on Christmas day…I just called to say I love you, I just called to say how much I care. I just called to say I love you. And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

And ended with some Stevie Wonder.

He stood in the street near the curb. He was straddling a bike, his head covered with a pith style helmet and the bullhorn held in his left hand near his mouth. He staked out the spot at the corner by the subway entrance, across from the newly erected Christmas mart in front of the Portrait Gallery. Good pedestrian traffic for his message.

People across the street glanced his way and smiled. People on his side of the street looked down or away as they scurried past. He called out another sinner for not looking both ways. The next group of cross walkers looked hard to the left and right. The peace officer on the other corner kept an eye on him. She was looking out for him.

“Jesus knows you. You can’t hide from him.”

And you can’t hid from Jesus’s spokesman, either.

Posted on by docthink 0

Bing Bells

Bing Crosby's Merry Christmas album cover.

The baritone of Bing brings Christmas to my house. Every year, for as long as I can remember, he croons Christmas to me as I string the lights and find the exact right ornament placements on my WTF-themed Tannenbaum.

My mom had what might have been an original press of the 1955 12-inch LP. It definitely was before my time. It always was in our house. Mom said that when we were little, she’d start playing Christmas music in October so we’d know all the words to the songs by the time the tree went up after Thanksgiving. There were other Christmas albums–that Sing Along with Mitch with the printouts of lyrics we’d pass around, a jazzy compilation headed by Frank Sinatra and other members of the Rat Pack and, of course, Elvis. Her technique worked. We knew all the words.

I didn’t know that the Bing was my favorite, though, until I left home and put up my first tree in my college dorm. I went out to buy my own copy of the album. I couldn’t feel Christmas until he sang Silver Bells. I remember walking across campus at dusk with the first real December snowflakes, city sidewalks dressed in holiday style the internal soundtrack to my first adult holidays.

I bought this album first on vinyl, then on cassette tape so I could listen in the car. We added it to our old reel to reel Christmas party tape. And, a decade or more ago, I purchased it again, this time on CD. My next car didn’t have a tape player. I ripped the CD, so I had digital files first for my iPod and now on my phone.

Tonight, I asked my new friend Alexa to play it for me from Amazon Prime. She went to the depths of her collection and served up Bing and the Andrew Sisters (theirs is the only version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town that beats The E Street Band‘s). I mumbled and stumbled along to the second and third verses of a Latin hymn. I was good, as usual, on the first. And, like I have since I was a teeny-tiny tot, imagined the holidays from Irish blarney to Hawaiian greetings. I remember that year I realized that you could have Christmas without snow. I thought that all your Christmases would be white. Wouldn’t Santa be too hot? And the reindeer? Mind blown.

I’ve infected or inoculated–maybe both?–the Boyz with this set of holiday tunes. Even the Spouse adds his baritone to our home choir that accompanies Bing. Turns out this was his dad’s favorite Christmas record, too.

I was going to rant a bit about owning music, since it doesn’t seem that I can actually own it, even though I buy it. I was gong to get righteous about buying multiple soon-to-be-obsolete media just to feed my fix. And then, I realized that I don’t even feel ripped off. Now that’s some charitable Christmas spirit there.

Mele Kalikimaka, y’all.

Posted on by docthink 2

Flower Girl

Roses I bought from the grocery store. Pretty, no? There are three here and they are light pink.

I shop much less frequently at grocery stores. I’m talking about the stores with the miles of aisle, where they hide the milk in the back of the store to tempt your impulses and where there are sixteen different types of mustard but none of the brown deli mustard you used to regularly buy there.

Gone are the days where there were just a handful of big box grocery chains in town. Now there are options that include those huge traditional stores with pharmacies and tons of prepared foods to small specialty stores or the independent butcher shop and bread shop and fish shop and cheese shop in the market. I buy my milk at the gas station when I run out–there is no line. I prefer the eggs at the Saturday morning farmers market. I can hustle in and out of the small independent organic grocer to grab an onion and enough green beans for tonight.

The big stores don’t carry my favorite yogurt. Their chicken thighs are as big as my own thigh–no actual chicken would be able to walk on that. The lines are too long. The parking lot too chaotic. And the staff, sometimes, too brusque.

Because there are so many nearby choices now, I don’t have to invest my time and money stocking up. It’s a big change that has happened slowly. More stores, more options and fewer people eating in the house.

The one thing I miss about the big stores, though, is the flowers. The cheap and beautiful roses. The purple or the maroon Alstroemeria with blooms for almost two weeks. The two stems of lilies that provide six or eight massive trumpets. The gerbera daisies with the green straws that hold up their heavy heads. The mixed bunches that shift with the seasons. I would pull out a tablecloth to match.

I’d sometimes buy two or three bunches and grab an assortment of vases, cutting the stems to fit. I’d distribute the sprays in the dining room, the living room and a small bunch in the bathroom. I have no talent for floral arranging, so I sometimes just lean them in the glass all bunched up for a more modern look. You do what you can.

Cheap fresh flowers from the grocery store don’t always open. I have had many a rose bud that stayed tightly wrapped until it became brown and crisp, dropping it’s lowly head down as if exhausted. These become my Corpse Bride bouquet, sitting on the table, somehow managing–only to me I suspect–to maintain a sense of beauty, if not actual beauty.

The flowers are the only thing that I miss from the megastores. And paper goods and cleaning supplies.

It’s good I don’t mind the shrunken head blooms, the falling petals and the crunchy leaves littering my dining room table. Stretching the blossom for an absurd period is a part of my indulgence. I guess I’m still experiencing whatever attracted me in the first place. It’s odd to be loyal to cut flowers, but that’s just my nature.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

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

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

Boom Clap

A pint of beer topping the bar, flanked by a napkin dispenser and a religious candle.

It was a classically delightful bar, from the worn wood floors to the mirror-backed shelves stocked with firewaters to the small well-curated selection of brews  Friendly people were amassing to watch the game, like they did every Saturday afternoon. The stalwarts arrived early to stake a seat around the cozy bar.

The folks in the front, lining the bay window had been there for a while. They had that end of the night volume, and it was just 2 p.m. There was the crash and shatter of a glass. The hands of the guilty flew into the air with a flurry of apologies. The server quickly arrived to clean up the shards.

A few minutes later he was at the bar for refills. He wisely ordered cans this time. The smash and splintering of a second glass hitting the floor ensured everyone’s attention. Patrons clustered around the bar all individually and as a group exchanged glances that said, “Who are these people and I hope they leave before kickoff.”

The server came around a second time with her broom and dustpan. She was much less cheerful this round. “You can’t break any more glasses.” The folks in the front knew that, but in a bar you have to be very clear with your instructions and warnings. Drunks aren’t the best at comprehension or nuance.

The man at the bar was worried that they would be asked to leave before they could finish the beers he just ordered. He safely cashed out and was joined by two young women who defiantly ordered more drinks. A guy watching the pre-game warmups suggested plastic cups for their round of vodka and tonics. The new bartender on shift verified that they were the ones with “two strikes.”

She asked to see their IDs. She was a bit gruff, but she was establishing dominance. She had a long shift ahead. She needed to assess their sobriety levels. Her goal was to make sure they stayed within the lines. This wasn’t her first rodeo. And anyway, she was a bit hungover herself.

It was time for kickoff.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

Bus Sketch II

Little girl looking out the bus window. She's wearing a leopard print coat.

“I gotta pee!”

Eleven heads bobbed up in unison, leaving posts unliked, candies uncrushed and videos advancing unwatched. The heads then turned to the front of the bus. Synchronized.

The toddler had been chirping away unnoticed for blocks and blocks. She was fascinated by everything rushing by, her nose pressed against the big window, her little feet hanging over the bench, her shoulders enclosed by an animal print.

She was full of style from toe to top. Starting from her black punk boots that were laced up half-way and working up to the most amazing glasses with a huge square white frame scattered with scores of little flowers, pink, orange, red, yellow, blue on stems of green. She moved with the comfort of a near two-year old who knew in her heart of hearts that she was amazing and fabulous.

She must have asked her dad for a car, because he said that he wasn’t buying her one. His response was like a scripted response that was a part of their private joke. A little bit like call and response. She babbled some sweet sounds, one of which resembled the word car. Or maybe cow. Or curl. Or cat. Or yard. But her dad knew. He delivered his line.

Nothing she said, however, was as clear as when she presented her pressing need. A cold blast of worry chilled the bus. Passengers wondered to themselves, “Will she make it?”

The mom asked her the unnecessary question that everyone wanted to know, “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

The little diva nodded vigorously. Her father looked concerned that she might nod the tinkle out. The mom worked the magic of distraction, suggesting the girl sit down and asking a few unrelated questions about school. It seemed to work, or at least the tot stopped talking about needing to go.

The dad pulled the cord for the next stop, and the girl leaned over to pull it, too. The mom was on the far side of the bench and shook her head. “Just let her pull it, okay?” She was working hard to avoid a morning meltdown. The dad leaned forward to make room for the girl to grab the yellow plastic coated wire behind him. The bus lurched and the girl held on tight. Since he had already called for a stop, there wasn’t a beep when she pulled. He adroitly pointed to the Stop Requested light above her head. She was convinced that she had effected that.

Her dad picked up her and his backpacks then took her by the hand. Her mom told her she loved her and would see her soon. The girl parroted back the words–or her interpretation and execution of those words–in her little squeaky sing song.

Kisses were exchanged and there was no peeing on the bus. Ten heads returned to the phones in their hands. One followed the pair off the bus and watched them approach the daycare. That one decided to enjoy the bus like a two year old and left her phone in her bag. She turned her head to the window to watch the cars and look for cows.

Posted on by docthink 2

Bus Sketches

The aisle on an empty bus

The woman was filling the boxes of her crossword puzzle in the morning paper. In pen. She sat sideways as the bus pulled away from its bay. She turned to the woman next to her and offered her a sweet.

The woman shook her head, “no,” and politely smiled her “thank you.” She had a pleasant round face topped by a hat. The leopard trimmed brim was double accented by the fringes of her pageboy peaking out and framing her full cheeks. The weather flirted with cold and the forecast teased rain. The hat was both prophylactic and camouflage–protecting against a potential storm and masking her need to see her hairdresser. She pulled the cord, requesting the next stop.

The man facing front looked up as the woman with the hat pulled herself out of the seat. She led with her chest, almost like someone was pulling her up via a string attached to her breastbone. The man read the sign floating above the aisle. It said the name of the next stop. The woman with the puzzle asked him a question. It might have been about the news or about an event at her church. He responded in a way that was familiar, but when they got to the next stop, a silent woman who was seated next to him stood up, too. He gently guided her off of the bus that pulled away as they got on to their day.

Posted on by docthink 1