Simply 60

Agua auga everywhere...

...but that doesn't mean I want to drink it.

Cajun's only Spanish word is 'agua.' She knows it well and laps it up. Literally and figuratively. Why can't/won't I? I filled her bowl tonight. It must hold an easy half a gallon. It's gone in a day. So is half the river. I, a cognizant human, could hold in my hand (with nothing running between my fingers) what I drink in any 24-hour period.

Pete argues that we get lots of our daily liquid requirement from things like milk (he drinks it, I do not), juice, the juice from fruit, etc. etc. I think if a rang dry everything I eat in a day it would not amount to 16 ounces of water, total.

We're told to consume six 8-oz. glasses of water a day. Huh. My water consumption is highest in the middle of the night — there on my bed stand is a Poland Springs sports bottle. I like these because if I swat it with my pillow and knock it off, it won't spill. Further, in the darkest dark of night, I can take a surreptitious swig without having to unscrew, then screw back on the top. Anyway, because it is there and because if I am thirsty the alternative is an entire seventeen-step flight of stairs away, I drink the stuff.

Someone asked me the other day — we were exploring the same subject — if I just didn't like water. Like water? Is that an option? To actually like it? I believe I have never given that question a single thought in my entire life, one way or the other. Do I like water? Do I dislike water? No. And no. Still, it is not, and never has been, my beverage of choice.

Tonight, running away from the Halloween tricksters as we were, at dinner at a nice restaurant in Chestnut Hill, the topic came up again. There before each of us was a glass of — what? You guessed it. Water. We never serve water with our wine. Or as a beverage for lunch. Indeed Concord tap water is so horrendously chemical in flavor I avoid it at all costs. Some time ago, because of my sincere aversion to drinking the local water, Pete bought me a Brita water filter. I use it to fill my night-time sports bottle. And to make iced tea.

I won't drink the tap water in Nantucket either. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit straight off that I won't drink the island water not because it doesn't taste good (it tastes great) but because I have a paranoid theory about the old town pipes and heavy metals infiltrating the aquifer. It goes beyond that but I won't bore you with it here. Suffice it to say, it's a folly of mine.

And for all that, if the invitation is to jump into the water, I'm there. Just don't expect me to drink the stuff.

Truffle: The Sunday New York Times delivered to the door. For the first time in Concord. This goes beyond what it might at first seem. It's more than a bum leg. Or laziness. Or even convenience. Ink black on my fingers is like flour on the hands of a cook. Up to my elbows in my milieu. 

Quote of the day: "I always wanted to be Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. I can't fly, but swimming is the next best thing. It's harmony and balance. The water is my sky." (Clayton Jones)

 

 

Chicken a la Greg

Chicken a la Greg is not a recipe. It's a farmyard reality. Over dinner tonight I was educated in the laying expectancy of the pullet, the life expectancy of the hen thereafter; in pecking orders and where Frank Perdue chickens really come from.

Fortunately, chicken was not being served. But veal stew was. And we all remember those heartbreaking baby-cow suffering ads promoting the end of veal. Or at least veal as we had come to know it.

Should we all become vegetarians? Well, I don't know about you but I am an unapologetic omnivore. And frankly, I like the omni in my voring. If I must eat my fruits and vegetables — practically poisonous when not in season — then surely I am entitled to my chocolate. And my rib roast. 

Yesterday I was at the doc's. She's working on my reflux issues. No heartburn. Just throat-clearing and cough. She handed me a single-spaced sheet of paper printed black with the things I should not be eating. In the end, there was nothing left. Except maybe raw flax and water. Filtered. I mean nothing edible, or at least edible with the word 'pleasurably' attached to it. It even eliminated pasta. Every pleasing food product, she tried to argue, makes the esophageal sphincter lax. Resulting in acid kickback.

What a killjoy! Both of them.

As everybody knows, chicken comes from the supermarket. It is born on a plastic diaper in a styrofoam tray, shrink wrapped and delivered to the grocery store— just the way babies are delivered by the stork to your awaiting nursery. Or, in some rare cases, the cabbage patch. Furthermore, chocolate and caffeine and alcoholic beverages, to say nothing of spicy food, dairy and white flour — these are natural foods, free of side effects other than satiation, aren't they? 

I have no truck with these know it alls. The less I know the better. Theirs is a classic case of TMI — Too Much Information. All I need to know about my chicken is that I can order it Buffalo style, deep fried or BBQ'ed. 

Truffle: Completing a complicated, fairly tedious desktop publishing project. Not only was it for a good cause, it added telos to my days. Telos. I learned that word in my ethics class, thanks to Aristotle, Frank and Serena, too.

Quote of the day: "Where is the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" (T.S. Eliot)

 

 

Time warp

I could have gone my whole life and missed a major cultural event. If I had not lived to be 60 I would have known of, but not experience, The Rocky Horror Show.

Tonight all that changed. No, we did not venture into Harvard Square for the midnight showing of the movie that plays every night — and has for decades. The play was done locally, at Emerson Umbrella (see ya around, Concord Players!). Guts, gusto and gawdknowswhat are the hallmarks of this incredibly lame, incredibly winning show.

But let's start with this: it first opened in London in June, 1973 (that would be nearly 40 years ago!) and is still going strong. Constantly. With a cult following that is now multi-generational. Pete saw that original production and took his daughter Emily to see the movie. People yell "Slut!" from the audience, hiss when Eddie's name is mentioned, blow bubbles during the 'wedding scene' and fire squirt guns when it rains. They dance in their seats and, of course, dance the Time Warp.

I would have danced too. And perhaps I should have given it a try. Moving like Lurch would have been perfectly appropriate tonight.

Four of us made up the Old Fogie section. And that was wonderful. For once most of the people in the audience were under 30. With theater audiences graying like the rest of America, here's a refreshing breath of ancient air, blowing in as if from the catacombs, irreverent, sexually explicit, trans-everything, full of life and humor and devil (HA!)- may-care. America could use IV injections of Rocky and his cohorts, especially the pleasure-loving Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry in the original; an energetic — you have to be energetic to play this part — Tim McShea, who ever he is, in the Umbrella production).

Thank you Richard O'Brien, who wrote Rocky way back then (and played the part of Riff-Raff in the original production). When he was 31. And I was 23. Still, we are more or less contemporaries. Somehow he just got it so right, and I envy him that. He managed to sink his teeth into the jugular of Western culture in such a campy, outrageous, hilarious and enduring way that it serves to remind us still of the laughable arrogance and petty prejudices that are the underpinnings of our First World Puritanism. 

Let's do the Time Warp again.

Truffle: Taking my first real drive in two weeks, and having all of New England ablaze before me.

Quote of the day: "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. (Mahatma Gandhi)

 

Putting the energizer back in the bunny

It's a good thing I believe in easing back into things after a setback. Two back-to-back Harvard classes, dinner and the theater. A thirteen hour marathon clumping around Cambridge and Boston. I could use a nap.

So I will not expound here tonight. Because my focus on the words are waxing and waning and I'm stone cold sober. Besides, what's to say? Shakespeare, who never disappoints, was disappointing in the hands of today's maestro. Ethics was all Aristotlean teleology and the twin moral dilemmas of Casey Martin's golf cart (should a handicapped golfer be allowed to compete in PGA tournaments and use a cart — this pressing issue made it all the way to the Supreme Court) and the fairness of legacy and athletic admissions to universities. Great fodder for conversation if neither the highest nor the fallutin-ist of moral issues. 

Then I met Pete for what turned out to be a so-so meal and a tedious play — part of the Huntington's subscription series — I think it was called Inner Circle Transformation. I can't remember the last time I got 100 feet out of a theater and could not recall the name of the play I'd just seen. Could be fatigue. Could be age. Could be unremarkable play.

In the Black family tradition of Best and Worst of the Day — best is that October 28 is the day we have elected to call Cajun's birthday. She turned two today. Which is the best news because, as I have carefully explained to her, she is now officially an adult Labrador retriever. So she'd better start acting like one (and , parenthetically, stop bowling her mother over).

Worst was listing ten things from the new house plan we could do away with in the interest of shaving the costs back to budget. Gone are many of the special details I'd been most excited about. Why do we always dream big? Why not dream little to begin with, then add on gleefully? That just never seems to be the way human beings plan. Not that I can even stop at ten. My goal was to list ten before I left the house this morning. A display of good faith. Then I ran — okay, it wasn't really running or even walking I was doing — down my overcharged battery in town all day. It helped take the sting out. Now to zzzzzzz's.

Truffle: Misty morning over Lake Temporary, with one lone sugar maple on our side of the river standing sentinel in full orangey-red regalia.

Quote of the day: "One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop." (G.M. Weilacher)

 

 

Culture wars, or, Shakespeare at 30 Rock

The more I know the less I want to know. And that's all I'm going to say here about my pegleg.

Homework was the diversion of the day. If it weren't for Harvard I most certainly would not be reading the philosophy (however abbreviated) of John Rawls (yawn) and Aristotle (enduringly interesting) on the subject of moral justice. I also would not have re-read Act 1 of Antony and Cleopatra for the second time in a week.

This last because tomorrow my second class begins, a six-week investigation into Shakespeare's 'problem play' about love and international power-plays starring an inept, middle-aged gigolo and a woman who puts a snake, not a child, to her breast. A play in which suicide is considered an honorable departure for those of noble blood. Wow. And people think TV is over the top! Shakespeare must have been working to boost his ratings at the Globe. 

Meanwhile, time affords me a rare opportunity to increase my pop culture knowledge. Or at least my pop TV knowledge. House M.D., The Wire, Glee, Jericho, West Wing, Heroes, 30 Rock and, as fall back, another full round of As Time Goes By, an all-time favorite. All these fell into my lap owing to invalid status. It will take me the rest of my natural lifetime, and a few decades longer, to work my way through them all. But I'm game. Especially on a rainy day. I'm counting on rain. These suddenly balmy days make me heartsick to roll in the leaves, cavort in the woods, gambol hither and yon. But mostly yon. Oh, what the hell. I'd gambol just about anywhere right about now.

Truffle: Armchair traveling to Turkmenistan (of all places!) thanks to a book my friend Sue loaned me. Silk Road roots, eighty percent dessert, gorgeous Caspian Sea, rugged landscape in the great unknown of central Asia. A world unknown to me till now. The translations from Turkmenistan to English are priceless too. Oh, that "impetuous stream..."!

Quote of the day: "I love long life better than figs." (Shakespeare; Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra)

 

Giving the boot the boot

**BULLETIN** — My leg is not broken. The MIR report, lost in translation between Nantucket and Concord for the last week, surfaced today. That might seem to be good news. But in fact what the MRI showed is a muscle tear. Like a sprain, this can be worse than a break. Or so my research on the net indicates.

I wondered why it was my ankle that was the source of so much discomfort. Referred pain, I figured. But today's revelation suggests that the reason I was feeling it there — as opposed to my mid-calf where the pain localized in the beginning — is because that's where the tear is. At my Achilles tendon. Ouch. 

The (relatively speaking) good news is that I only need to wear the boot for pain tolerance from now on. Get out the designer sneakers and start the barn dancing music! I am liberated! I thought. Only not. I had the boot off for about an hour this afternoon, after getting the word, and it was misery. A combination of floppy ankle and discomfort. The other good news is that I get to start PT. I love PT. I am a PT junkie. Physical therapists know soooooo much more than the white coats with M.D. neatly embroidered above the heart.

BUT. And this is a big but (not butt). It takes 2-3 months, not 6-8 weeks as with a break, for full recovery. So — twice the recovery time. Double ouch. Ugh. And, in the Gruesome Detail department, this note: the snap we all heard when I fell is a defining symptom of a torn muscle — it's the sound of the muscle ripping away from the tendon. Nice, huh?

Still, I have recovered the family honor. No one in our family has ever experienced a big bone break. Oh, we throw digits to the wind — toes, fingers — even the occasional nose. But never, no never, and not even now, has anyone had a major bone broken. 

It also bodes well for my own private collection of bones. The skeleton rattling around inside of me. Not brittle, after all.

Truffle: The last hot fudge sundae of 2010, in honor of today's temps approaching 70°.  

Quote of the day: "I haven't left my house in days. I watch the news channels incessantly. All the news stories are about the election; all the commercials are for Viagra and Cialis. Election, erection, election, erection — either way we're getting screwed." (Bette Midler)

 

 

 

Book ends

Here's a conundrum: why is it that the thing you long for when you have no time to spare takes on nuisance value when you have time to burn? 

Ninety percent of my time I spend craving time to read. Time to write. Time to cogitate. It's the Gazing Up at the Clouds Passing By syndrome that I swear I recall from my youth. Though it is possible I've made the whole scenario up. But I think I recall stretching out in the summer grass, writing poetry in my head and thinking about all manner of things existential as time — that overrated something parents always remind you you have too little of (because, incidentally, they have too little of it. But you have to get to adulthood, be well invested in adulthood in fact, to understand what it was they were on about in the first place) — as time flitted by. 

Now I have it. A bird in hand, so to speak. But it is flapping its wings so urgently, so hysterically, I can't pin the damned thing down and explain to it that I've been waiting for it to reside in my loose fingers' grip for as long as I can recall. So I'm reading four books at once and none is going fast enough. I have the time, yes. But I am still a slow reader. I read three pages, check my watch. Why does reading take so long? I want (expect?) to knock off books by the gross. Because I have this time.

I was sent a wonderful article on the role of books in our homes. Books? Remember? You oldies will know of what I speak: the fresh smell of new ink, the firm binding that bends but does not break, the satisfaction of whipping from one page to the next and, best of all, the embrace of books gracing shelf upon shelf. How wallpaper may please and paint may be gay but books, they give a room soul.

Here's a quote from the piece in the Financial Times: "Books, like bricks, are a basic element of architecture. I wasn’t quite aware of this until I viewed a couple of properties recently and was struck, and appalled, by the lack of books. No books. Not one. The otherwise impeccable interiors seemed painfully incomplete. Bereft."

And so I have this time, glued in place as I am. And suddenly the longed for pleasure of reading becomes the obligation to read. Oh, what a fickle psyche is mine!

What to do? What I've always done. What we all do. Procrastinate. But call it 'other necessities taking precedence'. Suddenly it is far more important for me to clean off my desk! Good God. I have a sign on my printer (because there is no room on my desk for it) that reads: A clean uncluttered desk is a sign of a sick mind. Or do anything. I wrap wedding presents (no rush). Make phone calls (that could wait). Book a restaurant for my birthday (three weeks! away). Anything but do what I've longed for time to do.

How perverse is human nature? Or at least how perverse is mine?

Truffle: Presiding over another forward-moving meeting of the Social Science Club's 125th anniversary book project. It is always heartening to exercise one's competency. And often so unexpected.

Quote of the day: "It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it." (Oscar Wilde)

 

Jailbirds sprung

Few things speak to normalcy like routine and few things are as uplifting as a well-suited double date.

Sunday breakfast is a tradition in our household of two. It's usually the only hot breakfast of the week and, although as sous chef I'm in charge of breakfast and lunch most days, Sunday's are my day to cook. Since The Big Break Pete has been doing it all. Three meals a day. Uncomplainingly. Though for all I know he retires to the garage, on the pretense of taking out the garbage, and screams and throws things. But to me he has been the soul of consideration and generosity of spirit.

So this morning I was just bloody determined, if I had to balance on my head to do it. Which turned out not to be necessary. French toast and bacon. It may not sound like much but it felt like my Get Out of Jail card.

Then this evening we went out to dinner and a movie with friends in West Newton. A genuine outing. Which required what of me? Getting dressed. That is, peeling off the sweats I've been living in, putting on presentable attire, brushing the pillow crush out of my hair, changing sock (singular — I only need one at a time these days, which does stretch a good pair for several days), considering make-up and letting that one go by.

I took crutches but never used them. Another mini-step in the recovery process. It helps too that the God of Parking Karma delivered a space right in front of the restaurant and another just outside the cinema. Try planning on that!

We are such a congenial foursome and West Newton delivered the goods in style. Dinner at a restaurant called, I think, The Local, where they served such delicacies as Pot of Bubbling Cheese, Fried Pickles and Homemade Hot Potato Chips. Tonight's special was Lobster Legs. Legs? Why didn't anyone ever think of this before? Those succulent little red sticks full of crunchy sucking goodness? I'd never seen any of these items on a menu before. And you know what a foodie I am.

The movie was Conviction with Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell. Great performances and local interest true no-crime story. The four of discussed it all the way back to Concord. Should they or should they not have included the fact at the end that Kenny Waters died six months after getting out of the slammer?

Like routine after there hasn't been any for awhile, sometimes the most ordinary of things can seem like Christmas presents.

Truffle: Sleeping till 8a.m.

Quote of the day: "No road is long with good company." (Turkish proverb)

 

 

 

Sinking spell

The weather channel reports that after today we have five steady days of rain coming. I don't feel the rain in my bones as, say, my mother-in-law does. But I do feel it coming in my psyche. Or perhaps it's just that it's Saturday. And Saturday by definition is a day of play.

We took a little drive today over to West Concord to look at the paint job on a house that bears a resemblance to what we hope to do when we build. If we build. As I intimated, I'm not in the most positive of places. But it is true, we thought we would break ground next month and now we almost know for certain it won't happen until early next spring. 

There we were, sailing blithely along in the permitting process, thinking the worse was behind us when — ZAP! The rug is pulled out from under us. We were told our non-conforming lot, having been before the zoning board of appeals in the past and deemed conforming by dint of their positive vote would require no further board of appeals action. Wrong. Because we need to move the lot line (between the two adjoining properties we own) to accommodate the Historic District Commission's requirements, and only a matter of feet, it no longer qualifies as a conforming lot. Oh, don't bother your heads trying to figure this one out. Suffice it to say, we now have another hurdle.

That, and the National Heritage Foundation. Who in the world are they? And why do they get a piece of our diminishing financial pie in order that we might buy their stamp of approval? And whyohwhy are we just learning about them now??

Oh well. I'm in a foul frame of mind. (I'd rather be framing a house — HA!). And it's all because it is Saturday. And everyone about me was working in the yard or taking a run or walking the dog or going hiking during foliage season in nearby mountains. Or playing with their children in the Great Outdoors. Or. Or. Or.

I feel the rain coming. It rises like mercury in a thermometer, and the thermometer is my body. And when it gets high enough, I will weep toxic silver tears.

Truffle: Jamie dropping in, dropping by.

Quote of the day: "If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed." (Lily Tomlin)

 

All is forgiven

Not that I was every really 'mad' at Cajun. But I did think she might not have been so rude as to bark and attack my crutches when I got home from the ER a week ago.

Thanks to her, though, I have dog walking friends there and here, and it is they who have rallied. This morning we — that being Cajun and I  — were invited for breakfast (humans) and playdate (dogs). Stephanie made muffins. The four-footed kids kicked up a storm in the backyard. We gossiped, they growled. In an unlikely display of — what? insecurity? separation anxiety? — Cajun ended up  standing by the porch door, whining and sniveling dog-style. Once I stuck my head around and instructed her to behave herself. It had no effect. Or it had this effect:

She jumped the four foot high wrought iron fence, with nary a belly scratch, came around to the front door and politely knocked to come in. Which she did. Checked me out and was ready to go back outside. Play a bit. Then do it all over again.

I am reminded of a year ago when she and I were in Nantucket. I drove out to Madaket for a blogging lesson and, of course, she rode along. I let her out on her own reconnaisance while I disappeared inside for more than an hour. She was gone when I came out. I called, I whistled. Nada. Fear crawled up my spine. Had I given her too much freedom? Had she, our rescue dog, bolted?

A workman saw my distress and asked if I was looking for a chocolate lab. "She's in your car," he informed me. I knew it was impossible. But there, indeed, she was. Sitting in the back seat looking guilty. The windows were up; she had not jumped in that way. She doesn't know how to open the car doors. I was perplexed until I saw the muddy paw prints on the hood of the car. And that's when I realized what she had done: she had jumped up on the hood, scrambled up the windshield and entered the car through the sunroof.

Problem solving. Just like this morning. She's a clever girl, that one. If only she'd learn not to knock her mother over. 

Truffle: Mastering new software, this time, BookSmart. Time flies when one's head is immersed in...well...problem solving.

Quote of the day: "Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just stand there." (Will Rogers)