Missives from the Birdcage

Taking a shine to it

Tonight was date night a chez nous, and I took Mr. P for Indian food at a place on the West End. The food was pretty good, we had a lovely time. In the parking lot Mr. P was getting text messages from friends at the 1708 charity auction, so we were sitting in the car while the texting was going back and forth. Parked in front of us was a ginormous pick up truck with a built in tool box across the bed of the truck just behind the cab. A guy appears, clearly the owner of the truck, and he is, shall we say, to type.... big hoss, shaved head, serious accent. He is being followed by a couple, the guy looking like a shrunken version of the truck owner, but stuffed into taking-someone-on-a-date clothes. The woman had big, blonde hair, too much makeup (if I can see it in a dark parking lot twenty feet away, that's too much), and a much too tight black dress that had ruffles and sparkly things on it. As the bald fellow comes into view he says,

Gonna get drunk tonight! whooo-hoo!

Mr. P and I look at each other. The three of them look only a little younger than us. Then, Big Hoss opens up the tool box and reaches in. And pulls out.... a mason jar full of moonshine. Seriously.  He hands it to the woman, who takes a swig, sucks her breath in loudly and then waves her hands in front of her like she's trying to dry just-painted fingernails. We decide we need to get out of there before any of them joins us on the road.

Thank you for playing, no really, there's a reason why that stereotype exists.

Wild ride

This summer has been a wild, wild ride, on all levels, with a whole lotta work to boot. Some big changes that have left me scrambling just to hang on-- but exciting things on the horizon if I manage to do that. In the meantime, it's a bit of a bumpy ride. Which is all to say that if I haven't answered an email you sent me in June...

Speaking of bumpy rides, we made it through the Week Of Natural Disaster (TM) in Virginny, starting, of course, with the earthquake. I know a 5.8 isn't much to old hands at these things, but it was big doin's down here. Not nearly as big as some people seemed to think (yelps that the end times had come seemed, well, misplaced), but big enough  to knock things off shelves at work and at home. There've been aftershocks, but I've only felt two, one of which was a 4.9 that woke up Mr. P and The Kitteh. I, however, was already awake, despite it being 1 in the morning. In both the lead up to the actual earthquake and to the late night, sizeable aftershock, had a headache that went away immediately after the earth started shaking. Which either means that I'm like the cats and dogs that freak out just before an earthquake, or it's just a coincidence.

 

Then five days later, Hurricane Irene. While we were in it, it really didn't seem all that bad-- very, very wet, and sometimes pretty windy, but we left the front door open (just the glass outer door closed) through the duration, so it didn't seem too worrisome. Later, we found out we were just lucky.

I took this on the way to work on Saturday-- a week later. That's the roof leaning against the front of the house. Mr. P passes this way most days and said for most of the week the top was open and you could see right in-- for the first couple of days with the tree still inside. We know quite a few people who lost power-- some for more than a week. We only lost it in short bursts (when we heard transformers blowing up nearby-- probably from trees landing on them). We did lose internet for a week..... Yeah, really not anything to complain about.

The storm blew away our internet, but also brought in a lot of rain and a whole week of cooler tempertures, which was actually pretty awesome. The garden did Not. A. Damn. Thing. this year, pointedly refusing to thrive. I got beans. That is all. Not one tomato (despite having a dozen plants, different varieties). No cucumbers. Even the flowers have refused to bloom. Actually, most things have looked terribly diseased. But, weirdly, some things seemed to like the abuse of Hurrican Irene dropping ten inches of water and little (and not so little) branches all over them.

 
I've planted these flowers for three years and this is the first time one has bloomed-- which it has done four times since Irene.

All summer I've had morning glory vines, but no flowers....

And then there's the tomatillo plant, which grew very tall and looked healthy, until we got back from Maine and found two thirds of the leaves had been stripped off, by this:

An enormous tomato horn worm. Since the plant hadn't done aaaaaanything, I just left it out there. The day after Mr. P and I investigated this thing it disappeared.... we assume some bird's super duper dinner. Two days later? Hurricane. Two days later? Three tomatillos finally started growing. Perhaps I just have masochistic plants?

Sadly, neither earthquakes nor hurricanes can disrupt my insomnia. This week's 4:30 am project? Knickers! (American ones, not British ones).

Black courdoroy. I saw a picture of some chick in a magazine wearing knickers and thought, hmmmm.... those look kinda cool. I mean, they kind of remind me of being a kid in the 70s when I feel like I saw people sporting knickers. But I thought, where would I be able to get knickers? Wait! I know! I'll make some!

So I did. I put a shiny button on the cuffs.

Spent a looooot of time reading theory and philosophy today for a project that totally snuck up on me.... Damn those stealth academic projects! In between reading I put some of my haul from the farmer's market into action:

First apple pie of the season. And it is yummy, boy. Ohmnomnom. So I guess all in all not a bad weekend. I had to go to work on Saturday, but got enough done that I didn't have to go in today (the day of the labor), which would have been kind of depressing. Here's hoping that things let up so I can catch up with laundry and novel reading and maybe even blogging and not going into the office.

How to make any trip unpleasant: Fly there

Plane travel has become such a monumental hassle that I try to avoid it at all costs, only giving in to it when absolutely necessary. Funerals fall under that category, so this week involved plane travel. I was reminded of why I try to avoid it when I got a computerized voicemail telling me that my flight had been canceled. No explanation, just canceled. The recording had my confirmation number, full of easily mistakable letters (wait, is that a V? Maybe a B? Did he say F or S?) that no amount of re-listening to could clarify. Continental's lines were busy and I sat on hold for twenty minutes after fiiiiinally getting through their stupid computerized system (no, I didn't say "upgrade" I said REPRESENTATIVE) which seems specifically designed to Piss. You. Off. When I finally got the representative she was huffy and sighed often, making me repeat the confirmation number not once, not twice, but TWELVE TIMES. I explained that I had had a hard time understanding it because I only had it from the computerized voicemail. She sighed loudly, "Repeat that again." I repeated again. And again. And again. She then admonished me, "you know, it's really hard to understand that number over the phone. Repeat it again." When I told her that YES I WAS AWARE OF THE DIFFICULTIES IN UNDERSTANDING IT, YOU SHOULD TRY GETTING IT ONLY FROM A STUPID COMPUTER, she hung up on me. I got to call back and once again do battle with the ridiculous computerized answering service (no, I still don't want a frigging upgrade!) and another twenty minutes on hold.

Meanwhile, my mother is checking the website for information, and it still shows my flight leaving in two hours. She calls Travelocity, sits on hold for a long time, and when they finally answer (before Continental fiiiiiinally does), they tell me that the flight hasn't changed-- it's still leaving in ninety minutes. On the upside, he gives me my confirmation number, complete with clarifiers (B as in Bravo, V as in Victor). We figure we better skeedaddle to the airport. Just to be sure I wait on hold with Continental, riding along in the car and listening to them tell me over and over that they are merging with United. (Ineptitude Squared!!1!!!! Awesome!!!1!!!!!) When, halfway to the airport, someone finally comes on I find out that my flight has, indeed, been canceled. Still no explanation. After much negotiation, I am finally rebooked on a different set of flights.

Waiting for my new, later flight, I am sitting next to an older fellah on the phone with his son back in Oregon. He says, "oh I have to tell you. I went through the security here, and you know, I have no butt, so I always get a bit worried when you have to give up your belt, but I always have a free hand, you know, so it hasn't been a problem. But I give up my belt and they make me go through the xray machine and, well, they make you put your hands up in the air to take that picture, and you know, I have no butt so my pants just dropped down to my knees! The lady just looked away, so that was good, but, hehehehe, there ya go!" He then made several more phone calls, all of them business related, all focused on sales orders and stuff, but it was hard to now associate him with anything other than dropping trou in the security line.

During my layover in Newark I discovered that the "silent" setting on my phone is not silent when I attempted to serreptitiously snap a picture of an outfit that was giving me a bit of a panic attack. It made the camera shutter noise REALLY LOUDLY. Thanks, camera phone. Checking in the camera settings later I discovered that there is no silent mode for the camera. WHAT THE HELL? But yes, those are multi-colored, tie-dyed leggings. What you can't see are the dark red & blue diagonal split toe nails or the t-shirt with the metal studs that outlined a calendar-like picture of a trio of fluffy kittens. Or that she was somewhere on the far side of 60.

The woman with the scary pants got on a flight to Toronto. I was subsequently surrounded by people going to Richmond. In particular, a gaggle of women who had all gone on some trip together that seemed focused on shopping. They spent the next hour complianing about how "these people" are "so rude." It was unclear to me what they meant by "these people." The most charitable description, in the context of the things they were saying, is that they were referring to New Yorkers. It was quite clear, however, that their prejudices may run deeper than regional issues. I wished very badly to get on a plane going back to Boston.

And Richmond struck again, proving itself, once more, to be a place where I just shouldn't expect stuff to be done right. Clear signage at the airport? Only if you want to get on 64. If you want to get back on 895, you best already know how. Because what I really wanted was to be forced to take a long, backtracking detour.

Now he only eats guitars

 

Today's theme song, brought to you by Harold Camping, wingnut and numeroligist extraordinaire! His group put up a billboard on I-95 south of town a few months ago, so I've been thinking about the end of the world soundtrack....

Of course, I've been wondering what to do about next year with that whole2012-end-of-the-world thing. I mean, I've been wracking  my brain, trying to think of a pop song with a chorus about the Mayan calendar, and haven't come up with one.... But then a friend posted some lyrics this morning and I was reminded that there IS a pop song that covers the bill for next year!

 

Glad to know that we're covered, soundtrack-wise, for all eventualities. I mean, if you've got birds and snakes and aero-planes, Lennie Bruce AND Leonard Bernstein.... well... what else is there?

A Night at the Opera and other things

So, I had kind of a difficult week. I woke up last weekend not feeling well. I chalked it up to allergies (something I never suffered in New England, New York, Europe, or Asia, until moving to the Mid-Atlantic) and began muddling through the ickiness of not feeling well. A week and a half later and I'm still not feeling well. I became so desperately miserable that, stuck in podunk last Thursday I crawled to the nearest pharmacy and bought some Claritan. Which had Absolutely. No. Effect.Whatsoever. Which I suppose means that what I have is a cold, not allergies. What I'd like to have is a working pulmonary system, but we don't always get what we want. SIGH. I do feel a teensy weensy bit better today. Here's hoping there is oxygen in my future.

In addition to feeling like I'd been trampled by an elephant, my computer died. It has been dying this slow death for a number of months, but I really couldn't afford to have it die, so I kind of told myself it wasn't reeeeeeally happening. Which has been working for me since December, me willing the computer to continue lumbering on, stiff upper lip and all that. But it finally died. DeaddeadeaddeadDEAD. SIGH.

Being ill for tenstraightdays and having one's computer die are both bad. It was a bad week. During this bad week I was unable to do a number of tasks due to having no computer and a brain that was fogged by lack of oxygen, which has compounded the badness. Like interest. Today I discovered that a bill that was taken care of last fall has resurfaced, having un-taken-care-of itself. This is really annoying. Also? BAD. BADBADBADBAD.

Also, as I mentioned, I had to visit a number of places in my weekly wanderings around the state. I got to stay at the Quality Inn. Which was kind of like the shabby version of the Holiday Inn Express. I got to drink bad coffee in the morning with a bunch of truckers, which was actually just like the Holiday Inn Express, but the room looked a bit like it had been put together with leftover pieces from other, non-matching rooms.The shower head was so short that I had to duck to get under it, and I am very short.

At a school I visited I asked the kids to try to think of a creature that spins silk. I was looking for "spider." Generally this is not a problem. Most kids get that spiders spin silk. But this class a little girl shot up her hand and when I called on her she said, "buffalo." I'm not sure what to do with that. Both from the standpoint that the image of a buffalo spinning silk, spider style, has kind of lodged itself in my psyche, and also from the standpoint that someone could know the word buffalo with so profound a misunderstanding of the creature.

That evening, desperate for some vitamins, I picked up dinner and some carrots and juice at the Food Lion across the street from the Quality Inn. It seemed like a healthier option than McDonalds or The Olde Country Buffet. I put the bag of carrots and juice and things on the conveyor belt, including the grapefruit I'd picked up, thinking that I could use some vitamin C. Mind you, the produce section in the town's Food Lion was, uhm.... spare. There were only a dozen or so different vegetables. I don't mean varieties, I mean vegetables. So this is the context within which, in the process of checking out, the cashier looked at the grapefruit, frowned, picked it up and held it up in the air between us and asked, earnestly, "What's this?" She didn't know how to ring it in because it didn't have a sticker on it with a PLU #, and because she also did not recognize the object to look up on the list. A GRAPEFRUIT. Seriously. She couldn't identify a GRAPEFRUIT. A pamplemousse. I mean, this is a standard breakfast item at every diner I've ever been to. It wasn't like I was standing there was a guava or a bunch of longans or rambuatans or something. A bloody grapefruit.

Friday night I zipped back to the RVA because I'd gotten a deal on some tickets to the opera. The opera! I quite like the opera. When I was an undergrad I used to get this deal that the Met had to see four operas every season at cheap student prices. (Also, going on their website I was reminded that they are doing the Ring cycle this season. SIGH. How I wish I could see it....). This is relevant because going to see opera at the Met was, prior to last Friday, my only opera experience. On the one hand, this is a perfect situation, right? The stage is huge, the productions are magnificent, the divas are prima. On the other of the hands, if you no longer have the pleasure of living in New York, then you might ultimately have to go see opera at a place that is not the Met. At which point you realize why it is the Met that is broadcast every Saturday afternoon rather than broadcasting live from the Carpenter Theater in downtown Richmond.

 We saw Madama Butterfly.

I'd never seen it before, though I have seen other Puccini operas. I saw La boheme at the Met, and it was quite memorable. This was... less memorable. The singing? Not bad. Certainly better than anything I could have come up with. But... well....hummmmm... not heartwrenching? I mean, it's melodrama. You're supposed to be overwhelmed by the tragedy of it. Poor Cio Cio San! Dastardly Sharpless! But it didn't really move me like that. Parts of the sets were really interesting, with an ingenious solution for such a small stage. But then... parts of the sets were also clunky and lacking elegance. Worst of all, NINJAS.

And not any ninjas. ACCIDENTAL NINJAS. Who knew this category of ninjas existed? Before Friday night, I had no idea. But there, in the midst of Act I, the lovers wandering through the night shadows, the stage is suddenly filled with ninjas twirling illuminated paper umbrellas. They clash into each other, one almost loses control of one of the umbrellas, then they set them down on the floor and slink away. I think to myself, Holy Crap! What the hell are ninjas doing at the opera? Then, later, the ninjas returned to slide some of the set pieces around. And then later to slide even more set pieces around. Now, I realize that the director, or whomever came up with this "solution" was trying to make these people "invisible" by dressing them in black and making them wear black mask/hood things so that they would "melt" into the background. But here is the problem:  it's an opera SET IN JAPAN. Which means, my mind is in Japan. And when, WHILE IN JAPAN, a group of stealthy, silent walking, dressed all in black with black mask/hoods and cloth split toe slippers suddenly runs around the stage waving butterflies on sticks, how can anyone be expected not to think Holy Crap! Ninjas!

Never, in all of the times I went to the opera at the Met, did I see ninjas. It is not a recommended addition.

You know what else I never saw at the Met? Raisinettes. I don't know when this became acceptable, but raisinettes and gummi bears in crinkly crinkly packaging should not be allowed at the opera. And drinks. The intermission came and everyone debunked to the bar. Which is what one does at intermission. But the last time I went to the opera you weren't allowed to bring either your drink or any snacks into the theater. Here, everyone was drinking (and spilling) and eating loud things in crinkly packaging, crinklecrinklecrinklecrinkle. REALLY? You can't make it TWO WHOLE HOURS without stuffing your face? Not even! One hour, then an intermission when you can eat chocolate dipped madeleines! Then another hour and then you are free to indulge your desire for raisinettes, but please, STOP CRINKLING THAT PACKAGE SO I DON'T HAVE TO KILL YOU.

Also never seen at the Met-- women cursing out the elderly usher seating ladies. We were in the cheap seats (which is what we can afford). I did not see a seating chart, but based on the price of the tickets we were sitting exactly where I expected. There were three rows behind us. Behind that was a high pressure system moving in from the Midwest. What else does one expect? You can't even get nosebleed seats at a baseball game for what I paid. Ten minutes before the show started two women were shown to their seats by the usher. They were in the last row. Trust me when I saw that there was virtually no difference between their view and ours. But this displeased one of the women, who made her displeasure known by yelling, "This is BULLSHIT! The LAST ROW?! This is BULLSHIT!" She ranted for a while about how she was told that these were the best seats left, and how could they, and she shouldn't have to sit in the last row and this was just bullshit, etc. etc.

Indeed.

Eventually she sat down and tucked into her raisinettes. Crinklecrinklecrinkle.

The Land of Extremes

So. Here we are. We live here, but it's not where we would have chosen to live, had we been offered other options. Well, certain other options. Other, markedly different options. But there are times where it doesn't seem so bad. Mostly, I find these in the car, though sometimes being in the car infuriates me (on the 22nd straight mile of looking at clear cut wastelands, for example). This week I got to go someplace pretty, drove over a ridge early in the morning, around a turn and was stunned by the sight of an Albert Bierstadt painting come to life. It had snowed up on the mountains the night before, and as I rounded a curve in the road the view to the right was a slowly curving river with spare trees on either side, converging into the distance where the Shenandoahs were standing majestically, the trees all up the side of the mountains and along the ridge covered in snow that was blazing in the early morning sun that shot, in visible rays, from between the thick clouds, layered one over another in shades of gray and purple. It was spectacular. On the way back I stopped briefly to check on a favorite place:

Still there! Still wacky!

And then, when I got home, just to remind me that it's better not to get out of the car, I had this Groupon offer in my inbox:

You may get offers for 67% off a haircut where you live, but here we get offers like this. I guess I should be happy that only 3 have been bought. AND YET.

The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

The boys took a nap.....

irresistable, no?

Whizzzzzing by

I was trying to make a picture of Mr. P and Mr. Tibbs, but Mr. P was feeling uncooperative, so this is what I got. It is, however, a painfully accurate rendering of what life is for both me and Mr. P at the moment. We are both kind of ready to get off the roller coaster. Life for Mr. Tibbs, however, has not changed. It is still mostly like this:

On the upside, many of the things that are making life a blur at the moment are good. Sadly, not all, but for the most part those will pass. Not soon enough, mind, but they are temporary. Or that's what I tell myself....

Muerte a los resolutionaries!

I hate the gym the first week of January. Much like I hate the flying bullets in Richmond on New Year's eve, I also forget how bad it is the first week of January, having been lulled into complacency during the dark days of December when I get to park next to the front door and have my choice of machines and space to spare in the locker room. But the first week of January the gym is beseiged by the guilty, those who have made the resolution that this, this is the year that they are going to get fit. I am not the only one that has noticed this phenomenon (by a long shot)-- there was an article in the WaPo about it (thank you to meanlouise for pointing me there). But other people noticing it doesn't make it any better when, on the third day of January, I arrive at the gym to find that every single person in Richmond is there. I'm glad I went to the one at Willow Lawn, which has a parking lot seven times the size of the dime sized parking lot by the one in the Fan. The upside of this was that I was, finally, able to park in the parking lot. The downside was that I had to park in Siberia. I have never seen every. single. space. taken, until last night. I hovered while someone walked to their car so I could snag the space and the sharks were still circling after I went inside.

There were no machines available. I had to hover around, waiting for someone to get off something, anything. Unlike the gyms I've belonged to in other cities (DC, New York, Ithaca) there are no time limits on the machines. I could have been there a long time. Fortunately, I managed to snag something after only fifteen minutes.

As bad as that all was, it was nothing compared to the debacle that was the locker room. First of all, I hate the lockers that they have at the gym. They are all made for basketball players. There are two rows, one stacked on the other, for each lane of lockers. The lockers are over four feet tall each, which means that the top stack starts at about 4'5". I am 5'2". You can see the dilemma. There is a hook in it for my coat that one would need an extension ladder to reach. But there was no avoiding the lockers for giants last night. I almost didn't get one at all. The gym recently installed a pool, and the locker room was jam packed with very large women dripping wet and bare feet (have you people never heard of foot fungus?), in bathing suits wandering around and taking up all of the available space. I spent ten minutes opening lockers to find one that was empty. Although only a third of the lockers had locks on them, all but one (and I mean ALL, I opened ALL of them) had stuff in them, no lock. Ten minutes of open, check, shit, close, open, check, shit, close, open, check, shit, close. And it wasn't just day clothes in these things-- purses, phones, electronics. Seriously?! Who does that? You would think a burning desire to continue to have your credit cards would motivate you to spend $3 on a lock. Also-- would have saved me (and the other fifteen women going through the same process at the same time) a lot of time if I could have seen which lockers were taken without having to open them.

So, dear resolutionaries, please. Give up now. I will not see you in April. In fact, many of you I will not see in February. I do not want your foot fungus. I do not want to listen to you talking on your cell phone while you are on the treadmill. (!!?!) I do not want to look at your pile of clothing and personals in the locker you did not lock. Go home and eat some Cheetoes.

Shoot the moon

Or the year. Shooting something, in any case. Mr. P and I watched a movie at home (Bride with the White Hair, because nothing says Happy New Year like a crazy Hong Kong kung fu movie) and then read til we fell asleep (because we are party animals like that). We had no real plans to ring in the new year. But then neither did our neighbors. Instead, as they do each year, the people of Richmond shot in the new year.

A premature ejaculator somewhere in the next subdivision woke us a little early, but we were definitely awake at midnight when people for miles in every direction emptied whatever firearm(s) they had into the air (one hopes). Someone on the street behind us emptied three different caliber weapons, one he was so excited about he reloaded and emptied it again. There were a couple of firecrackers thrown in for good measure, but the vast majority of the noisemaking was coming from guns. This happens here every year (and also happened the year I was living on a completely different side of Richmond before we got the house, so it is a pan-Richmond thing, not just our 'hood), although I tend to forget how bad it is until it's happening, at which point I start analyzing the safety aspects of our situation, coming to the conclusion each year that our chosen place for New Years-- asleep in bed-- is the best one, as the bed is lower than the window and any stray rounds would hit the side of the house, which is brick. Each year, Mr. P wakes up saying that New Year's here gives him flashbacks to Baghdad the night Saddam's sons were killed, as these two events are celebrated in similar ways. And each year the police are nowhere to be found (or perhaps they are outside the station, which is less than a mile from the house, shooting up in the air, yelling, "watch this one, Bobby!").

Now, living in New York during the denuement of the crack epidemic I heard my share of gunfire. And I heard it sometimes in Phnom Penh when I lived there. But, while in the individual instances it was surprising, it wasn't surprising, if you know what I mean. As in, not expecting it at that moment as opposed to not expecting it ever. But this is where we live:

This is our front yard looking out onto the street. This is the definition of suburbia. Ranch houses on large lots with trees in the yard and geraniums along the walkways in the spring. This is the kind of place one n-e-v-e-r expects to hear small arms fire.

But Richmond is special that way. This morning Mr. P and I discussed it, as we do each year, and he noted having recently seen a road sign in a built up area in Richmond  shot up. Something like this:

Except that this picture was taken in North Dakota on our roadtrip over the summer, quite literally in the middle of nowhere, in a state that only has about sixteen people living in it. Shooting up road signs, an activity that is, as Mr. P says, ignorant and potentially dangerous (though one assumes that in super flat ND you probably can see for quite a ways whether or not anyone is coming), is something I've only ever thought of as a rural activity. But in Richmond, it is practiced in town, exemplary of this place's special congruance of country and city ignorance, nestled neatly in the suburbs, where nothing says happy new year like twenty-seven live rounds shot into the sky while standing in the azaleas.

Happy bloody new year.