what's the hellenistic?

When I was a junior in high school, I took a world history course. It was the last in a long line of public education history courses that did very little in the way of educating me about history. My teacher was gruff and middle-aged. Had she always been just a little bit standoffish and grumpy, or had twenty-five years of teaching done it to her?

One day, we were reviewing for a test that would gauge how much we had learned about the Hellenistic civilization. We'd been studying that particular period for about the last six weeks. So poor is my history education that I don't really remember much of anything about Hellenistic civilization, but I think it was probably important, since we spent so long reading about it.

To sum up: We studied the Hellenistic period for six weeks. We then reviewed the Hellenistic period in preparation for a test. Also, I don't know crap about history.

The teacher, seeing that we had only a few minutes left in the class, gave us the opportunity to ask any last minute questions for clarification. One student sat leafing through his textbook with a perplexed expression on his face. It wasn't the book itself causing his confusion, though you might wonder. We all had the same enormous book, but his was the only one that had been left on top of a car, flung by one of Newton's Laws onto Highway 18, and then run over a few times. But it was not the state of his book hurting his puzzler. Rather, it was a specific word that he kept seeing over and over in the chapter that we were all about to be tested on. So he decided that he needed to ask about this ubiquitous and unknown word.

"What's the Hellenistic?"

Every other student in the class started laughing. Not because his question was an indication of stupidity or inattention, but because the student had spoken so quickly that it had sounded as if he had asked "What the hell is this?" while staring in confusion at his mangled book. Our laughter was first shock, because you can't say "hell" in front of a teacher. Then we all laughed some more as we figured out what he had actually said.

Unfortunately, our teacher did not mishear him, nor did she know that we had, and so we were treated to a lecture about the importance of not laughing at anyone in the quest for knowledge, even if they ask what might appear to be a stupid question. It was quite a long speech, and we all slumped in our seats, unfairly accused and unwilling to explain. At the end of it, she might have told that kid what the Hellenistic period was.

Sometime during the next week, I ran into that teacher in the hall after school. She brought up the incident again, but this time, her explanation was entirely different. She had felt obligated to lecture us, because there are no stupid questions blahblahblah. But really and truly, she thought that kid was an idiot and she wished that she could have delivered an entirely different lecture, one just for him.

I just sort of smiled and nodded, because some things are just too hard to explain.

samaritans.

I was taking exit 301 off I-40 to get on the beltline. It was dark, and traffic was light. The exit ramp curved down and to the right, carving a path between the tall, tall trees. Towards the left of the ramp, there were a pair of headlights illuminating some of those trees. I thought it was an odd place for a cop to station himself - surely the exit ramp is not the best place to catch speeders. But then I realized that the car was a civilian vehicle, and it was facing away from the road, as if it had tried to take the exit, but then forgotten to turn and instead plowed straight into the weeds.

By the time my brain had processed the scene, I was past it. And then I immediately felt terrible.

A couple of years ago, I found myself stranded in the middle of the road with a car that wouldn't run. It could have been any single girl's worst nightmare, but really it was not bad at all, since it was a nice day, and I had AAA. While I was sitting there waiting on the tow truck, I was impressed with how many people stopped to see if they could help. My faith in humanity was restored, even as I sat by a car that had been dinged multiple times by people who had not bothered to leave a note.

Since then, whenever I have seen a motorist on the side of the highway, I've always felt a little obligated to stop. And yet I haven't done it, not even once. Usually, the person does not seem to be in any danger - they are very close to open businesses, it's in the middle of the day, or someone else has already stopped. Of course, all those things were true when I got stuck, too, and those people stopped anyway. And then I didn't need them.

But this situation was different. It was at least a mile in any direction to any sort of gas station, and it was nighttime, so fewer places would be open. Plus, there was just the whole emergency vibe of the situation. I had been stopped in traffic when my car just cut off. This person had run off the road. They might be incapacitated, and every minute that a Good Samaritan did not stop and help was one minute less they had to be saved.

Finally, my guilt got the best of me, and so I decided to turn around. This was not as easy as it could have been. I had to take the next exit to go back in the other direction, then take the next exit that way to get back to the ramp. It gave me a lot of time to think about why this was not a good idea. I was, after all, still a single gal in the city. Instead of finding a person in need, I might find a jerk with a knife. As I got closer and closer, I planned carefully how I was going to lock the car and hide my wallet and phone on my person. I wasn't thinking about how the person might be dead or badly injured or a traumatized teenager.

This is why people shouldn't watch the news. You see someone who has driven their car into the trees and think that they are going to rob, rape, or kill you.

Despite my fears, it was important that I do this. In all likelihood, the person I found would not be dangerous. And they probably wouldn't be dead. They would be like I was when I was on the side of the road: frustrated at the situation but surprised by the way strangers took the time to lend a hand. Someday, they, too might see a car by the side of the road and feel obliged to stop. Maybe it would take them five minutes to get back to the exit ramp, and maybe they would worry the whole way about sting operations involving disabled vehicles. But still, they would do it, and the world would be a better place because of it.

I like that I live in a world where strangers help out. And if I want to continue living in that kind of world, I have to be one of those helpful strangers.

When I finally got back to where I started, there were three cars parked on the side of the exit ramp with their flashers going. I guess some people have a little more practice at this Good Samaritan stuff, so they don't have to drive all over the place having a crisis of conscience. Figuring that the situation was under control, I drove on by for the second time in five minutes. Yes, I was relieved that I didn't have to stop. But I would have, and I think that counts for something.

richmond.

It's not fair to hate a city and really, it doesn't make much sense. What are you hating, anyway? The inhabitants, the buildings, the weather? It does no good to hate a place, because the place surely doesn't care. Even the inhabitants of the place won't care, telling you that you just don't get it and that they don't want you around nohow. In the end, you are just wasting your energy.

All that being said, I kind of hate Richmond. I have a good reason: they towed my car once.

Josh had a show in downtown Richmond. My car was parked on the street, along with the cars of the other bar patrons. There were many. We came out of the bar at 2 AM, or whenever bars close in Virginia, and the night was lit up with blue lights pulsing from the tops of cars labelled "RPD." But no civilian cars on the street. I went to talk to a policeman, because that's what you should do when you're in a strange city and you can't find your car.

He said it had been towed. I asked why. He said it had been parked in a No Parking zone.

That seemed very odd to me, since I had been parked with a lot of other cars. Also, after living in Boone for four years, I am very careful to check for signs about where it is acceptable to park. Boone will tow your butt in a heartbeat, and then you have to go down to Ashe Lake Garage in the middle of the night, pay $70 to get your car back and then listen to the guy complain about stupid college kids. Spend any amount of time in Boone, and you will quickly develop a lifelong dread of public parking.

Apparently, Richmond and Boone have something in common.

It turns out that there were signs posted about No Parking. In front of every other space, there is a blue sign that says "2 Hour Parking, Monday - Friday, 8 AM - 5 PM." Now, from that sign, you might interpret that you could park there as long as you wanted on weekends or overnight. However, that sign should include some more text that says "Please refer to other signs". Because for every five of those signs is an additional sign which says "No Parking, Monday - Sunday, 11 PM - 4 AM." This sign is red, and there is a helpful graphic of the city of Richmond gleefully towing your butt.

So that's what happened. I presume that all the residents of Richmond know about this little trick and that 10:59, they sneak out of the bars and go move their cars to some secret free parking area, laughing at the clueless tourists all the way. Me, I was one of the clueless tourists, so at 10:59, I was still enjoying my beer inside the bar, unaware that the Okay To Park zone was about to become a HAHAHA SUCKAS zone. The policeman told me that my car was now at the police impound, which did not open until the next morning. We spent the night in Richmond, and the next morning, we took a cab over to the impound and rescued my car. It cost a lot of money, none of which the city of Richmond will use to put up more of the red No Parking signs.

And that's fine, that's life. But I can still hate Richmond, just a little bit, for that.

like a good neighbor.

Once I heard a story on NPR about a guy who tried to make a TV channel that was all puppies, all the time. It was called The Puppy Channel. There was a theme song, which was basically this old dude singing "Puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies PUPPIES!" That theme song pretty much describes my thought process for about a month now. My brain has been receiving The Puppy Channel.

I'm a little embarrassed by this condition, because I used to hate it when people talked about their pets all the time. And me being me, I probably did not do a good job concealing how uninterested I was in what those people were saying. And now, with The Puppy Channel in my head, I'm beginning to annoy myself. I'm also annoying other people, some of which probably do not care about Remix but who do a better job at responding appropriately than I ever did.

If you ever told me about your pet and I was a jerk, I am sorry. You were just trying to share about something that makes you happy, and sharing ourselves with others is the fabric of our lives, or something like that.

I know (hope?) that this is a temporary affliction. While I may be permanently a dog person, after a while I will get used to the fact that there is a dog in my house and she does adorable things. And when people tell me about their pets, I will be able to be enthusiastic with them. I may still be bored if they go on for too long, but that's only because I know that their pet is not as awesome as mine. But I will listen nicely anyway, because at the end, I will have earned my right to whip out my phone and show them pictures of Remix. Here she is smiling, and here she is sitting, and this is her digging, and...

I have tried not to talk too much about the dog here, either, because I know that some of you really, really, really don't care. Today, I am going to talk about something that is Remix-related, but not cute dog stories. It's about something even more thrilling: INSURANCE!

Back when we were first considering our dog options, I found out that various forces in the universe discourage owning certain types of dogs. These forces include city councils, apartment managers, and insurance companies. Did you know that no one who lives in Topeka, Kansas is allowed to own a pitbull? I formerly had a good opinion of the Kansas state capital, but now? Screw you, Topeka.

Let's talk a little bit about the ridiculousness of breed-specific restrictions. Aside from the idea of punishing all dogs for the actions of some, it's really hard to know what breed a dog is. Most dogs do not have papers that trace their lineage. If you get a dog from a shelter, then there really is no way of telling what all went into it. You can look at the dog and guess, but even then, it's really a crapshoot. These rules are practically unenforceable. The Topeka police might bang on your dog to collect your dog, but you can just say, "This dog? It's some kind of lab. Also, aren't there some actual crimes you could be investigating rather than harassing animals that haven't hurt anybody?" Are they going to do a DNA test on every single dog?

One of the reasons that we picked out this specific dog was that the shelter listed her as a "lab mix." Frankly, we are not sure why. Anyone else that has looked at her has immediately said something along the lines of "Got a little bit of pit in her, eh?" The only thing we can figure is that whoever processes the dogs goes by a picture, not by looking at the actual animal. The picture that was taken of her was not particularly flattering and was at an odd angle. Really, all you could tell from that photo was that she was mostly black, therefore, she was a lab mix. I knew that my insurance company had some restrictive policies regarding pitbulls, but I figured that we could always just send them the info sheet from the shelter, which had a blurry picture and the words "lab mix." Maybe we should have named her "Plausible Deniability."

But something about that didn't sit right with me, even though I know that a lot of people choose that route. I think that it is stupid and unfair that insurance companies have rules about specific breeds. But lying to my insurance company wasn't really standing up for the breed; it was just lying. The system can be stupid, but going outside the system doesn't really change it. I wanted to say to the world that I was not scared to live with a pitbull. The only way any of this would come into play was if she bit somebody, which I don't expect. Remix is exceedingly friendly to people; in fact, I worry that if there were an intruder in the house, she would attempt to snuggle him rather than chew on his face. She does not warm up to every single person, though, and in those cases, she tends to just back away. However, I am one of those people who believes deep down in the very bottom of me that not preparing for a worst-case scenario is the best way to make it happen to you.

So I started shopping around for insurance. You probably already know that it's a completely joyless exercise. I found a list of nationally rated insurance companies, and I basically emailed every single one of them with a single question: Do you offer insurance to households with pitbulls?

Several of them responded with a short and sweet "No." Some of them will give you a policy with an exclusion on the dog, meaning if someone gets bitten, they're not going to pay for it. Some of them want you to take the dog to obedience training. Still others had a long list of questions about fences and children under twelve and the dog's personal history. One ambitious insurance agent, who sells for a company that says "Absolutely not" with regards to dangerous breeds, tried to get me to play the lab mix card. Sir, if I wanted to lie to an insurance company, I'd just lie to the one I have already. It's cheaper anyway.

I got really, really frustrated by the whole thing. I felt like I was being punished for doing the right thing. I had rescued a dog that did not have a home, one who would forever be associated with eating babies because of its breed. And I was trying to play by the rules and be honest with my insurance company. It was causing me nothing but grief. Does everyone else just lie about their dogs? What do Jon Stewart and Jessica Alba do?

And then finally, FINALLY, State Farm responded to my desparate query with two questions: 1.) Has the dog ever attacked anyone? and 2.) Has the dog been trained to fight? In terms of Remix, I can answer 1.) No, and 2.) She has been trained to sit, fetch, and snuggle.

The really happy ending here? I'm going to save $208.46 a year. HA!

some things.

Thing 1: Free to good owner
When we were looking for a dog, I checked the newspapers in search of a "Free to good owner" ad. There were none. Instead I found fifty ads offering puppies in a variety of breeds, complete with papers, in exchange for money. We had already visited the animal shelter at this point, and after seeing cage after cage of dogs that were one step away from elimination, I just didn't feel good about buying from a breeder. I also did not feel good about paying $300 for a dog.

Where, oh where, were the free dogs? Is that just a small town thing, where someone stands out in front of the Wal-Mart with a box of wriggling lumps of fur, giving them away to whoever is willing to take them? Maybe here in the big city, people spay their pets and don't end up with a litter of unintended consequences.

But then last week, a guy from work sent out an email, offering a free puppy. There was a picture. It sure was cute (of course it was, it's a puppy). I thought hard about it, but then decided to delete the email so I would stop looking at the picture. It's nice to know that you can still get pets free, provided you promise to be a good owner.

Thing 2: Do not distract Simon.
We've just received our assignments at work, which is the list of things that we will be working on for next year's release. One fellow, Simon, is working on a very long, arduous, and critically important task. This week, my boss sent out an email to the rest of us, telling us not to distract him in any way, not even with work=related questions. In fact, if we were to ask him something, he has been instructed not to respond. I wonder if they are monitoring his email to see if he is replying. He must feel very sad and isolated.

I suppose that's an important thing to tell us, but it makes for a rather comical email. Indeed, I will think twice before I send Simon any questions. But also, I have a strange urge to hire a mariachi band to go stand inside his cubicle and play for hours on end. That sort of thing would never have occurred to me before, but now the thought is so appealing that it would almost be worth the money and the stern talking-to.

Thing 3: Some things are worth paying for a $8 ticket.


SO EXCITED.

blueberry bursh.

We were driving to see The Forbidden Caverns in my sister's minivan. Her kids were all in the back in their special kid seats. Seems like it was kind of a long drive, because we'd all fallen silent into our own thoughts. The kids were making noises, but that's just what they do. I had woken up that morning to what sounded like an entire herd of children playing, but when I came out of the bedroom, it was just three, running in a tight circle and chanting "Otter otter otter otter." No, I don't know why.

I call it chanting, which isn't exactly the right word. It's somewhere between talking and singing, and it's repetitive. Her kids seem to do it a lot, and I don't know if that's something in common with most kids or if it's something about her family. Maybe it's something about my family. My dad does it, and he doesn't have the excuse of being four years old. He'll just get a word or phrase in his head and repeat it randomly, the way that some people hum or whistle. It's just absent-minded noise-making. During the Albertville Olympics in 1992, he would periodically say "Yamaguchi Yamaguchi" for no reason at all.

Meanwhile, back in the van, I was sitting in the passenger seat, looking at the scenery, thinking about whatever. I don't know how long it had been going on before I noticed that my niece Claire was chanting again. I tuned out again to return to my thoughts (about something important, no doubt), but a minute or two later, I realized she was still doing it.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

Why was she saying that? Had we been talking about blueberries? I didn't think so. Is this one of those darnedest things that kids say? Over and over?

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

It was incessant. It wasn't too loud or screeching, but it just kept going. When does a person run out of impetus to keep saying the same thing?

Now, I don't have kids. So when I spend an extended amount of time with some, I am usually struck by something about their behavior. Usually, it's something that I already "knew," meaning that I'd heard about it from parents or seen limited evidence of it. But not until I hang out for a couple of days do I really start to get the idea about what kids are like. For example, did you know that children ask questions constantly? No, I mean it. ALL THE TIME. Also, when you have kids, you don't get to ever eat your own food again. You have to share. ALL THE TIME. Plus, kids can't go anywhere on their own. You can't just kick them out and tell them to get out of the house for a few hours so you can take a nap. No, they are there, underfoot and making noise, asking questions and wanting a bite of your donut.

ALL THE TIME.

While I'm all agog at the ins and outs of living in the same house as a child (or several children), the parents don't even seem to notice. Either they are used to it, or they know better than to ponder these things. More likely, they don't have time to ponder these things. It is only in my child-free state that I have the time for luxuries like pondering. Sometimes I do it in my pajamas in the middle of the day while eating a donut.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

How long had she been doing this? Five minutes? Ten? The weird thing was that no one had said anything about it, as if it were completely normal. If a random person did that in public, no one would say anything, but that's because everyone would be too polite to point out that there was a crazy person in the room. Are children actually just small crazy persons?

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

The thing about a repetitive sound is that once you do notice it, it's hard to tune it out again. I'd sat there for several minutes, not being annoyed at all, but now I couldn't think anymore, because of

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

I was just a teensy bit annoyed. I didn't want to be, because my niece is very sweet and cute. Not all children are, but she is. So maybe her chanting wasn't annoying at all, but actually cute. If I decided to think that it was cute, would I stop feeling irritated?

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

Okay, you know, now that I think about it, it's kinda cute. It's pretty funny, really, particularly with her little speech impediment.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

I giggled. My sister, in the seat next to me, giggled. Soon we were just laughing outright, because I suppose our other option was to be pissed off, and this was more fun. Claire picked up on our amusement, and she hammed it up, getting louder and saying the words with more gusto.

"BLUEberry bursh! BLUEberry bursh! BLUEberry bursh!"

It's a cute little story, but hearing about the incident secondhand is probably like looking at pictures of other people's cats. Everyone thinks what their kid does is incredibly adorable or smart or interesting, but really it's how you feel about the kid. I can tell you that Claire is very cute and sweet, particularly with her little purple glasses and long hair, but you don't care. She's just another kid, saying another darnedest thing. Yup, kids do that. There are a million blogs out there with people telling stories about how their kid did just the cutest/funniest/most precocious thing the other day.

So this story is not really about Claire and her affinity for alliterative phrases. It's actually about a particular moment in the story, the one right before I giggled. The one where I made a conscious decision to be amused instead of annoyed. I remember actually making that decision, partly for the sake of my sister and niece, but also for my own sanity. Perhaps it's not so surprising that I made the decision, but what blows my mind is that it worked. And that implies that I could do it all the time. I could just choose to enjoy myself, even when my first inclination is be grumpy.

Are all your minds blown?

I am a lucky person. I have absolutely nothing in my life to complain about. That does not mean that I am not sometimes whiny or bitchy or just in a bad, bad mood. Sometimes there are legitimate things to be momentarily unhappy about, though more often there are things that I am unhappy about, but don't necessarily need to be. These are the times that I need decide to be happy anyway, because I freakin' can.

It's weird. You would think that now that I have made this incredible, momentous discovery - happiness is a CHOICE, holy cow! - I would be happy all the time. But that's not true at all. For some reason, even when I know that the only thing keeping me from enjoying myself is myself, I have a hard time making that first step, having that first giggle. Is it laziness? Am I working undeveloped happiness muscles? Do I want to be miserable on some level? I don't know. More likely, I'm so busy going with that first instinct to be grumpy that I forget about the incredible epiphany I had while in a minivan on the way to the Forbidden Caverns. If only I had a reminder.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

neutral, but not afraid.

Today, our topic is pitbull propaganda. If you go looking on the internet, you'll find lots of conflicting information about pitbulls. Basically, some people love them and some people hate them. The former show pictures of happy dogs, with quotes like "Punish the deed, not the breed!" The latter put up gruesome pictures of people who have been attacked. Me, I'm just gonna skim over all of that, because y'all know where I stand: next to my dog.

But! Way back in the day, back before people associated an entire breed of smiling, wiggle-butted dogs with the ripped-open faces of children, pitbulls were actually a national symbol. In fact, there were posters made to boost the American spirit in a time of war, specifically the first World War. This was before we actually got into the war, when we were just sitting back and letting Europe do its thing.

Basically, these posters want to show that while America is not involved in this little European matter, if push came to shove, we'd push and shove better and harder than anyone else. And we'd do it with PITBULLS!


We're thinking of dressing Remix like this for the Fourth of July.


Do you need a safe place to put your kittens? Wrap them up in an American flag and then hand the whole bunch over to a patriotic pitbull!


I love this last one: Neutral, but not afraid. After living with a pitbull for a month now, I think it's appropriate. She's a powerful and muscular animal, pretty in the noble and strong way that a horse is pretty rather than in the fluffy way that many dogs are. She's got a huge jaw - all muscles and teeth. You can see why this kind of dog would make a great symbol of strength in a time of global turmoil. When we are playing tug-of-war, and she just won't give up, I can see why someone might be afraid of a dog like that.

But then she rolls over for me to scratch her tummy, and I just don't feel that threatened.

yard sales, may 14.

In case you were wondering, the 2011 Yard Sale Season is officially on. 

Once you've been yard saling in the same area for a few years, you end up going to the same church sales every year.  Me, I love a good church sale more than most anything, but there are definitely some church sales that I look forward to more than others.  On Saturday, there was a sale at a gigantic Presbyterian church in an older, richer part of Raleigh.  This is a great combination - rich people have lots of nice stuff, and old, rich people have lots of interesting stuff.  Just as I was walking in the door, I heard someone announcing that you could fill a box for $5.  I went out and picked the biggest box I found.  Then I proceeded to wander around and fill it up. 

While walking around the sale with my giant box, I overheard a lady tell her friend, "I dunno, I guess all the good stuff is gone."  I wanted to hit them.  Maybe it's just a difference in style, but I had actually timed my arrival at the sale so that I would be there for the box sale.  It's true that I did not find anything ¡¡¡SPECTACULAR!!!, just a huge box worth of small things, well worth five dollars.  Books, stuffed animals for the dog, some handy kitchen items, a huge box of old stationery, movies.  Stuff that you might buy after a day at the mall, or wherever the kids are going these days.

I did the most damage in the books section.  There were three tables piled high with books, and I could have looked for two hours and not seen them all.  Anything that was remotely interesting went right into my box.  I think I ended up with at least twenty, some of which will be given to my local book-hoarder.

I picked up yet another ridiculous clock to add to my ridiculous clock collection.  This one has a fireplace attached, which was apparently a specialty of the United Clock Company.  I have to note that neither the clock nor the fireplace is in working order.  When you plug the thing in, the clock makes a noise but does not run, and the fireplace does nothing at all.  There is a bulb in back that is supposed to light up, which might just be burned out.  I have plans to replace the plug with a battery-operated clock mechanism, probably one from some other yard sale clock.  I'm not sure yet about the bulb.  I could probably get away with a battery operated tealight or something similar.

The funny thing is, I bought this from a lady who was clearly just an older version of me.  She said she'd bought that clock fifteen years ago because she thought it was so neat.  She meant to fix it, and then never did.  There were several other items that she was selling that were clearly in a similar situation.  Crazy lady buying crazy things because they are cheap and cool.

I also got an egg basket shaped like a chicken.  I've wanted one of these for a while, though I have no idea why.  Sometimes, a secondhander develops a hankering for some random thing.  In my case, it’s usually something shaped like a chicken.  Two bucks.  I would have preferred it to be a little rustier, but I guess I could just leave it out in the rain.

There were three estate sales this weekend.  Sometimes at one of these sales, I can look through the possessions of the deceased and think that we would have gotten along famously.  Such was this sale.  I came away with this milk scale.  Since I don't need to weigh any milk, it's completely ornamental, and I'm just going to hang it up on the wall like those people did.  I paid the whopping sum of $10 for it, so you can tell that I really wanted it.

I think my best purchase of the day was an ironing board, of all things.  I already have an ironing board.  It's a avocado green metal number that I got at an estate sale for $3 a couple of years ago.  We don't do a lot of    ironing, just enough that we should have a board handy.  So buying that one was a practical purchase. 

This one was folded up in the corner of a bedroom.  I missed it on my first pass through the house, and only saw it when another person mentioned a chair sitting next to it.  I was just about to pass it by, but then I decided to see how it stood.  So I maneuvered it out of the corner and set it up in the middle of the room.  I was instantly hooked.  It's so darn rustic.  It's also really sturdy.  I could not figure out how to fold it up again and had a friendly stranger help me figure it out.  I think he wanted to buy it.  Or pick me up.  Maybe both?  An old ironing board and an unshowered crazy lady, all at one sale?  That’s the kind of day he could write about on his blog.

Three bucks.  The former owners apparently didn't like to just throw away padding, so they just added on top.  At the bottom level, you can see that there are pages from the May 1964 Philadelphia Inquirer sticking out.  SO FREAKING COOL. 

This ironing board is yet another illustration of what I love about shopping the way that I do.  Sure, my house is full of unusual things - a sarcophagus, a WWII dummy cartridge, now a milk scale.  And there are some things which are semi-valuable, like antique books or glassware.  But even my most practical things are so much more interesting than their retail equivalents.  When you buy secondhand, even your ironing board can be neat.

pluck and flush.

When I was in high school, I had a friend who was bitten by a tick. He told me a thrilling tale about trying to get the pest off by burning it with a lighter. He killed the tick and singed some leg hairs. Then he fretted about Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever for a week or two.

I didn't see what the fuss was about. When I was growing up, I was bitten by a fair share of ticks. That's what happens when you tromp around in the woods and play with outdoor pets - you get parasites. Whenever I found a tick on me, I would just pluck it off and flush it down the toilet. Then I would tell my mom, who would ask whether it had been attached. If I said no, she would respond "Good," and the matter was done. If I said yes, she would say "Hmm," and the matter was still pretty much over. I knew that ticks carried diseases, but I figured that they must be such rare occurrences that it wasn't a big worry. If my mother wasn't worried about her favorite child, then I wasn't worried either.

Ticks have made a resurgence in my life since we brought an animal into the house. They gave her a dose of Frontline at the shelter, but I've still found two ticks happily sucking away her mutty blood. I plucked them off and flushed them down the toilet. You know, as far as deaths go, being flushed down the toilet is probably one of the worst. You just have to hope you die before you get to the septic tank.

More concerning is that Josh has been the host of five ticks - three attached, two still looking for just the right spot. He found the first one slurping on his knee. After taking the appropriate measure of plucking and then flushing, he promptly freaked out.

I'll just let you in on a secret. Josh is a bit of a hypochondriac. Anytime he gets a little cough or a rash or a bump, he obsesses over it for days. I am less than patient when this happens. Maybe that's because he frequently finds some way to blame it on me. Somehow, I gave him Sealpox, even though I haven't been bitten by any seals, and I don't seem to be showing any of the symptoms.

So my general impatience with his hypochondria, in combination with my blase attitude about ticks, added up to me being not all that worried about a silly little tick bite. I've had dozens of tick bites - no, hundreds! Stop doing internet searches for Lyme disease and come snuggle. He eventually would come snuggle, but only after checking me for ticks. I am not even kidding about that.

After a couple of days, I happened to see his bite, probably while he was examining it for the eightieth time that hour. The scab had turned black, was a bit oozy, and there was a dark red blotch about an inch in diameter. I have never seen a tick bite look like that, and I've had hundreds - no, thousands! - of tick bites. Alright, now I understand your concern. It didn't look like the pictures of Lyme disease on the internet, but it sure looked like something bad.

The thing is, Josh continues to be without health insurance. As much as he would like to run to the doctor, he has to use the wait-and-see approach. It's amazing how many things just clear up on their own. Our strategy was to wait until the next week, and if it still looked gross, then he would go to the doctor. Despite having a clear plan of action, which always makes me feel better, he still looked at his leg with furrowed brow approximately twenty thousand times a day.

The following Monday, his tick bite continued to scare even the likes of a country girl like me, so he went to the CVS Minute Clinic. The lady there took one look at his leg and told him to take his Lyme diseased self down to Urgent Care. The doctor there said he wasn't sure what it was, but agreed with my assessment that it wasn't good and put him on some antibiotics. The doc told him that this stuff - doxycyline - kills pretty much everything except for MRSA. Of course, that offhand remark convinced Josh that he had MRSA. If he happened to also have anthrax or the bubonic plague, though, he's good to go now.

Here's a brief interlude to say nice things about the doctor at Urgent Care, whose name I do not know. He was apparently very understanding about the fact that Josh was without insurance. There is a blood test that they can do to check for Lyme, but the doctor opted not to do it. Even if Josh did have Lyme, the treatment would be the same - really dang strong antibiotics. The doctor also called the pharmacy and told them to charge the generic price ($10), rather than the full price ($40). Being without insurance often means being without treatment, but sometimes you've got a red and black oozing tick bite and you've got to suck it up and shell out the cash. It's nice that some doctors are willing to work with him.

After only a couple of days on the meds, the bite cleared up beautifully. And then Josh got a couple more bites, which he agonized over. But he still had twelve more days of antibiotics to take, so why worry? I am concerned about what we will do if this continues to happen. Anthrax or no, it's probably not good to be on antibiotics for an extended period of time.

The funny thing is that I haven't had a single tick on me. Either they are all hiding somewhere that is not visually accessible to me, or they're just not interested. It must be because I'm a country girl. They can tell it does no good to bite me, after thousands - no, millions! - have already tried.

cookie cake.

Like many offices, we have birthday celebrations. My only complaint with these little parties is that our birthdays are not more evenly distributed. In May, we get called into the break room for dessert about once a week. But then in September, there is a goody drought. Maybe we should consider this factor during the hiring process.

"I'm sorry, Phil, you're incredibly qualified and we really need to fill this position; however, we were looking for a Virgo."

The day of the party, a blue folder is passed around. Within this folder is a greeting card and a list of all the employee names. When you sign the card, you're supposed to cross out your name and then hand the blue folder to someone else on the list whose name has not been crossed out. It's all done with the utmost secrecy, as if the person did not know it was their birthday. The surprise is further ruined by the fact that the lady who buys the goodies asks what kind of sugary snack the person wants. Well, it's not always sugary. One guy is kind of a health nut (fruit) and another is on Atkins (meat and cheese tray). The rest of us know what birthdays are about, so we ask for cake or pie or cookies or ice cream bars.

Every once in a while, someone will be unable to decide between cookies and cake, and we'll end up with a cookie cake. This is basically one giant chocolate chip cookie which has icing on it. It's cut up into slices and served like a pizza.

I'm here to report that the cookie cake is crap. It's a waste of a perfectly good birthday wish, maybe the only birthday wish that ever consistently comes true. If you want cookies, wish for cookies. If you want cake, wish for cake. But this bastard son of cookie and cake is an abomination. It satisfies neither craving and just leaves you with a gross, sugary, fake dairy taste in your mouth. A glass of milk cannot save you.

Cookie cake is not worth the calories, the money, or the experience of eating it. I gotta tell you, my threshold for free dessert being worth the calories is incredibly low. I did not even know that it existed until I tried cookie cake. I do alright managing to resist junk food at the grocery store, and if I don't bring it into the house, I'm perfectly content not eating it. But when it's sitting there in the break room, waiting to be eaten, then I lose all sense of self-control. I am like a child who has not yet learned the rules of sharing, except I have learned the rules, so I mostly try to sneak in and get a piece when no one is looking.

Whereas on cookie cake days, I can sit idly by and watch other people consume it while I feel sorry for them. Suckers.

HOWEVER: You can make homemade cookie cake, and it is freaking amazing. In fact, you could make this tonight, because you probably already have all these ingredients.

Cookie Cake
From Alosha's Kitchen

• 2 c all-purpose flour


• 1 t baking soda


• 1/2 t kosher salt


• 3/4 c (12 T) unsalted butter, softened


• 1/2 c sugar


• 3/4 c packed light brown sugar


• 1 large egg


• 2 t vanilla extract


• 1 bag (11.5 oz) chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Use a mixer to cream together the butter and sugars. Mix in egg and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix until they are just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Put dough in a 12-inch cast iron or other ovenproof skillet, and spread so that you have one layer completely covering the bottom of the pan. Bake 40 - 45 minutes, or until edges are brown and top is golden. Be careful to not overbake, as it will keep cooking in the pan once you take it out of the oven. Cool on a wire rack in pan, 15 to 20 minutes.

Notes - I do not have a 12-inch cast iron skillet. But I do have a 10.5-inch and a 5-inch. I did the math, and it was close enough for me. Plus, the 5-inch skillet is really cute and would make a great individual cookie cake for someone's birthday. If you have a similar situation, you might need to increase the cooking time.

If you have ice cream, it needs to be involved. If you don't, it's still pretty dang good.

bogeyman.

Really, Saddam Hussein was the bogeyman of my childhood. By the time September 11 happened, I was eighteen. And while there was a new bogeyman to fear, there was also a lot of blame being distributed to entities with funny names - the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan. And then Iraq and Saddam got pulled back in there again. It was all very confusing.

After Saddam was executed, I found and watched the cell phone video of his hanging. It's the sort of thing that you seek out and then afterwards wish you hadn't. The video quality was terrible, for which I am grateful. At the end, there he was, the bogeyman, swinging. He was just a man after all, and then he wasn't even that.

I logged on to my work computer this morning and read that Osama bin Laden was finally dead. I was stunned, because up until then, it had been a very regular kind of day. I had hit the snooze button too many times. I'd read the advice column in the paper while waiting for my tea to steep. And then it became a momentous day, even though the moment was actually yesterday. Then again, 9/11 had started out as a normal sort of day, too.

And then I read a bunch more - articles, blogs, reactions from politicians, obituaries that had been written years ago (Whoever wrote most of the copy of the New York Times obituary has since died; how depressing to be outlived by the subject of a pre-written obit). There's a whole spectrum of views out there. Many of them are jubilant and triumphant. Others pay lip service to the idea that you shouldn't celebrate the death of a human being, then go on to say that this particular guy deserved it. Still others compare bin Laden's body count to that of the two wars that were started in his name and the loss of individual liberty for the sake of national security.

In all that reading, I was hoping to find someone else who had figured out what I was feeling and put it into words, since I am apparently unable to. I'm not at all sorry that bin Laden is dead. Justice, as far as we humans understand it, has been served. Mostly I wonder why I don't feel more. First I was stunned, and then just...well, not really anything.

Here is one thing I feel: I'm happy for the President. Just last week, I listened while someone told me that Obama was weak. I should have responded that recognizing that there are other options besides force is not the same as weakness. I did not say that, because political discussions turn me into a tense mash of mush. I am glad that Obama will get credit for this assassination, and I hope that it helps him get re-elected. He seems to be the only adult left in the room a lot of the time.

But I'm not celebrating in the streets. The fact that such a person existed at all is too depressing to make his death a festive affair. The fact that he is finally gone seems to have given a lot of people some closure, and I'm glad for them, even though I can't help but think that nothing is really closed. One less bogeyman is a good, good thing, but there will always be more.

give me your answer do.

Part of me was relieved when the guy told me that it had already been sold.


Part of me still wants it.

the cartman.

I used to think that dog toys were silly. They were the kind of thing that over-enthusiastic pet owners wasted their money on, because they could not differentiate between animals and people. The pet industry does not help, with their aisles of brightly colored packages featuring pictures of happy and cute dogs. This thing will make your dog happy. Don't you want him to be happy? What are you, some kind of puppy-hater?

While the industry does take advantage of people who love their animals, I very quickly came to the conclusion that dog toys are a requirement, at least if you own a dog. Otherwise, you're probably still wasting your money.

The day before we were going to pick up Remix, I went to a retail store, where I picked up things that I knew to be actual necessities - leash, collar, food. I specifically went to Wal-Mart rather than an actual pet store. I do not trust pet stores. They offer more selection; you can buy a collar for a medium-sized dog in just about any color you like. But the cost for carrying so many colors is built right in to the price of each individual item, and in the end, you will pay more for something that does the same thing. At Wal-Mart, they had three colors: black, red, and blue. I like red.

I also wanted to get a toy. At that point, I did not believe in them, but I had been suffering from a bad case of Puppy Anticipation for a couple of weeks. I was already smitten with my new dog that I did not yet have, and I wanted to buy her something she would like. While Wal-Mart only has three collar choices, the toy selection is much greater. That's where the money is. You'll probably only buy one collar, but you might fill your buggy with toys.

I was quickly overwhelmed by the different varieties of playthings. There are things to throw, things to chew, things to pull on. Many of them had squeakers inside, and I felt conspicuous squeezing toy after toy that made a ridiculous noise. I had no idea whether dogs liked any of this crap, much less what my specific one would want to play with. I was tempted by the one that looked like a rubber chicken, but it did not seem very durable. I was leaning towards a tug-of-war toy, because I personally like to play tug-of-war with dogs. So I found something called a "DogZilla," which was a knotted rope inside a rubber chewy thing. I was pleased with myself for escaping the dog toy aisle with only one item. Take that, pet care industry! You will not take advantage of my love for my dog.

Back at DogZilla Corp., they smile and say, "Just you wait."

Even after dropping $25 at a - gasp! - retail store, I decided that it would be good to check out the thrift stores to see what kind of pet options they had. The answer is none, really. They don't have a pet section, except for the occasional terrarium. I have spent enough time in the used marketplace to know about this limitation, which is why I went to Wal-Mart for the things I definitely would need. Thrift stores do have a lot of stuffed animals. Back in December, I had found a stuffed Mario that we gave to Josh's brother's dog. I felt ridiculous giving a dog a Christmas present, but I have a great fondness for that particular dog, it was only a buck-fifty, and it was a lot of fun to see Mario in the mouth of a Rottweiler. I was willing to buy a couple of cheap toys to give to our new dog for the sole purpose of her destroying them. Here dog, go nuts. I dug around in the bin of stuffed animals and found an Eric Cartman and an inexplicable green lobster that I kindof wanted for myself. They were fifty cents each.

The day after we became dog-owners, Josh sent me a text message with a picture of Remix chewing on Cartman. Fifty cents well spent, in my opinion.

The funny thing is that Remix loved the Cartman. She would happily play tug-of-war with the DogZilla, but it was the Cartman that she carried around the house in her mouth. She was destroying it, sure. By the time I got home that day, there was a hole in his feet and big wads of stuffing on the floor (which is thankfully very easy to clean up). But when she was not ripping it apart, she was very gentle with it. She trotted along behind us from room to room, and then once we settled in a place, she would plop down on the floor and go back to extracting fluff from its innards. "Toy" to a dog means "something to be destroyed," because that's apparently how they have fun. Still, she seemed to be savoring it. She would chew on it as she fell asleep, and so she would end up sleeping with her front legs around it, like they were snuggling. Guys, my dog is freakin' cute.

Even with her careful handling, it was clear that the Cartman's days were limited. She was surely capable of obliterating it within the hour if she wanted, but instead it took about three days. After that, he was still mostly together, but the majority of the fluff had been removed and I guess she lost interest. Let's do the math: three days worth of happily occupied dog was fifty cents, which puts us at five dollars a month. I think I can do even better, given a bag sale at a church yard sale. It's possible that a $5 chew toy would last longer, but I put some value on watching her play with a recognizable character.

While she was ripping apart the Cartman, we noticed that she was not doing that to anything else. We thanked the shelter gods for giving us such a well-behaved dog. She clearly had the power and the inclination to destroy, yet she was thoughtfully limiting it to the one item we allowed. What a good dog, we thought. We planned to just keep buying her cheap used stuffed animals for her to massacre on her own time. We decided that we would always refer to the toy of the moment as the "Cartman." Where's your Cartman, girl? Where is it?

One night, she started chewing on one of the blankets we had folded up to use as a dog bed. In the morning, we found stuffing on the floor, a sight that has become ubiquitous in our house during the past couple of weeks. Our dog is apparently very interested in fluff-extraction. Well, we reasoned, it was old and there was probably already fluff coming out of it. Plus, we did give it to her. If later we had to spend a dollar on a new blanket at a yard sale, that was no big deal. Then another day, the day after she lost interest in the first Cartman, Josh had to retrieve my shoe from her mouth. Then I had to stop her from chewing on the futon cover. One morning, I found her in the library next to a book (from the 1860s) that showed clear gnawing marks. Bad Remix.

I read an article about how to stop your dog from chewing on your stuff. It basically said to keep your stuff away from the dog, and also just go ahead and start making peace with the fact that something will be destroyed, and it will probably be something you really liked. That was not the kind of advice I was looking for. I wanted a clear list of steps that I could complete in like five minutes, and then forever after that, Remix would never be caught with my shoe in her mouth again.

That's when I figured out that dog toys are necessary. They are a bribe, a distraction. Here, you may maim this however you want, just don't bother anything else in the house. It's like the dog comes to you one day and says, "You got a real nice futon mattress right here. This is new, isn't it? My guess is that you bought it within the last year. Bet it was expensive. It would be a shame if something happened to it. A real shame." And so you give her a stuffed green lobster to keep her happy. The pre-Remix me would have said that the dog needs to be properly trained until she doesn't chew on stuff, but I realize now that this is what dogs do. They chew. If you keep them in the house, they chew on things in there. If we can keep her in Cartmans such that she leaves our shoes and mattresses and books and furniture alone, then that is a deal that I am willing to make with her.

And if I can fulfill my part of the deal without having to go to the pet store, then that is just gravy.

finish your thought.

I was there for a poetry reading. That's not strictly true; I was there for a poet. When I was an adolescent, I used to go places to meet boys. Now I was here because a boy that I had met had co-founded a poetry club. Sometimes, when I'm feeling much too old to be out late at a downtown bar or a poetry reading, I think about telling my adolescent self that the boy I had picked out was a rock star and poet. She would have thought that was so thoroughly fantastic that maybe she would lend me some of her energy and lust for life so I could get through the night. Life is happening, pay attention.

"You look tired. Good time last night?"

"What was last night?" I remembered being up late, but couldn't remember what we had done. "Oh. Yeah." We'd had friends over for dinner.

I had no bottled youth, so I settled for a beer. The bar was trying to get rid of all the seasonal beers from the winter, so they were selling them for two bucks a pop. I ordered some calamari, too, because when there is an opportunity to eat fried squid with a zesty dipping sauce, one should take it.

Aside from poetry, there was a guy with a guitar and another fellow doing live painting. That's what Josh called it, "live painting." I told him that all painting was live. I painted my own house live and on location. Maybe I should have sold tickets. Anyway, what with the poems and the guitar and the painting, I guess the point was that there was art happening there for those who wanted to be patrons of it.

I don't get poetry. I've tried, I promise. There are poems that I enjoy, but more often I find my mind wandering away as my reading turns to skimming before I give up altogether. It used to be the way I read recipes before I learned to cook. Poetry seems like unnecessary complication, at least in form if not also in word choice. It's a piece of writing that has been given a structure, and I don't understand why. Why is this written as a poem and not a paragraph?

The calamari was not good. It was well-fried, not too greasy, but the squid itself was rubbery. Very disappointing. I decided to have soup and asked the waiter to tell me which was the best of the three offerings. This is something that my brother does - he asks the wait staff what the best thing on the menu is and then he just orders it on their word. I admire his style, his ability to try something new as recommended by someone who may not care or have terrible taste. I've been trying to do this more, but I am not ready for complete trust, so I narrow the question. Just give me the best soup. And another beer.

I have no idea if the poetry was good. I liked the first reader, who was a professor at NC State. Her poems were like scenes from a sad movie. But they were beautiful, and I could relate to them. I've personally never had an affair with a slow but sweet boy in the California heat, but I've been caught up in a moment, even one that lasts a whole season. At the end of those kinds of moments, you look back and wonder who you had been that something like that would happen to you.

Josh read one that he had written just the night before, the night that was so long and late that I had already forgotten what I'd done. He wrote it after our guests had left, at his writing table in his library, while I drifted off to sleep in the leather chair. I've come to think of it as my chair, even though the library is his room. But that's where I sit, and I think he is so happy that I want to be in his room that he lets me take the more comfortable chair. The dog also thinks its her chair, but we are snugglers, so there is no conflict.

I would like to tell my adolescent self that one of the best things about dating a rock star and poet is that you know where he gets his material. A reference will come up in a poem or a lyric and I can smile to myself, knowing why that thing was on his mind that day. It's like our secret, the thing that redeems having to share him with so many. In the poem that he had written while I was falling asleep in his chair, he used a new word he'd discovered recently: frisson. All the other people who were listening might wonder where a man gets a word like that, while I enjoy my private knowledge that he got it from a Harry Potter book.

The other poems were fine, I guess. The restaurant filled up with people who were not there to listen to their boyfriend's poetry club, and it became harder to hear every word. My soup arrived. It was truly awful. The chicken pieces were dried up and chewy, and the citrus flavor was overwhelming.

As promised, there was live painting. A guy stood to the side of the microphone and painted a picture of a man grasping a pen while words came at him from an indistinct and gritty cityscape. Despite my mockery, I like live painting. It was like watching a Bob Ross show, but modern and edgy. I wondered if the artist was just making it up as he went along, thinking to himself that he would just add a bleak deserted building here, a dreary little tree right over there.

At the end of the readings, they announced that it was time to play a poetry game. This club that Josh is in - they basically get together and come up with a prompt, then everyone writes a poem on the spot. They read them aloud, then critique. I sort of played it once, at a Christmas party where I had consumed an immoderate amount of spiked egg nog. I wrote on the little slips of paper, then hurriedly crammed them in my pocket rather than share them with the group. I'm pretty sure how they were all about how I don't get poetry. I've always had a hard time being open with my writing. I like having enough time to edit and revise, so I don't have to put myself out there until I feel like I'm presenting my best. So this whole write a poem and then read it out load was terrible. I can't even write poetry. I was just trying to impress a boy.

They explained the rules of the poetry game, the most important being "Finish your thought." They handed out little slips of paper for people to write on. The guest readers and a couple of confident friends took them. The prompt was the painting itself, which had been created live before us. They stood around it, looking at this still-wet piece of art that had been created while we were all sitting around, listening to poetry, and not enjoying the calamari.

I ripped a piece of paper out of a notebook in my purse and wrote a haiku.

I just want to thank
y'all for coming out tonight.
Support live painting!

I folded it up and slipped it to Josh, who smiled and offered to read it to the group for me. I shook my head no in alarm, because even a tiny haiku is twelve syllables too much sharing. But I did share. Just not with everybody.

I feel bad for not understanding this thing that he loves. I'm not a musician either, but at least I have the capacity to appreciate music. Whereas Josh can read me a poem and I will have absolutely no reaction to it, other than the sinking feeling that he would be better off with a girl who thought in lines of verse rather than lines of code. He doesn't seem to care, and he can't read code, so I guess we're even. People act like I must be so smart because I write software, and they didn't even know that software was something that was written. I think my brain is just wired the right way for this job. I like it, but it's not for everyone. I guess neither is poetry.

singing and dancing hoodlums.

Summer Stock
This is one of three movies that paired Gene Kelly and Judy Garland (another being For Me and My Gal). In this one, Judy plays a farmer who lets a theatre troupe (led by Director Gene) put on a play in her barn in exchange for chores. Eventually, Farmer Judy is forced to take the leading role, discovering her true calling! People fall in love, there is singing and dancing. We are not told for sure, but presumably Judy does not lose her farm and Gene becomes very successful on Broadway.

I guess this movie fits in the big bucket of musicals which are fine, but not particularly special in any way. There are funny bits and poignant bits and the songs are pretty good, but you get the feeling that the only thing keeping this movie afloat is the cast. If it were starring a lesser pair, it would pretty much suck.

Songs and Dance: well, excellent, of course. If you like singing, there is Judy and if you like dancing, there is Gene. There are a couple of scenes where Farmer Judy is just going about her day - getting dressed, driving a tractor - and she's singing. A lot of people don't like musicals because they find it unrealistic that people just sing all the time, but I think that if I were Judy Garland, I would sing ALL THE TIME. I would sing while getting dressed and driving a tractor, plus while clipping my toenails or waiting in line at the DMV. I don't know if Judy actually did that, but I like to think that she did. The same is a bit true for Gene - even when he's walking, he's dancing just a little bit. Must've driven his downstairs neighbors crazy.

The movies features "Get Happy," which you've probably heard. It was inspired by a movement within African American Gospel Music. Getting happy means to receive the Holy Spirit, which makes you want to sing. I'm not going to post that song, though. I'm going to post Gene Kelly dancing with a newspaper and a creaky floorboard.



Will I Make Josh Watch It: Nope.

Carmen Jones
When I first started watching this movie, having basically no idea what it was about, I was amazed that I had not heard of it before. It takes songs from Bizet's opera Carmen, throws some Oscar Hammerstein II words on it, and sets it in the rural South with an all-black cast. That sounds awesome! Then I watched some more of it, and I realized that for all its grand ambitions, this movie is a swing and a miss.

What bothered me the most about this film was that it was supposedly a black movie, but there was nothing really black about it other than the people. There were occasional half-hearted attempts at dialect in the dialogue and lyrics, but they seemed to come and go. I expected some black culture. It's possible that the point was just to have a popular musical film with all black actors, and maybe for the time that was revolutionary enough. But I was repeatedly disappointed whenever there was a musical number. I wanted rhythm and blues, and what I got was Bizet and Hammerstein.

Maybe that's not fair. I wonder if I would have liked the movie if it had been cast with the standard lily-white actors that are usually in musicals from this era. That way, I would not have been distracted by whether it was a "black" movie or not. This movie seemed little more than just an all-black version of Oklahoma!. Which is fine, I guess, but it could have been so much more. We already have Oklahoma! and fifty thousand-million musicals just like it.

Okay, I probably would not have liked it anyway, since the plot follows the slow decline of a good and honorable man after he falls in love with a loose woman, our titular character. He shoulda stuck with the sweet and stable Cindy Lou, the girl he had in the first place. We're supposed to see Carmen as this beautiful and tragic figure, but I just relate more to nice girls. How can I relate to Carmen when the movie is telling me that nice boys everywhere will drop girls like me for girls like her?

Songs and Dance: You already know the tunes. Bizet's opera has managed to sink into the public consciousness through cartoons and commercials and whatever else sneaks classical music into our lives. And Hammerstein's lyrics were excellent as well. I would like to say nice things about the singing of Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge's singing, but they were both dubbed. So I'll just say that he was handsome and she was lovely. Pearl Bailey was not dubbed, and she was wonderful (and lovely).

Here's Pearl Bailey singing "Beat Out That Rhythm on the Drum." It really illustrates perfectly my problem with the whole movie. She's singing about that bump-bump-bumpin' in the music, but this particular song surely doesn't have any bump-bump-bumpin'. And then there is the dancing. Seriously? I saw that same exact dance in the barn-raising scene in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.


To the movie's credit, the drummer is Max Roach, who was a famous jazz percussionist (and was born in North Carolina).

Will I Make Josh Watch It: Nope. He wandered in with about ten minutes left and called it a blaxploitopera.

West Side Story
Man, Stephen Sondheim sure can write lyrics. I feel so silly saying that this movie is good, because everybody knows this movie is good. But this was the first time I had ever seen it, so I'll just say, this movie is good, y'all.

For the other two people who haven't seen it, this movie is yet another retelling of Romeo and Juliet, but with dancing street gangs. Shakespeare never saw it coming.

One of the best things about this movie is the way it goes back and forth between the two plots. One storyline is the continuing feud and upcoming rumble between the Sharks and the Jets. The other is the budding romance between Tony and Maria. So you have a scene with some hoodlums, the singing and dancing kind. Those scenes are incredibly depressing, because everyone is caught in this inner city quagmire. Even if they did manage to stop killing each other over territory, everyone's lives would pretty much still be rotten by my privileged middle-class standards. The white kids are talking about their terrible home lives, what with their abusive and drug-addicted parents, while the Puerto Ricans are talking about the awful way they are treated, but it's still better than the old country.

And then! You have Tony and Mario, who are in love. Their love creates a little bubble for them and even as everyone around them is caught up in this gang war, they are oblivious. So you've just spent a scene being thoroughly depressed at how much it sucks to be an immigrant, when all of a sudden you are bombarded with sweetness and light. It's a good thing, because this movie is pretty dark.

Songs and Dance: Wonderful, all the way through. There are plenty of songs that you might recognize, including "I Feel Pretty" and "Something's Coming."

I'm going to post two clips, because this movie is just that good. First, the Jets singing about why they're such bad kids. You might recognize Russ Tamblyn as Riff, who is just so cute, especially for a singing and dancing hoodlum.


And since I'm equal opportunity here, a song by the Sharks. The women are singing about how awesome it is in America, while the men counter with the troubles of being immigrants. Everybody dances!


Will I Make Josh Watch It: He watched it with me, then looked up the lyrics to "Gee, Officer Krupke" because he thought it would be fun for his band to cover.

with all the frills upon it.

As a child, it was a family tradition to buy a new dress and matching hat every Easter. Looking back, this seems to be very out of place in the general theme of my childhood. We were frugal people and not fashion-forward. This was a girls-only activity, and I don't think the boys got new Easter pants or anything like that. I wonder now where my mother got this idea. I seem to remember her being as excited about buying the new clothes as we were to pick them out and get them. Maybe she liked the fact that there was an excuse to spend a little money on ourselves.

This tradition obviously extends outside our family, as Irving Berlin didn't write songs just for us. New clothes at Easter go along with the whole theme of renewal. Easter was also the first opportunity to be frivolous after Lent. It's like Mardi Gras, except with less drunkenness and more, uh, flowery hats. Okay, it's nothing like Mardi Gras.

We would make a special trip to the big city of Hickory on some Sunday afternoon before Easter to go to all the department stores that we didn't have in my hometown. The racks would be filled with pastels to attract us and other women who were eager to start wearing feminine colors again after a winter of black and brown. I don't remember where we bought the hats, and if I had to go out and buy an Easter hat right now, I'd be pressed to think of a place to go (I guess I'd go to the thrift store, like always). But the stores must have had a few for the holiday, knowing that there were still some mothers and grandmothers out there who wanted bonnets for their little girls. I got new shoes, too, and also those constricting symbols of innocent girlhood - a pair of white tights. We would come home and model our new clothes for Daddy, who endured the fashion show with remarkable patience. Or maybe it was indifference.

The clothes and hats and shoes would be put away until Easter morning. Left to my own devices, I would have put them on every day after school and gone around in the goat pen in them. I'm sure the goats would have appreciated them very much; the hat in particular would have been tasty indeed. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio says "Did'st thou not fall out with a Tailor for wearing his new Doublet before Easter?" In my case, it would be more like "Did'st thou not fall out with thy mother for letting a bovidae nibble on thy new hat?"

Come Easter Sunday, I'd get up early just to get dressed, being very careful about not ruining the tights, and revel in the newness of my outfit. At church, I would be sweet and demure, looking like a proper little girl from a picture book one day a year, instead of the kind of little girl who would have to be told not to wear her nice clothes into a goat pen. In an effort to match my pretty and clean clothes, I would try very hard to be still and quiet while the preacher talked about the stuff that Easter is actually about.

At some point, probably somewhere in my adolescence, the tradition faded out. But there was one Easter, probably while I was in college, where my mother and I wore hats again. We had these nice sun hats that we'd bought in Australia for going out on a day trip on a boat. We put on pretty spring dresses that we had lurking in our closets, donned our Australia hats and went to Easter breakfast at church. We were the only people with headwear, and everyone there was sure to comment on it. It was a sweet mother-daughter morning, feeling special and dressed up in our outfits, but a little embarrassed at all the attention.

And that's my bit of holiday reminiscing for the day. Happy Easter.

poor people food.

Lately, I've been trying to make simpler food. I'm doing it for all the usual reasons, to save time, to save money, to build up a repetoire of dishes that save time and money. Luckily for me, Josh really responds to this kind of cuisine. We call it "poor people food." Poor people have never had much time or money, so there is a long and rich history of making really tasty food with neither. Once the rich people allowed them to learn to read and write, the poor people thoughtfully wrote down these recipes and shared them, so now even us middle-class people can benefit from their knowledge.

Last month, I wanted to make a Mardi Gras meal, a simple one. That's another thing that Josh loves - cajun and creole food. It's the seafood and the spice. There were plenty of recipes out there to choose from, many of them complicated. But I found one that seemed easy enough, and I already had all the ingredients waiting for me in my pantry or fridge.

Andouille Sausage Creole
Cheesy Creole Grits

Simple is right. This whole thing took about an hour from start to finish, and that includes chopping time. Oh, and it was really amazingly delicious. This meal instantly became a new favorite in the house.

But, Sandra!, you say. Andouille sausage is not cheap. How can this qualify as poor people food? The thing about making poor people food from other locales is that some of the ingredients which are common and inexpensive to them might be sort of exotic to you. I happened to have some andouille sausage that I had bought (on sale, with double coupon) hanging out in the freezer. Now it's all gone, because I made this dish again last week and used up the last bit of it. While I will still clip coupons and look out for the sale, I don't think this dish requires fancy sausage with a french name.

In fact, I would argue that the dish doesn't require sausage at all. You could substitute any ole meat (or even faux-meat?) in this dish. Brown a little ground beef with some spices, grill some chicken and cut it up, throw in some shrimp. I dare one of you to try it with hot dogs. I think this dish is probably pretty versatile in terms of what you can put in it, which is another hallmark of poor people food. Poor people make do with what they have.

One more thing - do not underestimate the cheesy grits. A lot of the spice and all of the cheese lives in the grits. To not include that would take away a lot of yum. But if you hate good food grits or if you just don't have any around, then you could probably use rice instead. Make do if you have to, but do make this food.

remix.

After losing the first puppy, I first sulked and then was motivated. After losing Madison, I became determined. We felt at war with the Universe, which we had previously thought was plopping a puppy in our laps but was now obviously plotting against us. I checked the animal shelter website multiple times a day to pick our potential pets and monitor which ones had been adopted. Meanwhile, Josh started working on a fence. He dug holes nearly three feet deep in the clay soil with those secondhand post-hole diggers. At the end of the day, he would tell me about his progress and also about the biceps he was developing. I was more interested in the latter, but I never cared about the fence.

Again, I made peace with our second lost dog in a week by thinking about the person on the other end of it. Some guy had lost his beautiful and sweet blue pit bull, and no doubt he thought he would never see her again. Isn't that the way it goes? When a pet is gone, you call around and you put up posters to appease your heartbroken kid, but you have to know that your chances aren't good. But this guy called the animal shelter and there she was, his lost dog. Despite what we thought, Madison was never ours. We wanted a dog, but we weren't trying to take anyone else's dog. Trust me, there are plenty to go around. It is all-you-care-to-handle pit bulls out there.

The next weekend, we went back to the shelter, bringing along our receipt from Madison like a gift certificate good for one dog, please. We could have gone to any number of other shelters in the area. I talked to a guy who got his dog at a no-kill shelter. He described it as a dog paradise, a big farm in the country where the puppies may run freely, without fear of the gas chamber. I respect that, but I can't help but think that adopting from a no-kill place is saving a dog that wasn't about to die, though perhaps it opens up space at the no-kill shelter for a dog that is still at risk. Either way, we got one dog saved and fifty bazillion still at risk. The Wake County Animal Shelter is big and nice and well-maintained, but they are facing up to the reality that there are too many dogs and cats. Euthanizing animals is a unpleasant solution to a difficult problem. No-kill shelters, while good in that they are providing space for more animals, aren't dealing with the problem at all. They just act like they're above it.

Heck, I don't know. This is just what I've been thinking about while looking at the profiles of dogs on the animal shelter website. It seemed like there were half a dozen new dogs every single day. Help control the pet population. Spay and neuter your pets.

At the shelter, I was dismayed to find out two things: 1. the dogs that I had picked out on the website were not there at all, and 2. Josh still pretty much only wanted a pit bull. I had come to think that losing our blue pit bull was maybe a blessing, because when we put down the deposit for her, we had not done any research. You all know that people don't like pit bulls. You know from that gut reaction that you got the first time I said we might be getting one. Even if you never ever had any interaction with one, you felt like maybe it wasn't a good choice for a nice family pet. That's how Josh and I felt anyway. But then we did all that reading about them, we met a couple of really sweet ones, and we looked at twenty-five (thirty? forty?) of the big-headed cuties who needed a place to live. Unfortunately, some people have turned that instant distrust of pit bulls into policy. Some insurance companies will not give you a homeowner's policy if you own a dog of certain specific breeds that they deem dangerous. The reason given is increased frequency of bites and increased damage if a bite occurs. They might have a point on that last one, seeing as how pit bulls were bred to combine the strong jaws of a bulldog with the perserverence of a terrier. Good job, selective breeding, you succeeded!

Me, I say let people have whatever dog they want. The insurance company can put a limit on how much damage they'll cover if it bites someone or they can charge more for the policy.

I emailed my insurance company and asked, oh so casually, if they had any restrictions on dog breeds. Why yes, of the following breeds: pit bull (a.k.a staffordshire terrier), akita, chow, presa canario, rottweiler, sharpei and wolf hybrids (wolf hybrids?!). Assuming there would just be a increase in the cost of my policy, I asked how much more I would have to pay for a year's worth of pit bull (completely hypothetically, of course). She replied that the charge would not go up, as long as the insurance company did not find out. That is baffling advice to receive from your insurance agent, but it does explain how there are so many pit bulls when no one is allowed to have them.

So I had to tell Josh that pit bulls were right out. We passed by cage after cage labelled American Staffordshire Terrier, and some of them were so cute. I felt like a rotten hypocrite for contributing to the continued disenfranchisement of the pit bull when I knew it was just not fair.

I pointed out a couple of hounds that I liked, but Josh was just not interested. He said they were too skinny. He wanted a thick and broad-shouldered dog. We made the rounds through the whole shelter, then came back to one cage with a dog that we were both completely unenthusiastic about. We didn't have to get a dog today, I reminded myself. And then the thought of coming back here to look at more sad dogs, of looking at the website every day was just so depressing that I figured we should give this dog, who was named Daisy, a chance. She was mostly black, with some white on the face, chest, and paws. She was labelled as a lab mix, but we had seen a lot of pits in the past couple of weeks and found her wide jaw very familiar. She was what neither one of us wanted - too much pit bull for me and not enough for him.

But you know what? When you get in the dang kennel with them, it's just over. You pet them and they instantly love you so much. They can't believe that you have finally come to see them, they have been waiting so long for only you. You are already in this doggy death camp, surrounded by misery, but here in this one place is a creature that is beaming pure, uncut love right at you. Must. Rescue. Dog.

So we did. We were thrilled to find that she had been surrendered, which meant that the owner had given her up. There was no waiting period where an owner might swoop in out of nowhere to steal reclaim our dog. And yet, we were twice bitten, which I guess made us frice shy. We agreed to not tell anyone about this new dog, afraid we might jinx it. We had enthusiastically told lots of people about the last two dogs, and we were just tired of having to tell them again later that no, we did not have a dog. There were many opportunities to tell people. My sister asked, and I wanted to tell her to ask again Thursday, nudge-nudge wink-wink. But I was strong, though I suspect that she, like my insurance agent, saw right through it.

But! I just told you! And you're so smart, so you know what that means.

Ladies and germs, may I present to you OUR dog, Remix. She is pure, uncut love.

the pits.

The day after Puppy Disappointment, Josh asked how long before I wanted to go pick out a dog at the shelter. I asked if he had any plans for the afternoon. There was more googling, and I discovered that the Wake County Animal Shelter has an online list of pets available for adoption.

In the throes of my renewed Puppy Anticipation, I somehow forgot that the animal shelter is one of the most depressing places you might care to spend a Sunday afternoon. Cage after cage of dogs of all shapes and sizes. Some of them looked up at you hopefully, and if you stood there for just a second, they would hop up and start with the tail-wagging. Others didn't even turn their heads, as if they'd given up hope of ever being loved by a people. We had talked about getting a puppy, but once at the shelter, it seemed like getting an adult dog, who was far less likely to be adopted than a puppy, would be the better plan. We had felt like good samaritans for offering to rescue a puppy, but we soon realized that there had been tremendous need all along.

I was almost too bummed out to even imagine which dog I might want, because I had to look at fifty others that I would not be able to save. Josh, however, was feeling up to it, so he picked out the biggest pit bull in the place, who was named Patrick and had a humongous head. Every dog that he pointed out was a pit bull. I was surprised at this, since we had previously discussed more houndish options. But then I realized that it was the internet's fault.

During our first phase of Puppy Anticipation, we had both done a lot of research about boxers and pit bulls, because when you haven't got the puppy yet, the best you can do is read about other puppies on the internet. We thought we were getting a breed of dog that much of the country considers to be a menace. We are the type of people to embrace our own eccentricities, so we became full-throated Pit Bull Defenders. We told anyone who would listen that they were unfairly maligned, a dog bred to fight, taught to fight, then hated for being exactly what we made it. Did you know that sometimes the media won't even report on a dog bite incident if the dog in question is not a pit bull? Have you heard about Sergeant Stubby, the most decorated dog in WWI, who used to warn his unit of poison gas and incoming artillery and also caught a German spy?

Fully half the dogs in the shelter were some mix of pit, which the shelter euphemistically labelled American Staffordshire Terrier, or Staffy, in the hopes that you fell in love with the face before you pictured it mauling you. If no one wants this kind of dog, how come are there so many of them around?

So now that Josh had aligned himself with the cause of the pit bull, that's all he wanted. The man likes his underdogs. We settled on a blue one that the shelter had named Madison. We took comfort in the fact she had her complete tail and ears, which meant that she was probably not raised to fight. The shelter people will let you in the kennel to do a meet-and-greet, but they might as well call that the Sucker's Downfall. You get in there with this dog that is even more desparate than a regular dog for love. She started out aloof and trembling, but inched closer with every scratch of the ear before finally trying to give me doggy kisses. She acted like a dog, you know - man's best friend, not a ferocious baby biter. I was still very hesitant about signing up for pit bull ownership, so the shelter employees offered to do a "cat test." I took the California Achievement Test in the third grade, but this was completely different. They put a cat in a cage and then brought in the dog to see what would happen.

This is what happened: Madison walked by the cat in the cage without noticing it, looking up at the lady in hopes of attention. Oh crap, I thought, she's lost her sense of smell. So they turned her to look right at the cage. She sniffed at it, then looked again at the lady. Finally, they let the cat out. Madison sniffed her up and down before looking once more to the lady. The cat calmly walked out, neither animal the slightest bit concerned about the other. I decided that a pit bull that opted to sit nicely rather than eat a cat was just fine with me.

Madison was a stray who had only arrived at the shelter that very day. They give owners a week to claim lost pets before allowing them to be adopted, so we couldn't take her home just yet. I paid my deposit and arranged to pick up my brand new blue pit bull the next week. I prepared my mind once more for being a person with a pit bull. I was ready to tell anyone about how pit bulls are just like any other dog - if you teach one to be mean, it will be. If you give one a loving home, it will be a steadfast friend (okay, and fierce guardian). I imagined us - me, Josh, and Madison - changing the way that people thought about pit bulls. Everywhere we went, people would pet our sweet and pretty dog and think, Huh. And then all the pit bulls at the shelter would be given loving homes, even Patrick, who is 75 pounds and not house-broken.

The next afternoon, right after Josh posted a picture of our soon-to-be dog, the animal shelter called and said that Madison's owner had come by and claimed her. BAM: Pit Bull Disappointment. I never realized it was so hard to get a dog. I thought building the fence was the hard part, but it turns out that it's darn near impossible to get an animal to put inside the fence that we still don't have.