No, actually, I'm waiting until I finish my beer and then I'm heading over to the East Village for a friend's birthday get-together with a bunch of actors with whom I've done a couple of shows. We are all VERY good friends because one of the shows most of us did together was a production of Richard III that was so unutterably ghastly that we feel about each other as I've heard men who fought a war together do - by God, we survived.
This Richard was a production bankrolled by a child psychiatrist who had always wanted to play Richard and had studied the role in acting class and had many fascinating ideas about the production - one of which, God help us, was that it was set in a post-Apocalyptic future (see Mad Max). Therefore we were all dressed in what we could "salvage out of the ruins of civilization." (Yeah, that looked exactly as awful as you think it might.) This shrink was also playing Richard - unfortunately, it wasn't until opening weekend that we discovered that while he'd been spending a year and half thinking about the production, none of those months had been spent learning the lines. The result of this was that whenever the gent managed to remember one of the monologues, he would grin all over his face and deliver it - without reference to whatever act or scene the rest of us happened to be doing at that moment.
And would you believe that was only ONE of the major problems with the show? Suffice it to say, this production has become legendary in NY theatre circles, and you can perhaps understand why the cast is, some years later, still best friends with each other. Who else could understand the hell we've been through?
And I went to a lovely concert today! A friend of a friend couldn't use her Avery Fisher Hall ticket for the matinee and passed it on to me. It was supposed to be Riccardo Mutti conducting, but he got ill, which didn't matter in the least, as it turned out. The first half was a Schubert octet, which was quite nice, although I'm not much of a Schubert fan. It's all a bit lace hanky and silk breeches for me. I'm much happier with Bach fugues and large lashings of Beethoven. I also absolutely LOVE Leonard Bernstein's anything, but most particularly his Mass, which very few people can take at all. Sometimes when I really hate my next door neighbors I blast it through the house. Try it...it takes some getting used to, but I think it's a fascinating piece of work.
But the second half was the Aaron Copland Concerto No. 3 which contains Fanfare for the Common Man, and I adore it. Lots of big striding huge music, with kettle drums and gongs and cymbals and horns...if Schubert tiptoes in wearing his silk breeches, Copland strides in wearing boots and jeans. Just gorgeous. And very nicely conducted by the young (and sudden) conductor, whose name is Michael something (well, the program's downstairs and I'm not).
At least Tracey's birthday party isn't at one of her usual haunts. She has a taste for very loud, very expensive type joints. (The Richard cast members tend to want to, you know, TALK to each other when we're together.) She's a cast member from the second show our gang did together, which was modern, and enormously better than the Richard - of course, watching Britney Spears do Lady Macbeth would probably be better than that Richard. Luckily, this party is in a small Italian restaurant, which should have a reasonably low decibel level.
Ah. 9:30 has struck, even though my computer hasn't got the hang of Daylight Savings Time. I know it's 9:35 because my computer says 8:35. Once or twice a week I click on this and attempt to change it and my computer smiles in a supercilious manner, changes for about an hour, and goes right back to being an hour early...chortling to itself in a snide manner. Well, the hell with it. At least I know what time it is.
Par-tay!!!
Love, Wendy
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday! Yay!
And I'm doing laundry again. I remember that in one of the Star Trek movies (I had a terrible crush on Captain Kirk for a while - not William Shatner, because all of my pals in the business told me he was a terrible prick, but Captain Kirk) there was this thing in Captain Kirk's cabin on the Enterprise, and he threw a crumpled up uniform in it and about 10 seconds later, pulled out a nice fresh uniform. As I recall, it was even on a hanger.
This has GOT to be the best idea I ever heard. I mean, I'm a member of the privileged classes because I actually have an in-house washer and dryer. But the dryer is about a hundred years old and takes for-friggin'-ever to dry stuff, and the washer is really tiny (because the bathroom is really tiny and so is the bathroom door - the whole thing is built for der elves in der Black Forest, which will make no sense whatsoever to anyone who wasn't around when the original Volkswagen came out - the line, of course, was used about the "pregnant roller skate"). Therefore a week's worth of my deeply dull winter office clothing (five days worth of turtlenecks and pants - it's boring, but it's really easy - you add various scarves or necklaces) takes three loads, when you include my raggedy bits of underwear.
Speaking of which, when the government sends me my economic stimulus check, you better believe I am off to Century 21 to dive into the underwear section. I can't wait. Threadbare doesn't even BEGIN to describe it. And Century 21 is about the only place where I can actually find a big selection of bras in my size, which is fairly unusual...34D. I have no back, just bosom. (It's sort of like my problem with hipslung pants, which are supposed to hang on your hips and booty...I got no hips, no booty. Flat, flat, flat. So I spend my days anxiously making sure that nothing slips off altogether, which actually happened with a hip slung linen skirt I got at Old Navy once. Luckily, I hadn't left the house yet, but I got up to do so and the damn skirt fell off. And I don't buy things that sit on my actual waist, because of my long, long legs - makes me look like I'm six inches tall from the waist up and eight feet tall below - what with the bust, the effect is that somebody crossed Mrs. Potatohead with a Barbie...weird.) Evidently bra manufacturers feel that if you are going to have a bust, you've got to have a back to go with it. Therefore, I can find tons of 38D, 40D, even 36D...but almost nothing in 34D.
By the way, as long as I'm wandering around in my underwear here, have you ever checked out the wall of panties at KMart over on Astor Place? KMart tends to cater to a clientele that is rather larger than I am, but their prices are so good that whenever I'm in there I look for nice cotton panties in a size 5/small (which they almost never have). Well, I have found some deeply amazing items. Did you know that there are actually lace thongs in size 12? Given that the normal run of ladies' panty sizes is 5/small, 6/medium and 7/large, think about this for a moment. Size 12 lace thongs. Let your mind conjure up this image. Vow to eat nothing but salad for the rest of your life. No dressing.
Century 21. I used to LOVE this place. This is when I was working downtown in the early '70s, and it was the least chic joint you can imagine. It had concrete floors, and exposed pipes overhead and glaring fluorescent lights - but, oh, my God, the bargains. I bought everything there. And yes, they had all those designer clothes, but it was a little secret known only to us Wall Street workers. They'd advertise, but only things like "Diapers Half Off", "Toothpaste Sale" - that sort of thing.
I got a wonderful suit in there once that I paid something like a hundred bucks for that was originally $700. And I will never forget what happened when I went to pay for it. I was writing them a check (yes, children, there was a time in recent history when not everyone had a credit card) and they asked for ID. I don't drive, so I pulled out my ID, which happens to be my passport. At which point the nice girl behind the counter informed me that it wasn't a legal ID. I gaped at her - a United States Passport isn't a legal ID? Turns out they only accepted drivers' licenses, and I actually don't think this child had ever seen a passport before anyway. They accepted my bank card. Not my ATM card (we didn't have ATMs yet, either, and I'll tell you that trying to catch a cab with all those woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers running around was pretty difficult, too) - my bank card that said I was a depositor at the bank and could cash a check there. No picture, no nothing. Ah, where are the snows of yesteryear?
These days, frankly, I hate Century 21 except for the aforementioned (must stop working at legal firms) underwear. I might just as well shop at Saks, for God's sake. I can't find anything that fits and the racks are always all jumbled up. Anyway (little shopping secret here), Saks has the all-time best half-yearly sales. And if you are in need of decent suits, go to Syms.
And if you are in need of fashion tips, why on earth are you listening to someone who spends October to May in the same five sets of turtlenecks and pants? Fools.
Love, Wendy
This has GOT to be the best idea I ever heard. I mean, I'm a member of the privileged classes because I actually have an in-house washer and dryer. But the dryer is about a hundred years old and takes for-friggin'-ever to dry stuff, and the washer is really tiny (because the bathroom is really tiny and so is the bathroom door - the whole thing is built for der elves in der Black Forest, which will make no sense whatsoever to anyone who wasn't around when the original Volkswagen came out - the line, of course, was used about the "pregnant roller skate"). Therefore a week's worth of my deeply dull winter office clothing (five days worth of turtlenecks and pants - it's boring, but it's really easy - you add various scarves or necklaces) takes three loads, when you include my raggedy bits of underwear.
Speaking of which, when the government sends me my economic stimulus check, you better believe I am off to Century 21 to dive into the underwear section. I can't wait. Threadbare doesn't even BEGIN to describe it. And Century 21 is about the only place where I can actually find a big selection of bras in my size, which is fairly unusual...34D. I have no back, just bosom. (It's sort of like my problem with hipslung pants, which are supposed to hang on your hips and booty...I got no hips, no booty. Flat, flat, flat. So I spend my days anxiously making sure that nothing slips off altogether, which actually happened with a hip slung linen skirt I got at Old Navy once. Luckily, I hadn't left the house yet, but I got up to do so and the damn skirt fell off. And I don't buy things that sit on my actual waist, because of my long, long legs - makes me look like I'm six inches tall from the waist up and eight feet tall below - what with the bust, the effect is that somebody crossed Mrs. Potatohead with a Barbie...weird.) Evidently bra manufacturers feel that if you are going to have a bust, you've got to have a back to go with it. Therefore, I can find tons of 38D, 40D, even 36D...but almost nothing in 34D.
By the way, as long as I'm wandering around in my underwear here, have you ever checked out the wall of panties at KMart over on Astor Place? KMart tends to cater to a clientele that is rather larger than I am, but their prices are so good that whenever I'm in there I look for nice cotton panties in a size 5/small (which they almost never have). Well, I have found some deeply amazing items. Did you know that there are actually lace thongs in size 12? Given that the normal run of ladies' panty sizes is 5/small, 6/medium and 7/large, think about this for a moment. Size 12 lace thongs. Let your mind conjure up this image. Vow to eat nothing but salad for the rest of your life. No dressing.
Century 21. I used to LOVE this place. This is when I was working downtown in the early '70s, and it was the least chic joint you can imagine. It had concrete floors, and exposed pipes overhead and glaring fluorescent lights - but, oh, my God, the bargains. I bought everything there. And yes, they had all those designer clothes, but it was a little secret known only to us Wall Street workers. They'd advertise, but only things like "Diapers Half Off", "Toothpaste Sale" - that sort of thing.
I got a wonderful suit in there once that I paid something like a hundred bucks for that was originally $700. And I will never forget what happened when I went to pay for it. I was writing them a check (yes, children, there was a time in recent history when not everyone had a credit card) and they asked for ID. I don't drive, so I pulled out my ID, which happens to be my passport. At which point the nice girl behind the counter informed me that it wasn't a legal ID. I gaped at her - a United States Passport isn't a legal ID? Turns out they only accepted drivers' licenses, and I actually don't think this child had ever seen a passport before anyway. They accepted my bank card. Not my ATM card (we didn't have ATMs yet, either, and I'll tell you that trying to catch a cab with all those woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers running around was pretty difficult, too) - my bank card that said I was a depositor at the bank and could cash a check there. No picture, no nothing. Ah, where are the snows of yesteryear?
These days, frankly, I hate Century 21 except for the aforementioned (must stop working at legal firms) underwear. I might just as well shop at Saks, for God's sake. I can't find anything that fits and the racks are always all jumbled up. Anyway (little shopping secret here), Saks has the all-time best half-yearly sales. And if you are in need of decent suits, go to Syms.
And if you are in need of fashion tips, why on earth are you listening to someone who spends October to May in the same five sets of turtlenecks and pants? Fools.
Love, Wendy
Thursday, March 27, 2008
First Things First
OK, before anything else happens, I want everyone to run to the closest deli and immediately buy a pint of Haagen Dazs White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle ice cream.
There. Now doesn't everybody feel better? When I am on my deathbed, I think someone should stand by to wave a pint of it under my nose. Wow! Look! Resurrection! (At least until I polish off the pint.)
I am very curious about something. Lately, within the last year or so, I've noticed these signs turning up on the stall door in ladies' rooms all over the place . They say, "Please flush the toilet."
Um, when did that become a problem? Surely it's an automatic gesture for anyone who grew up in a place with flush toilets? (I say this because I used to work in a building whose previous life had been a sweatshop that hired VERY recent immigrants, and those toilets had signs like that in English and something that looked like Asian calligraphy, which made sense to me because I'm sure a lot of those poor girls did NOT grow up with flush toilets.)
But really, almost without exception, I do my temping in large expensive law firms. The ladies in the bathrooms are lawyers or legal secretaries, all of whom are thoroughly educated, and most of whom have fairly advanced degrees. (You laugh at that regarding the secretaries, but legal secretarial work is a lot more lucrative than anything that uses your Master's in English Lit.) Why on earth should these gals need to be reminded to flush the toilet? How has this become a problem? And WHY has it become a problem? Call me deeply confused. And I'm even more confused by the fact that (ugh alert here) it so happens that at least once a week I enter a stall and discover that someone hasn't read the sign. What gives? I know damn well that there aren't all that many automatic flush type toilets floating about (oh, GOOD choice of words), so it's not that people have forgotten how to use a manual one...
And I've been reading the various forms of internet news (because I'm a news junkie) and I just came across a story about Merck, the big pharmaceutical company. They've issued a statement that they're going to do some in-depth testing of one of their asthma drugs because there have been about four cases of suicide in people who've been taking it. One can only hope that their testing is better than their English. The spokesman said that they were coming forward with this news "because suicide is a life-threatening activity."
I have nothing else to say, so in a rare burst of good sense, I think I'll go to bed. Remember to flush!
Love, Wendy
There. Now doesn't everybody feel better? When I am on my deathbed, I think someone should stand by to wave a pint of it under my nose. Wow! Look! Resurrection! (At least until I polish off the pint.)
I am very curious about something. Lately, within the last year or so, I've noticed these signs turning up on the stall door in ladies' rooms all over the place . They say, "Please flush the toilet."
Um, when did that become a problem? Surely it's an automatic gesture for anyone who grew up in a place with flush toilets? (I say this because I used to work in a building whose previous life had been a sweatshop that hired VERY recent immigrants, and those toilets had signs like that in English and something that looked like Asian calligraphy, which made sense to me because I'm sure a lot of those poor girls did NOT grow up with flush toilets.)
But really, almost without exception, I do my temping in large expensive law firms. The ladies in the bathrooms are lawyers or legal secretaries, all of whom are thoroughly educated, and most of whom have fairly advanced degrees. (You laugh at that regarding the secretaries, but legal secretarial work is a lot more lucrative than anything that uses your Master's in English Lit.) Why on earth should these gals need to be reminded to flush the toilet? How has this become a problem? And WHY has it become a problem? Call me deeply confused. And I'm even more confused by the fact that (ugh alert here) it so happens that at least once a week I enter a stall and discover that someone hasn't read the sign. What gives? I know damn well that there aren't all that many automatic flush type toilets floating about (oh, GOOD choice of words), so it's not that people have forgotten how to use a manual one...
And I've been reading the various forms of internet news (because I'm a news junkie) and I just came across a story about Merck, the big pharmaceutical company. They've issued a statement that they're going to do some in-depth testing of one of their asthma drugs because there have been about four cases of suicide in people who've been taking it. One can only hope that their testing is better than their English. The spokesman said that they were coming forward with this news "because suicide is a life-threatening activity."
I have nothing else to say, so in a rare burst of good sense, I think I'll go to bed. Remember to flush!
Love, Wendy
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A Sighting of the Living Room Carpet!
Joshua and Mel have removed all the extra bits of whatever it is they're doing with all that salvaged wood, and I actually have a living room again - mostly. Except that to the current cast of characters in the house we have now added Mel's girlfriend. (Studio apartment, studio apartment, studio apartment...) It's only for another week or so, I'm informed - and by that time I'll have a new kitchen floor and freshly painted bathrooms. It's just that I'm beginning to feel a tiny bit overpeopled...I've got them basically trained not to address me in the morning (Joshua is the worst in this regard - he wakes up talking about Wittgenstein and the Jewish Diaspora and wants to share), but they haven't quite got a handle on the first hour after I get home from work yet. All I want to do when I walk in the door is sit down, drink a beer, and smoke lovely indoor cigarettes and look at the mail, do a crossword puzzle, read...and the minute I turn up, the entire crew leaps madly at me to tell me all about their day. People - I'll be fascinated in a an hour. NOT NOW.
A deeply annoying day at the office. There is this thing in tax law which is called the CCH, and what it is 22 volumes of the entire United States Tax Code. Well, our tax code changes about every 22 seconds - not necessarily much, but enough that the information in these looseleaf binders (thick, THICK looseleaf binders) needs to be updated. And that's what I have spent the entire day doing...take out pages 22,388 to 22,389, replace with pages 22,388 to 22, 389, etc., etc., ad infinitum. For 22 of these damn books. And I thought sitting there reading a book was dull.
And my beloved Saint Tiger Lily: You're going to catch a cold in your toes!
Love, Wendy
A deeply annoying day at the office. There is this thing in tax law which is called the CCH, and what it is 22 volumes of the entire United States Tax Code. Well, our tax code changes about every 22 seconds - not necessarily much, but enough that the information in these looseleaf binders (thick, THICK looseleaf binders) needs to be updated. And that's what I have spent the entire day doing...take out pages 22,388 to 22,389, replace with pages 22,388 to 22, 389, etc., etc., ad infinitum. For 22 of these damn books. And I thought sitting there reading a book was dull.
And my beloved Saint Tiger Lily: You're going to catch a cold in your toes!
Love, Wendy
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Relative Rant
I came home to find that my entire living room has been taken over by bits and pieces of construction, including two doors (no, I don't know why - I understand one of them, but why two, I wonder), bits of cabinets salvaged from the street, and various and sundry other things (most of which look sort of broken and have nails sticking out of them...). Joshua and Mel, the two mad construction types, seem to be very pleased with all this crud and keep assuring me it's going to be wonderful. If anyone has any extra cash floating around, could you please buy me a studio apartment to live in? I may need it by the time these two get finished with their improvements. Although as of tonight, one of the improvements is going to be a new floor in the kitchen, of which I am in truly desperate need - ever since Sarah's friend Celine caused a Christmas Eve flood in the kitchen many years back, the floor has been disintegrating and now looks positively leprous...not attractive. So maybe I'll stick around after all. (Anyway, who's got two million bucks to buy a studio in the West Village?)
At least Mel is around to sit on Joshua when he begins to have his usual delusions. Joshua is under the impression that he's a great interior decorator. Unfortunately, he also seems to be color blind. My kitchen is yellow and red (I feel very strongly that if you don't have a window in your kitchen, there ought to be a lot of yellow in it so you can have pretend sunshine). One of Joshua's firmly held beliefs is that things should be draped with things (when he first moved in, I spent way too much time politely undraping). With three cats, and being a person who spills a lot of shit when I'm cooking (or eating, or just shoving a cat out of my plate while I'm TRYING to eat), draping large pieces of fragile material on things is not a terribly viable idea...I need to be able to wipe up the beer that the cat knocked over in a hurry and without resorting to stain remover and the washer.
Joshua, you see, keeps trying to put a tablecloth on my nice scarred very kitcheny kitchen table...it's a sort of farmhouse type table that looks like generations have left their mark on it, and I use it for food prep a lot, so I like to keep it clear (well, all right, except for my little box of pills and all the mail and various books and cookbooks I'm currently reading, and...oh, well, you understand). So one day (without consulting me, of course), he got a tablecloth for it. He got a burgundy tablecloth. Can you please explain to me why someone who is supposed to have at one point made money as an interior designer would buy a burgundy tablecloth for a red and yellow kitchen? I mean, I have a lovely reddish and brown/beige/creamish tablecloth and matching napkins that comes out for our nice Christmas dinner every year...it's Indonesian batik and was a wedding present, and it's now old and faded and rather stained, but that works just fine and anyway it's our traditional Christmas tablecloth. If I were going to buy another tablecloth for our kitchen (which is the only dining area in the house on account of we don't have a dining room), I would buy one of those cheerful yellow and red Provencal tablecloths, which would also work perfectly. But BURGUNDY? Against yellow and red? Blecccch.
I fail to understand why I keep getting these men living with me. Now, everybody says, "Why on earth did you marry two men you had to support who refused to get jobs?" The answer is extremely simple. I didn't. I married two men who had excellent jobs with possibilities for advancement and that happy horseshit. However, within six months of marrying me, both of them decided not to work...ever again. I let my cousin move in with me because HE had an excellent job and was splitting the household expenses with me...six months later, he decided that having ADD and a gluten allergy made him eligible for food stamps, Medicare (or Medicaid, whichever - I must find out the difference within the next two years because two years from Monday I'll be eligible) and disability payments. (And the government, for God's sweet sake, seems to agree with him - but then, the government...yes, well). So now he doesn't work. I can only assume that some bad fairy appeared at my christening a la Sleeping Beauty...because boy, do I get the pricks. (Yeah, that was awful...but who could resist it?)
Meanwhile, another blue legged broad in bare legs and flip-flops today. Sheesh. It was friggin' chilly out there - even though that was mostly the wind. And in a couple of months, it'll be lovely and warm...and I will be tromping through Times Square on my way home. I've given up on the notion of a pellet gun for the tourists, but if there's anyone out there who can teach me to be really accurate with a pea shooter...
Love, Wendy
At least Mel is around to sit on Joshua when he begins to have his usual delusions. Joshua is under the impression that he's a great interior decorator. Unfortunately, he also seems to be color blind. My kitchen is yellow and red (I feel very strongly that if you don't have a window in your kitchen, there ought to be a lot of yellow in it so you can have pretend sunshine). One of Joshua's firmly held beliefs is that things should be draped with things (when he first moved in, I spent way too much time politely undraping). With three cats, and being a person who spills a lot of shit when I'm cooking (or eating, or just shoving a cat out of my plate while I'm TRYING to eat), draping large pieces of fragile material on things is not a terribly viable idea...I need to be able to wipe up the beer that the cat knocked over in a hurry and without resorting to stain remover and the washer.
Joshua, you see, keeps trying to put a tablecloth on my nice scarred very kitcheny kitchen table...it's a sort of farmhouse type table that looks like generations have left their mark on it, and I use it for food prep a lot, so I like to keep it clear (well, all right, except for my little box of pills and all the mail and various books and cookbooks I'm currently reading, and...oh, well, you understand). So one day (without consulting me, of course), he got a tablecloth for it. He got a burgundy tablecloth. Can you please explain to me why someone who is supposed to have at one point made money as an interior designer would buy a burgundy tablecloth for a red and yellow kitchen? I mean, I have a lovely reddish and brown/beige/creamish tablecloth and matching napkins that comes out for our nice Christmas dinner every year...it's Indonesian batik and was a wedding present, and it's now old and faded and rather stained, but that works just fine and anyway it's our traditional Christmas tablecloth. If I were going to buy another tablecloth for our kitchen (which is the only dining area in the house on account of we don't have a dining room), I would buy one of those cheerful yellow and red Provencal tablecloths, which would also work perfectly. But BURGUNDY? Against yellow and red? Blecccch.
I fail to understand why I keep getting these men living with me. Now, everybody says, "Why on earth did you marry two men you had to support who refused to get jobs?" The answer is extremely simple. I didn't. I married two men who had excellent jobs with possibilities for advancement and that happy horseshit. However, within six months of marrying me, both of them decided not to work...ever again. I let my cousin move in with me because HE had an excellent job and was splitting the household expenses with me...six months later, he decided that having ADD and a gluten allergy made him eligible for food stamps, Medicare (or Medicaid, whichever - I must find out the difference within the next two years because two years from Monday I'll be eligible) and disability payments. (And the government, for God's sweet sake, seems to agree with him - but then, the government...yes, well). So now he doesn't work. I can only assume that some bad fairy appeared at my christening a la Sleeping Beauty...because boy, do I get the pricks. (Yeah, that was awful...but who could resist it?)
Meanwhile, another blue legged broad in bare legs and flip-flops today. Sheesh. It was friggin' chilly out there - even though that was mostly the wind. And in a couple of months, it'll be lovely and warm...and I will be tromping through Times Square on my way home. I've given up on the notion of a pellet gun for the tourists, but if there's anyone out there who can teach me to be really accurate with a pea shooter...
Love, Wendy
Monday, March 24, 2008
Daughters Are Dangerous
So I ended up cooking last night - which I assure you I had no intention of doing. You see, what with cousin Joshua and Mel and Mel's girlfriend all in the house, every time I feel like I might want to cook something, the kitchen magically fills up with people who are cooking something else. (Mel's girlfriend Rebecca makes wonderful jerk chicken.) But frankly, due to the sheer numbers of people in the kitchen half the time (and also due to my strange appetite problems), I usually just wait until the kitchen has cleared out before I do anything. Ergo, I wasn't intending to make dinner last night, but it turned out that Joshua had told Mel not to worry about cooking on Easter because I was doing it. It's good thing Mel told me about this the day before, since Joshua didn't actually mention it to me.
At any rate, I threw together a terminally dull meal - baked ham, green beans, and redskinned potatoes with scallions (the scallions were supposed to be parsley, of course, but I somehow wandered off into space while at the checkout counter in the grocery store and didn't realize that the checker left the parsley out of the bags - the scallions were fine, as a matter of fact - I sauteed them in a little butter before I mixed then with the potatoes). It wasn't at all a BAD meal, you understand - just sort of boring. Except for the ham, of course - I make terrific ham. (You glaze it with Dijon mustard, honey, and some powdered cloves.)
However, my child was there, and somehow or another after dinner Sarah and I got into our fun mode. This is invariably a disaster, because what happens is that we get into showing each other (and Mel, in this case - which didn't help because of course then we had somebody new to bounce things off of) our favorite Youtube bits, and telling stories, and laughing...and this always happens on a night where both of us have to get up in the morning and we always stay up WAY too late...i.e., 4 this morning. (We've been known to see the dawn come up like thunder when we really get going.) (And NEVER on a Friday or Saturday, damn it.)
Do not, if you value your sanity, be my age and stay up until 4 am and then get up to go to work at 7 am. I could do this when I was 26. I can still do it, but it takes me a week to recover. Thank God for a temp job where the only thing I have to do is try desperately to remember whose phones I'm answering that day - and, when I take my cigarette and/or lunch breaks, what the hell floor I'm working on. All this was extremely difficult today.
I'm going to bed. Because if I don't I'm going to fall asleep with my head on the keyboard, and my ears will type reams of nonsense...which will probably not be too much different than what I write in the first place, but who wants to be read for the deathless prose of their ears?
Love, Wendy
At any rate, I threw together a terminally dull meal - baked ham, green beans, and redskinned potatoes with scallions (the scallions were supposed to be parsley, of course, but I somehow wandered off into space while at the checkout counter in the grocery store and didn't realize that the checker left the parsley out of the bags - the scallions were fine, as a matter of fact - I sauteed them in a little butter before I mixed then with the potatoes). It wasn't at all a BAD meal, you understand - just sort of boring. Except for the ham, of course - I make terrific ham. (You glaze it with Dijon mustard, honey, and some powdered cloves.)
However, my child was there, and somehow or another after dinner Sarah and I got into our fun mode. This is invariably a disaster, because what happens is that we get into showing each other (and Mel, in this case - which didn't help because of course then we had somebody new to bounce things off of) our favorite Youtube bits, and telling stories, and laughing...and this always happens on a night where both of us have to get up in the morning and we always stay up WAY too late...i.e., 4 this morning. (We've been known to see the dawn come up like thunder when we really get going.) (And NEVER on a Friday or Saturday, damn it.)
Do not, if you value your sanity, be my age and stay up until 4 am and then get up to go to work at 7 am. I could do this when I was 26. I can still do it, but it takes me a week to recover. Thank God for a temp job where the only thing I have to do is try desperately to remember whose phones I'm answering that day - and, when I take my cigarette and/or lunch breaks, what the hell floor I'm working on. All this was extremely difficult today.
I'm going to bed. Because if I don't I'm going to fall asleep with my head on the keyboard, and my ears will type reams of nonsense...which will probably not be too much different than what I write in the first place, but who wants to be read for the deathless prose of their ears?
Love, Wendy
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Saturday! Yay!
Well, my goodness, what a hive of activity my house has been today. My cousin evidently has decided to pay back chunks of the money he owes me for his rent-free existence for the past three years by suddenly doing everything he can around the house. Thank God (because my cousin has delusions of competence) we have our current friendly neighborhood live-in lesbian, Mel, who has a contractor's license.
Therefore, I have now got proper lighting in the kitchen, in the front place (you can't call it a foyer because it isn't one - it's just where you come in the front door which used to be a pool of darkness which made me a little twitchy about opening the door) - the ceiling leak is fixed, and I now have an actual pantry sort of set up which has a cabinet for the stuff I don't use every day (i.e., my industrial size food processor) and a bookshelf for the cookbooks I DO use.
This setup is in a place that I can't imagine anyone who ever had a kitchen ever designing. I can only assume that it was made up by someone who ate takeout every night. It's to the right of the refrigerator, and it's a two drawer kitchen cabinet topped with the same black formica or whatever that all my other counters have. However, it has no electrical outlet, and it has no lighting of any variety, and was therefore unusable for any sort of food preparation (if I can't see what I'm chopping, I tend to bleed a lot). And part of it is behind a large piece of a wall that seems to be holding something else up - like the ceiling. So for all the years we've lived here, it has become the catchall space for anything that I didn't want to deal with at the moment - i.e., a mess. You know - wow, I just got this month's Bon Appetit and there are recipes I want to clip - I'll just put it over here. Oh, good, I've clipped the recipes. Well, no time to put them in the recipe file book - I'll just put them over here. Etc., etc., and so forth.
Well, now it's got a lovely cabinet and a lovely bookshelf, and room for all the stuff that's been cluttering up the rest of the counter space in my kitchen and I couldn't be happier.
This is not to say that the area won't get absolutely messed up, probably within about a week. (Look out - I'm in full blabber mode.) You see, I have MAJOR housekeeping problems. I am a very good cook, but I can't clean a house to save my life.
Now I know perfectly well what the problem is. I grew up between my mother's house and my fateher's apartment. Mother's house, where we lived with my grandparents and my great aunt,was where the food was wonderful (and where I learned to cook), and where the only way to get the house clean was to throw a party. This, of course, didn't work terribly well - obviously, when you throw a party, you have to clean up after it. This is the part where we sort of didn't. About a month later, when somebody found ANOTHER plate under a chair, we'd decide it was time to clean house - and throw another party to talk ourselves into it. And then every once in a while my mother and I would decide to dust the bookshelves - which invariably lasted until one of us, closely followed by the other of us, found a book we hadn't read in forever...and ended up spending the day on the floor reading (this took 15 minutes - tops).
And then I'd spend the weekends with Daddy. Now, in Daddy's apartment, I would be sitting down reading a book. I would get up to go to the john or something, and when I got back to my chair, the book would be back in the bookshelf and the cushions on the chair would be plumped up to look as if they'd never been sat upon.
And then I married my first husband, who insisted on the standard of housekeeping his mother kept. Meaning, I would have to get down on my hands and knees to polish the UNDERSIDE of the dining room table. Admittedly, we had parties at which people ended up under there, but it seems deeply unlikely that they were checking the polish.
And then I married my second husband, who was from a foreign service family, who got hysterical if I tried to clean anything, because in his mind, if you were cleaning things, it meant you were moving again.
So at this stage of the game, I have decided that there is no possible way I am EVER going to please anyone, and I have opted out of the whole thing. I maintain enough sanity to keep one step ahead of the Health Department, I do keep the bathrooms in some sort of order (when in fact I notice that things are growing, basically), and sometimes I can even find my underpants. Clean ones!
But I will never be a housekeeper...it's just too fraught. And it's not very interesting work, actually. But I keep buying all these housekeeping books...being a book person, I feel that if I ever get the RIGHT housekeeping book, it will magically transform me into a person who has a wonderful spotless house. However, as a realist, I know perfectly well that the only thing that will happen is that I will remain a person who sits at her somewhat grubby kitchen table and blows seven pounds of dust off her housekeeping books before she reads them. And never notices that while she reads them, another layer of crud is depositing itself all over the kitchen cabinets.
On the other hand, my baked ham is legendary, and several gentlemen have praised my efforts in other directions not involving a kitchen. It shouldn't be a total loss.
Love, Wendy
Therefore, I have now got proper lighting in the kitchen, in the front place (you can't call it a foyer because it isn't one - it's just where you come in the front door which used to be a pool of darkness which made me a little twitchy about opening the door) - the ceiling leak is fixed, and I now have an actual pantry sort of set up which has a cabinet for the stuff I don't use every day (i.e., my industrial size food processor) and a bookshelf for the cookbooks I DO use.
This setup is in a place that I can't imagine anyone who ever had a kitchen ever designing. I can only assume that it was made up by someone who ate takeout every night. It's to the right of the refrigerator, and it's a two drawer kitchen cabinet topped with the same black formica or whatever that all my other counters have. However, it has no electrical outlet, and it has no lighting of any variety, and was therefore unusable for any sort of food preparation (if I can't see what I'm chopping, I tend to bleed a lot). And part of it is behind a large piece of a wall that seems to be holding something else up - like the ceiling. So for all the years we've lived here, it has become the catchall space for anything that I didn't want to deal with at the moment - i.e., a mess. You know - wow, I just got this month's Bon Appetit and there are recipes I want to clip - I'll just put it over here. Oh, good, I've clipped the recipes. Well, no time to put them in the recipe file book - I'll just put them over here. Etc., etc., and so forth.
Well, now it's got a lovely cabinet and a lovely bookshelf, and room for all the stuff that's been cluttering up the rest of the counter space in my kitchen and I couldn't be happier.
This is not to say that the area won't get absolutely messed up, probably within about a week. (Look out - I'm in full blabber mode.) You see, I have MAJOR housekeeping problems. I am a very good cook, but I can't clean a house to save my life.
Now I know perfectly well what the problem is. I grew up between my mother's house and my fateher's apartment. Mother's house, where we lived with my grandparents and my great aunt,was where the food was wonderful (and where I learned to cook), and where the only way to get the house clean was to throw a party. This, of course, didn't work terribly well - obviously, when you throw a party, you have to clean up after it. This is the part where we sort of didn't. About a month later, when somebody found ANOTHER plate under a chair, we'd decide it was time to clean house - and throw another party to talk ourselves into it. And then every once in a while my mother and I would decide to dust the bookshelves - which invariably lasted until one of us, closely followed by the other of us, found a book we hadn't read in forever...and ended up spending the day on the floor reading (this took 15 minutes - tops).
And then I'd spend the weekends with Daddy. Now, in Daddy's apartment, I would be sitting down reading a book. I would get up to go to the john or something, and when I got back to my chair, the book would be back in the bookshelf and the cushions on the chair would be plumped up to look as if they'd never been sat upon.
And then I married my first husband, who insisted on the standard of housekeeping his mother kept. Meaning, I would have to get down on my hands and knees to polish the UNDERSIDE of the dining room table. Admittedly, we had parties at which people ended up under there, but it seems deeply unlikely that they were checking the polish.
And then I married my second husband, who was from a foreign service family, who got hysterical if I tried to clean anything, because in his mind, if you were cleaning things, it meant you were moving again.
So at this stage of the game, I have decided that there is no possible way I am EVER going to please anyone, and I have opted out of the whole thing. I maintain enough sanity to keep one step ahead of the Health Department, I do keep the bathrooms in some sort of order (when in fact I notice that things are growing, basically), and sometimes I can even find my underpants. Clean ones!
But I will never be a housekeeper...it's just too fraught. And it's not very interesting work, actually. But I keep buying all these housekeeping books...being a book person, I feel that if I ever get the RIGHT housekeeping book, it will magically transform me into a person who has a wonderful spotless house. However, as a realist, I know perfectly well that the only thing that will happen is that I will remain a person who sits at her somewhat grubby kitchen table and blows seven pounds of dust off her housekeeping books before she reads them. And never notices that while she reads them, another layer of crud is depositing itself all over the kitchen cabinets.
On the other hand, my baked ham is legendary, and several gentlemen have praised my efforts in other directions not involving a kitchen. It shouldn't be a total loss.
Love, Wendy
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