This Old Stove

Dinner for ten: yesterday began with a pound cake in the oven by 10am. I was feeling very self-satisfied with most of my house cleaned, the yard in reasonable array, the custard for a bing-cherry ice cream (vanilla bean, cream) steeping on the stovetop. Even better in that guests were contributing to the menu. All I had left to do was braise the ribs for most of the afternoon then crisp them up at a high heat right before we ate.

And I thought I smelled gas. I turned the fan on, opened the door. And just as quickly the smell was gone. Poked my head in the oven: nothing. No problem. Tinkered around some more, vacuumed, picked out tablecloths. And then again: gas.

WTF?

Did the same open-everything routine, and it vanished.

And again I smelled it.

By this point, the ribs were nicely braising in the oven in their beer/stock broth, the cake was cooled, the ice cream churned and ripening in the freezer. And I felt r-e-a-l-l-y spacey. Couldn't focus on a thing. Made some iced tea for a caffeine jolt.

And then.

Decided to google "smell gas from oven" and all the alarms went off in my head. Holy shit. One site said LEAVE THE HOUSE IMMEDIATELY. Another said don't be afraid of a little gas. And on and on, every possible variation. I thought at that point that if I rustled anything even a bit I would set off a massive explosion from here to Antarctica.

I turned off the oven.

I called my friend Tom.

Dear, reliable Tom, who checked for leaks in the pipes and fittings behind the stove (nothing) and then promptly turned off the gas supply. And then took my braising ribs back to his house to finish them off.

Tomorrow a certified repair person comes and let's hope that repairs are less than the cost of a new stove.

Dinner — with improvisation — came off without a hitch. But one of my guests told me that her step-father was in his kitchen when a gas explosion occurred, and he was thrown through a wall into a snowbank outside. Survived with a few broken bones — lucky man!

I'm thinking that my mental haze, which was really confounding, was the result of the pervading gas fumes. I'm thankful that the tiny jolt I got from my tea sparked my brain — and not the fumes! — just enough to realize the gravity of the situation at hand.

Yikes.

I really do try to avoid pet pics here, but I just couldn't resist this one.

Going Clown

Friday night is Martini Night, and yesterday, in celebration of completing our May orders (only three weeks behind schedule), Melinda and I walked down to The Royal Room, where a young man was improvising some jazz on the Steinway grand. We were delighted to run into our friend Charlie Parriot (his wife Connie is our co-worker who is undergoing chemo) —

When we left, Charlie turned to me and said, or, I heard, "I want you to work on being clowns." And I answered, "We're working on it." And then he grabbed my hand and kissed it.

 Now, Charlie may very well have been advising Melinda and me to look into career changes — he's never been known to make mundane conversation. But clowns?! And god only knows why I so quickly responded in the manner I did.

It wasn't until we were part way up the hill back to the factory that I realized what I thought he said, and what I responded. I laughed so hard that I had to steady myself by grabbing a telephone pole.

As I like to tell my kids, it's not hearing loss, but a more elevated form of auditory
perception known as Interpretive Hearing.

My friend Kathleen Flenniken on NPR.... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=155508138

Glass Breaks

It's amazing, really, that in working 40+ hours a week with glass, that more skin doesn't get cut. Today was the exception. I picked up a piece and it came apart in my hands — something that has never happened. There have been pieces that weren't properly annealed at the factory and literally exploded in my co-worker's face (luckily, no injuries!) and pieces that have spontaneously cracked while being worked on, which is unnerving but not really dangerous. But this one was different, and produced a nasty slice at the base of my thumb which produced a prodigious amount of blood, even after being bandaged.

And was followed by another disintegration, this time by a martini glass, which had been wrapped in tissue and bubble wrap, and tipped off the shelf, slowly, gently, and should have resulted in a bounce, but instead there was a gentle tinkling and bye-bye went the martini.

Not a good day for glass.

It's less than six weeks until the Bellevue Arts Fair, and we'll be exhibiting/selling once again. As usual, I haven't a clue how we're going to get from today to the last weekend in July considering the thick stack of orders to be filled prior to prepping for our big retail show, but, as usual, we'll pull it off.

Did someone mention summer?

Odd Blips in Cyber-Land: Disappearances, Appearances

Punish me, please, if I ever declare that I am tech-savvy.

I want to blame this on my computer/iPhone, but —

Today after a quick lunch, I went outside to take in a few moments of sudden sun, and while taking  cliche photos of roses (I insist, because they make me happy) like this....
 
...mid-snap, I saw a baby chicadee just inches from where I was squatting. I inched closer, closer still, until I was about a foot from her. Very slowly I switched my camera setting to movie, and began recording. The parent-birds were alarmed and making a racket all about my head, and I managed to reach out and stroke the baby, just once, with my index finger.

Got home and planned this blog piece. And that's when things began to get really weird....

I went to my nephew's high-school graduation, and like a good citizen, turned the ringer on my phone off prior to the start of the program. Halfway into the valedictorian's speech, music began playing somewhere around where I was sitting. I looked at my sister and we rolled our eyes — who in hell was messing around on their iPhone in the middle of a graduation ceremony?! The nerve!! I heard some commentary, like a radio personality. People sitting close to us also began to look around, shaking their heads. More music. I whispered to my sister, "It couldn't be my phone — I turned it off already." I reached down into my purse, unzipped the pocket where I'd stashed my phone, and the music suddenly got very loud.

Holy crap. It was my phone, er, radio, er, iTunes. God knows what. I silenced it, quickly, feeling a blush creep up my face. Yikes. (Giggled.)

Don't know how or why that happened, but my phone has a habit of bursting into song at unplanned moments. (If I'd only taken the time to listen to the music being played, I'm certain there would've been an embedded message.)

Once home, I uploaded my photos to my computer, went through the standard Do you wish to delete photos from your iPhone protocol. Yes, delete.

And everything disappeared. All photos — gone from phone, gone from iPhoto.

Baby chicadee: gone.

Roses: gone.

I've waited 55 years to get that close to a baby bird with a camera in hand, and not only did I have a camera, but the camera had video capability. And suddenly: all was gone.

I dithered, nearly wept.

Told myself that everything is ephemeral.

Told myself to get over it.

Told myself to be thankful to have even experienced that one moment — fleeting — of grace.

And just about when I was coming to a place of acceptance and peace for my perceived stupidity at deleting the photos — blammo — they appeared.

And I mean they just leapt out onto the screen. I'm not exaggerating — one minute they'd been deleted, the next minute they were all in front of me, in full-buxom-blossom and chirruping chickadee-dee-dee delight.

Sent down from some heaven, some repository of repentant images.

Moral: all is not lost.

And here's my mysteriously-recovered 14 seconds of baby chickadee:

Two Poems for Father's Day

Limits of Spectacle Lake

--in memory of my father,

Walter James Clear, 1918-1966

When the sun had slipped behind the hills

I said, let’s go back. Forget this business

of lures and lines and casting so far

the eye could hardly follow the thread

out to snag a rainbow’s lip. Afraid

we’d lose our way and soon our boat

would spin and sink. There we’d sit

eye to eye with a million trout.

When I was eight I caught my limit.

But not before my father turned the boat

to shore and let out one last line for luck.

I held that rod for all the hope left

reeling in the churning depths.

I don’t know who was more the spectacle that night --

the lake, me, or my father gently guiding the pole

between my unbelieving hands. Somehow he trusted

in the end of all filtering light. When he died

the next winter, I remembered six fish

laid out stiff on a plank of wood.

Eye to eye with the dead, in the wake

of the boat, I learned the limits,

the last ripple of life in a dying fish.

                       

Regret

Mark, I have to tell you:

the starlings returned

to nest in the eaves

where you neglected repair.

You never loved them,

yet last year waited to roust

the messy twig and mud jumble

until each fledgling soared

clear of gutter and roof.

Grumbling, glad to be done,

this was your unexpected gift

and I never thanked you.

Soon summer will spread its wing

over this unfinished house

where porches and railings

await the carpenter’s hammer and nail.

Our children — nearly men —

will desire to roam the city all night,

and I’ll let them go

one feather at a time,

always holding back

and then releasing, alone now

instructing in the mechanics of flight.

--in memory, Mark Benchley Anderson, 1956-2003

© T.Clear

Glued to a car....

FOR SOME ANNOYING REASON BLOGGER IS INSISTING ON ALL UPPER CASE. APOLOGIES. MAKES THE WRITING LOOK RATHER ALARMING!

ANYWAY, HERE'S THE EXPLANATION TO TUESDAY'S "THREE FAVORITES" POST.

--FAVORITE ANIMAL: THIS IS HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF.

--SECOND FAVORITE ANIMAL: THIS IS WHAT YOU VALUE/LOOK-FOR IN A PARTNER.

--FAVORITE COLOR: THIS IS HOW THE WORLD SEES YOU.

(MY FAVORITE COLOR IS GREEN; CALM, COOL, LUSH. HA!)

Little Quakes

Few things delight me more than hanging out with both my sons — at the same time. Tonight, after Nelson started dinging me on etymology, it was clear that I raised him. And then they both ganged up on me on the subject of word origins. Ouch. These two young men are clearly my sons. Not to worry — laughter ensued. But you'd think that they'd back off just a little on their mother. It left me shaking my head and wondering who are these guys, anyway?!

Oy.

Meanwhile, the foundation of the house sinks, walls fracture and doors fail to close. Tomorrow a shimming will take place and hopefully upright order will be restored.

Disintegration seems to be a theme.

Tonight the oven threatened explosion, a refrigerator shelf collapsed, the blender sent out shrill screeches and I swept a full wine glass into full-on shatter.

Perhaps shimming will suffice.

And then again, all may fail.

Here's something pretty darn interesting — if you want to take part, leave your answers in the comments box, and I'll return to them in a post later this week:

1. What is your favorite animal?
2. List three things you love about that animal.
3. What is your second favorite animal?
4. List three things you love about that animal.
5. What is your favorite color?
6. List three reasons that it's your favorite.

Awaiting your responses!

A Happy-Birthday-Candied-Rose-Petal-Not-Enough-Icing-Confection.

I made a cake today for a birthday and most of it was consumed before there was any notion of documenting its existence. Without enough prior planning, I brain-stormed how to make instant candied rose petals and came up with an acceptable solution in which I sprayed each petal (a rose called "Taboo") with aerosol vegetable oil and then sprinkled all sides with granulated sugar. And after a pound and a half of butter, 10 eggs and countless cups of sugar, I still ended up without enough icing. Not wanting to make another trip to the store, I hurry-scurried a decoration of lemon-balm leaves pressed into the sides of the cake, upright, like a little marching army of mint 'round the cake. The impromptu rose petals, haphazardly scattered atop the French buttercream, looked decidedly intentional. And after countless rounds of Bloody Mary's, martini's, rosé and god knows what else, it all tasted (and looked, dare I say) completely fabulous.

Time, Deconstructed, on a Plate

Protection

It's so damn cold here my cucumber plants have turned white for lack of blood flow. I'm tempted to throw blankets on my three tomato plants, much as I had to cover every single one of my dolls and stuffed toys before I could sleep, when I was wee. Drove my mother crazy. But even a spent sock did the trick, just anything to ward off the chill.

No end to caregiving, to mothering. It began early and shall continue until the end, I believe. 

It's amazing how instinct-driven we are.

If an African violet fell from the window-sill and broke leaves (when I was 17), I'd mourn.

Important to toughen; I no longer weep for ripped leaves but just place a wounded child at my knees and I'll fold every last cell of my being around him.

Kitchen Mischief

I have a new poem up at The Far Field, the Washington State Poet Laureate blog.

You can see it by clicking here.

My New Treasure

I found these on the sidewalk in front of my house: tiny hands in a plastic baggie. I was out planting beets and carrots in my parking strip boxes, my phone to my ear, talking to my sister M. Three young boys and their parents tumbled by, but I didn't notice the baggie until they were long gone, and I don't know who they are or where they live, or even if one of them dropped it. (Or now, in retrospect, if they even existed.) I set the bag out on the bottom step, waiting all weekend for their return, but this evening still it sits, abandoned.

My friend Jamey said, "Only you, T. I never find anything like this in front of my house."

Mysteries abound.

And then on a lighter note....

 ....there was Honk Fest West last night in Georgetown, where the universe was all a'clang with trombones, tubas, trumpets, drums. Felt soul-scoured when I left, swept clean of troubles and concerns.

Visual feast!

Bunny ears galore.

I wanted to listen in to this conversation.

Best smile!

An intimate moment of sorts, with brass barrier.

I was fascinated by Miss Sparkle Head's mournful expression.

A girdle of drums.

Best hair!

The shootings in Seattle this week have left this mostly-gentle city jittery and profoundly saddened. And being as small a city as it is (or seems to be, at least), there are connections with every one —

At last week's shooting on 23rd and Cherry, a close friend was at the stoplight at the intersection when the act of violence occurred. She called me from her house that evening, in lockdown.

Another friend works at Town Hall, and witnessed the murder that occurred there.

Still another friend frequents Cafe Racer in the University District, and has played music often with some of the victims.

Our bookkeeper (at work) was in lockdown at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center close to where the gunman, surrounded by police, put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. If only he had done that first, and spared so many this immeasurable grief.

Earlier in the week yet another friend called to say that her 88-year-old father-in-law locked himself in his bedroom (wife outside the door) and shot himself in the head.

Here's an argument I've heard often from NRA fanatics:

"If only each of these victims had a gun themselves, none of this would have happened, because they would have been able to defend themselves."

That kind of "logic" sends my blood pressure into an upward spiral.

Can we invent something that renders guns & ammo useless? Please?

Flora/Fauna

Tonight I discovered a most unusual plant growing beside the heliotrope:
the felineus Lucifius....

I think it's nearly ripe.

Tuesday

Every day, it seems, I leave work and think I'm going to go home and do some writing. And then I get home and clean up the kitchen and start dinner and go outside to pull some bindweed and dandelions and then one of my sisters calls and I pour a glass of wine and pull the roast from the oven and dangle a scrap of paper for the cat and check the mail and all the time laughing and listening with the phone pressed so close to my ear that I end up muting it with my ear.

No writing.

Tonight after work I picked up a prescription and then waited in the library parking lot for a parking space then waited in line to get a copy of my library card then browsed the non-fiction shelves, thinking to pick up anything anything learn something new, ending up with two CD's by Mulatu Astatque and a Mary Oliver collection and two books with titles like 101 Hikes To Somewhere thinking what I need to do is get out of this city.

Then I went to Home Depot and bought a new dishwasher spending money like I have it. For a month I thought I could get along just fine without a dishwasher but damn, I like to cook and entertain (=lots of dishes) and damn, I like to put dishes in the dishwasher and enjoy the convenience of forgetting they're there.

The salesman was 102 years old and had breath that could fell an army. And wanted to talk. I mean, I like to talk but this guy — Don — liked to talk. Yowza. I slunk away inch by inch to his receding sentence. Bye now! Bye bye!!

And then home, well past 8pm, and dinner and a bit more of the Sunday NYTimes (I ration it day by day) and then another phone call, more cat time, check facebook, check email, check checking checkity check.

How in god's name did it get to be 10:21?

Ruby-Throated, Again

Unexpected, this noontime when I was out wrangling the overgrown rhododendron, my hummingbird made his/her first face-to-face appearance of the season with me. He hovered about three feet directly in front of my face, and I made my hummingbird-chirrup-sound, and then he flew to the electric lines and perched. Moments later an eagle swooped about thirty feet above my roofline, with an aggressive crow entourage. I couldn't have been more thrilled!

A little later I was standing out on my upstairs balcony, and there he was again, in the apple tree with yet another hummingbird. I chirruped, and he flew directly out of the leaves and did that hover-thing again right in front of me, then did a quick straight-upward flight for what seemed to be 50 or 60 feet. Amazing.

Last summer there existed in my garden an enchantment of hummingbirds, and yet I never expected such a familiar return visit. There seems to be some kind of magic at work.

My heart is wide open to it.

I Feel Pretty

I shaved the last of my sister's hair off today, sitting in her kitchen, another sister beside us. I've never used electric hair clippers, and was quite leery of the process, and looked up some how-to videos on YouTube, which helped not at all.

So I figured out how to put the guard on, and went to it. The unit has a tiny vacuum chamber attached, so the shorn locks are sucked directly into it. Handy, that. No clumps of hair scattered underfoot. I was slow and careful, getting the feel of the thing, careful not to injure my sister in any way. Had to stop several times, and we hugged her and stroked her emerging scalp.

And damn, she looked great — blessed with good bones and strikingly blue eyes. She spent some time in front of a hand mirror, getting used to it. I asked my other sister if maybe we should shave our heads too, in solidarity. We considered it, more than for just a moment. Opted out. (Chickened out.)

What we saw, after all was tidied up, tears dried, was that L. looks surprisingly like our mother. Astonishing, really, because for 59 years she's been the spitting image of our paternal Aunt Mary. It's amazing what a dearth of hair reveals.

And then I told my sisters to listen up, because I wanted to play something for them on my iPhone, a YouTube video. Listen up:

Alice-June Catering

My mother — widowed in mid-life with children ranging from ages 4 to 21 — did a variety of jobs to bring in extra income. None was as glamorous as her wedding catering business, and she and her friend June employed their daughters for regular Saturday afternoon gigs in various Catholic church social halls and basements: Immaculate Conception, Blessed Family, Holy Sacrament.

We skirted tables in rustles of white taffeta, draped ribbons from corner to corner, set out silver-plated tea and coffee sets. I insisted, always, on being the one to fill the sugar bowl with sugar cubes, plucked from their precisely-packed rows in pink and white boxes. In Renton, in 1970, that was about exotic as it got: sugar cubes. Great for sucking-on, even better to chew, quietly, privately.

Mints dyed to match the bridesmaids' dresses were ordered from Frederick & Nelson's, and came in flat white boxes, packed in white tissue. (Okay, they were exotic also.) Always in prim pastels: pink, green, yellow, not often blue. Rarely lavender.

We fanned napkins and rows of forks, unwrapped glass punch cups, stirred a red brew of Hawaiian Punch concentrate and 7-Up. Sometimes there was a spiked punch, the paper-wrapped bottles of vodka gurgled-in at the last minute.

We were efficient, proficient; so much that our prep was usually completed well in advance of the oncoming newlyweds and the entourage of family and friends. In that space of free time, I searched out a piano to play, pushed into a corner, old and out-of-tune, hulking uprights with yellowed ivories. Each piano was so different from the previous, and so different from the shiny spinet I played at home. I escaped into Chopin or Debussy or Scott Joplin with all the surging passion of a young teen cooped in a church basement on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

For this I was paid $10 — more than the minimum wage — and which was, to me, gold.

This all came to mind just this week when I saw an old upright piano on a sidewalk with a sign: FREE. It was raining.

Electronic keyboards are of course the affordable option these days, but I would have never found one of those in the coat closet at Assumption Parish, at the age of 14.

self as poet

Late Tuesday Poem!

Petition to the Muse 

 Once you dangled frittered metaphors
from the tips of silver spoons,
glazed my lips with rhyme and wit,
nogged me silly with saucy sentences.
Apricots, adjectives, angel food, adverbs.
Every day -- chiffon and streusel, allspice
and whiskey-vanilla. A dazzling consumption,
a poetry-case of divinity, carmelized and meringued.

And then,
you took the cake out of the oven,
tipped the thermometer from roiling syrup.
(We were not quite to the hard-ball stage.)
The springform sprung.
The custard slipped.
The ink blanched from my pen.
I was chilled but not quite set.

You changed diction mid-stanza
and life became boiled cabbage and potatoes.
Wilted lettuce, no salt.
Oil gone rancid. Liver
and stewed mutton. Non-fat.
A single wizened apple.

You left me
a pantry of garlic skins, corn husks.
A drawerful of dull blades
and a measure of nothing to fill the page.

O come back, garnishes and buttercreams,
puff paste and puddings —
fill me up with fondant, roll me
a cookie, bake me an Alaska —
just once more -- make me a tarte
for poetry!
 

© T. Clear 2012

For more Tuesday Poems click here

Listen

How wonderful is it to have adult children who turn you on to new things? Very wonderful. Tonight Nelson introduced me to Balkan Beat Box, on Pandora. Great stuff. We had dinner listening to this. Make this one very happy mama!

I turned him on to Mulatu Estatque, an Ethiopian jazz musician. I played this for him on my iPod:

But here's the funny thing: I was in my local coffee shop — Cafe Lladro — yesterday afternoon, making great strides on my manuscript, when I heard this piece, and rushed to ask Jacob, the barista, what it was. He  told me to wait just a moment, and he'd check. Meanwhile, I got a call from a friend, and made impromptu dinner plans, and exited sans song title.

Something nagged at me, and I checked my iTunes (long overdue for a sync with my iPhone [god save me from this plethora of e-devices]), and I found it, from an album called "Ethiopiques" — great stuff.

My iPod is now synced, and I've played this piece, oh, 15 or 20 times in the past 24 hours. 

Being the survivor of two marriages with very opinionated husbands in the realm of music, there is immeasurable pleasure at having the freedom to explore, and choose, what it is I listen to. No censorship, no boundaries.

This Persistent Song

In the honeyed noon of mid-May I'm in the garden, and I hear what I think is singing very close to me, and I listen for the source. I check to see if I've left the music on my iPhone playing at a low level, it's that close.

Music abounds on the street where I live, but this feels intimate, private.

Pale petals flutter onto me from the pink climbing rose that arches above me, and I raise my eyes to it and the source of that frail song is suddenly so obvious I'm annoyed with myself for thinking that it came from my phone: bees, dozens of them, intent on every rose blossom.

Round about age twenty, I believed with absolute certainty that when I'd reached the age that I am now, all knowledge (gained from experience, of course) would be mine, and all roller-coasters of emotion would have long played themselves out. How I envied "older" people. Folly!

Little did I know that, with the onset of spring in the year 2012 (and 2011, and 2010, etc.) the burgeoning season would awaken not only the landscape with its velvet-tipped fronds and pistilled blossoms, but also an elemental essence deep within the human psyche, within my every cell.

How marvelous a thing it is to be wholly alive and breathing-in yet another spring season, where the scents change from hour to hour, one minute the cool wash of rain, and then the crushed greeny scent of sweet woodruff underfoot in the garden. Or the irises, some skunky, some sugar-cane sweet, others with the distinct zip of root beer.

I desire more, and more, and yet more again.

Drop the "E"

I thought the sign at the hardware store said,

"One year guarantee on all planets."

I thought, it's either one of two things:

 1) Great! I can buy Venus and if anything happens to it, I can return it.

2) I can purchase anything in the store, and return it on a Lowe's location ON ANY PLANET.

(A third thing: Pluto can be had for a bargain. Fully returnable!!)

I left planet-free, but did bring home one fully-refundable plant. Much rather would have exited with a big bag full of Mars.

Clement

We've had a run of warm days, lucky this early when it could easily drizzle until July 5th. Walking home from work I stopped and inhaled every iris blooming alongside my path. And the lake tonight was ruckled-up, foretelling a shift into slightly cooler days. It's difficult in times like this to imagine the world as anything other than benign.

Still, two blocks away yesterday there was an armed robbery at a children's-clothing consignment shop. I'm obviously missing something here — is that where all the big money is? The cash? Some damn stupid punks, I'd guess.

It's hard to settle down in the evening when everything is so flung-open. The desire is to stay outside until the last possible moment, but not, it seems, recumbent in my hammock, which gave way tonight, dumping me into pineapple mint. I sheared off two fingernails in the spill, limped inside to ice and band-aids.

And then: heliotrope, a single plant plucked from the rows and rows of screaming petunias at Lowe's.

Brothers

The high point of my Mother's Day was my boys, together in the kitchen, laughing.

Want

(In response to the question I posed at the close of the previous entry):

I want my sister Lorraine to stand up and go to Ireland with me and the rest of my sisters — the trip long-planned and then abandoned last May in the wake of my disintegrated marriage. I want the  tumor-fractured discs in her back to fuse so we can wrestle for the front seat of the rental car, and then collapse into laughter. I want to walk the beach at Keem on a blustery sunny Irish afternoon. I want to share a pint at the Minaun Heights pub, where the jar on the counter for political contributions is never quite filled enough. I want her competing with me to scale Croagh Patrick, the summit of which I've never reached. I want every shop owner to look at the five of us and ask, "sisters?"

Roy's Hauling can't deliver this.

I want my friend Connie back at work. I want her stomach back, where it belongs. I want a bite of her scone, or posole, or whatever homemade marvel she brings for lunch. (Just one bite.) I want to hear about her travels to the Czech Republic when it was Czechoslovakia. I want to hear about her Whidbey Island property, about her daughter's Brooklyn apartment. I want to hear about all three of her cats.

Again: no Roy's Hauling.

I want my friend Carol back, right now, so I can share this Piesporter Michelsberg wine with her and tell her about all these things I want but seem so completely impossible. I want her advice on so many things....

I want someone to talk to — every night — when I get home from work.

Oh Roy, you are a wonder, but there are things that, no matter how much I ask the universe, there is no chance that I'll encounter any of them on the sidewalk in front of your house.

Twenty Bucks, Pine, Rap

I've wanted this table for god knows how long — at least twenty years. And about this same time last year, I had the notion to tell my neighbor Roy to look for one for me. Roy is, among many things, a hauler. ("No job too odd.") You pay, he takes. A lot goes to the dump; the remaining treasures he sells at one of his summer garage sales. So much of what I own came via Roy, and some of what I no longer own departed in his pickup. I'm luckier for it — all of it, both the coming and going.

But I neglected to tell Roy I wanted this table: solid wood,  sturdy, able to withstand some abuse, as I own not a stick of furniture that is precious. It needed to be big enough to take a stack of books, a bouquet of flowers, a teapot —

Just last week I was cursing (again) the rickety, ugly "thing" that stood between my sofa and love seat and ended up a dumping ground for mail, wine glasses, old New Yorkers. I entertained a fantasy of burning it out back in the fire pit.

Saturday, I saw Roy's YARD SALE sign at the end of the street, and walked the half-block to his house. As I turned the corner, I saw it: pine, 30x60", a bit banged up, with two small drawers.

"How much for the table?"

"Thirty-five, but for you T., I'll take twenty."

Done.

His son and I lugged it back to my house (slowly, heavily) and on the way he filled me in on the latest developments in his rap group, comprised of him, my son Nelson, and Roy: two skinny white guys and the old dude who does background vocals. Their name: South Brandon.

I took a steel wool pad and some dishwashing liquid to it and scraped off a layer of gunk to reveal an honest, solid table top. All it needs now it a light oil rubdown and I'm in business.

What should I ask for next?

Sunday

A bit under the water, missing an oar,
and stuck in the reeds.

Mostly Tripe, with Poetry

One of the menu items at Canton Wonton House is Beef Bibles Tripe with Vegetable. Does one order that with a side of Deuteronomy? [Thanks to TP for Deuteronomy.]

Honestly.

I ordered wonton soup (which I keep wanting to type as "wanton" soup) with crispy noodles but there was nothing crisp about anything. The tea tasted like bleach.

The bok choi, however, was lovely and fresh, as were the wontons, with shrimp nestled inside each one.

I wonder: can one order the Beef Bibles Tripe and hold the bibles? And when the word "vegetable" is singular as it was tonight, my worry is that they've already sold the one vegetable. Or does it mean that it comes with generic "vegetable", an undistingiushable fibrous mass? These things are cause for concern.


---

Manuscript preparation is a chore I detest, so much in fact that tonight, in lieu of getting to work on it, I sat down and paid bills. If I don't watch out I'll soon have a sparkling oven and tidy closets. God help me if I start on the garage — it'll be taps for my future in poetry.

Many decisions to be made re: poem choice. Toss the ex-husband. Revive the dead husband. How much history to include? Keep it mostly au courant? There are a lot of pieces that aren't particularly pretty, pieces that might cause a ruckus. (Of course, that's assuming that 1) the collection gets published, and 2) someone reads it.) Include humor? (That's an easy one: yes.)

Oh dither dither dither.

As Kafka says at the top right of this blog, "Writing means revealing oneself to excess." Can't be avoided.

(The good news is that there's a press interested in reading my manuscript.)

Three Doors and No Parking

Sunday

Instead of writing a poem, I paddled a kayak across the chilly waters of Lake Washington on a perfect Sunday sunny afternoon. Two otters, two eagles, one blue heron, one red-winged blackbird, three yachts, one speedboat and everywhere people onshore: angling, setting out picnic dinners, bicycling, jogging, skate-boarding, tossing stones into the water, tossing sticks for dogs.

I was particularly struck by the collision of nature and the urban world. Overhead, crows harassed the omnipresent eagles, and on the surface of the lake, my companion and I plucked empty plastic bottles — apparently flung by wealthy weekend boaters — from the water.

Drifting in shallows, last year's lily pads hunkered like ghost flowers below the surface, brown and mucky. A single fish leapt and skittered across the water in front of me. Salmon? Trout? Bass? All is mystery beneath my boat.

The way back was heads-down into a breeze, my bow pulling to the right, onto deep and open water. I pulled and pulled on the right to turn to the left, again and again. Thought of the pork slow-cooking in the oven at home, rubbed with salt and cumin and cinnamon and chili powder. Thought of the corn bread, half-prepped, ready for eggs, milk, butter.

Nearing shore, we manoeuvered our slim crafts to beach side-by-side, hoping to avoid last summer's dousing arrival, the spilling-out of each of us into the lake. And success! Legs unfurled, stretched to regain a flow of blood, we stepped onto land with not a drop of water where it didn't belong. Heaved the kayaks to the roof of the car, strapped and buckled-down each one, and paddles & skirts & life-vests tossed in the back.

Saturday

 ~~Today the moss-strung woods of the park were trilling with birdsong, and everywhere ferns were unfurling into the warming afternoon. On a secluded interior trail I found it absolutely necessary to stop and linger every few steps, to take note of lichen on tree trunks, or the heart-breaking translucent green of May leaves, the utter fragility of new growth.

No rush, there. Nothing but the present.

I spotted a blue heron in flight, a pair of flickers pecking at insects in bark, and an eagle circling its massive nest woven high in a Douglas fir. I found a branch curved into a perfect "C", the complicated and upended root system of a toppled fir, as well as an altar in a hollow at the base of yet another evergreen.

Some of the trees are 200-250 years old, scarcely babies when one considers that before white settlers arrived and began their systematic deforestation, there were entire forests of conifers in what is now Seattle, ranging in age from 1,000-2,000 years. A character in Annie Dillard's novel The Living, set in early Bellingham, Washington, lives in a "cabin" fashioned from a stump (very Wind in the Willows). I often ponder the fact that I exist on land that was once old-growth forest.

Walking these trails with my friend T., our conversation — which began 20+ years ago and has included in its ongoing narrative possibly every subject worth speaking of — turned to the notion of "going home" and all contained therein. He's just back from a sojourn to his midwest hometown, so it was fresh material from which to draw. He's come to the conclusion that he needn't go back again — of course, only time will tell. But at what point, if any, does someone decide this? I almost don't qualify to even state my views on this, as my hometown, ten miles to the southeast of my current home, is visible from my bedroom window. I believe, though, that it's calming to arrive at a place where one can comfortably say, "That was a life unto itself, and complete. I don't need to revisit it."

I no longer yearn for the woods I roamed as a child, nor for the maples in whose windy branches I swayed. Both my parents are buried in my hometown (just footsteps from Jimi Hendrix), and any sting of loss has long since faded. And while the details of that life in the late 20th century are rich and nuanced, I'm able to recall their all of their complexities — both in shadow and in light — while continuing to move with a surprising ease in these early years of the 21st century.

As a passenger in the car riding back from the park (the long way home, looping up into the switchback roads of Frink Park [many thanks to the Olmstead brothers]),  I kept my face turned to the passing scenery (while the conversation, of course, missed not a single beat) because there was so much to see, so many scents to breathe in, all of the wide, bursting world presenting itself with all the new life that this change of season allows.

And I thought: it's grand to be alive, in this city, with my friend T., at this single perfect moment~~

I was in-and-out, in-and-out and up-and-down stairs in the rain today at work, head-down, getting the job done, with no regard for anything but project completion. When I got home I glanced in the mirror and — GOOD GOD — who was that frizzled crazy woman peering back at me?!

It's been a day without any frantic text messages. I'm mighty grateful. The only frantic today was our attempt to get orders shipped to arrive pre-Mother's Day, and we were moderately successful.

Off to dinner.
Yay.
No kitchen duty pour moi.

She was beautiful.
I brought her blackberries every morning
but never knew her name.

May Day: toot toot

Tonight I brought my sister, who is ensconced in the hospital, a green glass vase filled with Spanish blue bells. She said, "I don't know if I can keep them when they move me to the oncology ward later tonight."

She's very weak, can't walk. Is on a heart monitor and enough big-guns pain meds to sedate a much larger mammal. Decided not to shave her head just yet — I put away the barber's clippers I'd carried in under my arm.

We talked about heads: heads shaved, heads with odd tufted hair, heads in prim crocheted caps and heads wigged in pink spikes. She's going to opt for the odd and funky: Yay sister! I'm taking on the task of searching out compelling head "treatments".  Nothing conservative or reserved for this one!

Chemo begins tomorrow, incidentally our father's birthday, he who left the land of the upright 46 years ago, half the age he'd be tomorrow.

Each day is another wave of the unexpected, another surge of new information. It baffles, it confounds. I go to bed each night cursing my inability to fix everything.

A fragment of the hilarious: the "stolen" dirt was taken by my younger son. I suspected him, but my older son, who was home all day, said that N. hadn't been by. I guess he did a drive-by. Grabbed the dirt and ran! Ha. He's already planted carrots, and has plans for a white peach tree in a big barrel.

And amidst some incredibly frustrating painting (at work) on a cylindrical piece of glass, I ended up with some perfectly stunning — if I may toot my own horn here — leaves and berries. I've mentioned before that painting has never been my forte, and I'm stunned with the completely unexpected joy that arises when I manage to do it right — and beautiful to boot. So: toot.

Sometime today someone pulled up outside my house and helped themselves to my pile of $$ planting mix, which has been waiting for me to assemble the remaining boxes. So....I enlisted my son to help me tonight after work — in a fierce spring wind — and we got the job finished. Carrots and beets seeds are planted. My chard hasn't done much of anything, alas. But at least it's still alive. We've had odd spring weather: one day sunny and balmy, the next with winter's lingering hiss.

My attempts to rouse the muse have fallen short. Always feels like a stifled silence when she's gone, fists stuffed down my throat. Ack.  

O absent muse.

Again, or Not

A subject keeps coming to mind of the inability to completely comprehend the fact that I was married to someone and now, most likely, will never see this person again. Not that I want to see him again — the man did me wrong — but it's such an unsettling notion that I once shared intimacies with a man who, for all intents and purposes, has voluntarily vanished from my life.

I'm guessing that the passage of time enables one to become accustomed to any change in routine. The new life unfolds with its own new habits and reoccurences, whatever they may be, for good or not. I'm lucky in that I won't run into my ex-husband on the street: he now lives 3,000 miles away. But just as we possess a curiosity to see, say, high-school friends at a years-later reunion (or not, as is my case), will I desire an end-of-marriage reunion in 2031? What an odd thought that is.

The picture I keeps in my mind of long-ago friends is my last, ultimately embellished, memory of them. Last summer I rendez-vous-ed with a high school friend I'd not seen for 23 years — and I didn't recognize her when she walked into the restaurant. In high school, she was plain, pale and awkward, dressed like a boy with a head of short kinky hair. The woman I met for lunch had long styled straight hair swooped to one side, and was chic and confident. And who was I, I wonder, to her?

The ex-husband I won't see in 2031 will be an old man. And I guess that would make me, equally, an old woman. Who will I be in twenty years? Who do I want to be?

Cut loose from domineering men, that decision is now completely my own.

Can I say that it brings me a profound measure of joy?

Yes, I can.

And it does.

The Job

The artisan glass business continues at a frantic pace. We're down two people, behind on orders and every day we are writing re-orders. Such problems! Today I unpacked 22 cases of blanks, broke down the large boxes, bundled them together for recycling, bagged-up the bubble wrap. When UPS delivered, I asked the delivery man to stack the cases on the front porch. When I finally got around to unpacking them, I discovered that he'd stacked them flush up against the front door, so the only way out (that way, at least) was to unpack the very heavy boxes = a sizable caloric burn. I guess I lucked out.

It's an ever-evolving adventure — though we work with glass and paint, which would seem to be fairly contant without a tremendous quantity of variables — the variables each day are numerous. Paint reacts to temperatures, glass is cranky when it's been stored out in the cold, the masking we use requires that we handle it with kid gloves. All is temperamental: every client has particular notions, wants this color and that shape in this pattern. And what color is Champagne, really? All that matters is we guess right.

I think what is not well-understood (even though we communicate this often and well) is that every single piece is painted, by hand, one at a time. By real live people. On this planet. By Melinda and me.

The pace and the on-going variety of tasks holds great appeal for me, though. And at the end of the day today, I walked down to Columbia Library before heading back home through blossom-scented streets, a lunch-sack filled to overflowing with CD's and novels.

(I would request these colors.)

A Remedy

As medical bills once again begin their upward spiral chez-moi, as a privately-insured citizen I suggest that Costco — known for volume discounts — get into the healthcare business.

Imagine this: while shopping for your gallon-jar of salsa and 24-pack of toilet paper, you could also pick up a six-pack of knee replacements — instructional DVD included! You could share the extras with friends and family, or save them for yourself. Fast and convenient, without the hassle of a hospital stay!

Need some talk-therapy? Not a problem: Costsco can offer a 12-session (what most insurance plans in this country cover) DVD that you can use IN THE PRIVACY OF YOUR OWN HOME. When you feel the need to speak, just press "pause", and you can talk for as long as your heart desires. And the best part: you can use it over and over again.

How about this, available only in February: buy one human heart, get one human heart free. For an additional fee, installation could be arranged.

And for issues dealing with infertility, a septic pack of fertilized human eggs could be marketed in the refrigerated case beside the 48-packs of fresh chicken eggs. Easy! Long shelf life! No need to check expiration dates!

It's sick — I know — but then, so is our healthcare industry. 

All weekend I dug in the garden and sawed and clipped and transplanted and pulled weeds and cursed morning glory, called it by its more appropriate name bindweed. The Chehalis apple tree is blooming and it's a considerable bit of heaven, just outside my kitchen door. Out the front door the clematis blooms pale pink and I think that maybe some bushtits or wrens are building a nest in the tangle just under the eaves — time will tell. Cats attend to my tending, Kitty Boy from across the street or Oliver from who knows exactly where these days, he might be calling my house his home. Flip and Lucy, mine, patrol the deck and pretend to be fierce but we all know that they're not. I can hear neighbor children pounding drums and laughing. Someone has grilled meat three nights in a row — I want a bite.

This benediction with the earth keeps me steady in a week where foundations have been cracked and sundered. My sister L. has lymphoma, and is still in the discovery stage, on heavy-dose pain-killers that render her a bit loopy. I visited her Friday night, and left feeling helpless, mortal.

(My own health is well. Thankfully.)

There have been lots of phone calls and text messages, one from my younger sister K., who wrote, I always thought that you, L., and I would live together when we're old. I texted back we will.

Damn it.

I hate this.

---

I planted sunflowers in little starter pots, and gave the wintered-over geraniums new soil and a tincture for health and vitality. I moved mint, ripped ivy, trimmed violas.

The nursery man at Holly Park Greenhouse said that he might have heliotrope this year (I count on him for this) and maybe cosmos — sales have declined, and only the oldsters (I'm assuming he included me in this category) ask for them. We'll see. I've been shopping there for 25 years — it's time I asked him his name.

Everything grows — tumors and parsley and collards and, if I'm lucky, heliotrope.

---

On another note, my son left for work today when I was working in the garden, and he locked me out. Oy. ("Oy" is my current favorite new word.) A back window was unlocked (bad in general, good for me) and I climbed through it onto a winter's accumulation of plastic sacks and assorted cast-off debris. Landed, balanced, got on with the business of being alive.

I do not live here.
    I buy seeds here.

   There is little that isn't run-down,
   but still it's beautiful.

Good afternoon, Napoleon.

Once I walked into a little shop in Orvieto and announced "grazie" to two very confused sales clerks. No context — just this goofy American feeling overly confident with her newly-acquired four-or-five word Italian vocabulary, and stuttering out a completely incorrect greeting.

Thank-you!
Thank-you!
Thank-you!

Oy.

Cursed with blushing, I turned around, exited.
Once outside, I nearly fell down laughing.

And then there was that bakery in Paris, when I was twenty, that I visited daily for my croissants and baguette. Desiring something sweet, I asked for a Napoleon. The crowded boulangerie suddenly became very quiet, and the girl behind the counter delivered an arch glare.

What? Did I say something wrong?

She looked me in the eye and said, "Il est mort."
Whereupon loud bursts of laughter erupted from everyone in line.

"Mille feuille," she said, "a thou-sand-leaves."

Oops.
I'd just ordered a dead emperor.

Tuesday Poem: My Papa's Waltz

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

—Theodore Roethke



For the past week, I've been struggling (and not blogging) with writing about a subject fraught with terror and sorrow, a subject that has pushed itself — once again — into the center of my daily life: the plague of our times — cancer.

A week ago my co-worker C. underwent major surgery for removal of her stomach and spleen, with evidence discovered of a more extensive diagnosis than what was originally anticipated. At work, we've had the delightful company of her dog, who runs in first thing and jumps to my lap. Melinda takes her on jaunts around the neighborhood, and the resident feline has decided to be the dog's new best friend. This was our upside to the darker side of what C. has had to endure, and is now recovering from, one day — one hour — at a time.

Who among us has any real inkling of the future? We can plan, guess, schedule, anticipate, etch in stone, and in the end life will hand us its own version of What Will Be. In the end, the only thing etched in stone will be your name, and mine.

Late last week I received news that my sister L. was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. She is still in the discovery phase, but the grim evidence shows large masses in three locations, one of which has caused a fractured spine. I spent Saturday in Urgent Care with L., her husband, and their youngest child, who is a sophomore in college. It was all very surreal, and then also frighteningly real, with the awareness that this is it folks, it's all we get.

My sister asked me to pick up her son from college and drive him to the hospital, which I was more than glad to do. Now, I come from a very large family, and there are many nieces and nephews with whom I've not spent more than a few minutes visiting at a hectic family gathering. Such was the case on Saturday with K. Although the larger part of my thoughts were focused on L., I did wonder what I'd talk about with K., and whether there would be awkward aunt-nephew silences.

During the 30 minute drive, the conversation veered to an English class K. is taking. I asked him what he's reading, and he said so far it's been mostly poetry. Said he'd read some Roethke — My Papa's Waltz — and was required to analyze it word for word. Had to look up each word and pay attention to not only the etymology, but also every meaning, and the nuances of every meaning, and how a slight shift in nuance could shift the direction and understanding of the writing. I'd entered into this conversation with the knowledge that K. excelled in high school in math and science, and here we were talking about one of my favorite subjects, and talking about the poet on whom I cut my teeth. I was astonished, thrilled.

Soon we'd settled into an easy banter. We talked a little about James Joyce, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. We got lost trying to find the hospital. And then we sat for long hours in the waiting room, run out of conversation. We each drank a can of vending-machine soda and ate cashews from a teensy plastic sack. Ran the batteries down on our phones. Took photos. Sent texts.

It was a protracted afternoon, but a mere blink compared to what my co-worker C. faces, and what my sister also now faces. The silver lining to Saturday was that I got to know my nephew, at least this little bit. He's contemplative, tender, smart as all get-out. I wondered, how did he get to be twenty without really ever being on my radar? Life has a habit of getting in the way, and we are led from day to day minus enough intentions to do the things that are most important. A cancer diagnosis enabled this closer acquaintance with my nephew, and, while I felt a filial glow afterwards (shadowed by the terror of the larger issue at hand), I also felt a little ashamed. There are delights and riches everywhere, if we would only pay better attention.

Sleep didn't volunteer Saturday night.

And then all of this has pushed my own surgical procedure (on Wednesday) to the furthest reaches of my consciousness. More discovery, more waiting for results.

But my new planting bed in back of the garage is ready for sunflower seeds. I dug out the rocks and glass shards and chips of vinyl, made a tidy edge and lined it with the unearthed stones so the garbage collector will (hopefully) avoid crushing seedlings with his giant wheels. Last night the air outside smelled like spun sugar, like a bakery, like a million flowers in bloom at once.

So say a prayer, cross your fingers, stroke a good-luck charm. And maybe we'll all be here for a little while longer.

It has been observed that men, in their aging, for the most part have thrown off their feathers; while women, largely, remain in full and absolute plumage for many, many years.

This is an issue, for those women among us who still stand with feathers fluffed and ruffled, those of us still seeking a complement of feathers no matter how dark and muffled. There is the disenchantment of the jowly neck, the rubicose nose, the sprung-steel brows.

A long time ago, in another century, there were peacocks late on a summer's night, with their solitary cries traversing hill and gully. I recall how that piercing tone caught my imagination, a lonesome teen penning poetry by moonlight. I could see in my mind's eye that fan of iridescent plumage, while my own want & adolescent desire threw off sparks that failed to ignite even the most tenuous of tinders.

Oh.

Oh.

Gardening by the Square Inch

In my cardboard-box planting beds, bright slips of rainbow chard and ruffled lettuces (red, green) have taken root. A part of me wants to just grow flowers: clarkia and bachelor's buttons and godetia and nasturtiums. To hell with vegetables. But no. Instead of delphiniums and larkspur and portulaca there will be tomatoes and bush beans and beets.

A neighbor tonight raised an eyebrow to my project and said, "Oh, I see you've done some, uh, landscaping."

I told him that it wasn't landscaping but an eco-hip edible garden plot made entirely from recycled materials, which are also 100% biodegradable. This neighbor, an epidemiologist, looked at me and said, "Oh! Okay!" Then he flashed a barely-discernible twinkle. He got it.

And although he generally seems to take zero interest in gardening, this evening he was engaged in hand-to-thorn combat with the Himalayan blackberry vines which were threatening to overtake his shrubbery. (God Save The Shrubbery.)

My son and I recently took shovels to the roots of blackberries back of the garage. (The falling-down garage.) For 25 years I've put that particular swathe of earth at the bottom of the to-do list, and it felt good to finally get out there and make something happen. It'll be the perfect spot for some giant Russian sunflowers.

My brother's red barn
at the end of the orchard —
.

East of the Mountains: Abandoned

It's been that kind of week....

This space intentionally left blank.

We Intend To Have Fun....

....and we do.

Tuesday Poem: Reilly, Escaping

A blur of blond curls between houses,
scrape of an elbow, heel of a shoe around a corner:
Reilly runs from any open door.
When we install trick locks
six feet up, he opens them
with the tip of a plastic sword,
a wooden spoon, anything long enough.

Today he runs panting from the alley with
a branch of apple blossoms torn from a neighbor's tree,
its pink extravagance waving in the blue May air.

How can I be angry:
This child plies me with flowers.
At five, already he knows about love,
which gifts to bring,
what small penance we must serve.

© T. Clear 1991

---

At a party last Saturday was a woman to whom I hadn't spoken since a conflict arose between her husband and my late husband, many years ago, concerning a flooring installment gone bad and the ensuing repayment. There was intrigue and deception (not on my husband's part) which resulted in late-night threats of violence. Scary stuff, which has lingered and left me uneasy whenever I'm reminded of it.

So when she entered the party, our eyes met, and I offered a courteous hello, hoping to avoid her after that. But no: she sat down across from me, said hello again, asked me how I was, and said,

"I have a wonderful memory of you, T. There was a neighborhood party, and you read some poems, and I remember one particularly, a poem about your son Reilly, and his running off, and apple blossoms. In fact, it's stayed with me all this time. It really touched me."

I think my mouth dropped open in amazement. The poem (appearing above) was written years ago, and I'd long left it forgotten in a box in my basement, not even in the current roster of work on my computer.

I told her as much. I was stunned — both that she'd remembered the poem and that she'd decided to sidestep the uncomfortable issue between us and moved instead directly to something founded in love. I told her that I hadn't thought of that poem in years, and expressed gratitude that she mentioned it at all. I know that, without saying, the unmentionable incident was dancing in front of us, flashing red lights.

Instead, she offered a gift of inestimable worth.

She added, "It's so rare that one remembers a poem so clearly as I remember that one."

And even better: it's my son's birthday tomorrow.
I can't believe I have a 26-year-old son.

Poetry — with all its mystery and enduring power — healed a long-simmering feud.

I bow down
at the altar of the poem,
in humble gratitude.

When the corpse of a dream lingers....

Have you ever awakened from a dream still so completely entrenched — flesh & spirit — that it's nearly impossible to escape it? My eyes were literally bleary with dream imagery when I woke up today, and I can't seem to shake off its disturbing details. With a rapidly shifting cast of characters, I was visited by:

1. Serial killer Gary Ridgway's mother, who, though long-deceased (or so I thought) had changed her identity and was still working at a JCPenney. (In my non-dream life, I worked with this woman when I was in college. You can read about that nightmare-ish adventure here.)

2. A man who was my supervisor at a job when I was nineteen, who'd repeatedly asked me out, and was repeatedly turned down. In the dream, he was mistakenly introduced as my husband. I DON'T THINK SO.

3. Paul Newman. (Back from the dead. And damn — no opportunity to get his autograph!)

4. A two-year-old child throwing a tantrum, who screamed one long, dramatic, drawn-out note so completely exquisitely that a crowd of people gathered around him, and applauded when he finished.

In addition, there was the recurring appearance of the non-functioning phone, the recurring disappearance of my car (lost in a parking lot!), and I was late for work at a job where I was to sell forks and CD's.

What I need now is a good night's sleep, so I can recover!

Click on this, and read all the way to the bottom:

Google Really Advanced Search.