Laundry

There are lots of things I like about living in Maine. One of them is being able to use antiques in everyday life. Take, for instance, our local "Launderette". This noble cornerstone of Kittery commerce was established some time around the ice age. It is now run by a father and son who skulk around warning clientele about the dangers of overloading the washers.

There are 26 washers in the laundrette and the owners instigate runs on individual machines by programming 2 of the 26 to cost 50 cents less than the other 24. This leads to the patrons, myself included, to troll along the rows of ancient washers, subtly looking for the machines with 4 coin slots instead of 6. These machines are inevitably taken, leaving the people who pay full price to feel vaguely ripped off.

Depending on the time of day that you're there, the kind of people you share the laundrette with will vary. In midsummer at midday, it's mostly casually dressed tourists washing the bedding from their summer homes. At six in the morning, you generally find Navy yard workers at the end of their shift, surreptitiously drinking beer out of brown paper bags. They generally avoid conversation as they wait for the cycles to run but occasionally they amuse themselves with jovial and aggressive flirtation. They are largely harmless however, the alcohol making it necessary for their movement to be restricted to Formica chairs that they've settled in. In late afternoon, you find exhausted looking parents in these chairs, ignoring their children as run laps around the outside of the washers, making navigating the narrow rows a live obstacle course!

Jaded and suspicious people choose to stay right next to their washers the throughout the entire cycle to guard their clothes against thieves, pranksters and other vandals. Oddly, these are generally the clothes that no one in their right minds would steal. However, the owners stare at every new arrival to the laundrette as if recognizing our faces from America's Most Wanted.

The dryers are even more exciting than the washers! They tend to shrink clothes down to doll-sized while at the same time redecorating them with rust spots. They wheeze and occasionally just decide not to dry your clothes. I mean, they fool you by going around and around for an hour but then when you open them to retrieve your clothes, they are still soaking wet and only slightly warmed despite the piles of quarters you pump into them!

I've been thinking about buying a washer and dryer for the house. This would definitely be cheaper and more convenient but there's a part of me that would miss the surly owners, poorly maintained washers and rusty dryers.

Odds And Ends

Today, I am not funny. I've been sitting here for a long time trying to cleverly craft phrases into hilarious, practical and clever descriptions of mundane daily events. So far . . . nothing. But, I do have some cool pictures to show . . .

Here are some ocean pictures from a rainy day two days ago:

Lobster boats in Seabrook.

And the wetlands in Hampton:


Some elements of old boilers that I saw today:

These old boilers photograph much better than they run. They're as old as the hills and they heat a family-run greenhouse.

The father own the business and is a guff old man who likes to tell me stories about how he jokingly tries to convert lesbians back to the straight side, a longer version of the "you just haven't met the right man" theory.

The son is a frog-like man who lives so obviously in his father's shadow that he went out of his way to display his prowess to me by introducing his very beautiful, much younger wife.

They both stare blankly at me when I make recommendations for the improving the chemical treatment to protect their boilers. Their bravado is overshadowed only by their insecurity. The flowers always make it smell good there though.

Foraging For Food

My grocery store has decided stay open while it remodels. It is possibly the most disorienting thing I have ever encountered. All of the food has been moved into half of the store. A giant wall has been erected to divide the half with food from the half without.

The entrance, however, is still in the half with empty shelves and the check out. It causes everyone great confusion. It's been going on for two weeks now and I still see shoppers drifting through the empty aisles with glassy stares.

They look like strangers in a strange land. As if food will magically appear if they just stay in that section long enough.

All the remaining food is packed into tight aisles, constantly gridlocked by confused patrons. I hate these people. How hard is it to learn to navigate around a new store? I hate them even more when I find myself and my cart parked across an aisle staring blankly at the frozen vegetables trying to remember why I'm even in this store.

The staff at the store is both exasperated and perkily helpful. They block up the aisles, smiling aggressively, asking if we're finding everything we need. We aren't, of course, and they know it. It's really insult to injury at it's basest level.

I finally gave up and left the store with pickles, basmati rice, and frozen peas. On the way out, the checkout lady (her name tag read MRS. Griffin) told me with forceful cheerfulness that the store was going to just great when it was finished. The bagger gave me a $10.00 coupon to thank me for inconveniencing myself in their store. I checked the expiration date on the way out. It expires next month.

Smoking

My sister, Fran, smokes.

She does it in an earthy artistic way that is hard to condemn as unhealthy. We do our best to act disapproving by staring at her accusingly whenever a "quitting" commercial featuring a sad orphan or a man whose lost his job, house, wife and children because of cigarettes comes on the television. But honestly, she makes it look good and we have to hide our grudging admiration behind our morally correct judgement!

But the truth is, she makes it look good.

I tried smoking a total of one time. I remember it well. I was standing outside the apartment I shared with Greg, took a small drag on the cigarette he was smoking and my lungs let me know they were not impressed. I coughed and choked loudly enough that he rushed me back inside so that I wouldn't wake up the neighbors. It really didn't boost me up on the sexy and mysterious scale at all.

In contrast, Fran rolls her own in smoky pubs while drinking dense local brews,

expounding effortlessly on deep philosophical theories with all the conviction of a tortured visionary. Watching her gesture with it for emphasis makes everyone present feel as if they were involved in a discussion that would be remembered as the point that some important social change hinged on.

She rolls her own in a ritualistic fashion in her room,

mummified with blankets, the window open to the sub-zero temperatures outside, music blasting into the room. She blows smoke out into the chilly air in a meditative fashion.

I feel certain that with a couple more weeks of baneful stares

will make her change her mind, slap a patch on her arm and decide to shape up.

Probably. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Adventures With Home Repair

Today I got home from work to find Dad and Fran standing in the kitchen over the carcass of our faulty stereo.



This stereo used to work perfectly well. It played Cd's and the radio beautifully. Then our very active nephew moved in with us and in an unguarded moment, decided that it would be a great idea to eject the Cd tray and try to hang from it.






It snapped and ended it's life half extended out from the front of the Cd player, unable to be pushed in or pulled out, effectively trapping six Cd's inside it's handicapped body. That happened a year and a half ago and since then it has inhabited a counter in the kitchen looking for all the world like an evil face sticking out it's drawer tongue at us and mocking our efforts when we periodically take the drawer in our hands and violently push and pull the drawer just in case it's only been joking all this time!


It sat on this counter, relegated to channelling NPR on a daily basis, resenting our resentment towards it's handicap . . . until today!


Often, when Dad visits, he likes to pick projects to accomplish while he's here. They make him feel useful and that if he wants to take a nap later, he can because he's gotten something done. Once he built us a counter and desk. At the very least, he sharpens our knives:





But today, he had apparently decided to take on the stereo as his fixer-upper project du jour! And by the time I got home, it was clear that this project was personal. The stereo sat partially dismembered, it's innards strewn across the counter.





So far the dissection had yielded several Cd's but the drawer remained stubbornly jammed despite being fully revealed. It continued to bang into a molded metal piece that sat in the midst of the track where it appeared to have always sat. The only evidence we had that it might not have always been there was our vague memory that the drawer used to roll smoothly in and out, accepting and playing our beautiful music at whim.



As we stood and gazed at it, willing it to heal before our eyes, Anne walked in with her friend, Stephen, her friend from college, who she had just picked up at the airport.





Stephen has never visited us before and is reportedly fascinated by the traffic circles, forests and the ocean. He was raised in suburban Ohio and is now in law school in Chicago. Stephen had also taken a course in circuits and electronics so he was greeted by open arms!



He began to examine the stereo. Fran seemed sceptical that he could do any good.


Ultimately, she turned out to be right.





Anne decided to let Stephen settle in. She showed him around the house and introduced him to everyone. The only person that Stephen had already met was Sara, who had visited Anne when she was at school.






Sara was sleeping on the futon. She is very sick because she claims to be allergic to mom and dad's house. She has a firm belief that she is being infected by people-dander. Apparently Gess and Clara are shedding again.


Stephen, amongst other things, such as being a male, a disliker of Guinness, a lover of cheese, a law student, is an Orthodox Jew. Apparently, this last characteristic of Stephen's gave my family pause. After Anne announced his need to eat only kosher food, there was a slight lull in the conversation followed by a loud rush of helpfulness designed to cover and make up for the lull. We would go shopping! What kind of meal would he like? How did he deal with this particular challenge? Maybe would should go out to eat! Many suggestions were made, through which Stephen had to raise his voice to protest loudly that this was not a problem that could not be easily solved. He dealt with it every day. He was very gracious about our offer to take him out to eat but explained that the only thing he could eat in restaurants generally were salads and he was perfectly fine making food for himself. He and Anne left for the store.


To be fair, we would have reacted similarly to any vegan, diabetic, suffer of Celiac's or Catholic on Friday who entered our kitchen. Different eaters make us nervous.


When they returned from the store with a large selection of kosher food, Stephen made himself a sandwich with lox, pine nut hummus and kosher cheddar cheese. Anne made herself chicken cordon bleu, a forbidden combination (we learned) of non-kosher chicken, dairy and ham. Mission accomplished! He and Anne then settled in to watch (and sing along to) Across the Universe.


To get back to the problem of the stereo, it died for good today, abandoned almost completely disassembled on the counter. It is temporarily replaced by it's lesser, uglier cousin. An old radio that can channel NPR nonetheless.

Sunday

Today I woke up tired. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the impending doom that the last day of the weekend brings. Maybe it was staying up late to watch Mariah Carey on SNL. (I am a reluctant fan.)

Whatever it was, it wasn't pretty.


I decided that I would feel better if I accomplished some tangible goals today. So after finishing some paperwork and paying some bills, I decided to tackle something truly scary. My refrigerator!



We actually have two refrigerators in the house, a full sized one in the pantry/utility room/catch all. Fran and Anne share that one and I use the half-sized one in the kitchen. However, we do find that sometimes because my fridge is actually in the kitchen, their food tends to migrate out into mine. This leads to the me opening my packed fridge and assuming that I actually have food.

On closer examination, however, my error becomes clear to me.

You know, I might complain about the food migration if I didn't think there was great potential for the tables to turn on me and the list of my bad roommate habits to be brought to light. As a person who loves confrontation almost much as dental surgery, I tend use it only as a last resort! Plus, I know I'm a nightmare roommate and I don't want to talk about it.

I decided to tackle the cleaning today because something is starting to smell and I need to get to the bottom of it.


As you can see, it was at least in need of some organization. It was getting too hard to throw something back in there and close the door fast enough to keep it from springing back out! So I pulled everything out including the shelves and the drawer.


I threw away the offending food (chicken past it's sell by date) and washed everything down with Clorox. As I was doing this, I listened to Selected Shorts on NPR. They read one story about a woman who lived two blocks from the library but still kept her library books checked out for so long that by the time she brought them back, she owed $32.00 in overdue library charges. Also, she had read them so long ago that as soon as she returned them, she checked them out again, vowing this time to read them and promptly return them . . .





'Fate has a nasty sense of humor', I thought, as I scrubbed at the encrusted surfaces that had seemed to appear overnight in the fridge, 'didn't I just do this?'!

Once it was properly sanitized again, I reloaded the food that I actually had

and found that, as I had suspected, I need to go shopping for more food to meet it's quiet demise in the back of my fridge. There seems to be an over abundance of pickles and condiments trying to pass themselves off as something that can in some way form a meal, if only I am creative enough to find the right combination.




With this project done, I poured my self a bloody mary

and looked around for my next project.


Just in case there is any curiosity about the essential ingredients for the perfect bloody mary, here they are:


After deliberating for a few minutes, I decided to make an apple carrot spice cake.

Baking on the weekends is a little bit of a compulsion for me. I generally give it away to outwardly grateful friends and neighbors. I only say outwardly grateful because I always imagine them shaking their fists at me as I walk away for sabotaging their diets.





I put tons of fruit and nuts and spices in this cake and it just smells amazing! It's dense and gorgeous. I tend to enjoy "rustic" cooking. For "rustic" read "lazy". I like to leave the skins on the apples and cut them in large chunks instead of grating them or cooking them down first.


I have not yet decided who will be getting this cake but I'm open to suggestions.

Day Off

Saturday was a good day. I met Fran after she got off work at Popovers for lunch and wine. The mistake I made was that I decided to wear these fabulous boots and the boots led to the sweater. But first came the boots -

I love these boots and I got them for a good price but they are as uncomfortable as they are beautiful! Not only are the soles slightly curved so that you need intense concentration and strong ankles to walk in them but they require a kind of confident walk from the wearer that speaks of grace, poise and an "owning of all she surveys" that takes some real character acting for me to pull off.

I had optimistically decided that I would undoubtedly find a parking spot right outside the restaurant and I could just (confidently) limp the short distance inside and find a table. As it was, there was no parking and after circling the block several times in growing desperation, I ended up parking in the parking garage. When wearing flat shoes, the garage is mere inches from everything in Portsmouth. Today, however, it was an epic journey, complete with all the appropriate suffering of the martyrs!

I left the car, went down the stairs,


up the street toward the church,



navigating the crumbling brick sidewalks

with as much dignity and poise as I could muster.

It was with great relief that I finally (three minutes after leaving my car) made it to Popovers and found a table!


Fran had not yet arrived, so I ordered the beef and barley soup and got the tomato bisque instead which is what I really wanted anyway.


After a few minutes of awkwardly sitting alone and feeling the growing panic that comes to me when I realize I may be sitting alone indefinitely and have not brought anything to camouflage myself against scrutiny, a book, note cards (Why do you think I started the letter writing kick?), a large hat. It's not that people can't see me, it's that I can forget that they can. Kind of the adult equivalent of hiding under the sheets to be safe from the monsters.



I tucked my hair my hair behind my ear for the seventeenth time and accidentally made eye contact with a middle aged woman sitting near me. She locked eyes with me for a long awkward second and then turned back to her friend. Just as my mind began to play her inevitable dialogue with her friend discussing everything from lunch choice to my sweater - you have to understand about this sweater, it's great and it goes perfectly with my boots!

I knew I was going to wear it to Popovers since Fran suggested that we meet there this morning. I'm trying to think of a way to explain how I feel about "outfits". Once I know what I'm going to wear on any given day, there's not a lot of flexibility in my mind about it! Certain clothes work together. And if they're together, I look awesome, seventy pounds lighter, brimming with youth and vitality! And if they're not, it doesn't matter what I do. It's just an ugly day. Which is why, when I left the house and dropped this sweater in the mud on my way to the restaurant, I didn't once think about going back inside and getting another sweater. This was the only acceptable way these clothes work for me! And there was no way I was going out with Fran for a late lunch on a Saturday ugly. A little mud on the sweater? It's brown anyway! However, with this woman looking at me, I felt that the sweater was shouting the story of it's neurotic owner and of the abuse my inflexibility heaped upon it!

Luckily, just as my mind turned down this dark and dangerous path, Fran showed up and saved the day!

She proceeds to order us a bottle of Riesling

and tell me a hilarious story about her boss, a woman who sounds like she lacks any internal monologue. A woman who'd spent the morning holding the phone to her ear while she shouted into the speaker phone. A woman who repeatedly curses her customers and interjects into delicate negotiations over pricing with enough hostility to effectively sour the exchange.

As she was telling this story a couple came into the restaurant with their very young baby and took a table near us. They had a stroller/baby carrier/car seat with them and used it to block the entire aisle between the tables, effectively cutting off our escape route.

We had no real desire to escape at that very moment but that hardly seemed the point!

This, of course, led to the inevitable conversation about people who not only choose to have children but who also see fit to take them out in public!

We relaxed into our comfortable, lazy criticism of those around us,

drank our wine,

and made plans to go see a movie!

Ah, Saturday! You should have seen me trying to walk back to my car after the wine though! Definitely worth the price of admission.