We’re BAAAAAAACK. Sort of.
It’s raining today. Before it started in pelting down in earnest, the hummingbirds were out in back, taking little showers. The two She’s Who Must Be Obeyed are napping at present. I’m baking the pumpkin for future pies. And, actually, warmth.
I must confess, Gentle Reader, that I am tired. The last two weeks of running my life and business (complete with Fair in the middle requiring preparation and lotsa driving) plus taking care of two cats and a disabled individual were like a mad Olympic sprint. With lead boots on. Not writing turned out to be not so great, either. There’s so much challenging stuff going on in the Personal Dominion that sorting it all out in the abstract helps. The past two weeks did not allow for that, what with the mad dash from one distress call to another, and God help me, ANOTHER VISIT TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM after a particularly ghastly, though unrelated, telephonic interlude. I even found myself in Walgreen’s one morning at effing 5:30 a.m. quizzing a bleary eyed Pharmacy Tech about OTC meds for the home front. We looked at each other and exchanged a silent Yup. Sucks. A friend called me about halfway through all this and said: Jeez. Where’d my life go? Ha ha, I said. If I could find MINE I’d tell you. Anyway.
The cats were interesting. Their human had left out, in a genius humanitarian move, latex gloves for me to use and this made it possible to pet them without instantly blazing into Hive Central. It was great. It made me think, however, about the cognitive and behavioral differences between cats and parrots. Since my mornings were filled by feeding both and providing slavish attention all round. Parrots are funnily like humans, or perhaps it is that you can see a particular type of emotional pattern that we share with them. They’re like Presidents which is to say, I suppose, that there is a certain amount of Ego, and they are deeply emotional and jealous on top of it. Once you get past that, you can actually have a decent conversation with one. They revel in language and sound and interpreting how to communicate. Which I appreciate. Just not at high decibels. Cats, on the other hand. Independent but also high maintenance, and not the same kind of intellectual interaction. They want what they want, when they want it, and, you may pet me when I choose and I’ll talk to you when I get good and ready. Maybe. But you’ll have to learn Cat, dude, because I refuse to be bilingual. Then, of course, there’s dogs. Easy to talk to, dogs are. They get it, usually without a fuss, too. This all made me realize that I think of animals, in a primary way, as creatures whose language I have to learn. I have animal clients and it is generally not hard for me to “tune in” to them. So I guess that means I’m making progress on my language skills. It’s interesting, really.
All of which has led me to fantasize about hot springs. I’d like to go up in the mountains to a hot spring, and a hot bath isn’t going to do it. Peace, silence, stars and hot water. Right now, that’s all I want.
OMG
Well. I just did something I should have done at the beginning, of course. Googled n.w.b. And, so appropriate. It’s from an advertising site, sort of a Craig’s List if you will, in Limburg, Germany. Apparently now also in Bolivia? I still can’t figure out how they got to Rancho Boozilla. Spam Magnet, I tell you. This could get messy.
Nils Walg Bolivia
This, Gentle Readers, was the past week’s top search, er, thingy, according to my Stats. Those three words led someone to my blog, apparently. The more I think about it, the more apropos it seems. Unless “walg” has some sinister meaning, this is a tantalizingly meaningless set of letters. Nils, you say. Yes! Nils desperendum, right? Bolivia! We know where that is. Now, what about walg? And what has it to do with House of Boozilla? Especially since this searcher left an encrypted comment.
Sometimes I think I’ve spent my life trying to determine what about walg. Recent trips through the mental dumpster have left me feeling that not only has this been a wild goose chase, a snipe hunt, it has been a complete waste of time. Yes, indeed, I have lots of experiences and memories: Most of which I am valiantly trying to forget. While in the dumpster, I mean. Other out of dumpster times I think it is a worthwhile step toward understanding. Which, at some point in the past, was what I said I wanted, when asked. That right there just shows you how hopeless it all is. Did I say money? No. Did I say love, or success? No. Did I say a large commercial building in Manhattan? No. Did I even say no loss of muscle tone as time goes by? NO! Wisdom, I said. Understanding. The meaning of walg hunt began in earnest.
So, walg. I had several emails recently from people whose email “names” were those of animals. Like, rhino, or dancing asp, let’s say. It’s all part of the Spam Magnet I’ve become, inter- and out of -net. The “rhino” email was an okey doke brushoff from a place I had tried to volunteer at. Not being their sort of volunteer, they gave me the old we’ll keep it on file in a we cool, contemporary, jazzy way. We’re nearing walg here, I think. But dancingasp was something else. A clear walg sighting. I remembered the initial communique from Asp, because it occasioned an argument between the Partner and I. Asp wanted samples, you see, to see if Asp wanted to buy anything. Being in my ropeadope phase, I thought, well, sure, why not. (Yes, now I KNOW why not.) Duly sent samples, got duly lectured by Partner who quite correctly pointed out that I am not in a position to be giving things away. Months pass. I assume the samples arrived because? I send out lots of packages and they all seem to arrive. However I receive an email from dancingasp saying package not received, please sir could I have some more? Realized in due course that Asp had got the package, and simply wanted more samples for Asp’s own purposes. Which did not include actually purchasing anything. Dear oh dear. The perfidy of people, really. Walg can leave one a bit downcast at close quarters, apparently.
Meanwhile, walg notwithstanding, current duties have kept us away from our keyboard until now, and promise to continue doing so for a few more days. I know this is hideous news, but there it is. I am my BFF’s Chief Cat Wrangler for some days, along with many and several other duties which seem to leave me in a state of semi-exhaustion. Apart from the fact that I am completely and totally allergic to cats. I am in need of a concerted Mad Scientist Session, what with an Important Fair coming up this weekend, but all the cat toy twirling and conciliatory tail brushing, along with rushing hither and yon, AND dealing with piles and piles of walg, have drained the batteries. So this afternoon, after {see above: Wrangling} , instead of doing what was on my list to do, which would have kept me abreast of the hectic pace? I retired to my couch and read SKATING TO ANTARCTICA by Jenny Diski. A terrific book, and if I say so myself, some very lovely stolen moments. The walg hasn’t completely gotten us yet, apparently. More to come, so even if you haven’t made the transition to digital, please stay tuned.
Claude Levi-Strauss
Having read Tristes Tropiques and being sad when it ended, I actually lugged The Origin of Table Manners with me on a long trip through Mexico. ( And read it there, moreover, while I had real deal amoebic dysentery in the freaking jungle. Way to have fun!) So, I was saddened to see that Claude Levi-Strauss died over this past weekend. He brought a fresh eye to his subject, as well as rigor, and whether or not the end product was something you agreed with or not, it was always stimulating and thought provoking to read his work. I always enjoyed the way he opened up anthropological thought, and perhaps academic thought as a whole, by his more horizontal analysis of how things repeat through cultures, which was called “structuralism”. I never understand these names, but anyway. (Like, really, for example, what is Deconstruction?) In any event, an original mind is no longer with us, and while that is the way of life, it is still a melancholy thing. I hope he is on to another grand adventure.
Misadventure, with Hollandaise
So, yesterday we went out to breakfast as an unusual and most welcome break in the routine. This would have been fine if the devil hadn’t made me I hadn’t decided that life was impossible without Eggs Benedict. This particular place, which is actually wonderful, operates on the premise that more is more. It says two pancakes, sometimes you get four. It says Eggs Benedict and you get something that looks like a small buttercup color lake with tiny pontoons floating in it. Net net, it plunged me, even having not partaken of the dish in its entirety, in a state of suspended and putrified animation in a gaseous domain, temporarily.
Which left me plenty of time to think, while I was trying to position myself in such a way as to not a )explode, or b) implode. Last week was pretty rough, again. The spot of Friday pawholding with a friend who found dealing with menacing and foul mouthed 20 somethings on BART (the Bay Bridge has been closed , and the Ferry wasn’t working because of an oil spill in the bay. Perhaps, really we need say no more.) ultimately more than she could take was just a small part. Combined with her empathy for a colleague at work who had come back from a trial in the deep south. The trial of the murderer of his daughter. Who was white. By her boyfriend, who was black, and demonstrated his total innocence by immediately decamping to Canada post event. Apparently the papers in this town trumpeted the constant refrain that the only reason this young man was considered as a suspect was because he was black. Forget forensics, right? Meanwhile, I think everyone in the Bay Area is, and certainly should be, disturbed and sickened by what happened to the Richmond high school girl at a school dance. It is an odd thing to come to terms with the fact that there are individuals out there who seem to have, actually, no real human component. Who will hurt you and think nothing of it. The possibility of life in prison seemed to get their attention, interestingly enough. The thing that I noticed though, was that somehow, now, everyone is racist and right off the top, too. Before it was just white folks. Now it is everyone. Whatever happens, it is related to the color of your skin, not your behavior. While this is oftentrue, it isn’t ALWAYS true. Kids in the Richmond case who were picked up by the Police because they had been watching and texting their friends about it and not lifting a finger to help? They were of course picked up just because of their skin color. Not because they were there and participating on some level in an atrocity. Basically. People are accepting rotten behavior and limitations on their own freedom because they are afraid to speak up and experience the wrath of one of these individuals , who of course come in all sizes, shapes, colors, stripes, sexes and persuasions. I met a raving white one yesterday and it shook me up more than a little, in addition to narrowly missing turning my car into an accordion. Also I was not happy with myself: Yo Mamma lept to my lips in a heartbeat and that isn’t going to help anything overall. It’s terrifying, actually, to see all of this. It is as though all the work and thought that happened in the last forty years….just didn’t. On top of the stomach balancing act, it really was just too much for me yesterday. Even taking a broad view of why this happens and allowing for the truth of people’s feelings about discrimination and the brutal reality of its existence in daily life- we still cannot be treating each other in this disrespectful and cruel way. Period. It is time to put down Your Personal Very Important Story. What you do to one, you do to all. How you treat someone else is how you treat yourself. Food for thought. Without, perhaps, hollandaise.
I Should Be…..
Washing the dishes. Watering the garden. Any number of things. Instead, I’m thinking about how Pedro Martinez reminded me of Yojimbo last night. ( One of my all time favorite movies, that and Sanjuro, of course.) But: That merest flick of a backward glance while walking off the mound. And since Matsui was the only one who, initially at least, seemed to figure out what was going on, the–er–motif got firmly fixed in my pliable little brain. Oh, baseball. As long as I can watch it, just watch the game, watch the people moving, and not think about all the money and owner weirdnesses and all, I am happy. There is a kind of discipline to the game that is like a martial art, in the way one has to devote oneself to the skills and techniques until they become second nature. And nature always has the last word: Luck, chance, weather, so many things enter into what happens in a baseball game. It is really like life. In that, you never know, sort of way.
And indeed, one never DOES know. I went to see my client in the nursing home today and everyone was dressed for Halloween. I didn’t recognize anybody, they’d costumed and switched up wheelchairs and all sorts of things. Werewolves! Goddesses! Border Patrol Agents! And everyone was having a fantastic time of it as a result. Slipping off their identities and entering into the spirit of the holiday- which, being about the bridge between the worlds of “life” and “death”, is actually appropriate for such a locale- with great humor and joy. The ability to be anonymous lent everyone an energy and …an abandon. A freedom. Which is precisely the point of it all, really. Entering into life with one’s heart. No guarantee of a win or a good ERA or success OR failure. It just IS and you might as well jump. So it was pretty amazing to see all these people, who live lives many would consider totally impossible, being collectively happy and, actually, powerful, in a funny way. The werewolf scared the hell out of me, to be honest. It turned out he’s one of the people who don’t speak, but I finally recognized him from his particular laugh. Oh, he thought it was hilarious sneaking up on me in that infernal wheelchair! I of course, being the mature person I am, laughed so hard I got the hiccups, which made everyone else giggle even more. Dude. Always a source of entertainment, we are. At least I didn’t fall down.
There is a kind of piercing, yet suspended, sense to things today. Maybe it’s the weather- warm, actually, blindingly clear. The intensity of the colors of things against the sky. We’re on the Pacific Flyway so there is always something amazing flying around–I saw a flock of small birds wheeling through the air earlier, watched them in a clustered group, then a circle, then a long line, constantly forming and reforming. Sometimes you could see them and sometimes the sun hit their wings and turned them so white they disappeared. Finally they expanded from the clump to the long sinuous line and all of a sudden: They were gone. It’s really all quite something, isn’t it.
Batty
Here, as heretofore alluded to and promised, is my Halloween picture.
The monoprint is from Bridget Henry (www.bridgetmaryhenry.com) and Batty plus halo is just part of the crew here at Rancho Boozilla. The pumpkin is destined to be a pie.
Batty has a special place in my heart, as a bit of an alter ego really. Lately I have been feeling ever more…lost in space. Batty, as it were. It seems challenging-er and challenging-er to keep everything together, and as a friend of mine remarked yesterday, things are becoming Chaotic. Surely not, I murmured, narrowly missing a pedestrian who had decided to step out into the crosswalk when the light turned red. Having waited, of course, through the green light. We were driving to the hospital to straighten out yet another life snafu, so there was some urgency to it all. Then I went into my “Shipping Department” (garage) today to send out some products and thought: Oh dear. Chaos indeed. Still. Lost shipments from last summer and non-stop solicitations notwithstanding, today I feel as though I and my Little Website have really arrived. We are now receiving long, lingering visits from robots. Yes. Bots. And Spiders. Not, as I anxiously asked the Webhost, Dr. Evil? No, no, he said. Robots. Ha, ha, he said. Dr. Evil! You have quite the little sense of humor don’t you? he said. Apparently, since I get hits from all over the world the robots think this means something. Hits, mind you. Sales, not so much. Then again it is hard to ship reasonably to Arabia and Bolivia. After all. And it is especially hard to make sales when your credit card processing service decides to switch your shipping options from various and mostly free, to express mail only with no notice. Somehow people just don’t want to be pushed into that! Whoa. And, as shopping on my own website is not my habit, I Had No Idea. After my head came back together after exploding upon receiving this wonderful piece of intelligence, I was relieved to learn there is a new “slogan”, as it were, for this occasion. When I called this nest of vipers Entity before with problems, they have said, Oh, no, no one else has that problem. Right. Right? Now, they said, Oh, no. We never offered that service. Never offered multiple shipping options for a web based business. Never. We’re just processing money. Oh. Of course. Sure, you’re right. Just because you have all these effing programming options for just these very services on the site that programs my shopping cart? Meaningless. Only a complete dolt would think that had any meaning at all. So, Batty and I looked at each other for a while and then I cowboyed up and fixed the darn thing. I hope. Meanwhile. Does anyone know what the Good Witch looked like?
Bird Day
Something kind of amazing happened this afternoon.
We have a hummingbird feeder in the back yard and a full complement of hummies to go with it. Often when we’re outside, if there is an Issue with the feeder, a hummingbird will come right up nose to nose and squeak a certain way. OK, we’re trainable, we know what to do. So, today, we were inside, and heard this enormously loud chirp sound, such as they make when they’re doing mating displays or just goofing around. The Partner responded to this call , opened the back door, and was greeted by the sight of the hummingbird right outside our kitchen door, zooming straight up and down, chirping- because the feeder needed to be filled. He led the Partner straight to the feeder, made eye contact, and flew off to allow the needed repairs to be completed. ( This plunged Boozilla and Co. into total jealous rage of course which required mollification with popcorn.) I’ve had hummingbird feeders for a long time, and I have never had a bird knock on my door when it was empty before. Amazing.
And, so. Like I said: Phillies. Don’t you think? Even taking A-rod into consideration.
Just Because
The Things I Amuse Myself With
A friend sent me this wonderful Hans Hoffman Pig Portrait postcard, which for some reason I have fallen in love with. It seemed only natural to pose The Pig with stuff from the garden, to wit, tomatoes of astonishing redness. And strawberries. It’s a thin line, in short. Wait, however, for our upcoming Halloween picture to get the full flavor of just how thin.
We are, of course, watching baseball here at Rancho Boozilla. I have been rooting for the Dodgers, and hope springs eternal. If they lose tonight, though, and all hope is dashed, my money’s on the Phillies for the whole thing. It should be fun watching Pedro pitch to the Yankees, after all.
Meanwhile, the fun just continues. But, baseball. Happy hour. Nils desperendum.
The Original Concept
Was what? when I started writing this blog. Nothing much, really. I like writing. It makes me feel slightly less crazy to get things out so I can look at them. Blogging is perfect also, because, quite often, even I can’t read my own handwriting. (And after three attempts, apparently can’t spell it either with any ease).
Meanwhile, it is Monday again. The Partner has MSNBC on, the ever irritating Jim Cramer and his shirt sleeves. All these things they talk about, they’re quite lame, to paraphrase Bob. But, a question. Why does a billionaire steal money? If the answer is simply because he can? It’s worse than we thought out here in the cold. A trip to the local open 24 hours Walgreen’s yesterday yielded the information that people are sleeping at night on the benches outside it now, including one man in a wheelchair and his wife (they take turns, apparently, keeping watch over each other, one awake and one asleep). It’s too deep for tears, just about. And perilously close in every way.
So, yesterday I pushed the Titanic off my chest by cooking. Waffles! Make extra and freeze so there’s something to eat even when you’re too anxious to figure it out in the morning. Enchiladas filled with squash and black beans with a sauce made from tomatoes from our garden. Not only thrifty but nutritious. The sauce is really easy, too. I roasted some tomatoes and an onion first, then put them in the food processor (or just chop up) with more fresh tomatoes and chilis. Whoosh around, then put in lightly oiled pan and sear. Done. The roasted onion makes a big difference, actually, in the sauce. Much better than raw. Garlic minced and sprinkled over filling before final assembly. Also this time I discovered that cubing cheese, if you use it, and putting it in the filling mixture and letting it all rest and come together flavor-wise is better than putting it on top. I liked it better, anyway, and the Partner pronounced it “authentic tasting.” And he would know. He is, himself, VERY authentic.
Meanwhile, the Titanic is back in position and I am trying to create some order out of the mayhem-ish winds blowing our way. We’ll see how I do. I did see yesterday, for sure, that basic kindness goes a long way and helps alot, however. So I’m going to try and remember that in my travels today.
