You're Doing It Wrong

When we moved into the new office building about 18 months ago, among the first thing we did was check out the restaurant and the sundries market.

After moving we went to the restaurant bar for happy hour. It smelled like beer and had the ambiance of a bar in an airport hotel. We decided never to go there again. It later went out of business. It’s like a haunted restaurant now because all the stuff is still in there, including the hard liquor, and occasionally there will be a light on and a few chairs moved around, but no people.

We also only went into the sundries market one time. Co-worker smokes. She didn’t have his brand. She didn’t have his back-up brand. We never never went in there again.

The sundries market was tiny and didn’t even have good candy. The whole place reeked of despair. There was a 50-ish lady who is the only person I ever saw working in there and she never smiled. It wasn’t like she was a person who doesn’t smile much, it was like she was about 5 minutes a way from swallowing a box of paper clips to end it all.

One day the place was locked up and there was a big sign that the business license was expired. But she returned. And she seemed to be trying. There was a sign that she now sold coffee. Two sizes. Small and large. There was a sign they now served Chinese food.

Our law clerk last summer bought soda from there even after I told him it was the most depressing sundries shop in the world.

I didn’t even like to walk past it. I always thought it was too bad they didn’t get some charming person in there and paint the walls and sell yummy baked goods.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a sign that they had new management. I saw two new people working in there. Bummer lady is gone. They wear bright green smocks and have colorful signs up and a big display of sandwiches.

I don’t know for sure because I still can’t bring myself to go in there.

Today’s my mother-in-law’s birthday.

I had a good week but I woke up at 2:30am this morning and I’m completely droopy right now. I had an epic post planned but the scanner decided to go crazy on me so we’ll have to look forward to it later.

Here’s one of the shots from the Europe trip. I wrote on the back, “Arc D’Triumph Aug 78.” I love the cars.

Tonight’s update is that I sold another story, “Estelle Makes the Casino Run,” which will be available online on June 1st. The table of contents is here: Innsmouth Free Press.

I’m excited to see my name turn up in one of my Google vanity alerts from something other than my own blog.

At last, all my major responsibilities for the week are over. Comcast has been and and gone. The guy seemed slightly taken aback when I ran out to the truck and thanked him.

Now I’ve got a little free time and I think I’m going to squander part of it by sitting on the couch and watching one of my shows.

Today was writer’s group and I usually bake a treat. When I know I’m going to be busy I usually buy cookie dough or brownie mix to make it easy. This week I was mesmerized by the pictures of layer cakes on the cake mix boxes and threw a mix in my cart. Of course, later I realized that made no sense. That I wasn’t going to pour the mix in a bowl and pull a frosted layer cake out of the oven.

I thought I could make it a bundt cake and drizzle something over the top. I hollered at Kira and Amanda for help and Amanda recommended a basic ganache and explained how to do it.

I made the cake last night but I waited until this morning at the last minute to do the topping. I needed to bathe before the meeting and the chocolate wasn’t melting so I finally put it in my improvised double boiler and put it on low and jumped in the shower. When I returned it was all melty and I very delicately attempted to drizzle it on my cake.

PLOP. PLOP.

I used a spatula to smear it around. I wasn’t sure whether this was a disaster or not. It’s not a great photo. I still need a “make your food look pretty on your blog” tutorial. It tasted fantastic and everyone loved it. That’s good enough for me.

On Tuesday I had a smoked bacon cheeseburger and fries that ruined my digestive system for 24 hours but was so totally worth it.

Patti with surprise appearance by Severus Snape. (Peter Buck)

When I started this post almost two hours ago, it was going to be about seeing Patti Smith talk about her new memoir this week. But we’ve had a minor clusterfuk in the meanwhile so I’m going to write about that instead.

Here’s Hannah’s review of Patti in Seattle. The first time I met Hannah was at a soccer game. The second time I met Hannah was at a Patti Smith show. If the third time we met it was at a Star Wars convention, we would have had to get married. But she’s not a Star Wars fanatic. But she loves to read and is a fiction librarian which is even better. But we already married other people.

Here’s Bob’s review of Patti in Portland.

Onto today’s surprise adventure.

We have this giant hedge between our house and the house next door. Today we had someone come over to prune our trees and whack back the hedge.

A couple of hours ago he knocked on the door to let me know that he’d accidentally cut the phone line to the house next door. Okay! Crap!

I got on the horn and sat through the phone tree from hell, did a song and dance to get the repair department. “No not my phone, the phone next door,” and so forth like this. They told me there was no record of them having a landline.

Yay! They won’t be inconvenienced.

The phone company made an appointment to come fix it anyway and I put a note on the neighbor’s door letting them know what was happening.

Could it possibly be that easy?

No. Neighbor comes over and thanks me for the note but informs me she has no cable and no internet. And she’s not happy. And who can blame her? Who wants to come home from work and find you have no cable because of your stupid neighbors?

So now I have to get on the horn with Comcast and go through another phone tree. [Hint: when the phonebot asks you to explain the problem yell at it. It’ll transfer you to a person.] More back and forth and when can they come? Monday. Yikes! Please don’t make me go to angry neighbor’s house and tell her she has to wait until Monday. More back and forth. The best they can do is tomorrow.

Then back to the phone company’s phone tree to cancel that service call.

Then over to neighbor’s with more apologies and explanation.

Then pour a glass of wine.

Let’s just hope the repair goes as planned. The guy said “there is no way on earth someone won’t be there to repair it tomorrow.”

Another photo from Germany. Look at my Mom’s giant purse. That’s my sister exiting the WC. Me and my bitchin feathered hair are holding my Kodak camera which must be the source of the old packet of random photos of castles and lakes with no people or interesting things to look at that I have in my photo box.

Here’s a journal entry from that trip, exactly as in original:

Sunday August 20th
Today we went to a old ruined castle. The walls were thick and high. There was a wonderful view of the Rhine River. We crossed the border and went to Heidleburg. Heidleberg is a wonderful little city where we stayed in a nice hotel with featherbeds and a nice big bathroom. We took a short walk to the train station. That night we went to a famous resteraunt and had a good meal.

You can really get a sense of my early genius. I’m grateful we didn’t lose that detail about the hotel bathroom.

In the process of my regular Sunday afternoon taking stock of things I noticed that I have a crazy busy week coming up. Posting will be cranky if at all.

I don’t know exactly where this photo was taken. I’m going to guess somewhere in Germany around 1978-ish. Nice lighting.

I especially love that my pants desperately need hemming and that I’m carting around the world’s biggest purse. How practical. What was I carrying? Hairstyling supplies? Lunch for four? The Complete Kent Family Chronicles? Also I’m pretty sure the collar on that shirt is pink satin. I wish I still had it.

Today’s “why do we always see this in stories?” topic is: unlocked storage rooms.

TV, movies and fiction always seem to have conveniently located unlocked storage rooms when they need them. Often for amorous purposes. I remember a show where some people did it in a storage room at the airport.

When was the last time you saw an unlocked storage room anywhere?

This book I just read not only had an unlocked storage room but it was huge. There were four people in there and fighting and at one point someone was running from someone else. This was at a night club.

Maybe I’m not going to the right places.

I think I got this thing in the second grade which would be, urgh, early seventies. It was part of a whole desk set. There was a stapler. A letter opener. A blotter. A noteholder. You had to buy it all separately and I wanted the complete set for the important work I did at my desk when I was seven.

My income was pretty tiny at the time so I only got this, the stapler and the noteholder. The other items are long gone but I still use this thing to hold my paperclips and safety pins.

I have way too many projects going right now and it looks like I’m not going to finish any of them.

One of the projects is working on revisions to a story and I had two productive days but now I’m all gummed up in the same part that been giving me fits since the first draft. I think I have it under control but I’m not going to finish today which is a bummer because I have some momentum and probably won’t have time again until next weekend.

Other projects I’m not finishing include updates to my bio page and the photo letter I’m doing for my Aunties in Germany.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d take advantage of the break between storms and got my butt out into the yard. I took care of a bunch of stuff that I neglected to do in the fall. I cleaned up dahlia stalks and raked junk and hopefully discouraged tons of weeds. I don’t think it’s possible to discourage weeds. I think attacking them now just kills the weak ones and makes more room for the vicious ones to come in later.

I also pruned the roses.

When the people moved in next door they asked about the roses between the houses. I said that the roses went with their house (they’re renters) but that I’d been taking care of them. They said they didn’t mind taking care of them but I guess there was a misunderstanding because no one watered, clipped or paid attention to the roses ever again.

I decided to prune them and I was deep into it when this loud bark-howling cuts loose behind me. I jumped out of my skin and turned around and there’s a huge black dog trotting over from the hedge between our houses. I have adult onset fear of dogs but I held it together and scolded him for startling me. He turned out to be a big friendly labrador-hound something who cowered behind me when his master came out to drag him back to his own yard.

It took about 45 minutes for my heartrate to return to normal.

The other night I jabbed myself with one of the dullest kitchen knives we have. We were in the last phases of getting dinner on the table so I squeezed it with a paper towel for a minute and then threw on a bandage. Later I noticed this.

Does anyone else ever think about crime shows when you throw a bloody paper towel into the garbage? If something terrible happened and the detective team had to come search the house and they’d hold up the bloody paper towel with their tweezers and gloved hands and use it as proof that something terrible happened. Even though really you just cut your finger in the kitchen.

Hm. I think about that.

What are bandages made out of these days? Before I went to bed I decided I’d better do a little proper first aid on my wound and it took me a couple of minutes to scrape that thing off my finger. There was a brief moment of panic when I thought it might be bonded to me forever.