Tales from the Shark Tank

Quote: “That’s not a roadblock, it’s a mudslide over the next 20 miles!”

I’ve been trying for several weeks to get someone to mow my lawn for me, as I had no idea how to so much as start the mower. Today’s attempt failed because my designated mower couldn’t get the machine to start. Neither could I, when I tried, but I got more stubborn. I went to my neighbor, out mowing his own lawn, and requested his aid and assistance. I thought about doing the “damsel in distress” routine, but I’ve gotten a little to self-confident to be able to carry that one off convincingly anymore, and I really didn’t want to make a total fool of myself. Besides, my neighbors are young enough to be my kids. In the event, he was quite willing to essay the attempt, and was indeed met with success. Of course, I realized forthwith that I had neglected such details as picking up the hose and drain pipes, and that I didn’t dare let go of the mower lever lest I be back where I started. So I simply began the project, doing our postage stamp sized front yard first and then moving to the back. I would have been better served with a couple of sheep or a scythe for the back yard, but I did my best with the machine. And indeed, one can see where I have been and where I have not. I ran out of gas, and it was getting dark. But you know, I’m still not sure what I accomplished. I may have mowed a part of the lawn, or I may simply have reseeded dandelions. Either way, with the rain due the next few days, I am fully expecting the part I mowed to be indisinguishable from the part I didn’t by the time it’s dry again. But we shall see. At least now I know how to start the mower.

For the past several years, Seder has been held as much in spite of our son as with him. I’ve considered, each year, whether to enforce the dietary restrictions of the holiday for him. Each year I’ve tried to explain the holiday and what its particular rules are, and each year I’ve been met with utter incomprehension or resistance. Each year, I’ve decided that his need for as much consistency as we can provide him was more important than enforcing dietary restrictions that would eliminate most of what few things he’s willing to eat.

This year was different. This year he was enthusiastic, wanted to participate, wanted to know what we were doing and why. He read the four questions of the Seder perfectly, without prior practice. He listened to the answers, and insisted on reading the blessings himself. He got them right, too, and then went and did whatever he’d been reading about. That included washing his hands at one point, and actually eating a bite of parsley and one of matzo at others. I was so proud of him it’s a good thing I didn’t have buttons, because I guarantee they would have popped.

Clearly, teaching my son the traditions I grew up with is taking second place to putting the Seder itself together. That’s as well, because for some odd reason my mind didn’t wrap around the upcoming holiday until about three days ago. Then I put myself and everyhone around me into high gear, and began cleaning, cooking, and then cooking some more. And of course, we got some stories out of that. There was dessert. I usually make a chocolate wine sponge cake, but couldn’t for the life of me locate the cookbook containing the recipe, nor was it online. So I went through some of my other cookbooks, realizing to my own bemusement that I have an entire three foot shelf just of Passover cookbooks, let alone the other kosher cookbooks. There I found a recipe for honey sponge cake which sounded good to Wick. So I made it, adding assorted flavorings. It smelled wonderful, and looked good coming out of the oven. It continued to to look good as I turned it upside down over a wine bottle to cool, as is prescribed for sponge cakes. I had no sooner turned my back than my housemate, cleaning in the dining room, called me back in a tone that brooked no delay. The cake had fallen out of the pan in pieces all over the dining room table. I looked at it. I looked at my watch. No time to make another cake. So dessert, at the suggestion of my housemate, was a sort of take on trifle. The cake got torn into pieces. A quart of strawberries got pureed, and another sliced. That and a bag of frozen blueberries and some Cointreau got folded in with the cake. Hey presto, we had dessert!

Then there was the spontaneous translation. The Haggadah we use was prepared sometime in the 1920s or ’30s; the language is poetic, but quite opaque to a 7 year old. So I suggested that as each of us read a section, we paraphrase so boychick would understand. My housemate, slightly tipsy with the two cups of wine she’d already consumed, had to come up with an alternate term for “sojourn”. Her choice? “They were just going to Egypt to hang out for a while”. I shall never hear that phrase the same way again.

A few minutes ago the local tornado sirens went off, causing me to look out the window. I’d been listening to the intermitent rumblings of incoming storm for a while, so I was expecting dark sky and rain. The closest window looks out over the back yard, and what I actually saw was a sky cloudy but bright, with never a drop of water to spatter on my son’s swingset nor bend the blades of the overlong grass. So why the sirens? Then I looked out the front window.

Out the front window, visible from the same chair in which I glanced out into the back yard, I see something entirely different. It’s so dark it verges on twilight, a good two hours before sunset. Rain is coming down in sheets, and the branches of the trees tossing so hard I will be utterly unsurprised if some of them break. Out the front window, the severe storm warning flashing across the tv makes sense. From the back window, perhaps 20 feet further south, all looks quiet and serene. It is the sharpest demarcation line at the edge of a storm I have ever seen.

My son has been reading Garfield books lately. He has also been absorbing the ideas expressed therein, such as they are. I can tell this because he just informed me that he is “putting two stores on a diet”. One is Burger King, because they stopped giving out Robots: The Movie toys before he managed to collect Piper (one of the characters) . The other is a local liquor store, because I told him you had to be 21 to go inside and look at the pretty glassware in the window. Per my favorite boychick, 7 is a much more reasonable age for such rules. And we’re going to have to work on his eating habits if he considers being put on a diet the worst curse he can conceive.

I’ve looked at the calendar. It consistently reports that it is the middle of April. Now, I’ve lived in Indiana for the past 30 years. I know what April in Indiana should be like. It should be damp, rainy, and fairly cool. There may be the occasional day that mimics late spring or early summer, but for the most part the weather should be fairly comfortable for walking, gardening, and other active endeavors. I also know what it should not be. It should not be so hot that air conditioning is not only something meriting consideration, but necessary. It should not be so hot that a short walk leaves one in dire need of a shower. In short, it should not be in the mid 80s. And if by some quirk it does attain such a temperature, it certainly shouldn’t maintain it for more than a day.

But the weather isn’t listening. It’s right hot out. At sunset, it’s still 80 degrees Farenheit, and today is no different from yesterday or the day before or the weekend. I’ve gotten my son’s shorts out, to his great delight. He wants to run in the sprinkler, and I have to admit my first thought was “but it’s April. It’s too soon.” Then we went ahead and did it, because it really is hot enough to warrant it. But y’know, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance here. Temperatures in the mid 80s don’t go with blooming daffodils and lilacs. They just don’t.

I just got e-mail from my friend. Her husband’s cancer did not respond to radiation or chemo. He’s on hospice now, at home with all sorts of equipment. He’ll be getting different chemo, simply for control of symptoms, but there’s nothing to stop the progression of the illness. His doctor says even the chemo won’t be effective for more than six months. What a horrible roller-coaster ride this is turning out to be.

I think I shall be asking my beloved husband if he will give up one of our weekends together so that I can go up and visit her. I’ve been sending her e-mail periodically even if I don’t have anything to say worth reading, just to let her know she hasn’t been forgotten. Another friend has suggested setting up a trust for their son’s education, and I shall be looking into what is required for that. But I keep thinking…I went to a Halloween party one year as the Queen of Faerie. I wish it were so in truth, and that I had the power to heal this for them. And I know I’m not the only one who’s making such wishes.

I finally got a chance to get in and join a gym today. You’d think it wouldn’t take much coordinating, but somehow the school day is never long enough for me to accomplish what I want. So today, as soon as His Boyness was safely at school, I headed in the direction of the Emporium of Exercise, there to write them a check and get my photo printed on one of their cards. (I must say, it is bar none the *worst* photo of myself I have ever had the misfortune to be saddled with, worse than either my passport or my driver’s license. It is so bad that I may “lose” the card simply for the sake of getting another one.)

I had some other obligations thereafter, but early afternoon I managed to get back with my swimsuit and necessary stuff. I managed to swim laps for half an hour without collapsing after. Given that I am in the worst shape I’ve ever been, that makes me pretty happy. Tomorrow morning will see me joining the water aerobics class that meets 4 days a week. The mission is really very simple. I want to have a body I can live in comfortably again. It’s been too long.

As my gentle readers may be aware, my husband has been working in the north-west corner of the state, two and a half hours drive away. So he leaves very early Monday morning, returning home on Friday evening in time to put our small son to bed and then have a date with me. It is a contract position, and in theory temporary. The good news is that theory is not reality; he has been told he will be hired for it as a permanent position. There are some details to work out, but the job is no longer posted by The Big Insurance Company. They are extraordinarily pleased with him, and I very proud of him.

The down side of this is that now we’ll have to pack and move. I’ve been trying to sort and pitch for a while, but now the process will have to accelerate dramatically. We’ve been in this house for ten years, the longest stretch I’ve lived in a single structure in my life. We’d intended to stay in it forever. Now that changes. We don’t know the school systems, so we don’t know where to even try to find a place to live. We need to balance my husband’s commute with my parent’s needs. There is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to get this house in shape to be put on the market. I’m already getting started on finding people to do the bits I can’t manage, like painting trim at the roof-peak of a 2 story house. Every place I look, I see something else I need to attend to.

I wish I could better explain it to my mother-in-law. She sees no reason why J. and I can’t just go as soon as he’s out of school. If he had more than six weeks left in the school year, she’d be encouraging us to transfer him and go. All I can think of is that she last moved when my husband was starting high school. That was the mid 1970’s, and here in town as well. She’s forgotten what it’s like. But I’m an Air Force brat, and I remember entirely too well.

I’ve been debating whether to keep my gas grill. It was a nice one, but for whatever reason we haven’t made much use of it, so I decided to consign it to Freecycle. This evening I got home to find that it had been moved, visibly, but was still on my deck. I wondered why that should be, and got online to e-mail the man who was supposed to collect it. What I found was e-mail from him. He couldn’t get it. It was full of wasp’s nests and their inhabitants, and they objected strenuously to having their abode disrupted. He was nice about, though, saying only “watch your kids”. Having had my kid stung last year, I greatly appreciated the warning.

So I went out and peered through the glass on the front of the grill. Sure enough, I counted at least 4 visible nests, with no guarantee that there weren’t more attached where I could not easily see them. Ok, I sprayed out the ones that took over a toy last year; I could eradicate these, and indeed I have done so. They’re quiescent at night, and while I don’t like poisons, they have their uses.

But it occurs to me. This is the stuff that lasts for months. It has dire warnings all over it about using on surfaces that come into contact with food. I can’t think of anything more designed to come into contact with food than the interior of a grill. So although it is, for them, a pyrrhic victory, I think the wasps won this one. Dead though they be, they have still made the grill unusable. It will be going out Monday morning for heavy trash pickup. That’s ok, though. All I really wanted was to make it go away. And y’know, the trash truck will make it go away very effectively.