Tales from the Shark Tank

This afternoon, since I was going past, I stopped at the local Old Time Pottery store to see if I could find a small size (5 to 7 inch) pottery or glass pie plate.  That is an emporium I normally avoid like the plague, mostly because my tolerance of kitsch is best measured in negative numbers, but the Anchor Hocking website said that was one of the retailers who handled their products, and there was a small pie plate listed among their wares.

This is essentially a warehouse-sized store.  The back half was full of dishes, bakeware, pots, pans, linens, cushions, storage supplies and the like.  Not my pie plates, but certainly a lot of stuff.  The problem was that in order to get to the back half, I had to go through the front half.

The entire front half, an area larger than many grocery stores I’ve been in, was full of Christmas stuff.  Trees.  Ornaments.  Fake greenery.  Santas.  Inflatable snowmen.  Seven foot tall straw figures that I assume, from the costumes, were intended as either shepherds or wise men.  You name it and it was there, and the vast majority of it was cheap in both senses of the word - inexpensive and tacky. And of course, there was the music.  I never knew you could do Greensleeves as a torchy blues, and you know, my life would have been complete if I had continued in my blissful ignorance.

I did it.  I got back to the back corner, looked at the stoneware and glass bakeware, found full size regular and deep dish pie plates, but none that were tart or individual sized.  And then I fled.  I don’t think I’ll be going back any time soon.

The local synagogue hosted the annual cookout/ picnic/ call it what you will for the Northwest Indiana Jewish Federation today.  The organizers sent out a request for donations of things to use as prizes for kid’s games, snacks, desserts, and so forth.  One of the things I’ve been known to do is make stretchy bracelets out of beads I’m not likely to use for any major project: “orphan” beads, inadvertently purchased cheapies, non-color-fast Chinese seed beads and the like.  I make some of them very small, so that if a mom gets something for herself, I can let her choose a bracelet as a bonus for a small daughter.  I have a bag of about a dozen of them, so I dropped it in my pocket and handed it to the game coordinator.

She pronounced them beautiful, then gave them back to me, saying they were “too nice”.  I told her what sort of materials went into them, and she shook her head.  They didn’t look cheap; they were “too pretty”, and she was concerned that there would be bad feelings if there was a perception that some kids had gotten nicer prizes than others.

So I took them home with me, save for one I gave to a little girl who was sitting at the same table with us, distressed because her efforts to win a prize had been unsuccessful.  Given her mother’s reaction, I think I’ll be making more.  I can put them in a basket in the gift shop, with a price tag that the kids in Hebrew School can afford.

But y’know?  I really don’t understand how a thing can be “too pretty”.  That just makes no sense to me at all.

We received a shipment of frozen stuff today that came packaged in a thick styrofoam container.  Once I’d gotten the contents into the freezer, I went back, expecting the ice block packaged with it to be one of the reusable ones.  Instead, I found that the white plastic bag read “Dry Ice.  DO NOT TOUCH” in large friendly letters.  My son had been hovering over the whole unpackaging process (and getting between me and the freezer, but that’s another matter), and so was right there.

Dry ice, eh.  And my favorite weather geek standing right there.  Would he like to do a science experiment on fog?  Wouldn’t he just!  So I went and ran some water into the tub, then went back, picked up the plastic bag containing the dry ice, took it into the bathroom, cut it open, and let it fall in.

Fog boiled up so quickly we couldn’t even see the splash we knew must have occurred.  It continued to bubble up from the locus of the ice, covering the water surface and then rising steadily to fill the tub.  He poked the fog with a finger, and proclaimed it cold.  He put his hand in it, carefully away from the block of ice itself, and lowered it carefully until the tip of a finger touched the water, and proclaimed it colder.  Then he tried to get a close look at it.  It was cold enough to hurt his face before he got close, so he came back and got his swim mask.  That took care of the eyes and nose (it’s a snorkeling mask), but it burned his mouth. Back to the swim bag.  He returned to his investigations with his snorkel in his mouth.  He finally got an actual look at how the fog developed, and said that while it was “burny-cold” on his mouth after a minute or so, the mask and snorkel let him stay close long enough to get a good look at the pattern of temperature currents in the fog over the dry ice, and off at the other end of the tub.  I was tremendously impressed by his persistence and ingenuity in getting the look he wanted.

So our unexpected package was a double gift - both the consumable contents and the means to do an impromptu chemistry lesson with my kid.  Or maybe it was a triple - the ice chest it arrived in is far the nicest foam one I’ve seen in a good while.  I’m thinking it should go in the back of my car, to get frozen things home from my favorite grocery in Indy.

And my son was so excited that as soon as dad pulled into the driveway, he was out the door to tell his father all about the bathtub full of burny-cold fog.  That was the best part.

I was about to e-mail a friend of mine to point out that it’s been three weeks since she posted anything to her blog. I know what’s going on in her life because we’ve talked, but what she puts in her blog is different. Then I checked and realized that it’s been very nearly as long since I’ve written anything. So before I say anything to her, it behooves me to attend to my own behavior. In other words, I’ll acknowledge that pot and kettle are equally carbonized before she points it out to me.

So what has our intrepid reporter been doing? A few things. Last weekend we went to an s.f. convention, which had a writer’s workshop as part of its available activities. It was taught by professional writers whose work I very much like, and I decided that I had put enough effort and energy into my writing skills that I might actually get something out of it now. So I signed myself up, and away I went.

My only comment is that I want to do it again. Soon. Often. It was great. There’s an incredible rush in reading the single page you’ve managed to write between the session that ended at 8:00 pm one night and the one the next morning at 10:00 and having the instructor say “that’s a first draft?” Then one gets to hear the comments and suggestions of the others there, about half of whom are published authors and all of whom are creative, intelligent, articulate people. Hearing what they’ve written and getting both to comment on it and to ask them why they chose one method of presenting something over another left me with enough food for thought that I’m still chewing it over a week later. I enjoyed the con; I got to see some people I haven’t seen in a good while, and got to hear some wonderful music and actually share a quiet dinner with a single friend who joined my family. I picked up some marvelous CDs, too, which I have been blithely listening to. I went for a swim with my son, and talked jewelry making with one merchant and costuming with another. But the thing that stands out most for me is that writer’s workshop. I’ll be doing that again. Who knows; maybe I’ll even gather the nerve to submit something to be published? Stranger things have happened.

Late in May 2007, I found myself sitting in the living room of my friends L. and M., giggling as he teased her about various ways he might choose to propose to her. I remember getting on the PA system at Target being suggested, as well as a few other equally public and potentially embarrassing options. Finally one of them turned to me and said “Aren’t you going to help me out here?”

My response was “What do you want me to do, offer to officiate?” The wisecrack turned out to be fateful. This past Saturday afternoon found me standing on the porch steps at Morris-Butler House in Indianapolis, judge pro temp appointment duly obtained, with two of the people who are dearest to me standing in front of me in formal wear listening to the wedding ceremony that was my gift to them. Both of them were glowing, so full of delight that I half expected at least one of them to float away like a balloon. The band, also friends of mine, had equipped me with a headset microphone so I could be heard over the noise of the nearby interstate. (That was a first; I don’t usually require artificial amplification.) I gather I did a reasonable job of it, judging by the compliments I got afterwards, but I suspect I could have simply asked them if they wished to be married and pronounced them so and they would have been happy. The weather was perfect, with rain holding off until not only the reception but most of the cleanup was complete. Everything was as lovely as one could wish for them.

The spring before we moved, I introduced them to each other, just because I thought they’d be great friends. I can claim credit for that, but not for anything else. What is between them they have built themselves. Now I’ve had the honor and privilege of performing their wedding ceremony, a development no one had any idea of in Spring of 2005. I’m delighted, but it’s they whose happiness lit up the day, and that is exactly as it should be.

We had a religion salesman (aka evangelist) knock on our door this morning. My beloved husband sent him away politely but quickly, and afterwards we were trying to explain what he was doing to our son. “He wants to convince us to leave our religion and join his” we told him. Once he understood it, he was most indignant. “That’s not cool!” quoth our son. “That’s so not in our family plan book!”

It never rains but it pours. My dad, now in the nursing home for rehab, has developed pneumonia. And my oldest friend has just been dismissed from her job of near to 20 years. The reasons she’s been given don’t make sense, unless you interpret it as daring to speak the truth to power, and offending someone with rather an overinflated sense of their own importance. At least my father-in-law, who has also been quite ill, is improving.

And all I can do, for any of those involved, is listen. Fortunately I’m very good at it, but I think we could all really use a break here. And if we can’t find the brake lever, can we maybe get the tool box off the throttle at least?

The traditional view of birds in farm fields involves crows. I mean, scarecrows have all but become a symbol of agricultural activity. Every cartoon that shows birds in fields shows caricatured black birds that everyone knows are meant to be crows simply because that is the convention.

There are birds settling in the fields here, especially right after they’ve been plowed for the spring or harvested in the fall, but they aren’t crows. They’re white, or pale grey and white. Like the crows, they come in flocks, lifting into the air to whirl around each other crying and land to forage some more. Their calls are no more like a crow’s caw than their feathers are glossy black, though. Instead they are high, clear and unmistakable, both pitch and volume falling from their initial note. They are also simply part of the atmosphere on the lake, or by any sea shore, but wildly out of place over farm fields and woodland.

It seems very strange to me to have gulls foraging in the corn fields. Those beaks are designed for scooping fish out of the lake, not whatever it is they’re finding in the newly plowed ground. Graceful as they are in the air, they’re as awkward and ungainly as any other water bird on the ground. But they must be getting something for the efforts, because flocks of them are absolutely everywhere. There are also a multitude of little seed-eaters in those same fields, but their brown feathers and tiny bodies disappear, camouflaged by the soil itself until they hop or flutter to another spot for a different selection from the birdie buffet. But from a distance, with those white feathers, it’s the gulls you see, and to my eye they look incredibly incongruous.

I’ve replaced my cell phone with the next generation of the one I had. I debated it, but in the end decided to get the one with the features I wanted that actually best fit my hand. I looked at a slide model, but the woman helping me told me those were quite fragile, which will not do at all. I looked at some PDA/phones as well, but really, what’s the point? I can use the one I got for reminders and the few text messages I send, and my schedule is no longer so full that I need an electronic brain. Were I still in full-time practice, it would be another matter, but I’m not. Likewise if my son were involved in numerous after-school activities that required I keep track of them, but he’s not either. Those things for which I have to be on schedule happen daily, and so are easy to keep track of.

The replacement process took about four times longer than I thought it would, but I did not grudge the time. What took so long was the staff’s efforts to get my phone list copied to the new phone. It took them 4 or 5 tries. I lost count, but I’m very grateful that they didn’t give up. So I haven’t lost my list of contacts. Now if I can just get my photos to transfer to my computer when the phone’s keyboard doesn’t work, I’ll be able even happier.

Those whom I call, on a regular or even an irregular basis, do not expect to hear from me over the next several days. My cell phone, the one with everyone’s phone number in it, died abruptly. The keyboard simply stopped responding between one call and another, over a space of at most five minutes.

I may well be e-mailing to ask for phone numbers again as well. It depends on what else the phone collapse took with it.

To say this has been a frustrating day would be a huge understatement.