Sara

    Sometimes when she'd return from  lunch at Tancredi's or Callahan's in Troy, and she'd had her Manhattan, she'd get a little philosophical and she'd ask me to sit and talk with her. She would often conclude  her reminiscences by saying, "We live in hope, but we die in despair."   I think she may have had something there.

That's How It Goes...

 

Colonoscopy In A Vacuum? On A Shark?

     Why, yes, you can, if it's the Shark Rocket Vacuum. In this household, over the many years,  we've owned 3 dogs, 6 cats, 3 refrigerators, 2 stoves, 3 dishwashers, and about a hundred vacuum cleaners. The latest, the Shark, was purchased 4 years ago, and it's been okay, nothing spectacular, but gets the light cleaning jobs done. Until last week, when it refused to pick up any debris, even from the hard surface of the kitchen floor. Now I will say, I faithfully empty the dust cup after each use, sometimes twice during the use. And  after each use, I clear the accumulations mostly of hair, etc. from the brushroll on the base. So when the Shark showed no accumulation in the container, I thought it must be time to toss it into the dumpster. But then, I thought, I'll look in the Instruction Booklet. I found  a page under maintenance that indicated I may want to "check the wand for blockages." Now since I assembled the vacuum cleaner, I'd never thought to check the wand, but worth a try. First I had to remove the wand from the handheld portion and check  all the dust cup intake (colon) openings. I'd done that and there was no significant issue. Next step was to remove the floor nozzle from the wand and check the wand for blockages. And to clear blockages if required. Instructions stop there. The so-called wand, or large intestine, about 3 feet in length, appeared to be totally blocked. Visibility was zero, in attempt to peer through. My first tool was an old toothbrush, which reached only a short part of the blockage. I tried next an old bottle brush, but that was also too short in addition to being too spindly. So I located an old and very long screwdriver, and was able to push and pull the remainder of the blockage* away from  the sides and center of the "wand." The operation was a success, and no anesthesia was needed, though if I drank alcohol, I could have used a drink.

 * Most of the blockage consisted of wads of cat hair, not strands of hair, but the shedded fluff of her undercoat, which probably could serve as insulation.

Wordle

 Got it in 3 today. Take that, Jimmy Fallon.

Puttermesser in Paradise

"Very deep is the well of the past.  Should we not call  it bottomless?" 

    We used to subscribe to a number of magazines. My favorite was probably The Atlantic Monthly. I still read a lot then, and here was a wonderful mix of news, opinion, poetry, and fiction. 

   I'm attempting to de-clutter, downsize, whatever you want to call it. Today I located a stack of old magazines in the bottom of a bookcase. Included in the pile was the May 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and I think the reason I stopped my subscription. The magazine contains a short story by Cynthia Ozick, one of the most unsettling pieces of literature I'd ever read till then and ever after. I remember stuffing the magazine into the lowest level of the bookcase, out of fear that I might read, or even think of it, again. 

  I know that poor old Mrs. Puttermesser encountered some demonic happenings on her way to Paradise. I forget what was so intrinsically terrifying, but I had wished I'd never seen the magazine. 

 Now the story  in my hands again, and I'm tempted to reread it. But I also know that  the tragic tale of what   happened to Mrs. Puttermesser 25 years ago is going to seem more vivid at my present stage of life. 

 To shred or not to shred: 

that is the dilemma.

Memories Of Things That They Said. And Did.

     The days are short now, and darkness and loneness collide into the pain of long and sleepless nights.  Conjuring up  younger and happier times only emphasizes the  sadness of finality. So I turn my thoughts to thinking of youth, that being the more recent memories involving the grandchildren, not here attempting to explain meaning and thought, just a description of brief moments in time, more precious for their unawareness. 

   Starting with the oldest:

Ben---For a time in his young life, he was fascinated by the Magic Tree House books. Of course when the boys  were little, I often read to them in the house just down the road, but even after Ben learned to read by himself, he would ask me to read these books to him. Somewhere in the jumble of storage, there is a phone tape of his call, "Nana, will you come down and read to me; I don't know why, but I just like you to."  

Greg---Not so long ago, but though somewhat taciturn, he did what nobody else has done in  a very long time;  he asked me, just in conversation,  what I thought about a subject brought up in the discussion of current events. 

Andrew---Dave's duties in childcare ended near the end of the school year when Andrew was almost 10 years old. That following fall, he started out by getting off the schoolbus at my house, but it soon became clear, with one or more older brothers at home after school, that he could go to his own house. However, sometimes he would choose to take the bus here, saying, "I kind of like the idea of having two homes."

Annabel---When she was about 5 years old or so, she hugged me goodbye as they were leaving one night. She came to my chair by the doorway, and as the family was bidding goodnight, the hug lasted so long that she fell asleep, partly in my lap and partly standing alongside the chair.

Madeleine---I'm now somewhat averse to having my picture taken, for obvious reasons, and am often subjected to criticism from some family members for that reluctance. This summer, it was much the same during the usual family picture. Madeleine, on her own, approached where I  was standing and said, "Nana, you're pretty."

Theo---Just tonight he said he had a message I had written to him last year, in response to the first letter he had sent to me. He wanted to read me the message, and he did so, perfectly too.

Aliceanna---She's usually quite reserved in her words and actions in this house, where she has not spent much time in her young life. Last summer, as the family was leaving, Aliceanna whispered something to her mother, which was "Can I give Nana a kiss goodbye?"

 Juliet---A few visits ago, when she was oh so much younger than four, she happened to tip our  television set forward, to the gasps of all assembled in the  room. I was sitting closest to the scene of the near-catastrophe, and she immediately flung herself into my lap and buried her face in my shoulder. 

Today's Body Count

  If possum, definitely not playin'.

So it's been a while...

 Clearing out old papers, I find this. Goes back a few years, sure, but maybe the last compliment I've received. So here you are, Blog. And if anyone cares to peruse Tolstoy's Literary Intentions, just contact me. It's fascinating reading, I can assure you.

"That's how it goes. Everybody knows."

 Lately I have been reading, or at least skimming, the obituary columns in the newspapers. A recurrent theme in more than a few writeups is how the deceased are  remembered for their storytelling and recitations of their memories of a long-ago childhood.  I can picture a rapt audience sitting around the dinner table while Grandpa recounts war stories, and raves on about the first car he ever owned.  And Grandma with her children and grandchildren paying rapt attention while she tells them what life was like in her courting days, and how different schools and teachers were. 

   Maybe the surviving obituary writers have actual memories of those old-timer stories; maybe they are realizing too late that they should have listened to those tales told by someone who will never do so again; maybe those writers live in a parallel universe. But if they do indeed yearn for stories from the past, I can tell them, in no particular order, :

* What it was like to grow up in a house with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no telephone.

* How a parent living in the country struggled to have her child attend school with no schoolbus transportation.

* How the same parent, in isolation, had to wait for the mailman in order to seek medical attention during her children's emergencies.

* What a home looks like after a SWAT team tosses a flashbang into a window and searches for a gun.

* How you feel after the door to your home is kicked in and your house burglarized, on 2 separate occasions.

* The excitement and terror of bobsledding down Mt Von Hoevenberg with your sled riding the outside bank the whole way and you're completely blinded by the cast-off ice.

* The surprise of having an entire Canadian hockey team take the floor pre-game and welcome you by name to the game

* Being "kidnapped" in your car by an overzealous airport employee for being in the wrong area. (I wasn't the driver.

* Cruising on the Mississippi River and having your traveling companion be surprised when meeting her mom's neighbors from her hometown

* Being in a party of invited guests to the inner sanctums of a Playboy Club

* Having a pelican poop on your head as you walked from your room to the pool

* Finding you sister's long missing cat, Willie, on a random visit to the Menands Animal Shelter

* Riding a chair lift to a very steep mountain at Mt. Snow and being to afraid to ski off.

* Medical /Health-related accounts of missed diagnoses, misdiagnoses, surgeries, radiation, chemo, and diagnoses yet to come

* Wading through a government process, the outcome of which by most accounts was speculative at best.

* Walking, hiking, traipsing in the unknown banks of Lake Pontchartrain  with  a Brit who was out to walk its entire length, which we learned later is about 24 miles.

*  Winning the Power Ball  ( Life is but a dream.

Through a lens, darkly or Night must fall

 

Flammable

 It's the season for those advocating duct cleaning. I think, from personal experience,  the claims have validity. Every year about this time, I sort through the mountains of accumulated  paperwork , and clear out that no longer needed, or so I hope. Since some papers have sensitive information, such as social security and banking account numbers, I don't feel comfortable tossing them into the recyclable bin. I used to have a shredder, but it disappeared, and it was a tedious process anyway. So it has been my practice to cram them into a paper bag and set fire to it. In past years, I've formed a burn pit out of snow, no open burning allowed. One may think it would be easy to burn a paper bag stuffed with papers, but it is not. The flames flicker, burn down the page or two, and then snuff out. I've tried to fan the flames, have added tissue paper, kleenex or any other available materials that would seem to stoke a fire, even cat fur, with poor results. I have finally discovered one substance that quickly ignites and feeds the fire until all is rendered to ashes. That substance is dryer lint.