Trans/plant/portation

birthday cake from the past

1. Open first cookbook, entitled, “Baking,” and search for chocolate cake recipe.

2. Realize that there is not, in fact, any specific recipe for chocolate cake — there are, however, 15 recipes related to chocolate cake as a topographal category: flourless chocolate cake, chocolate mousse cake, sour cherry chocolate cake, hazelnut chocolate torte, chocolate and ice box cake . . . . Quit reading and try to remember what the original idea was again.

3. Read through four more cookbooks, not finding a cake recipe worth making. 

4. Pull out the Fine Cooking Chocolate magazine special and identify the recipe to attempt today. Sigh with relief until discovering there are 14,836 steps to creating said cake. Go for it anyway, since it’s the best bet.

5. Push self on office chair over to pantry and reach up to acquire 16-pound container of flour. Sift 3 cups into bowl and add other dry ingredients. 

6. Make wet chocolate mixture, spilling some on container of homemade pasta, and realizing that it is out of reach, choose to leave it there, because at least it smells nice.

7. Whip butter and sugar together in mixer, becoming quickly aware that there is something already in the bowl. Turn off mixer, look in bowl and see small pieces of homemade pasta. Curse out loud that now you need more room temperature butter.

8. Spill some of butter-sugar mixture on on boxer shorts, which are the fashion around the house these days. Admire how the boxer short ribbing nicely holds things like flour, sugar, and butter.

9. Re-mix, in clean bowl, more butter and sugar, and add flour and wet mixture to bowl. Slop wet mixture up onto the kitchen ceiling, 8 feet above and understand that from a seated position, getting it off the ceiling is next to impossible. Continue with cake baking.

10. Curse again as it is evidenced that there is no parchment or wax paper. Grease and flour all three cake pans, crossing fingers that the cakes will come out of them after baking.

11. Get cakes in oven and then crutch over to couch to rest while they fuse to the cake pans.

12. Hear alarm go off much earlier than reconstructed knee would like, and take cakes out to cool.

13. Carefully take out one cake, grumbling at the one spot that has glued itself to the pan. 

14. Repeat Step 13 twice more.

15. Grind up 6 ounces of chocolate in food processor and become dimly aware that it is not actually plugged into the wall. Take stock that said wall is at least one foot beyond reach from seated position in office chair. 

16. Melt 6 ounces of unground chocolate on stove top in double boiler, being able to see only 2 square inches of the pan surface. Stir constantly, assuming the rest of the pan surface looks like the part that is viewable, making assumptions based on sampling size and overall population.

17. Watch as stirring arm falls off body. Consider cost to benefit ratio of having surgery again, this time to replace arm.

18. Mix melted chocolate into other ingredients for frosting and whip with mixer.

19. Layer crumbly cake layers with frosting, teetering one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable cake stand on thigh. Watch as cake slides off cake stand onto floor.

20. Kidding. Finish crumb layer and put cake into fridge for quick cool down before the cake target comes home from work.

21. Remove cake from fridge and finish frosting. Crutch back to couch and thank reconstructed knee for cooperating.

22. Nap.

I was looking at the throngs of people who mashed into DC’s 69 square miles for the inauguration yesterday, getting wistful for a time, and then it hit me that they were in, in fact, the District of Columbia. Those long lines of portable restrooms were there because there aren’t a lot of places to use the bathroom; you wind up buying some diet peach Snapple product that expired in 2003 just so you can be called a “customer” and get a grimy key to a suspicious-looking toilet. I thought about the clusters of RVs that sell fake FBI shirts and crappy plaster Capitol buildings on far more average tourist days than this. They must have done some big time product procurement in advance of the millions of folks visiting. 

In reality, there is no such thing as clean coal banner

DC in general, though, tends toward the dodgy business practices. Consider the following:

1. A woman walking home from work one day is approached by two rough-looking men who have a deal for her: a brand-new Culligan water machine, complete with 6 or 7 10-gallon water jugs. One had been leaning up against a white, unmarked truck, while the other, just to add a little something special to the business exchange, looked nervously around the intersection, presumably to identify any other potential customers. The entire kit and kaboodle was rather undervalued at something like $40. The woman’s inquiry about how to continue water service was met with an “uh, you can just call the company, or something.” Or something indeed.

2. A friend of ours was offered free cable from some random cable guy if only she’d perform her own service on him. “Cable guy” in DC, just to clarify, amounts to a guy in a beat-up Toyota pickup truck with a “No Fear” sticker on the crooked back bumper. This particular cable guy did his very best to live up to the standard, even though the standard is about 2 inches off the ground.

3. Leaving a parking garage one evening, the cashier told us she didn’t have any change. This could have meant that A) she didn’t have any change, B) she didn’t care to give us the change she did have, C) she was saving up for a new iPod. Of course it wasn’t even in the realm of possibility that she round down our ticket cost until she could give us the next bill she did have. We just had to overpay. Okay, that’s not really an example of “discounted” services, but it does show that sometimes in the nation’s capitol, the lines get a little blurred.

4. A popular coffee shop, Murky Coffee, just off the Eastern Market Metro stop, was shut down by the city for not paying its sales tax. By the time officials shuttered the doors, the owner owed more than $400,000. For coffee sales. Didn’t exactly take overnight to rack up that much back tax debt. As one friend put it, “all those times I paid an extra $2 because I had to go to the ATM since they would only take cash? That really pisses me off.” So much for cheap coffee.

5. In response to the revelation, previously covered up by the city, that DC water was laden with lead, city officials started giving out free Brita filters to households. That they didn’t plan much in the way of redoing the plumbing infrastructure — well, let’s not pay attention to that. People got something for nothing. Lead poisoning! Fast forward about 8 years or so and the city stopped short of replacing all of the bad pipe — if you guessed that African-American dense area of Anacostia, you win a prize. The prize is a cheap Culligan water system.

I sure hope the tourists enjoyed DC!

wasserman political cartoon

Intrepid readers of this blog will recall that before Election Day I made some crack about CNN showing some crude holograms as part of it’s “Watch Us!” election coverage. I said it in jest and with a jaundiced eye, and then lo and behold, there is Wolf Blitzer having a rather inane conversation with a “virtual” reporter — about the technology and not the election. Whether said “holograms” were real or not, I was prescient. So with such completely uninspiring obviousness, here are a few other “predictions:”

1. Obamania will be fading fast by the end of the first 100 days. The message about hope is great, the enthusiasm is fantastic, and you can’t live in DC for more than a decade and not feel like the obvious differences between Obama and the outgoing administration hit you like a truck pileup on the Beltway. But to enact his ideas he simply has to govern from the center, which is going to strike some — vehicle carnage aside — as inauthentic at some point. It isn’t necessarily the case, but there will be some folks who see this as a selling out — and it’s just a matter of time when people feel like Obama’s pulled a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” or a welfare reform bill that we weren’t expecting.

2. The Daily Show will be no more — Jon Stewart for one isn’t going to want to continue walking the tightrope of making fun of the people in power in a politically “incorrect” way without getting TOO incorrect about it, for one. But without the 8-foot wide pipe of shit that was the Bush White House giving Comedy Central such excellent material, we’re going to need a new kind of political humor. Jon is going to jump ship to more mainstream broadcast comedy — probably after Jay Leno’s next gig fails right out of the gate. Long live Conan.

3. Reversals to the tightening of reproductive rights laws is either going to happen quietly and successfully, or is going to be the once and future “gay marriage” of the religious right. I’ve seen it only on the margins of reporting so far that Obama will reverse the global gag rule — that to get federal funding for family planning practitioners have to first and foremost talk about abstinence-only practices — and given that this is something they’re planning in the first week in office, signals that there is some Hillary agenda being taken up within the administration. So if they’re serious about rescinding that executive order, will they go the next step and try to get some more permanent legislation passed? If that’s the case, how will they work that on the Hill? With fanfare or under cover of night?

4. Michelle Obama is only going to First Lady us for so long before the Real Michelle stands up — and by that I mean that you cannot possibly contain this smart lady within the narrow confines of the duties and office of First Lady for long. While I think the President (I’m only jumping the title gun by a couple of hours here) is anxious not to repeat any Clintonian mistakes, like putting her in charge of health care, I do think she’ll get some kind of policy duty. She’s not going to be content with picking out furniture, talking about the girls’ school choice, and continuing Laura’s quite boring legacy of the National Book Expo on the Mall.

5. The $850B stimulus bill is not going to pass in the way we think it will today. Already there are rumblings about how it’s not going to help anyone in the near future. If that logic catches wind in the Capitol, who’s going to vote for it? Obama will likely get a lot more traction on job creation than in having to constantly spin the stimulus as something other than a “typical” Democrat tax and spend program. But again, I’m as jaded as a cheap Obama statue currently being sold in a small mobile vehicle parked 100 years from the Washington Monument….

Well, the surgery went well, and by “well” I mean that it took an expected two hours or so and ended with a repaired knee joint. The outpatient center was in its own way, beyond imagination — with comfy chairs and a fancy mocha bar (lest we forget we are in the Pacific Northwest). Susanne wondered if she shouldn’t just show up there from time to time to get some work done. 

After getting prepped via a series of 12,783 questions, 73 percent of which were “which knee is it,” I drew my initials on the left leg and added a smile. The surgeon was grateful I hadn’t sketched a frown, but honestly, how could I have gone into the experience with such negativity? After knowing this doctor for five months, he said he was a Christian and asked if we would mind if he said a prayer before the surgery. This inspired the following thoughts, in no particular order, but which occurred to me in something like 2.3 seconds:

1. All his training, residency, education, and experience, and he doesn’t find that sufficient? Is the prayer for the last nth percent chance that something will go wrong?

2. If a surgeon wants to have a prayer before going into the operating theater, for Pete’s sake, LET HIM DO IT. 

3. The Catholics pray so differently — so often for penance and nearly always from a standard script. Perhaps the Hail Holy Queen would suffice?

4. Was there a measurable quantity of irony I could point to here that this doctor was praying for my knee? Or just conceptual irony?

We told him to go ahead and pray, and he asked for good healing on my joint so I could go and serve others. That was a little presumptive of him, but I don’t technically have anything against that, per se, anyway.

I watched the ceiling go by as I was wheeled into operating suite 3. Now then, I understand that good doctors like to have their tools of the trade laid out neatly and orderly, but there is something about seeing the odd single-piece, stainless steel hammer on the table to give one pause. Great pause. I have had a lumbar puncture before, which means I have had a 10-inch needle inserted into my spine. Scratch that — I’ve had FIVE spinal taps in this life. I’ve had seven strabismus surgeries on my lazy eyes, one of which was, believe it or not, intentionally interrupted so that I could sit up and have the surgeon pull on plastic sutures she’d attached to my eye muscles so that she could “fine tune” her work. Having the sensation of one’s eye being tugged against the eye socket while having no actual feeling of pain has definitely been one of the odder moments in my 38.5 years on the planet.

But these surreal experiences pale in comparison to the hammer. Surgery was hammer time? Why was such an instrument necessary, exactly?* Gratefully, I was soon woozy with the poison — erm, anesthesia. The anesthesiologist seemed to get a kick out of not even asking me to count back from 10. I was there one second and gone the next.

Waking up some hours later I had the now-familiar queasiness from having whatever hellacious concoction poured into me. It took me three hours to get it together enough to get out of bed and get into the house, where I have now planted my derriere for the next three weeks or so. First the Blizzard of 2008, now the Knee Mending of 2009 begins. I’m sure it’s because I made no specific resolutions for the year other than to be open to new experiences. I should know to be extremely specific and not allow any definitional latitude. But nooooo, I had to say, “be open to new experiences,” blah blah blah, so that shiny hammers and titanium screws could wander their way into my life and my body and here I have to count them as wins in my exploration of new freaking experiences.

Be that as it may, I am on the mend. I have discovered, vicariously through Susanne, that Tallman’s Pharmacy on Main Street is chock full of friendly employees, that Oxycontin does not work with the needs of my stomach, that purple Gatorade Fierce turns green after only 20 minutes in one’s stomach, and that I was wrong when I thought that Washington State allowed marijuana for medical use.

So many lovely new experiences, it’s a joy to have arrived in this new year. Seriously, however, I am looking forward to four months from now, when my knee is expected to make a full recovery. Full recovery I can get behind quite easily.

*Those reading this who may know the answer to this question, please be alerted that I am asking it rhetorically only. I do not need any comments with technical answers.

We were talking the other night about hospital mishaps — which some of you political junkies will recall the NLM 1999 study showed happen at the rate of 90,000 a year — and we started conjecturing what could go wrong with my knee surgery, because all medical science has been working toward this moment of my ACL reconstruction. Hey, it’s not my ego, people, it’s just the way the world is.

Anyway, so many people who have had issues on one side of their body have had the wrong side addressed that now even the doctors tell you to write on your body and identify which limb or side needs repair, and which should be left alone. This sounds simple at first, but consider:

Writing “NO” could just as easily look like “ON.” On this side? Come ON over here, baby? Baby you can drive my car?

Writing “Not this one” could, if masked by a patterned hospital gown, look like the abbreviated and wholly misleading “this one.”

Writing “GO AWAY” just seems rude.

We also considered drawing a big “X” on the right (healthy) knee, and worried it would look like the final destination on a pirate map. Yes, pirating figures into my medical situation. Pirates are relevant, damn it, and not just the 21st century pirates of Somalia.

We’ve opted for the “THIS ONE” on the left left and “NO” with an underline on the right leg. The underline will help the health providers see which way is up on the wording, since bodies lying on a table don’t really imply north-south very well. We’re also crossing our fingers that our nursing staff are avid billiards players, and so will know how to interpret the underlining correctly, as they have seen their share of 6 and 9 balls. This is why it’s important to teach children the basics of pool, so that they can provide the highest level of care to their craziest customers at some point in the unforeseeable future. Trust me, if there’d been a way to bring bowling into this discussion I would have, but I got nothing.

Anyway, I’ll be back as soon as I can because as we all know from last December, I need to vent my prolific insights when I’m cooped up. Have a great weekend, folks.

Gearing up for surgery tomorrow, I’ve just been trying to keep things tidy around the house and make sure we’re stocked with foodstuffs and the other necessities one wants when one is recuperating from such an event. It’s kind of like getting ready for a storm, I suppose, because you know you won’t be going out for a while, but it’s unlike that — simply put, when you’re the only person at Safeway buying ginger ale, potato chips, and batteries, people look at you strangely. When everyone is buying up for a storm, it’s no big deal. It wasn’t even that crazy, in the days after 9/11 to purchase yards of cellophane and duct tape, with which we could all slowly suffocate ourselves in our own homes. But ginger ale and batteries? He must be insane, the cashier thinks.

So we came back to Walla Walla a bit over a week ago, to snowy highways and a persistent fog that obscured, once again, anything on the sides of the highways so that it looked like the beginning of Heaven Can Wait  where the squirrely guys come out and try to escort you to your Next Phase of Death. Only then you find yourself in a recently murdered body and can’t understand why Dyan Cannon keeps screaming her head off every time you walk in the room. Okay, it wasn’t quite like that, it was more like this:

The long long road to Walla Walla

The fog lifted after about an hour of driving, and to give ourselves a last moment of civilization, we stopped off at Costco, about 50 miles outside of W2. First though, we went to P.F. Chang’s for lunch where we had a rather uninspired meal that culminated in me receiving just about the most annoying fortune cookie ever, or at least for these last five months.

Fortune cookie from the land of the obvious and ironic

That was good for a laugh, at least. I’ll be sure to let the management of P.F. Chang’s know when I’ve encountered the exotic, because you know, I’m sure they’re on pins and needles waiting for such an epistle.

In the meantime, I wait for the surgery. And then I’ll do my best to follow instructions and wait through the recovery. And then, happily, I shall bowl.

Back in July, I got married to a wonderful woman who makes me smile just by thinking about her. We made a ceremony together, finding readings, music, writing up our own words and also vows, and we included time for our community to speak if they wanted to. The flowers were colorful and vibrant, the participants excited, the guests supportive, and the church light-filled, if not a bit warmer than we’d have liked. It was July in DC, after all. But everything went well, on time, and we enjoyed our 15 minutes of photo opp after the event, casually walking down to the reception a block away in the heart of the embassy district in the city.

We walked into the reception venue and were cheered by our loved ones, and I thought my heart was bursting a little, so stunned was I by their affection. We made our way around the room like celebrities, which made it difficult to remember to actually take care of ourselves. But the evening was fun, until…

Dance, dance, pop

It’s all Michael Jackson’s fault. No sooner than the intro of Billie Jean came on was I doing a dance move I’d executed successfully since 1989. No sooner was I doing my little leg twist than I heard a short “pop” and the physical sensation of my left leg buckling under me. I was hopping on my right foot, trying to figure out why the left one had just given me its pink slip. My brand spanking new wife looked at me and saw the panic in my eyes. Our guests, some of whom were well lubricated at this point in the evening, did not notice the calamity at first. And then they saw me hopping like an overweight kangaroo and everyone stopped moving. Somehow, in the recesses of my brain, I stopped having my moment of shock and ow enough to wave at them, smile, and tell them to “keep dancing! I’m fine! Ha ha!”

Holy crap, I needed a chair, I told Susanne. One was quickly provided and I spent the next 90 minutes icing the knee, compressing the knee with an ace bandage someone had brought to me, and nursing a glass of ice water (with a twist, of course). Four ibuprofen later I looked at the clock and realized we had to get people home — the venue needed to close soon. But with all my will I still couldn’t stand. A friend who works for the National Security Agency had found me some crutches. I joked that there’s probably a van that drives around DC in case any NSA calls them, and he replied that he could neither confirm nor deny that. Dry wit, those NSA employees.

We rolled into the ER in our formal wear, still smiling and a bit incredulous that such a lovely day was closing this way. The X-rays showed that all of my bones were in place, but yup, I sure couldn’t stand on the leg. It was 5 days later when I could put any weight on it at all. The ER doctor who clearly hated that this was where his career had ended up, guessed that I’d dislocated the knee cap.

By our drive cross-country I was walking again, albeit slowly and not for very long. It wasn’t until late September that I’d found an orthopaedic doctor who ran an MRI, and we found out I’d torn my ACL and meniscus. And here we are in January, me still somewhat hobbled and homesick for some quality time in a 10-pin bowling alley.

Finally, I have a surgery date — next Friday. I’ve been waiting for donor material to be available, which is awful to think about but necessary to get me back and working. I promised the nursing staff I’d bring them caramel brownies, because you know, it’s a good thing to have the people cutting you open really like you as a person. Can’t hurt, right?

So, I’ll cross my fingers, draw a big arrow on my left leg and a red “NOT THIS ONE” on my right, and get ready for a lot of TV. Which will make it pretty much just like life as usual.

Mao Zedong

Just before our friend’s baby reached her language explosion, a small blue and red betta fish entered their lives. As they are good, intrepid parents, they left the naming of the fish up to their child, who, not yet having a terribly large vocabulary, decreed the fish, “Mao.” It is doubtful she knew of the torrid and storied history of the Chinese leader, as she was only about 18 months old at the time. But so named he was. He greeted her every morning as she ate her breakfast, and waved his dorsal fin goodnight to her each evening as she finished supper. His place in the center of the kitchen table must have supplied him with a decent stream of activity, with which to amuse himself, but he didn’t have much in the way of rocks or greenery to play with. The parents had heard some horror stories about betta fish getting caught in the leaves and dying, and as already mentioned, they are conscientious people who work to minimize environmental risks to their loved ones.

Now then, at another, earlier, point in time, Susanne was a foster parent to another betta fish, Hank, who had been given to her upon a friend’s cross-country move from DC. Hank could have contested for the longest-lived betta fish ever, if only Willard Scott cared about other species. Susanne had Hank under her care for more than two years, and Hank had lived with his previous owner for at least a year before that. He must have been 125 years old in fish years. He had even survived some time outside of his tank. True, Hank was a gladiator among fish.

Mao did not fare as well. Nine months or so into his existence atop the kitchen table, he started showing signs of slowing down. He began to list to port. He, like Hank in his final days, started having trouble finding his food, such that his benefactors had to throw the pellets onto his face. I told the parents it was perhaps time to let Mao begin the next chapter in his life, making sure the little one was out of earshot. Oh, no, they said, he just leans a little, everything is fine. We just got him. They seemed to have a little trouble letting go. I refrained from talking about loss of fish bladder control as a sign of dying. We ate a lovely dinner out in the living room.

Coming back into the kitchen an hour later to clean up, Mao looked distressed.

Mao the fish

This wasn’t a slight list. This was the Andrea Doria just before she slipped under the water after her collision with the Stockholm. This fish was saying goodnight moon for the last time.

We considered our options. I advocated for a burial at “sea.” The parents seemed resistant to doing this until Mao had taken his last breath, but I pointed out that his color was already fading. One parent took him into the bathroom, and from there, Mao presumably would make it out to the Potomac.

Now that we had taken action, we needed to consider the messaging. They couldn’t tell the child Mao had been sick — how to help her understand she wasn’t going to die the next time she caught a cough? They didn’t want to say he was old, for that seemed too vague, and they were still pissed that their $15 investment at PetSmart didn’t last very long at all. The idea that “it was just his time” was positively terrifying. At any moment any of us could just get flushed down a toilet? Not cool!

In fact, they also figured they shouldn’t say that’s how they disposed of Mao. She had just gotten the potty training act down. That her potty should double as a mortuary was probably too disturbing, and there is not a parent on the planet, I’m sure, who wants their kid to double back to diapers after switching to underwear. 

Also, given this particular child’s tendency toward the precocious, we were all a little nervous that she would declare that she was feeding her poopies to Mao, or that she would stick her head in there looking for him. Hey, this is a kid who ran around the back of a photo to see the other side of the people in the image — anything is possible. 

Two days later we were visiting them again, and lo and behold, there was a new fish in the bowl. The child misses the last one but is moving on. This one eats his food quickly and likes to dart around and play. I can’t recall his name though, because really, nothing is as memorable as Mao, right?

eagle's plume

My sister was holed up in her bedroom, recovering from back surgery, and the rest of us were hanging out in the kitchen, playing Apples to Apples while a turkey soup coalesced on the stove. The word to match was “smooth.” Those unfamiliar with the game should know that it works by one player, the judge, putting down an adjective card, and the other players looking at their hands of noun cards, with the goal finding a card the judge will think is the closest match. The winner gets the adjective card, and the next player is the judge for the next hand. One winds up aiming for what they think the judge will pick, not what they themselves would match up. Obvious playcating, like putting up “Canadians,” for the adjective, “brave,” when Susanne is the judge, won’t fare one very well. The game lends itself toward advocating for your noun card so the judge at least can see your logic. Conversations can get a little odd with all the lobbying, but apparently, this is a selling point for the game.

Okay, so the card was “smooth.” I had bubkus in my hand, and couldn’t decide between the following:

The 1970s

Republicans

Mardi Gras

David Hasselhoff

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

I thought and thought and thought, and I had nothing, so I slapped down the Mardi Gras card just to get rid of it. A number of seconds later everyone else had put down their card, and then the conversation went like this:

Jamie (my 13-year old niece, who was the judge this turn): Um, bald eagle? They’re not smooth.

Michael (my best buddy): Sure they are.

Susanne (my honey): Well, they’re not really bald.

Michael: They’re smooth, really.

Jamie: Uh…

Michael (in defense of his position): They have plumes. They’re smooth.

At this point, the table erupted in laughter. “Plumes” became the Pee-Wee Hermanesque word of the weekend, with my nieces trying to get Michael to say the word every 20 minutes or so. He even recorded the word on Jamie’s cell phone.

Honestly, a 13-year old with a cell phone is like an old lady with a Cadillac DeVille — you just wonder when you’ll hear the acceleration and crash in the background. But for now, she has constant access to “plume.”

Susanne, Michael, and I headed down to DC a few days later, and I cajoled them into pulling off the Turnpike at the Bordentown exit so that we could go to one of my best-loved restaurants on the planet, Mastori’s. This establishment has grown since my parents and I ate there in the 80s, and now features 5 large separate eating rooms.

Mastori's restaurant front door

Now then, for people from New Jersey, diners are a fact of life, and from the day a child can read, we verse ourselves in how to interpret and understand one of the most difficult texts in US culture, the diner menu. I am not kidding — there must be 300 choices of things one could order, everything from the boring and standard chicken tenders, to the nearly high-class dishes like veal scallopini, and absolutely everything in between.

For example, Mastori’s menu looks like this:

Easy to choose menu

Exacerbating the sheer number of choices is the 7-point font, the daily specials list, and the menu items the server only tells you about in person. It is literally mind-numbing.

Somehow, some way, we figured out what to order. It was a blur, actually. I tried to find a way to get Michael to say “plume,” but he was having none of it, being rather plumed out. Mastori’s failed us a little, with slow service not common to the establishment. Perhaps they’ve grown too big to remember where all of the tables are. Out on the terrace, we did seem to be in another ZIP code.

But then again, there’s nothing like a pizzaburger to make me feel like I’m back in my home state.

Boxing Day was our pretend Christmas, and I started off by stuffing a 22-pound turkey with my mother’s recipe for dressing goodness. Such an enormous bird was a bit beyond the needs of a 7-person group with one vegetarian and two minors, but as it was a free gift from Shop Rite, how could my sister refuse? So four days after coming out of the freezer to thaw, it was still solid ice inside. Susanne and I ran some warm water from the tap in it for about 45 minutes (sorry, Connecticut water resources staff), and considered it good enough to get started. My surgically repaired sister made it to the table long enough to enjoy the turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, creamed spinach, and salad, and I later brought her a slice of the cheesecake her friend Sherri and I had made. I wondered vaguely how cheesecake must taste when you’re drugged on Oxycodone and butter shots. I suppose I should ask Rush Limbaugh, since that guy has clearly had his fill of sweetened cheese.

We went for a visit to the mall with the girls so they could use their gift cards, and I was astonished to see that there is now a vendor selling cutesy underwear to teenage girls. My nieces came out of the Aerie store with peace symbol thongs, because how better to support world peace than by wearing a small strip of fabric that cost $20?

Afterward we went duck pin bowling which I can handle with my bad knee, since the balls are the size of my palms. Duck pin bowling is a treat — the tiny pins crackling like snapped twigs, and the girls cheering each point. We came back and made some turkey soup and dumplings and then retreated to the solace of the hot tub, which was a fine way to mark the end of each day there.

Monday morning we kissed the gang goodbye and road down to DC to see our old pals and their families. With each day, the frustration of the snowy fortress back in Walla Walla receded and we visibly exhaled into the places we visited back in our old stomping grounds.