Trans/plant/portation

The 2009 Walla Walla Balloon Stampede is this weekend, and events kicked off yesterday at the snappy hour of 6 AM. Stampede is kind of a strange word to associate with rudderless airborne vehicles that drift on the wind, but it is the wild west out here, so I presumed the name was really more about the other, more rodeo-esque events that take place in this region. But after going to take pictures of the hot air balloons, I now also realize it does refer—a bit, at least—to this event itself.

Balloons launch from several locations in town, and I plus a few friends picked a junior high school football field as our location to watch the events unfold. About 30 or 40 pickup trucks were parked within a few feet of each other, and just as dawn was breaking, they started unfurling their tarps and balloons and testing their heaters. This gave the audio effect, for someone who had gotten up at 5 and not had a cup of coffee, of little dragons learning to cast fire.

I was surprised that the balloons were set up so close to each other, thinking that they’d need lots of space for each one, but everything went off without a hitch, despite the fact that 5,000 people had gathered to see the event (which is about one-sixth of the WW population, for those who care about such things). Each balloon had vents at the top that the handlers made sure were properly velcroed in place, and the top of every balloon had a long rope that the presumably strongest handler would hold on to, in order, I think, the manage the rate at which the balloon went from horizontal to vertical. So picture the early breaking dawn, temperatures in the low to mid 60s, colorful fabrics strewn all about the grass, and thousands of children running around, dodging taut ropes and sleepy grownups who are looking at the sky taking pictures. And nobody got hurt.

balloon raising

One of these balloons launches first—it’s called the “hare” balloon—and is chased by the other launching balloons. Hence part of the stampede moniker. We knew this because we had, I should have guessed there would be one, an announcer to tell us this, and to call out the names of people flying each balloon like it was a very colorful, in-the-air quinceanera. This guy was a Garrison Keillor wannabe if ever there was one, which I know is a big statement to make. I really did a double take to make sure I wasn’t suddenly in an episode of Prairie Home Companion. Put this guy in a hockey rink and one would get a very entertaining play by play. Really all he lacked was the quality of tone that Garrison has, that kind of half a piece of toast in his mouth sound. If he would just talk with food in his mouth, he’d be a dead ringer.

balloons away

One by one balloons floated into the sky, they drifted east, chasing the rabbit. At this point the pickup trucks for each would leave the field (“Please give the trucks egress, folks,” said the announcer. Egress? Wow.) and then would chase their balloons around and out of town. I suppose this is another aspect of the stampede. I stayed put and snapped 200 photos instead.

balloon

After all of them had launched we headed over to Clarette’s restaurant for breakfast, and I have to really think hard about when the last time was that I ate breakfast before 8 in the morning. A long, long time. Perfectly serviceable eggs over easy, served old school with the toast already buttered. The coffee was delightful, and I’ve decided I miss coffee that hasn’t been overroasted into bitterness. It was a little thrilling to see the balloons making their way overhead while we were in the middle of the city. Probably the neatest thing I’ve seen since I’ve been out here, majestic snow-capped mountains aside. Now if I could just get Susanne to go up in a balloon with me, that would be the real stuff of fun.

We have been thinking of renaming our house. Without knowing it was the tradition around these college parts, we nicknamed the house shortly after we moved into it, decreeing it was “the Liar House,” namely because it looks cute from the outside (and in the picture we’d seen before we moved here), but hosting a series of minor to moderate problems once you get inside.

One of the issues has been that the tub from the full bathroom leaks through the ceiling and into our kitchen. As my 14-year-old niece put it, “your dirty tub water rains into your kitchen? Eww!”

We’ve asked the building manager to come out to fix this several times, and although he didn’t understand the severity of the leak at first, he has been here repeatedly to try different things, even opening up the ceiling at one point and having a bona fide plumber replace some of the pipes. We still had water coming down after that, but the ceiling was closed back up anyway.

While we were away on our tour of western Canada, the building manager had the kitchen painted in Susanne’s favorite shade of blue (the shade of which he had researched with me) in order to win her heart and soften her email messages, which by this point had become understandably more and more irate. Who wants to deal with putting four pots around the kitchen to catch brown water, after all? Not either of us.

We were assured the matter had been resolved. Until one of us took a bath. And then:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/evmaroon/3484892097/

We are considering changing the name of our abode to, “The Crying House.” There are a multitude of connotations, see, that we can address with this moniker, and so that may be the direction we take. Thoughts? Comments? Questions?

In my search for earnings on the Karma Credit Plan, I agreed to babysit one of Susanne’s colleagues babies—a 6-week old boy who is still growing into his cheeks, which are bountiful. Now, I’ve babysat little ones before, including my sister’s girls, babies of friends, that kind of thing. So I think of myself as a capable caretaker, if nothing else.

In the morning my charge was alert and curious. He is working the phonemes currently, so when I say “oo?” to him, he will reply with the identical sound. It’s pretty groovy of babies when they’re in that phase.

This particular morning we played around with sounds, and compared hand size, which was pretty funny to him. And then in a flash, the good times were over, something had struck him as all kinds of terrible awful horrendously bad, and he was off to the races with a good cry.

I knew it wasn’t feeding time, so I figured it was diaper time. This presents an immediate conundrum when it happens. Does one rush to change the diaper, knowing there may soon be more to come, or does one wait another oh, minute or so? Certainly most people don’t like the thought that a sweet innocent child is sitting in his or her own swill. But for the sake of the planet, not to mention the baby’s bottom, rushing to change a diaper only to change it again in a few minutes, seems inadvisable.

So I looked at him and I asked him if he was done with his business. Having misplaced my Baby Screams Decoder Ring that I got in my last box of Life cereal, he replied with a hearty, “waaaaaaaahahahaha!” I took this as yes.

It is not without a certain sense of accomplishment that I held him in one arm whilst opening up the baby changing pad, found a new diaper in the bag his mother left for me, and managed to get out the wipes and creamy paste stuff all at once. Only more impressive, I imagined, would have been me also running around the room spinning plates on wooden dowels, although the scene felt about that chaotic, even without the circus sideshow. Wait a minute. I was the circus sideshow. No worries.

I put him down on the matt and he eased up on the tears-making, realizing I’d figured out what his incredibly urgent need was. Such dumb big people, the baby thought, I’m sure. They’re so slow on the uptake.

I opened up the diaper and sure enough, there was a mess to behold. For some reason unbeknownst to me, he decided to start kicking. This seemed inefficient at best to me. If he wants a clean diaper, why was he making trouble?

I lifted him half-off the matt by his ankles and proceeded to do my babysitter/chosen uncle duty of wiping him clean, attempting at the same moment to steer clear of the mess and hold him firmly enough that he couldn’t kick anything onto either of us. In this effort I was unsuccessful, but I figured I could wash up easily enough afterward. And then the unimaginable happened.

It was like an orange-green waterfall of shit. His butt still up in the air, there emerged a projection of poo such as I had never seen before. In a blink, it seemed it was everywhere. I tried to get him back on the matt quickly, but it was a hopeless task. And now I had not only to start all over, but to also change his clothes and mine.

The baby, at least, was now quite satisfied. And the stupid grown-up realized why he’d been fussing. Stupid grown-up now plans to wait a few minutes and let the baby cry before running to change the diaper. I’ll consider it a good lung work out for him.

It was in the nadir of the winter that a long-time Walla Wallan approached me and told me to hang in there, the spring in Walla Walla is beautiful and I will really enjoy it. I trusted her, thinking that she wouldn’t knowingly lie to me, except that the people in this town have also declared the following:

1. It doesn’t snow here all that much (we got 40 inches last winter, the height of your average 9-year-old)

2. Oh, you’ll find a job out here, it just may take a few months (9 and counting, is that still “few”?)

3. Vote McCain!

So I took her very genuine statement as well intentioned but potentially far, far off the mark.

Spring did, in fact, uh spring. The wheat started out green on the rolling hills around town, a lovely contrast with the swimming pool blue skies. Daffodils and then tulips started popping up, and in town, the tree buds have given way to bright green baby leaves.

Spring, however, now appears to be over. It lasted something like 8 days. The past three days have been mid-80s, no humidity and lots of bright sunlight. One wonders how hot this desert town will get in the next month, and when we’ll see our first 3-digit degree day. I’ll start a pool on that, I’m sure.

Small town life continues despite the surge in temperature. I’ve been here long enough that shopkeepers know how I like my coffee and my haircut, and ask what I’m going to make for supper when I am in the grocery store. It’s nice and invasive at the same time, and I’m a little surprised that I think that, given that I sometimes was irritated by the constant anonymity of living in a large city. But I do appreciate the friendliness.

Walla Walla hosted a cycling race last weekend, the Tour of Walla Walla. Imagine what my sentence will be:

It was a short race. They looped through the downtown area several times to complete the race. Why they didn’t go through the prison facility or the plutonium plant, I have no idea. We cheered them on, however, and I was happy that someone had brought a cow bell. You really can’t have a bike race without a cow bell.

Tour of Walla Walla bike race

Our other excitement of the week was a fire across the street from our house. We had come in our back door from visiting with a friend, and thought the air smelled funny, like barbeque gone horribly wrong. Then we were inside, playing cards with Kurtis, and a few minutes after that, noticing some blinking lights from the street. A quick look with the blinds pulled aside and we could see that one of the apartments in the senior housing center across the way was on fire. The city had sent three fire trucks and a host of police cars, all working to put out the flames and get the residents out safely. Fortunately no one was seriously injured, but it was more than a bit unnerving to see firefighters in full gear running up the stairs with hoses and axes.

Walla Walla has 48 full-time fire fighters, and I think the majority of them were there at the scene. The next morning the building bore the scars of the event.

building after the fire

Given that the rain is pretty much over for the season, I wonder how often fires happen in and around town now. We have no Santa Ana-like winds here, but we do have wind, and it is sometimes intense. I suppose given that the town doesn’t own a snow plow, having about 50 people to put out fires is a sign they’ve had to deal with the dryness before. And hopefully that fire last week is the closest it will ever come to us.

I woke up from a dream a couple of nights ago in which I was riding the front half of a two-person bicycle down a hill in the rain on a busy city street. I think we’ll call that a stress dream. But the only way I could have imagined this as a dream was as the regurgitation of an actual memory of going down a rainy hill on a two-person cycle with my other half screaming in fear the whole time. Steering was a nightmare. There was this sense that even if you wanted to stop or slow down, your partner wasn’t with you on that, and you were just about to hurtle out of control. It’s one thing to learn how to ride a bike, but it’s quite another to cause muscle memory confusion because half of the muscles riding the contraption aren’t yours and so the bike is constantly making unanticipated moves.

I suppose that gets better with practice, for those intrepid individuals who can push past the first wall of terror and shock. I am not so strong. We rolled the bike back next to the garage at my sister’s old house in Connecticut and sat down on the lawn until the shaking stopped.

But I acknowledge that some things get better with time. Walla Walla, for its own efforts, is mildly more fun to live in during springtime than in the nadir of winter. I am reminded, by the colorful daffodils and tulips that have pushed out of the ground on people’s lawns and in downtown, that we are an oasis in the desert. I am hearing now about things that were either held back from me because of my temporary disability, or because I am getting to know people better: there’s a fun group who go bowling every Thursday night, there’s another gang who started a Stitch ‘n Bitch on Wednesdays, there’s a shepherding dog trial event coming up in May, and a hot air balloon race in a few weeks, east of town, I think.

One of the things we have been able to do through my varying stages of not having a left ACL, having a dead person’s ACL replacement, and having a rehabilitated knee, is hit the restaurants. It is with this gratitude that I can write a bit about one notable venue, Pho Sho.

Cute name aside, Pho Sho has a small but strong menu of salads, rice and spring rolls, and, of course, pho. The pho tai, a rare beef pho, is the most delightful. Spicing is minimal and left up to the customers, via a series of chili and spice jars out on the tables, and folks should take advantage of them. Spring rolls are fresh—I often crave the peanut sauce that accompanies them. Entrees are priced in the high $8-to high $9 range, and I have wondered exactly why the price points are so tight but different, but that doesn’t really matter if you’re not going to own your own restaurant, I suppose. The chicken pho is less expressive but still well seasoned. Pho, though, really works better with beef. If you’re going to go veg, you’ll be happy that the vegetarian pho comes with amazingly crunchy cubes of fried tofu. 

The place is well lit, and the minimal decoration lets you appreciate the clean lines of the room and the heavy wooden tables. The communal table in the middle of the room is a great way to meet new neighbors, which translated into, in this small city, creating new friends to see the next time you sit down here to eat. A very satisfying, interesting meal, expect to pay about $30 for two big bowl of pho, an appetizer, and a pot of green tea.

spring wheat field, walla walla

Susanne and I were making our monthly trip to Costco last weekend when we pulled into the gas station just past the Bad Broccoli Plant. Well, we needed gas, and it usually has a better price than in town. It’s also notable for a few other reasons, namely:

it is next to the “tattletale light,” as described on a local news broadcast, to catch speeders, the only one of its kind for 20 plus miles.

it is located on Humorist Road. I swear, I haven’t found any humorists there, and I’ve asked around.

it is patronized by completely clueless drivers who pull up to one of only four pumps, walk inside, eat a hot dog, walk outside, and then pump their gas, 15 minutes later.

The only thing that makes this place tolerable is the gas prices. Consistently they were about 15 to 20 cents cheaper per gallon than in town. I am sorry to report that those prices are no longer deep discounts, so perhaps our foray on Sunday will be our last for a while. However, I did get to observe the following exchange between two obviously teenage women.

Teenager #1: (standing next to gas pump, smoking, wearing an oversized WSU sweatshirt and purple sweatpants, hair up in a ponytail) I hear you’re not talking to Cherie anymore.

Teenager #2: (drinking Diet Pepsi, wearing a faded t-shirt and tight jeans) That bitch.

Teenager #1: What happened?

Teenager #2: You know, I don’t even care anymore. Whatever. She’s gonna stay fat after having that baby, not like I did. I lost all my weight right away.

Good thing they didn’t see that my jaw was hanging open. Back in my day, in my Catholic school, girls would actually hide their pregnancies. How . . . nice that we’ve gotten more permissive? I certainly am not advocating for shaming girls in painful, difficult situations. But to see that completely ignored in favor of making nasty comments about one’s pregnancy rate, well, I think we’ve gone a bit off the rails there.

Meanwhile, spring has come to the valley. I had no idea before I moved out here that wheat starts its life green, but I suppose that’s not terribly surprising. It does make for some striking landscape.

walla walla in spring

The daffodils have popped up and opened, the tulips are sticking their heads out from the ground, people are talking about gardening, and the river and creeks are flush with all of winter’s precipitation. Rushing, hard water, that gushes through town in small levees, first through the eastern outskirts of town, and into downtown. Years ago, intrepid and stupid Whitman students would get the futile idea to go tubing down the canal path, only to wind up outside Macy’s, bruised and naked, suddenly aware of the power of a fast current. The path for the water is gated off, but every now and again, some person will get the urge to make the Walla Walla equivalent of a trip down Niagara Falls in a barrel. With all the snow we had last December, this would be a particularly bad spring to take a ride at the impromptu water park.

Latest on the Walla Walla Freecycle list: a “gently used” maternity belt that the soon-to-be former owner just washed so it still has a little “fuzz” on it, and ferret cages from a family who realized all too late that ferrets are not the pet for them. Anyone else picture screaming toddlers running away from a snapping rodent running amok in the house?

It started out well enough, our bags stuffed to the gills, some fresh homemade granola bars and drinks up front with us, needing to get gas but we had enough to get out of town and over to the cheap gas station, about 30 miles out of town. It was obvious to anyone alive that it was a pretty windy day—too brisk to say, picnic in the park, but not so bad you worry your dog will blow away on a walk. Well, hindsight tells me now that if it was that windy in town, it was two or three times that bad once we were clear of any buildings to slow it down. I got quite the forearm and biceps workout as I battled to keep the car on the road.

tumbleweed

Next up were the tumbleweeds. Now then, let’s take a minute to explain tumbleweeds. Recall the theme from High Noon if you want to, sure, but I’m talking about something much less romanticized and rather more pure irritation. These were once scrub brush, small brown and green plants that grow in a clumpy cluster and huddle up on the rolling hills that surround the narrow roads. Summer came, and they flourished. They hailed the good times with regular downpours of rain, told themselves to put off making strong root systems, and just enjoyed the good life. Fall came and went. They were totally unprepared for winter. And then, the winds started. The rain didn’t go that deep into the ground. They started drying up. Panicked, they tried to consult their neighbors, only to discover whole groups of them that were now dead or dying.

Or were they? For it is such that nature decrees that any scrub brush bush that dies is sent to live again as the Undead Plantage. Humans call these tumbleweeds. They’re pushed along with no chance of fighting against the breeze, they thrust themselves under parked cars, roll down and up hills, hurtling themselves at the thin traffic on Highway 12 like it could be their last big event on this earth. They are like unwanted rodents—where you see one tumbleweed, there are hundreds.

They came at us from every direction. They lined up and assaulted the car like kamikaze Rockettes. Susanne informed me that I was the only car on the road attempting to dodge them. I can’t help it if a good portion of my childhood was spent playing Frogger on various gaming systems (Intellivision’s version kicked Atari’s ass!). We looked to our right at a fence that had heretofore never made sense to us and realized it was a tumbleweed-catching fence. There were literally thousands of them self-shoved into every part of it. In some sections there were so many new arrivals could jump the fence, wagging their tumbleweed fingers at the farmers who’d tried to keep them out, victorious in their zombification of the landscape. A couple particularly large ones (in fairness, they may have merged with other dead shrubs to form super-tumbleweeds) threatened to take out the car, and Susanne didn’t seem to mind that I worked to avoid those. A few of them were totally unpredictable and sort of spun in the roadway, instead of hightailing it from one point to another.

How we drove from desert wind storm to blizzard, I’m still not sure, although I have been assured I was in the same state. This microclimate thing is insane. No sooner had we left the foothills of eastern Washington than we started approaching 2,500 feet in the Cascades, getting ready to drive through the Snoqualmie Pass. And let me assure you that right now, this very minute, as I type this on Monday, March 16, at 9:25AM PDT, it is snowing in the Snoqualmie Pass. Yesterday, it was not just snowing. Yesterday, it was blizzarding. There were big, wet flakes that stung as they hit you. I know this because all non-4-wheel-drive cars were required to put on snow chains before they could go through the pass. Not that there were any state troopers to enact such a requirement. But everyone pulled off to the side, marked for such an event. We couldn’t get our chains to fit because clearly our tires have gained a lot of weight since Christmas. I keep telling them they need to drop a few pounds, but why would they listen to me? Fully an hour later, soaked, numb, and very, very bitter, Susanne (mostly) and me (a little) had gotten the chains on, and we were off—except the chain up area is 20 miles ahead of the actual pass. Given that the car wouldn’t drive over 25mph with the chains on, it was a long time before we actually made it to the pass. The pavement, all along the way to the pass, was wet but clear. So we more or less vibrated to the pass. And the hours trailed by, tick tock, tick tock.

Now we were in the national forest zone. Still snowing hard, had the defroster working, the windshield wipers, Susanne drying out her feet since her sneakers had soaked through in the slush. Surely we’d see snow-covered conditions now. Nope. Three more slow, anxious, vibrate-y miles later, we were in the actual pass. Thank goodness we had snow chains! Right?

Wrong. There was a little slush on the road, and NOTHING ELSE. Fully 90 minutes after the big slow down to put on chains, we realized we’d been had by the Washington State Department of Transportation. Sure folks, it was snowing, but all of the uh, traffic was keeping the roads clear.

We pulled over with every other frustrated motorist, and unhooked the @#%@#^% tire chains. And a friend in Seattle told us that it had been sunny since 11AM that day, where he was.

You can imagine how happy we were to hear that, 6 hours after we’d left Walla Walla.

So Walla Walla gets its laugh on us again, always causing some kind of calamity when we try to leave the city limits. It’s how it keeps its population of 30,000, I suppose. It’s like one great, big Amityville Horror, and the tumbleweeds are the evil flies.

I got up early today, well, early for me, meaning 7:30, well after sunrise but hours before the sun would reach its peak in the spring sky. I got in the car for a long ride to Portland, first following the Columbia River and then dipping down to the interstate. I had plugged in my iPod which is bursting at the seams with 18 gigs of music, I had made a fresh thermos of coffee, and had downed a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. I had brought with me a banana, directions, my cell phone, and not much else. 

The road from here, Walla Walla, to there is filled with microclimates. East of the Cascade Mountains one will observe magpies; west of them there are none to be found. Out here in eastern Washington/Oregon there are many rolling hills as part of the scrubland landscape–red-brown rocks and outcroppings share space with tan brush that gives the effect of looking like sheep that need to be shorn for the year. Thirty miles west of Walla Walla the gorges begin, and the royal blue river winds through the high hills as if to thumb its nose at the typically pale blue sky up ahead. And that sky is empty; only the long series of enormous windmills dare to drive up that high, standing over the scene like silent giants, spinning slowly and methodically as I zipped by. (Note to Oregon State Patrol: “zipped” means under or at the speed limit.) 

The rolling hills slowly begin to grow, and as they acquire the status of height, they pick up other things: taller scrub brush, small evergreen trees, fine dustings of snow. These, in turn, evolve to another status as deciduous trees appear on the side of the road, the evergreens get taller and taller, and the dust gives way to a thickening green carpet of moss and wild grasses. Now the blue river cutting through the rock looks complementary to the other Mother Earth colors, and then the dams begin, controlling and harnessing its flow.

The dams are not without their controversy. Fishermen wail that their harvests are at all-time lows, just 40 years after the dams were installed. Farmers cry out to keep the dams because they rely on the steady irrigation. Conservationists fret about the livelihood of the salmon spawning capability, tourist guides in Idaho bemoan what the dams are doing to their industry, and security experts talk quietly about risk assessments. I, however, am single-minded in my quest to reach my destination, and decide to defer the arguments for another moment. Such is my luxury.

Dead ahead of drivers on I-84, all of a sudden, is Mount Hood. It looms in the background like a gigantic screen saver and I have to blink many times before I realize it’s the real deal. Snow-covered as far as I can see, top to bottom. A sign that flashes by on my right tells me that it is 11,000 feet tall. That’s two or so miles high, I calculate vaguely. I see the hillsides around it; now they look like a velvet cloth has been cast over them, with the soft grass and moss and the dry patches of sand worked in. I bet this is the doing of the giant windmills. I see parts of two or three windmills passing me on the highway, dismembered on a series of WIDE LOAD-marked semis. Each truck comes with its own pacer car that alerts other drivers to the mystery of the cargo — it can take two or three trucks to figure out what these very very large pieces of white metal are, until you’ve figured it out the first time. 

Eventually I hit actual traffic, and by traffic, I mean more than one tractor-trailer and a nervous-looking woman in a 1990 Ford Escort. I have a moment where my sense memory comes back to me, so I change my distance to the car ahead, lest some jerky driver try to cut me off. I tell myself this is one of the good things about Walla Walla. 

I finally make it to my goal, shut off the car, and walk inside the building, my legs having stiffened up during the long drive and barking at me for neglecting their care. One hour later, I’m back in the car, heading home, to go through the process in reverse, and this time, with the setting sun behind me, gradually turning to a burnt umber and snuffing itself out just as I pull in to the driveway.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about freecycle over the years — people who see the value in giving or getting things for free instead of throwing them away or heading to Walmart yet again have told me they really like freecycle for handing them easy access to things they need or would like to pass on. It stops just short of bartering, so you don’t need to offer anything other than the obligation to come pick up the item yourself.

I signed on to the Walla Walla freecycle list. I didn’t really know what to expect. In a rural town of 30,000, what things would appear? How soon would people respond? 

farm field east of Walla Walla

My friends in DC have gotten and let go of a lot of kids’ toys, but I haven’t seen anything like that. Ferret cages and supplies, on the other hand, are on the Walla Walla list. There’s also one particular person who puts out requests for things several times a week, items like a washer and dryer, baby clothes, that sort of thing. I read these email messages and I get nervous. Has the local Freecycle always been this busy, or is it an effect of a poor economy? Are people posting because they value doing things a little off the grid, or is there distress I should be reading into the letters?

Perhaps Freecycle is not for me, if it’s going to make me anxious like this.

Someone posted that they had a Betta fish to give away. Being a fan of such creatures, and wanting to get back in the pet-caring-for community, I sent in an email saying I could pick it up anytime. I didn’t hear back, and three days went by with no “Claimed” or “Retrieved” notice from the original poster. I stayed up all night — was the fish okay? Had he been on his last legs? Was he in the sewer system — the Valhalla for trusty but short-lived aquarium animals? Would he meet Chairman Mao in his next life, perhaps? The more I thought about it, the more concerned I became. My mind raced to thoughts of a painful, slow death for the fish and wondering if they thought I was somehow undeserving of parenting their little friend, based only on my email address. I reread my email — I didn’t sound like a fish-focused ax murderer. But then I went on to wonder if ax murderers realized they sounded crazy. Perhaps I was blind to my own insanity!

Days later, the email followup appeared: many, many people had written in to claim the fish. The forlorn, nearly-dead Betta I had pictured was a little off-base: clearly this was the most beloved fish in all of Walla Walla County. Loved and free.

I could make a flag of that. And put it on Freecycle.

While Susanne’s younger brother Kurtis was visiting us, his birthday rolled around. Given my penchant for enjoying producing confectionary creations, I asked what kind of cake he would like to celebrate the day. I was not ready for his response — an ice cream cake. While unexpected, I of course was not about to back away from a challenge. I thought about what I liked when it came to such things, and remembered many a frozen Carvel cake. Anyone from the Northeast of a certain age will recall the delights of Fudgie the Whale and Cookie Puss. Central to those cakes is the chocolate cookie layer, so I went about figuring out how to recreate it in my kitchen.

I cleaned out the filling from half a package of Oreos, crumbled up the cookies, mixed them in with vanilla and melted butter, and pressed it into the pan. I made homemade vanilla ice cream, Kurt’s expressed preference. I made whipped cream with a hint of vanilla, layering them and freezing them one layer after another into the pan. Then it came time, on the morning of his birthday, to decorate the top. I made some royal icing and colored it green and blue, two colors I know he likes. I wrote out his name and then attempted to make something from nature, an interest of his. I stood back and saw I had made a simple flower. Kind of girly. I needed to add something. I put down some more designs and stood back again and then realized my error. The cake looked like this:

ice cream cake

Oh dear. This would have been perfect if Kurtis was an 11-year-old girl, but not a grown man. He seemed not to care, declaring it tasty and just the thing he’d wanted.