Trans/plant/portation

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.

This time last year, Susanne was mulling a job offer to move out to what we thought at the time was the West Coast. And what we thought at the time would be a cute little house in a quaint little town with lots of promise of new adventure and experiences. Also last year around now I was finally starting to recover from a surgery and a subsequent major infection. I was itching to get back to the office and sink my teeth into some projects.

our xmas eve abode

We received, in fact, all of our wishes. Susanne took the job, the house sure is cute from the outside, the town is indeed quaint, and we’ve had the new experience of purchasing and installing snow chains. We’ve also sampled some local wines and cuisine, met some new people, had a fun trip cross-country, and seen a major natural wonder up front and close.

Before we left DC, Susanne defended her dissertation and earned her Ph.D., we introduced our families to each other, we got married (twice, in fact), and hosted a whole slew of memorable parties and get-togethers with friends. I at least felt like a successful person loved by many and complete with two ACLs in my knees.

To say this past fall has been a let down would be a large understatement. It’s hard to move anywhere, let alone on the other side of a continent. It’s challenging to walk away from a very secure, well paying job and try to plant stakes with people who don’t know you or your reputation. It’s even more difficult to establish a new home on one good leg, and then you notice that all of these frustrations are combining with each other in this minestrone soup way and you can’t tell which flavor is which anymore, or what is really bugging you. Susanne had to get up to speed on the school, the climate of the college, the students, the new digs, and the increasingly grumpy partner. We have been stressed. We have been searching for the things that can sustain us — getting to know people, exploring our new environment, reveling in the nice things about our new town — but we do get tired and weary.

Spring holds promise. I know now that any such promise will come attached to things I’d rather not have to encounter, but it will be there nonetheless. Nothing so far in this life of mine has gone according to any sort of plan. I’ve learned more by trying to adapt or meet a challenge than I have in attempting to set things up a certain way and ticking off my lists item by item. So I adapt.

I remember the evening of my wedding, dancing with my darling, and thinking about all of what was ahead of us. Not just for 2008, but for 2018, and 28 and 38. There will be so much, and a lot of it won’t be easy, and I know that is tritely put. I am ready for the good things in 2009. They don’t have to come to me, necessarily, I’ll try to make them happen. I do seem to love a good struggle. There must be a fulfilling, good job out there for me. There must be a way to make our circumstances work — if not for 20 years, then maybe a few, in this town of many waters. I resolve to be positive-focused and forward-looking. But those things I thought of last July that I thought I would experience this fall — they haven’t happened, and either I adjust to new expectations, or I push harder to make things happen. In any case, I’m going to approach Spring 2009 differently than I did this fall. With the sense of adventure I felt on my wedding evening. Because life is what it is, and I might as well find a way to enjoy it.

We are the proud owners of snow chains. Susanne and I strapped them to the front tires yesterday morning, one $40 purchase closer to being able to get out of our back alleyway and onto the snowy street, which is only 8 snowy streets away from the highway out of town. Turns out we had to shovel the alley all the way out to the street because it was too high for the undercarriage of the SUV. We’re not talking low-riding NASCAR racer here — we’re talking Honda CR-V with a clearance of more than 7 inches. This was not DC snow. Apparently it’s also not Walla Walla snow but since this is our first winter, to us it’s now a package deal in our minds.

Thirty minutes later we had shoveled our way out, and the chains did their job giving the car some traction. Then it was off! To where, we didn’t know. We were just excited to be out of the house! So we went where any red-blooded North Americans would go — we drove to Macy’s and did some last-minute shopping. Nice bargains at the only department store in town, I must say.

Back home, we decided to part out front on the street. The math went like this — if it snowed badly overnight, we’d only have to dig off the car, but if we put the car back in the garage, we’d have to shovel out the whole alley again. So we parked on the street.

This morning, I heard a rumbling like a train was rolling down our street. Unfamiliar with such noise, I looked out the kitchen window. It was . . . wait for it . . . a PLOW! In the alley! Twelve days after the snow first started accumulating, and notably, 30 MINUTES before we were leaving Walla Walla, the plow dug out the alley. Gee, thanks a lot, jackass. Where were you on December 15?

We drove on up to Spokane and it was like a drive into an Agnes Martin painting of white on white. The road was white. The hills were white. The scrubland plants were covered in snow, rendered invisible. The fog was white. The sky — take a guess. There were two rut lines in the road, and so I followed  those to keep on track. I’ve never seen white like that.

Agnes Martin painting

I think the only place more remote would be the River of No Return in Idaho. Or so it would seem. But come to think of it, there are probably people there. There are not all that many people up here in Spokane. 

As we came into the city limits, the snow started falling again. Forecasts call for a few to several inches to fall today and tonight. We will cross our fingers that our flight takes off on time — and hopefully, with us on it this time.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

9:30 AM PST Friday — I look at the clock and realize it’s only been 5 and a half hours since I fell asleep. While my upper brain starts computing all the possibilities for the day: gym, grocery, Web work, Xmas gift shopping (online, of course), one stark image comes to mind and lizard brain pops up and shuts the whole mess down. Just the thought of the snow outside was apparently overwhelming.

10:17 AM PST Friday — My blurry vision is clear enough to let me see the time. I get immediately stressed out that the day is getting away from me. There’s so much to do today! Aren’t we having someone over for supper? I can’t ask Susanne, as she is sound asleep.

10:23 AM PST Friday — Oh come on, just get up already, says the Angel Ev over my shoulder. This would likely work better if Angel Ev could sport me a cup of coffee.

10:31 AM PST Friday — Clad in ripped jeans, navy pea coat, shirt and sweatervest (of course), and DC-branded baseball cap, I venture out to the stand-alone garage where our car is. For the first time in a while, it is not snowing. I lean hard on the garage door to open it, then from inside, I open the big door, the one the car goes through. I smile as I realize our neighbor has done a great job of keeping our “driveway” — which is seriously only 6 feet long — really clear and passable.

10:33 AM PST Friday — Not passable enough. I am stuck as I start turning the wheels to enter the alley behind our house.

10:34 AM PST Friday — I have shoveled all of the snow in a 3-foot radius around the car, paying attention to the tires. I get back in and . . . no go, the wheels spin helplessly. I think I may have just created ice patches from the friction of the rubber. Go me, creating ice. It’s like I’m God.

10:39 AM PST Friday — I have shoveled all of the snow in a 5-foot radius around the car, rocked on it a bit, being careful of the knee, and I am realizing I am not one inch closer to the grocery store. This was a Bad Idea.

Canada's best snow gear

11:09 AM PST Friday — Susanne comes outside in all of her Emergency Canadian Snow Gear, sponsored by Roots clothiers. She is armed with cardboard boxes that still say her last name on them from our move four months ago. Oh, our ill-fated relocation into this frosty circle of hell! If only Dante had lived to see cars. I think of The Inferno and I can hear, somewhere, Devil Ev laughing at me.

11:22 AM PST Friday — The cardboard boxes are failing us.

11:25 AM PST Friday — Someone who has come by to drop off his unwanted cardboard boxes — in this weather, are you crazy? — which the college defines as illegal dumping, is helping us push the car out of the newly formed ice patches. Illegal dumper has a 4-wheel-drive Outback. I want a 4-wheel-drive Outback. Right now, it’s the only thing I want and the only thing I have ever wanted. Oh, and gloves for my frozen fingers. Oh, and boots. I’m noticing my toes are cold.

11:32 AM PST Friday — The car is moving! The car is moving! I’m driving! It’s driving! I’m heading down the alleyway, I’m turning left! Wow, a left turn! Gosh this street of ours needs a plow, I think. I see the VW Jetta parked on the wrong side of the street — more illegal dumpers. Wow, am I sick of these illegal dumpers. It’s like living next to a drug dealer, with the constant activity and bad parking. Okay, it’s not like that at all, but whatever. Gosh, I seem to be sliding into their car. Darn, I need to stop the car so I don’t hit them, I think. 

And now I’m stuck. A string of curse words flows out of my mouth like the rotten broccoli smell at the paper mill in Wallula. I see the illegal dumpers walking back to their car, and I call them horrible names.

11:35 AM PST Friday — I have discovered I can drive backwards. Maybe if I drive this way I will somehow reverse time and then I’ll be back in the bed having never ventured out in the first place. I hear giggling off in the distance.

11:37 AM PST Friday — I am stuck again, backwards-lodged into a bank of snow representing the curb, I think, right out in front of our house. I can actually feel my blood pumping through my veins. That is not a good sign.

11:52 AM PST Friday — Susanne is out front with me now, trying to reestablish contact with the road via the same tired cardboard boxes. Poor boxes, this is not what they signed up for when they were born at the cardboard box factory. They thought they’d be holding pretty items from Pottery Barn and making people smile, but instead, they’ve got hot rubber, rock salt, and dirty snow all over them. I start to feel like I am just another misused cardboard box.

12:11 PM PST Friday — It is clear we can’t get the car out of this spot. We wonder if we should call AAA or knock on the door of our neighbor who has a Jeep and a winch. I start thinking about the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, and tell myself that there will be no winch mishaps. No winch mishaps. I do realize at this point that I can’t feel my big toes anymore.

12:22 PM PST Friday — Susanne heads to school for meetings with students, and I head inside to call AAA. It’s busy.

12:48 PM PST Friday — AAA is busy. I see online that there are snowstorms all over the country. Someone needs to call Santa and tell him he can have his Arctic wind back.

1:15 PM PST Friday — I head back outside and shovel my way to our neighbors’ house, to talk about his mighty fine winch. He says he’ll finish lunch and then we can get cracking. Hopefully that light at the end of the tunnel is the sun, and not an oncoming train. If I see anything that looks remotely like “Canada Pacific,” I’m hauling ass out of here.

1:32 PM PST Friday — Ken and Denise come over with the Jeep, hook the winch up to the frame of my car, and pull while I put it in drive and try to get some momentum. The car slides, then the wheels spin, albeit 3 feet forward of the last place they spun. Angel Ev shouts, “Yay, we’re making ice again!” and claps his hands wildly. Devil Ev chuckles as the tires fail to find any traction. I have the sudden thought that I had a 4-wheel-drive car for 7 years and never needed it like I do right at this moment. Great.

1:34 PM PST Friday — Ken gets my car winched to within about 5 feet of his. We unhook the line and he gets ready to start the process all over again. I wonder if now that I’m in a new spot, if I can’t get something going…

1:35 PM PST Friday — I’M MOVING! THE CAR IS MOVING! THANK THE BABY JESUS! I’m turning! Still rolling! I see now that I have to handle the car a lot more sternly, instead of being Mr. Gentle.

1:38 PM PST Friday — I shut the garage door, the car safely inside, and stick my tongue out to catch a couple of snowflakes. Denise is going to the store later and I can go with her. I thank her and silently give the town one more curse, just for good measure.

1:40 PM PST Friday — I stand over the tea kettle, heating up water and wondering where the day went. And whoa, I need a shower.

As the snow is still falling, it’s tough for the one-kneed bandit to get out there and take proper pictures, but I’ll try a little later today. For now, there are these from when the snow first started falling. Enjoy.

We throw a party every year to bake and exchange holiday cookies of no particular affiliation, although there do seem to be a preponderance of Christmas trees in the mix with each year’s collection. I started the annual cookie exchange in 2003, when I was living in a 1-bedroom 3rd floor walk up, which incidentally was the only place I’ve lived that had kitchen appliances younger than me. Unbeknownst to me, Susanne was hosting her own cookie party, not surprising since we both own KitchenAid Artisan 5.5 quart mixers that we have given names. Obviously baking is more important to us than your average bear. No, I do not think that makes us weird.

What was a fun little get-together has evolved into a tag-team extravaganza of confection. We held our first cookie exchange in Wallyworld last weekend and 30 guests came by with all manner of sweet goodness: there were butter cookies, gingerbread cookies, fudge, pumpkin-chocolate-chip cookies, spice-raisin cookies, shortbread cookies, nutty cookies, fruity cookies, and some high-end store bought cookies. 

To cut some of this unending sweetness, Susanne and I made a few savory delights — her well known (in DC) stuffed mushroom caps, spinach dip, and as a joke, I made mini-wieners with Pillsbury dough crescent rolls snugly wrapped around each one. Susanne could not believe her eyes, but I said, “you wait and see, people will love them.” She continued to look absolutely horrified. 

I ran out to the store, buying last-minute things and getting some cider so we could mull it with some spices on the stove. It had started snowing. Walla Walla, although it gets about three times the amount of snow, on average, that DC does, does not own a single plow. So driving gets pretty treacherous. I put on my grippiest shoes, prayed my remaining ACL would hold out on any ice, and hopped in the car. And then drove very slowly to the grocery store. Anti-lock brakes are great, but the jittery dashboard alarm that the road is slick annoyed the hell out of me. I know it’s slippery, car, I’ve been driving for 20 years. You were just manufactured in June. Don’t tell me how to drive. 

After this altercation with our vehicle, I slipped into the grocery, grabbing what I needed, and then heading for the cash registers. In Walla Walla, there aren’t long lines for anything, really, but they’re still painfully slow. People here like to commiserate. It did, after all, take us 2.5 hours to buy a new dryer at Home Depot our second week here because the appliance salesman spent so much time chatting us up. By the end I knew his full name, favorite hobby (hot air ballooning), preferred church (Adventist), favorite restaurant (26 Brix), and had met his current girlfriend and her two children.

I stood in the line of two people (me and another person) for 12 minutes. At this point all the friendly has evaporated from my body and the three-foot radius of space around me. I am thus very consistently a rather terse, unhappy customer by the time I actually reach the cashier, but my politeness stops me from spilling over into rudeness, which is fortunate, because that would be such a difference from Chatty Cathy Cashier that it would rip the fabric of the universe, and then where would we be? Looking at the gates of hell or the 7th dimension or something, at Checkout 1 of the Safeway on Tientin Street? Not good.

Then it was off to get home, get the food prepped, and hop in the shower and find some festive outfit. I was happy, damn it, happy for the holiday party!

I showered too quickly. I left soap on my backside and realized, only after I’d gotten dressed, that this made it hard to walk. Apparently friction keeps our legs from doing the Monty Python silly walk, and I had just minimized my friction. But with 30 minutes until the party, I didn’t have time to remedy my situation. So it was that I realized that inside slipperiness is just as bad, if not worse, than outside slipperiness, like ice. At least I didn’t have a butt alarm telling me that it would be hard to keep my legs together. Actually, that’s not really how I meant that to sound. Oh, bother.

The party went off without a hitch, and two people actually squealed with delight when they saw the mini-wieners. Somehow this post has gotten off track with all the talk about butts and wieners. Sorry about that. I have pictures somewhere, of all the cookies, and when I locate the camera cord (Susanne tells me it’s in the cabinet of no return), I’ll update this post.

Barbershops and hair salons, more than other locally owned businesses, seem to reflect the immediate community around them. Walking into one convenience store or another, things aren’t so different from town to town, although I acknowledge that the suburban WaWa in Maryland isn’t the same as the below street level no name mart of DC. But one cramped store or another, if you need bandages for your ouchie, you can get them anywhere. And you’ll probably get a similar indifferent quality of service at either, whether high school students with pimples or embittered older city clerks are the ones selling them to you.

Not so the barbershop. The barbershop, in my limited experience, is really about who lives in that neighborhood. There was one near my job in Baltimore that was like a scene out of Tim Story’s movie, with all the yammering and disagreement over the local sports team, in this case, the Ravens (go Ravens!). A line of tall mirrors all along the walls that were accidentally feminine and reminiscent of a beauty salon. Three customer chairs for the hair and beard trimming that were reasonably new and very nondescript. No actual decorating of any kind and I can’t even recall what color the walls were painted or even if they were painted. 

Barbershops seem to never have a name, other than to use the name of the owner, like Alex’s Barbershop, as in the preceding example. They relieve themselves of the cutesy but horrifically bad establishment names that plague the hair salon industry, like Kidz Cutz (which sounds like an alternative to abandoning your kids in Nebraska), Happy Beauty Salon (conveniently located next to the Happy Buddha all you can eat Chinese buffet), Shear Pleasure (only if you come out of there with something you like, right?), and She Bangz, which seriously has got to be one of the worst names I’ve ever heard of for a salon. But hey, there are more. 

Outside the barbershop in Walla Walla

Now I’ve gotten some pretty bad haircuts in my day, and by bad I mean torturously uneven, with a harsh line carved into the back of my neck so that people behind me can earnestly relive 1986, some bad dye jobs, you name it. Thus I have some trepidation about going to just any old place. I hesitated and procrastinated going anyplace once we moved to Walla Walla — I even went to a supercuts in Alexandria, Virginia, while I was traveling because I hadn’t gone to the barbershop in town, and I knew that at some point I was going to have to break down and just try it. In my defense, I did attempt to go once, but it was a Tuesday or something and god knows only half the stores are open on Monday and Tuesday around here. I nearly picked up my own clippers to cut my hair myself, but good sense won out in the end.

My fast-growing but thinning hair needs a cut every 4 weeks or so, so I trudged on in to Sung’s Barbershop here in town, not having any faith at all that I wasn’t going to look like a stuck sheep upon my exit. Having a friend named Sang I was prepared for meeting someone with the present perfect tense of the name. Hey, Sang’s a nice guy. Sung is not a nice guy. Sung is a taciturn woman with a scarce smile and an obvious sense of skepticism. I appreciated all of that. 

This barbershop, or rather, barber’s shop, was unlike any other I have ever had the fortune to enter. There was a  beat-up, used-to-be-white sofa on one wall, and which only gave access to patrons on one half, because the other half was already occupied by a dozing sharpei. One wall was covered in baseball caps and below them, seemingly random pictures that I supposed had specific meaning or value to Sung. A piece of torn, white cardboard announced the pricing structure: Haircuts, $12 Seniors, $9 Beard Trim $5. Wow, I can get a senior for $9? That’s a bargain.

A small, dirty mirror allowed customers to see a 3 square inch area of their heads while she was clipping away, and the lone chair was a relic from the 1940s. I wonder how many people have had a haircut in that chair. Must be thousands. There were lots of pictures of the Walla Walla valley, old pictures of the valley ridges before the windmills moved in, sending who knows how many kilowatts to California. It was kind of Old West meets baseball fanatic.

In a town of 29,000, of course it stands to reason that the person already in the chair getting his haircut was one of the 16 I’ve met since moving here. He stood up at the end of his cut and shook my hand. She gesticulated that I should sit down. This was no suburban Supercuts, nor was it a DC/Baltimore chat shop. I told her how I like it cut, not using any parlance like “high and tight,” and she cut it exactly as I asked, in 6.2 minutes. I was really happy with it, which of course I couldn’t show her because I was certain it would unravel the time/space continuum in the store, or something. I gave her a generous tip and headed out, relived that I have a place to go when Susanne starts making comments about how long my hair is getting. I just have to remember not to go there on Monday or Tuesday.

Saturday brought with it a flurry of activity, starting with barrel tasting weekend. Susanne offered to be the designated driver and we piled into the car — Susanne, me, and two other folks from the college. The first vineyard, Dusty Valley (an appropriate name for around here) has a couple of strong wines, including a pinot noir. No barrel tasting, though. We went to two more vineyards, heading to Pepper Bridge where we sampled a merlot that will be bottled next year. The sun set on the rolling hills strewn with grapes, unseasonably warm for December. We drove back into town and found some church stairs from which to watch the holiday parade.

2007 barrel of wine

Now then, I am not unfamiliar with small-town parades. My hometown of Hightstown has a few parades a year, including a don’t-call-it-pagan winter parade.

But Walla Walla, as I know all to well at this point, is not anything like New Jersey. I don’t think I’ve met even one Italian at this point, three and a half months into living here. It was a small parade. It was as small as a parade can be and still have some semblance of a parade. I mean, you need more than a few slowly moving vehicles, right?

The tininess of the parade was distinctly at odds with its name, officially called the “Macy’s Festival of Lights Parade.” Wow. Small town America meets international capitalist licensing and sponsorship! Yes, there is a Macy’s in town. It is in fact, the only department store in Walla Walla. There are at least half a dozen auto supply stores, two of them are Schuck’s Auto Supply, as it happens. I wonder about that. Are they separate competing franchises? Or held by one owner who didn’t want to have to commute too far between them? Seriously, what are they, the Starbucks of car parts? My favorite new Schuck’s joke, because I need the laughs, goes like this:

Customer to clerk: Why are you named Schuck’s?

Clerk: So when we’re out of something, we can say, “Schuck’s, we don’t have that.”

Okay, so that can’t be why that’s their name, because that’s Bad Marketing.

And I digress.

The parade started on time, which was very impressive, since practically nothing and nobody is punctual around these parts. There was a Mini Cooper brigade, which consisted of the 8 Mini Coopers in town getting together and driving slowly through the parade route. Too bad we drive a Honda.

There were many trucks decked out with white lights, a few floats with square dancers on them, not looking anything like the folks I’ve seen at New York City and DC’s pride parades. In other words, they most definitely did not look like this:

Gay dancing cowboys on a float

I don’t think Walla Walla, or any part of eastern Washington, is ready for that, but then again, I’ve never seen Spokane’s pride parade.

The only actual disconcerting thing in the parade was the Santa. I know Santa is the anchor in these things, in the last car before the police end pace car. But Santa was facing backwards. Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t Mr. Kringle be more forward-looking than that? What’s with the symbolism, people? Further, I know it’s slow-going because it’s a parade, but uh, that’s not good for preventing motion sickness. The last thing you need at one of these is to traumatize a bunch of kids because Santa decided the best green for his red suit was his split pea soup lunch. Dare I say more?

No, I daren’t.

So, without the plethora of gay-related dancing floats, without a series of politicians doing their bit for public relations (who cares about 29,000 votes, anyway *cough, cough, FRANKEN cough*), and with no high school marching bands, we had representatives from most of the churches in town, from a couple of businesses (10% off your next 5 gallons of paint at Gary’s!), and cutest of all, from the local chapter of the Humane Society. There were many dogs wearing sweaters that said, “Adopt Me,” and they drew a lot of “aww”s from the crowd. They also handed out candy canes with stickers on them, which fortunately for me, I did not read until the next day. 

Marketed on the stickers was an upcoming adoption drive for December 20. December 20, as many of you probably don’t know, will be a bargain basement day for pet adoption in lovely Walla Walla. Dogs will only cost $40 (regularly $80-$120) and cats the low, low price of $10! And only between 10 and noon, cats are free.

Seriously, I think it’s a good thing, even if I am a little weirded out by making animals seem like they’re for sale at Filene’s. But we can’t really get a dog until I can walk him or her everyday. And I can’t do that until there’s allograft material for me, and wow, the world is a weird place, isn’t it? I refuse to bargain for a dog on the death of some person. I just would like a friggin dog, and to go bowling, and try the foxtrot again, or even to carry a 10-pound bag of flour from Costco without feeling like I’m playing russian roulette with my remaining knee ligaments.

My surgery has been postponed indefinitely because there isn’t currently any donor tissue to use to reconstruct my ACL. In a weird twist to my attempts to “buy local,” I seem to be subject to an inaccessibility of allograft material, which is a localized issue. Apparently if we were still living in DC I would have had the surgery by now.

But not having the surgery just yet provides some unexpected benefits, like I’ve trimmed our Christmas tree, we can go ahead with a cookie exchange party, which will help us meet some new people, and I got to go to the annual holiday farmer’s market (the regular weekly market closed at the end of October and won’t reopen until April).

Still, it’s strange to think that I’m waiting, basically, for someone to pass away not so I can have their heart, but so I can go bowling again. It’s strangely offensive, or trite, or . . . something distasteful. That said, it is the best surgical option for me. And as I myself am an organ donor, I suppose I may pass something on, too. I just don’t have a response for people who try to make jokes about all of this (except maybe for the “buy local” one). Organ donation just isn’t funny. I mean, it’s kind of ridiculously unfunny.

So in the meantime, I bake. Baking, as we all know, sure can be funny. For Thanksgiving, I produced an apple pie, about two and a half dozen sweet potato biscuits, and a pumpkin swirl cheesecake. Thanks to my Mom, James Turner, and Junior’s bakery in Brooklyn, respectively, for the recipes.

Pumpkin swirl cheesecake

The cheesecake, it should be noted, was not made without some trauma to me and the people in the room whilst it was being prepared. I was making the cake with my almost 12-year-old niece, Beth, when I was showing her my trick for cracking eggs. She asked, rightly so, if I wanted her to break the egg into the bowl or into something else, then putting that into the bowl. Because my egg-cracking tip minimizes the chance that broken shell will get into the recipe, I said it was fine to break it into the bowl.

Bad idea, Everett. Bad, bad idea. For while my 38 years of experience with store-bought eggs has so far produced wonderful incredible edibleness, this was about to go off the rails for me. She cracked and cracked the egg, and said, “it won’t open.” I took the egg from her, and in the nanosecond before I released the yolk, I saw the problem.

Humans, however, need something more than a nanosecond for their reflexes to kick in. I could only manage a slow-motion, “noooooooooo,” as I dropped it into $8 worth of cream cheese, vanilla, and whipping cream.

It was blood red. Worse, it had a half-inch large dead baby chick in it. And the redness of it against the pure white cream cheese mix made it only look more incredibly disgusting.

Suddenly there were people all crowding around the bowl trying to get a glimpse of the grotesque concoction. Kind of like when someone tastes something spoiled and screams and then begs you to taste it, too. Or like eating lunch in the Social Security Administration cafeteria. Kind of like that.

Susanne’s older brother, true to older brother form, suggested we just dump out the egg and continue on with the cake making. We did not of course, listen to him. This was made easier because of precedent–we are in the habit of not listening to his crazy man ideas. Instead I took a drive 12 miles to the grocery store and got more cream cheese, which was conveniently on sale. Then I wondered if the grocery store had some conspiracy to screw up people’s cheesecakes with fertilized chicken eggs so we would have to double our purchases of the cream cheese. Now that the Republicans are out of the White House, what will we do for conspiracy theories? Egg producers may take a lot of heat. 

This brings me to the mind-losing portion of this post. I was planning on the knee surgery on December 3, but lo and behold, as it is postponed indefinitely, I now have no calendar for anything — not rehab, not getting a job, not bowling — and so my sanity has begun to trickle away. Dear readers, hopefully it will not adversely affect this poor little blog too badly.

In the meantime, I snapped this apple pie picture shortly before the pie was no more. Enjoy.

Almost gone apple pie

Next up: Santa comes to Walla Walla.

I’m inclined to spend time writing in coffeehouses, because my extroverted brain needs something to tune out; I can’t just concentrate in a quiet space. There’s definitely a breaking point — thinking back to when the gaggle of toddlers was running around one coffee joint in town, that was definitely too much chaos for me. But if there is some good music piping in, some “ambiance” in the room, and a hearty level of caffeine, I’m good to go. 

I say “tune out,” but that means that none of the conversations can be that strange, interesting, or far-fetched, or my semi-conscious brain will fast-track it to the front of my mind. Thus it is that some comments cause a lot of distraction and a bit of amusement. Some of the more notable remarks:

1. Techniques that enhance one’s masturabatory moments. Talk about some TMI, people. It should be noted that this conversation took place while all of the conversationalists were texting on their cell phones and PDAs. Ha. PDAs. Public Displays of Abhorrence.

2. “I mean, I can only listen to Bruce Springsteen for so long.” The discussion then drifted to a tips ‘n tricks of how to take notes on one’s daily existential insights, for use in future lyric-writing, so your band, Walla Walla, and then the rest of the world can benefit from your brilliance. As long as we don’t have to listen for more than a few minutes, okay?

3. “I’m just wondering where this rash is gonna spread next.” No, really, someone said that. In public.

4. “I can’t figure out how to turn off my speakerphone.” Aren’t 19-year-olds the tech generation? Have we made technology so intuitive now that people no longer can do their own troubleshooting? This 38-year-old hasn’t been using computers his entire life, remember. No, I did not get up and turn off her speakerphone for her.

5. “Dude, getting your paper online is so retarded.” Dude, what are you thinking? You’re like, stupid and in college!

I may have to start wearing headphones.