Trans/plant/portation

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.

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.

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.

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.

not the bike in question

We’ve all had that friend, colleague, or acquaintance who posted or forwarded useless emails to everyone on their friends list or at work. Exploding mugs of water in the microwave, rats that are on the loose and sure to crawl up the toilet bowl while we’re doing our business, endless streams of pictures of misstyped signs that we’re supposed to find funny — and sure, sometimes they’re funny. But mostly I, at least, grit my teeth and feel badly for the poor soul who thought I needed to read this.

The college here in town has a community interest list, which has all manner of important, interesting, and completely vapid email. One item tonight was too funny not to share, so feel free to have a chuckle, even though laughing will involve either a sense of schadenfreude or a hope that the matter involved will somehow be resolved. This post comes about a month after a series of emails to the college community about a wounded raccoon that one campus member decided to take in, foster, and then release. I almost thought there would be a “Raccoon Watch” to relay the ongoing, evolving medical condition of the rodent. The closest I ever came to a live raccoon was last year in DC, when one was blocking our path to our front door, but my memory is a little fuzzy, as Susanne was pushing me in front of her, making me her living shield from the thing as it growled at us. Do not mess with raccoons when they’re trying to find dinner in their private Dumpsters, knawhatImean?

So, without further adieu, the email in question. Note the subject line.

Subject: If you borrowed a blue bike with bent handle bars, please return it!

I really NEED it. I can’t get to work without it and I’m a pretty worthless human being 

if I can’t work. Please don’t make me miserable.

 

And if you were planning to keep it, I regret to inform you that it’s a worthless peace 
of shit. But I do really need it to get around and get stuff done, and if I had the money 
to afford another bike, believe me, I would have replaced this one long ago.

Soooo… just leaving it back at XXX Alder St. works.

And just in case you’re not sure whether you have my bike:

It’s a REALLY OLD kind of METALLIC BLUE SCHWINN, it has bent handle bars and a really 
CONTORTED looking basket, kind of resembles a SHOPPING CART.

Susanne and I went to see an evening of cabaret with Tomson Highway, a Cree musician, playwright, novelist, and songwriter. It was not a Gershwin medley — these were songs from two musicals he’s written, namely, Rose and The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito. The latter is a children’s play, in case that wasn’t already abundantly clear. We all piled into a small auditorium, about 40 of us, and were subjected to Tomson’s wacky presentation style, which was this entertaining mix of Victor Borge wit and Elton John effete manner. Unfortunately, the music itself was a little on the simplistic side — interesting enough chord progressions but then that was about it. There were times when he would jam during a vamp portion of a song and I could see that he could play really well, but those weren’t things he’d written into the songs. He was joined by a singer, also from the Cree Nation north of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and a sax player from Walla Walla who did a very good job on an instrument that is not anywhere near my favorite. I’m more of a woodwinds and strings fella, but that’s another story. 

Tomson Highway

There was a portion of his cabaret where he talked about the Cree’s notion of “the trickster,” a spiritual being with no gender who is like a lightning bolt of divine magic from God. The trickster is behind your laughter, lightening you up from the moment, an ephemeral gift from God. Or in Tomson’s language, he’s bumping your butt. Which made us laugh. Which made Tomson point out that he was bumping our butts again. Which made us laugh again. You can see where this is going. It was a butt-bumping laughfest for a while there.

Another moment of hysteria, when I thought I would just lose it — he remarked that this next song was a good song, because you know, he wrote it. Not to blow his own horn, you know, because he doesn’t play the horn. And don’t think he’s going to blow the piano tonight. Though that might be interesting.

I will point out here that the idiom is “toot” your own horn, not blow it. Perhaps those Cree have their own take on such things. Certainly it made for a funnier story. I did go home humming a few tunes about mosquitoes who take the train to find new friends. Groove Armada it was not, but it was a nice event. And, I suppose, very Wallyworld.

…or more precisely, eight and a half months. Back last January, when Susanne was being courted by the college that later hired her, I had a call from an administrator at the college who was interested in my resume. Originally, my journal post went something like this:

I got a call from the College that wants to bring Susanne on board next fall. The voice mail had the name of a person and said she was the head of advancement and then asked me to call back. Not knowing what the hell “advancement” meant (am I not advanced enough? I do walk on two legs, after all, and I haven’t dragged my knuckles on the floor in years), I figured she was a head hunter or some such. I called her back. I got her voice mail. It went like this:

“Hi, this is Betsy K—-, Director of the Department of Advancement at XX College. Please leave the date and time you called, and your name and number, and I’ll call you at my earliest opportunity. Thank you. *cough*

Hi, this is Betsy K—-, Director of the Department of [pause]

Hi, this is Betsy K—-, Director of the Department of Advancement Services at XX College. Please leave the date and time you called, and I’ll call you at my earliest opportunity. Thanks.

This is Betsy K—-, Director of the Department of Advancement Services at XX College. Please leave your name and number, and the time and date that you called. I will call you at my earliest opportunity. Thank you.”

I swear, she recorded the outgoing message SEVEN TIMES. I waited patiently, trying not to laugh in the phone’s microphone, because of course I had no idea at that point just when the beep would begin. And so I wondered:

1. how could she not realize she was saving 27 messages?
2. why has nobody told her yet?

Anyway, I did indeed leave my name, number, time and date of call. She called me back. She offered me a job as her assistant, basically, but I said we could talk in a few days since she only had about 10 minutes to go over things with me.

Really? Wow. I am kind of at a loss for words. I don’t even understand the job duties because she was so inarticulate. It has something to do with data reporting, SQL queries, and institutional endowment. Those are my words. Hers were more like, databases, project management, wow, and this college is cool.

Fast forward to today. Limping through the administration building looking for the ID office so I can go to the campus gym and library, I see a familiar name on one of the doors. It’s her! Rampant outgoing message leaver! I try to casually assess the woman sitting at the desk. She doesn’t look at all like I’d pictured — in my mind’s eye I saw a nervous woman with tight hair, a la Bree Van De Kamp. This woman was dressed like a college student in black stretch pants, a green sweater, and penny loafers. She had an office three times the size of my last cube, and for those former SSA colleagues paying attention, a name plate on her door. (Note to SSA: since you’ve already paid for it, feel free to send me my name plate whenever it finally arrives. You’ve got my address already!)

I couldn’t help myself. Could this earnest outgoing message leaving woman be interesting to talk to? Did she repeat everything she had to say 7 times? Could the number 7 be like, a divine number for her?

“Honey, I need you to go to the store. Could you go to the store for me? I need some things from the store, so how about you stop by there? Dear, this is really important, I need you to swing by the store. So if you could pick up a few items for me from the store, that would be great. Just please go to the store today. Hey, you know what would be great — stopping by the store today!”

Okay, somehow I’ve made this woman become my mother. Hmm.

Anyway, I poked my head in and introduced myself, and she remembered me from last winter. After the awkward, “no no, I haven’t found a job yet” moment, we chatted about Walla Walla and what is and isn’t in it. No knishes, bagels, whitefish or any other cuisine a good boy from New Jersey would crave in that 3 a.m. in the morning suddenly way. One, count it, one, liquor store. For 26,000 people. She was friendly and nice and putting a face to the answering machine message and phone calls did a lot to make her more human. And I was glad I met her, even if I still can’t envision myself working for her. And there is the issue of I continue not to have any idea what her job is, or what mine might have been.

Just another day in Wallyworld!

The airline industry is just not what it used to be. I know I’m not saying anything people don’t already know, but reading headlines about paying for each checked bag and not getting a tiny package of two mini-pretzels anymore is also not the same as living with the changes.

Take overhead containers on the planes themselves. There’s just no way to get your overnight bag in them, because everyone else’s overnight bags are already stuffed into them. I bet you could fit an olympic-sized swimming pool in the cargo areas at this point because all of our crap is sitting over our heads. Anything not to pay another $15 for a trip in a flying gas can.

I also want to ask: how much are the airlines saving on the peanuts and pretzels? Okay, okay, the answer is out there — $650,000. This multi-billion dollar industry is hurting, I understand, but when the flights are packed together and you’re hobbling through an airport on one bad leg and one that sounds like a bowl of Rice Crispies, with no time to get even the most depressing burger from Burger King Express (isn’t it already a scaled-down fast food restaurant? what the hell does “express” mean?), a bag of a few pretzels for your 5-hour flight is suddenly critically important. And sure, I could spend $9 on a cup of sulfurized fruit, yogurt, and granola, but the 10 hours of feeling stupid for paying top dollar for crap food doesn’t seem worth it.

After oversleeping past my 3:30 a.m. wake up, I groggily looked at my cell phone and screamed silently as I saw it was now 5:37. My flight was leaving Dulles Airport, site of the personally infamous 2005 Big Toe Mishap, 50 miles away from where I was. I cursed, stumbled to the computer and looked up the Airline’s customer service line. After 45 minutes of trying to explain I wanted to rebook my flight, I was told I had to go to the airport. Note to United Airlines: please redo your “help” protocol so you tell customers this information in the first 5 minutes and not the 45th!

I hopped in the rental car, along with the rest of the Beltway early morning rush hour traffic, and eventually I got to Dulles. I was happy to get on the plane, not so happy for the lack of leg room, and really not happy with my seatmate to the right. Seatmate to the Right had obviously showered not in water, as I hear is standard (see last post), but in tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil. She smelled like she’d screwed a koala, seriously, or like she was taking the best-defense-is-a-good-offense approach to the whole anti-perfume movement. I couldn’t even look out the window because putting my nostrils two inches closer to her body made me overwhelmed with the powerfully bad smell. It was like sitting next to an Aveda store after an earthquake. That flight was 5 and a half hours, people. Five and a half hours of TEA TREE OIL. And just to note — there is no bloody point to huffing tea tree oil, unless you want a bad headache in the middle of your forehead. So boys and girls, just say no to tea tree oil huffing, mkay?

My flight from Seattle to Spokane was less perfumatic, more turbulent. We had a flight attendant who had clearly previously been a performer at Cirque du Soleil, for she had amazing balance and control as the propellor plane dipped and weaved and bounced like it was Oscar de la Hoya in a fight. I could tell we were close to Walla Walla because

1. at 23,000 feet you can practically read the license plates on the cars below

2. I could almost smell the Bad Broccoli Plant

3. the wheat fields began appearing, like such:

wheat fields

Living in Washington for 8 weeks, it was almost familiar, though not really. But now I’m home, olfactory senses intact, big toe unbroken, and back in the arms of my honey.

Next post: getting through the Dulles Airport is a lot harder than it would seem to be.

How nice that cell phones come equipped with alarms you can set. So it was that my little LG Rumor phone woke us up at 5:30 so I could take Susanne to the airport. She’s set to teach tonight, after she flies to Denver, changes planes, lands in Spokane, drives 3 hours to Walla Walla and gets to exhale a couple of times before the debate begins.

I turned around at BWI and drove back to the lovely Michael’s house, checked email, and fell back asleep at 7:30. At 11 I groggily got up, walked through the closet and then connected guest bathroom. Turn on the hot and cold taps to the shower. Shuffle in. Stand under the water, fumbling for the shower gel. Then I transferred into “awake” from the semi-dream space of an odd-hour nap. (I call those “poison naps,” but that’s for another story.)

I am practiced at turning off the hot and cold taps together, for I greatly detest having a last spurt of too-hot or too-cold water just before I’m toweling off. Hey, it’s my shower, I get to be as controlling as I want. So, both taps closed. But water was still coming out the top of the shower. My brain was a little slow in computing that something was wrong. I opened and closed the cold water tap. Still flowing. I noticed that the pipe itself was turning, not just the handle. Uh-oh. Before I could really compute how to fix the problem, the faucet blew out of the wall like a torpedo and suddenly a hard jet of water was slamming across the shower and all over the wall, and then it took the 90 degree angle and raced across the bathroom onto the floor. It looked like this:

The shower unplugged

Okay, I’m exaggerating a little. But it was quite the forceful thick stream of water! I called out to Michael’s roommate, who himself took a moment to realize someone was calling his name, and a little desperately. He gently knocked on the bathroom door. I was in the shower holding the water off with my back, draping the curtain over the front of me, in some stupid attempt to preserve my regular level of modesty. 

“Come in!”

He heard the pounding surf and asked what happened. I held up the faucet and four-inch section of pipe.

“Oh, shit,” he said. My thoughts exactly.

I asked him to find the water cut-off for the condo, since trying to put the pipe back in place didn’t work at all, what with the pound force of pressure working against me. I could hear him looking everywhere for the valve, next to the washer/dryer, the water heater, out on the back deck in the utility room. Nowhere. He thought maybe such a thing didn’t exist, but I’ve watched enough Holmes on Homes to know every house in America has a freaking cut-off valve for just such a water crisis. By this point I was standing outside the shower with my hand over the stream directing the water to the back corner of the shower stall, but the level of water was rising faster than the drain could take it away. Watching my left knee I moved a couple of towels onto the drenched floor to sop up the mess.

Michael’s roommate stuck his head back in the bathroom. “I can’t find it anywhere! He was starting to look a bit panicked. “Call Michael,” I shouted over the din. 

“I called his office three times.”

“Cell phone,” I shouted.

“Oh, right!” he shouted back at me.

At this point, 1.2 miles away, Michael saunters into his office, having a busy but productive morning at work. His assistant tells him his phone has been ringing off the hook. Michael also sees a message on his cell, and as he’s checking it, sees that his roommate has also been calling his desk. So he calls back, saying, “Hey there,” in a merry sing-song tone.

“No,” says the roommate, which at that moment became a shortcut for “stop talking and help me find the water cut off valve.”

For those of you unfamiliar with Michael, let me just say here that the word “nonplussed” came into existence in part because of him. For even when he’s livid, he’ll just tell you quietly that he is currently very angry, and that’s about it. If hothead is one polar extreme, Michael is fairly close to the other end.

He calmly directed his roommate as to the location of the cutoff, and I felt the water ease and then cease, dribbling out and then ending like a grizzly bear succumbing to a massive dose of tranquilizers from a scientist’s dart. 

I suppose this means I have not been a very good houseguest, so the plan now is to make a nice supper of lamb shank, roasted tomatoes and orzo, and a mixed green salad. I’ll need the water back on, of course.

Let’s start with a poll. How would you pronounce the following word: Touchet. Would you say:

Too-SHAY, as in the French

TUH-shee, as in one’s derriere

TOUCH-it, if you were pretending not to understand French pronounciation

TOO-shee, just to put that option in the list (read, I have nothing witty to say about this)

If you picked the last choice, you win! The town of Touchet, Washington, is pronounced TOO-shee. Susanne and I wondered about “touch it” because we had driven through Havre, Montana, on the way into town, which the locals pronounce “HAVE-er. French, what’s that? No worries, they can call their villages whatever they like. Just don’t expect that out-of-towners will have any clue how to replicate the name.

Paper Mill

Driving on Route 12 through Touchet toward the setting sun, you will at some point intersect the very pretty Columbia River. Unfortunately for the river, near the port of Walla Walla sits a paper mill and a slaughterhouse. For olfactory reasons I refuse to slow down long enough to investigate which of these creates the smell I am about to describe, or if there is some awful marriage of odors that creates such a cesspool of particulate that hangs in the air on the roadway, waiting for people to drive through, like an ambush of molecules. For there I am, traveling at 60 mph, looking at the pretty river and the still-fascinating windmill towers lined up on the tops of the hills, and then it hits me. It’s like three tons of broccoli were allowed to slowly rot and decay, the green of the flowerettes turning yellow and then brown, liquefying in a mass of death and abandonment. Paper mill my ass. I call it the Bad Broccoli plant, because honestly, it doesn’t smell like turned lettuce or sausage or groundhog. It’s bad broccoli. We make sure to shut off the air conditioning, close the windows, and then we cross our fingers and hope for the best.

And yes, it’s the only road out of town in that direction. So perhaps I should call it the Bad Broccoli Plant of Inevitability.