THE DAY THE MACHINES WENT DOWN

Thursday, September 11, 2014.

Dateline: Uxbridge, Massachusetts 

It was an ordinary day. Early September in southern New England. Cool. Almost crisp. Some leaves had already changed and they shone bright yellow, signalling the rapid approach of Autumn.

An average kind of day — except, as it turned out, we had run out of half-and-half.

In many — perhaps most —  homes, this would be no big deal. Certainly not an emergency requiring an immediate voyage into town. But. This is a household of addicted coffee aficionados. There was no way we could get through 24 hours without half-and-half for our coffee.

No. Regular milk is not the same. Someone — okay, Garry — would have to go to the store to buy half-and-half. The nearest shop — the deli — sells only tiny containers of the stuff and often has none at all. So it was off to Hannaford.

Hannaford, the grocery store we patronize, is not the biggest or fanciest. Au contraire, it’s the smallest and least impressive of the local supermarkets, part of a small Maine-based chain. We like it because the prices are not bad, the produce is fresh and often locally grown. You don’t need a special card to get the discounts and they give a 5% discount to Senior Citizens every Tuesday. Most important, they are easy to get to and have ample parking.

I was in the middle of a book — I usually am — so I didn’t pay a lot of attention as Garry went out. Not a big deal. Just the aforementioned half-and-half and maybe pick up something for dinner, too. He came back a couple of hours later. Which was a bit longer than such errands usually take. Garry looked amused.

“There is shock and confusion in downtown Uxbridge, today,” he announced.

“Shock and confusion?”

“Yes,” Garry said. “I thought it might be delayed PTSD because of it being 9/11 and all. Everyone in Hannaford looked stunned.”

“Because?” I questioned.

“The credit card readers were down. You couldn’t pay with your bank or credit card. You had to pay cash or use a check. Everyone looked shell-shocked. Thousand-yard stares. Stumbling, vacant-eyed around the store.”

“Holy mackerel,” I said. “I can only imagine.”

“You could see them mumbling to themselves. They kept saying ‘cash!’ … but I could tell they were confused and were not sure what to do.”

“Wow,” I said. “Oh cruel fate! How awful! What did you do?” I asked. Garry seemed to have survived with his sense of humor intact and brought home the half-and-half.

“Oh, I paid with cash. I had enough on me.”

He went off to the kitchen chuckling to himself. I hoped everyone would be okay back in town. A shock like that can haunt people for a long time. Cash. Imagine that.

Everyone will be talking about this for weeks. The day the machines went down at Hannaford. That’s huge.

PUT OUT THE FIRE

A bunch of us had gathered at Sandy’s house. She was a cook, aspiring to be a professional. When she invited us for a meal, it was good. Always a good feeding and delicious. We were her test subjects, never knowing what great idea she’d come up with. Whatever, we were happy to eat it.

On this day, Sandy was dressed — as always — in a floaty Indian blouse and long skirt. The blouse had angel-wing sleeves. Very pretty, if a bit inconvenient in the kitchen. All of us had been smoking a little hashish. We’d have been smoking pot, but it was hard to come by. Hashish was ubiquitous, available everywhere. All it really meant was we were building up a hearty appetite. It was our appetizer.

“Hey,” I said. “Sandy! You are on fire.” Sure enough, the wings of her blouse passed smoldering — I’d missed that — and were now in flames.

“Oh,” said Sandy, flustered.

All the friends stood there like stuffed dummies, staring at the pretty fire. Morons, I mumbled. Then, I put out the fire. Cotton doesn’t flame up quickly and if one is attentive, it’s easy to douse. Sandy thanked me profusely for a commonplace thing I’d have done for anyone. What was more interesting was how the rest of the gang just stood there with their mouths open, apparently at a loss to know what to do. Not good in a crisis, I surmised.

“No one else tried to put out the fire,” said Sandy.

“Not a big deal,” I said, and it wasn’t. I still don’t understand why I was the only one who realized that “Sandy is on fire” should be followed by putting out the fire.

Sandy stopped wearing loose clothing in the kitchen and stopped inviting those friends for dinner. Shortly thereafter, following a misunderstanding with the local constabulary vis-à-vis the growing of certain plants on her balcony, she moved to San Francisco and opened a chain of take-out restaurants. I visited her there. She’s doing fine and no longer feels obliged to grow her own on the balcony.

In any case, it would be legal.

HALCYON DAYS OF YORE

Back in college, my housemate Micki had a tall boyfriend and a VW bug. Her boyfriend’s best friend had rich parents and a hunting lodge on a lake in the Adirondacks. One Friday evening, Micki and her beau grabbed me and said “We’re going to the lake. Come on.”

I didn’t have any plans, so we climbed into the bug and headed north. No one had any money. I don’t mean we didn’t have a lot of money. I mean we didn’t have any money. I didn’t own a wallet or a driver’s license. Or an official ID. You didn’t need it in those days. Hard to believe, but it was normal to walk around with no money or ID. No cell phones (what’s a cell phone?). I suppose some women carried a suitcase full of makeup and stuff, but I wasn’t one of them.

Odd girl out, I sat in the back behind the very tall driver folded like a pretzel. Along the way, we got hungry but lacking money, we didn’t eat. It was a long drive from Long Island to the top of the Adirondacks. The car got hungry too and unlike people, it couldn’t wait. So we saved fuel by coasting down mountains, restarting the engine to go uphill.

We got to the house on the lake just after dawn. It was beautiful, mist rising on the lake. We were exhausted. So was the bug having made the journey on fumes. No rest for the weary. The sun was up. We had to be sociable.

It was some house. Huge, more like a hotel. I wondered what their regular house looked like. Wooden steps led down to a dock and boat. I met Micki’s boyfriend’s friend. We sort of hung out. He made a half-hearted attempt to neck with me, but my disinterest was obvious and he gave up.

After sex was taken off our dance card, he walked me to the lake for a swim. I had borrowed someone’s bathing suit. He dove off the dock. When he surfaced, I called to him. “How is it?”

“Not bad,” he said. So I dove in too and my heart almost stopped. That water was as close to ice as I’ve ever experienced. I thought I was going to die, and porpoise-like leapt back onto the dock, a feat I’ve never matched since.

“What do you mean by ‘not bad’” I squawked.

“It can be a lot colder,” he assured me. We sat for a while on the dock. There were a lot of round holes in the wood.

“What are those holes?”

“Bullet holes,” he said.

“Bullet holes?”

“I shoot the spiders,” he said. “With the rifle.” I hadn’t noticed it, but there it was. Probably for target shooting. But … shoot at spiders? That’s when the biggest spider I’ve ever seen ambled onto the dock. It was the size of my hand … maybe bigger. Black. Furry.

He grabbed the rifle and shot it.

That did it for me. I found Micki, told her to saddle up. We were going home. The two of us begged and borrowed gasoline money and leaving her boyfriend at the lake, headed home. We hadn’t slept in days. I didn’t drive, but Micki was okay as long as I kept poking her to keep her awake.

Living with Micki was full of surprises. She was a terrible roomie. Never had the rent, ate all my food, borrowed my stuff, never returned anything. And she was the most fun of anyone with whom I ever shared space.

GRINNIN' IDIOTS

Cheer up. Things could be worse. OH NO. I said the jinx words! Whenever you say “Things could be worse” or its doubly jinxed twin “How much worse could they get?” … they get worse. Guaranteed. Because the Fickle Finger of Fate is ever busy, seeking fools who lack the sense to just shut up.

Who needs a pep talk? Right now, ME. I need a pep talk. I have the chest cold from Hell. I’m looking forward to a heart valve replacement, not to mention doing something about that nasty old cardiomyopathy. We are perpetually broke because (gasp!) Social Security doesn’t actually give you enough to live on and even including a couple of pitiful pensions from Garry’s former employers and AFTRA, we barely scrape by on a good month and don’t scrape by on the rest.

If I really look at where we are at, I could get discouraged. At this precise moment, I’ve taken enough medication that nothing is going to affect me much. I’m just buzzing with chemical joy. But when it wears off? Oy vay. It will all come rushing back and remind me that life basically sucks. But there are high points — for which we live.

High points? Having a vacation so abysmal that it morphs from dreadful, to humorous, to absurd, to downright funny. Okay, my back is still out from sleeping on an ancient lumpy futon, but having light-hearted anecdotes to post on this blog makes it (almost) not matter. At least not much.

Pep talk? You never know when something horrible will transform into anecdotal material of exceptionally high quality. No matter how hideous the experience, I can usually retell it as a hilarious story. Death? Disaster? Disease? The Triple Dog Dare of survival? Just fodder for the mill.

Cheer up you stupidhead. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, but you’ll find a way to laugh your way through it, until you choke, unable to draw a breath and actually die. Be of good cheer! Really! God’s watching. And laughing his ass off, if he has an ass. Have any philosophers delved into that particular mystery? No? Why not?

I feel better already. I think I’ll take some more of whatever I took earlier. That was vintage stuff and it’s definitely cheering me up. There’s no crying in baseball and no crying around here, by golly. We smile all the time. Just call us The Grinnin’ Idiots.

Have a good day now y’hear?

BEWARE THE TREACHEROUS BLACK TRASH BAG

Long ago, when Garry and I were first married, before we owned a home, we rented a tiny, adorable and over-priced apartment on Beacon Hill. I had bought curtains and drapes — nice ones — for all the windows in the apartment. It was a building dating back to the early 1800s. The ceilings were high, the windows tall. That was the best part of the apartment … that and the fireplace in the living room and what was probably the nicest marble bathroom we’ve ever had. I could have lived without the other residents of the flat — the cockroaches who had apparently been there since Paul Revere made his ride. Quaintness comes at a price.

Photo Credit: Juergen Roth

I put all the new curtains in a black trash bag and warned Garry — or thought I warned Garry — this wasn’t trash. It was our new drapes. I either hadn’t actually warned him or he hadn’t heard me. We had just moved in and there was a lot of trash to go out, all in black trash bags. I’m sure you already know the punchline.

By the time I realized the drapes had been taken to the curb, the scavengers of Beacon Hill had snagged them. Everybody on Beacon Hill, rich and poor alike, scavenges. While we were still in the process of moving in, people kept coming by trying to take our stuff. I’m not talking about poor homeless people. I mean The Neighbors. Several times I had to remove lamps and other items of furniture from their clenched fists.

So, to no one’s surprise, the drapes were out there a nanosecond and then gone. Since they were all still in their original unopened wrappings with the price tags attached, whoever took them had to know they were not trash. In Roxbury, where we later lived — a poor, mostly black neighborhood — I’m sure they would have returned the drapes. They would have gone door to door until they found the right house. But that was Roxbury. Beacon Hillers have a different way of looking at things that reminds me of an old childhood chant “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” Just saying.

I had to buy new drapes and the second set wasn’t as nice — or expensive — as the first. I’d used up the money and couldn’t spend it twice.

Over the years, my penchant for storing stuff in black trash bags has cost us dearly. Christmas presents, out of season clothing, household items intended for the attic — have all vanished. Who done it? Me? Garry? One of the kids? It could be anyone. I’m inclined to blame the terriers. They are always sneaking around, up to no good.

As a family, we have a knee-jerk reflexive response to black trash bags. We throw them out. It could have been anyone. (I still suspect Bonnie, the Scottie.)

Last night, I realized that our down comforter (yes, stored in a black trash bag), had vanished. This is not an item that you can easily overlook. A queen-sized down comforter is big and fluffy, even in a trash bag. It had considerable size, if not heft. This is not like looking for a piece of missing paper. This was something that would be easy to spot. It should have been in the bedroom — but wasn’t.

I checked the closets and the attic. Nothing. No black trash bags.

When finally the dust settled (I really liked that comforter) and I had ordered a replacement from Kohl’s, hopefully to be delivered before the cold weather closes in, I apologized to Garry for accusing him of perfidiously disposing of our bedding and said: “I have to stop storing things in black trash bags. This isn’t working out.”

He agreed. With enthusiasm.

Do they make big bags like that in clear plastic? Just wondering.

BLOOD EVIDENCE

I watch too many shows about murders and forensics. NCIS, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, CSI, Body of Evidence and so many more. I've seen an awful lot of people convicted on blood evidence. I know how incriminating traces of a victim's blood can make someone look.

This evening, while making dinner, I nicked myself with a paring knife. This isn't an unusual event. I am not nearly careful enough in the kitchen. I have a bad habit of slicing off the tips of fingers, stabbing myself, then bleeding all over the place. I used to joke that the blood of the cook was mixed in the food, but it wasn't entirely untrue. My son and my husband both have been known to pull knives out of my hands and chop the veggies themselves because watching me using a knife made them unbearably nervous.

It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't bleed so much, but I do. This is ironic. When I go for tests at the hospital, they can never find a vein or get any blood out of me. I've suggested I bring a paring knife and slice open a finger. They will have more blood than they'll know what to do with. For some reason, they don't find this suggestion nearly as funny as I do.

Anyway, I nicked myself cutting up the chicken. It wasn't a bad cut as these things go and if I hadn't been in the middle of preparing dinner while simultaneously fighting with the cable company on the telephone, I might have put a band-aid onto my finger sooner. Then there wouldn't have been drops of my blood all over the kitchen. It wasn't a gusher. Just a dribbler. Drip. Drip. Drip. Damn, not on my sweater. Blood is so hard to get out of clothing.

After I finally got the food going. I put the knife down, ended the phone call, still snarling at Charter Cable. I really hate them. I made my way to the cupboard, managed to get the blood flow stopped. That was when I realized my blood is all over the kitchen - from this little nick and all the other cuts, nicks and stabs when I have been slicing, dicing, mincing or paring. CSI would have a field day in our kitchen.

If anything ever happens to me and my poor guiltless husband is accused of doing me in, they'll find my blood everywhere. The poor dear will look terribly guilty and all he's ever done is try to protect me from myself. This is probably the right time point out many of my self stabbings take place while fighting an endless battle with shrink-wrap and other packaging.

Have you ever tried to get a couple of blister-packed pills out of their containers in the middle of the night? It says "press here" and you do, but all it does is stretch, the urgently needed medication still out of reach.

I have found myself using hemostats (I use them for stringing dolls; I am not a doctor for living people, only plastic ones) to pull cotton out of pill bottles, stabbing blister packs with tweezers (the only pointy things in my bathroom), using a steak knife to cut the plastic seals on a spray bottle, attacking packing tape with a hunting knife. I have two knives: a 4" folding knife with a turquoise handle and a 5" sheath knife with a deer antler handle. Nobody has taken them away from me yet, but that's probably because I hide them.

I cut myself regularly, but I also damage the contents of packages in my frenzied attempt to actually extract whatever is in there with any tools I have at hand. My favorite tool is a box cutter which I have used for things like prying the back off my Blackberry to get at the battery. It isn't supposed to require special tools, but my Blackberry Torch was hermetically sealed against owner interference. Unfortunately, taking the back off and removing the battery is the only way to reboot the phone. I gave up and got an iPhone, not because I like the iPhone better. I don't. I just couldn't battle my way into the battery compartment one more time.

I do not set out to do myself injury, but in the contest of me against packaging, packaging is the clear winner.

Thus you can find traces of my blood anywhere I've ever opened a package. Everywhere in my kitchen. You'll find blood on my computer keys, my mouse, my knives, tweezers and especially my beloved box cutter. I hide my box cutter, always afraid someone will take it from me in a pointless (sorry about the pun) attempt to save me from myself.

If CSI comes here, just show them this post. Maybe they won't send anyone up for life on my behalf.