So, fair warning. Yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and yes, I’ve written about 30 different blog posts in my head. So many things I’m thinking about, so many things I’d like to say, some of which I shouldn’t, some of which I won’t. I had been thinking, OK, let’s get back in the swing of it, put the thoughts to keyboard, and had planned on writing something today.
Just not about this.
Fair warning again. It’s so gross.
I got some things done this morning, met a rep for lunch, and went to the grocery store. Got my car washed, filled up Mimi with gas, and headed home. I’ve got a lot of work to do this weekend, but I’m also looking forward to my evening out with knitting peeps and having some laughs. I decide to leave Mimi in the drive, as that will make it easier to get the groceries in, and after all, I’m heading back out later.

None of this is interesting, or of note, or even that different. I push open the door, the alarm warning goes off, the dogs greet me, and I walk through the breezeway and into the dining room. I am carrying as much as I can, and it’s funny how your brain multi-tasks: Make sure dogs don’t go out into the garage (as they could get out of the house or, more likely, attempt to eat all the dog food out of its bin.) Have a very short amount of time to get to the alarm, which we don’t have right by the door on purpose, so don’t dilly dally. Note that answering machine is blinking. And through all of this, Olfactory Gnome wakes up and starts sending up red flags. Alert! Alert! Something smells…… and something smells …… BAD.
Then I see it. Because now I’m across the dining room and about to enter the kitchen, only it is a mine field of dog diarrhea. One main source, but there was some travelling and then some tracking to boot. The smell is overwhelming and the alarm is still going. I think, “Do I tell the alarm company when they call that I just couldn’t cross a river of dog shit to turn it off? Would they accept that?” I think, no, I have to turn this off and so I do my own version of a Highland jig through our kitchen, screaming “BACK! BACK!” because Tripper is now eagerly following behind me and I all can think is we’re both expanding the cleaning area exponentially. I get the alarm turned off, the dog has retreated, and I repeat my jig back across the tile, breathing through my mouth.

Somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, Philosophical Gnome asks the question, “Which would you rather clean up? Dog vomit, or shit?” Well, duh, the answer is neither, but I’m going with vomit. Unless it’s just hardened overnight poop, which is unpleasant but nothing compared to the chore ahead of me. I get the rest of the groceries in the house, shut the garage door, and strip down to skivvies to handle the worst of it. (After all, nobody needs their clothing dragging through it to boot.) Paper towels everywhere, and copious amounts of plastic grocery bags. Yes, they may be evil but lord help me, this is why they’re on earth. I get out two trash bags. The Swiffer Wet Jet, a huge stack of mop pads, and I tackle it.

Partway through, I realized I sounded like Darth Vader trying to say the word “Halal.” (Hey, we don’t know if Darth needs his meats butchered according to Muslim law.) For to just breathe through one’s mouth is not enough – the stench was so horrific. I was trying to block my sinus passages with my tongue, which leads to very raspy, labored-sounding breathing. hhhhhhhaaaaaaaa….lllllaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllhhhhhhhhh. The anal-retentive chef from SNL has nothing on me. Everything is multiple-bagged, and then I mopped. And then everything went into another trash bag, while I still hhhhhhhhaaaaaaalllllaallllllllhhhh’ed around and took the trash to the garage. I’m dripping with sweat, I shoo the dogs outside while holding back dry heaves, and get the rest of the groceries put away. My phone’s ringing, I’m having a Silkwood Shower in the sink, I get a candle lit to put on the stove, and finally sit down in front of the fan to cool off.
Only to hear a huge clap of thunder roll overhead.
Dogs are hurried back into the house, and I throw my top back on, because remember? Freshly washed car sitting in the driveway. At this point? I can’t be bothered with pants. Yep. I did a SWAT-team-esque run to my car (only potentially being in-sight of someone driving by for all of 3 seconds) to get it put back into the garage before the heavens opened up.

Which, fifteen minutes later, they have yet to do. I didn’t need to crouchingly shuffle to my car half-dressed, but I did. And I didn’t really care if someone happened to drive by at that exact moment.

Basically? This is my life. I have a lot of good things in my life, and I’ve reflected a lot on the past year, over these past few weeks. Losing my job, almost a year ago, was really shitty. It was also really good. I haven’t done all the things I thought I’d do in that time, but I also haven’t gotten sick, had stupid office politics/turmoil with people clawing to climb over you or tear you down. Did you notice that first one? I haven’t gotten sick. No cold. No bronchitis. No walking pneumonia, for the first time in many, many years. I miss a couple of my clients, and I miss not worrying about money as much, but there’s really very little to miss about my former job except a couple of friends. The limbo, sometimes, gets to me. But I’m not all that different from most of the people out there. I noticed there’s a Facebook group making the rounds, “Be kinder than necessary, because everyone you meet is fighting some sort of battle.” and it’s really true. These aren’t easy times. When stressed and/or depressed, it’s even easier to feel overwhelmed and hopeless. And alone. But we’re not. So many people are riding this same current, and so it’s those moments of connection, we need to make them and find them and enjoy them. Because when I was at the grocery store, the checker asked me to put the big sign on the end of her checkout stand, that said “THIS LANE CLOSED”. I did, making sure I put it right on the spot where the belt wouldn’t grab it. Helping someone out. So imagine my surprise, as I’m finishing up paying, I see this very old lady in my peripheral vision, standing next to me. I look down, and she’s got items on the belt. I actually did a double-take, like, WHa? I swear I put that sign there, nobody’s supposed to be behind me, and I look at the checker, who’s looking at me and has seen my whole WTF reaction. I raise one eyebrow at her. She starts giggling. My eyes shift over towards granny, then back to her. Oh yes, the sign was there. Granny just decided to say “Fuck it” to the sign and what was anyone going to do? I don’t have to say a word, my face says it all. The checker is shaking her head, she gets it too, and is shaking with laughter. I’m chuckling, still with an eyebrow hitting my hairline, and we went on from that moment. That moment, those are the moments I seek in life. When we can look at each other and just laugh because there’s no point in getting mad, there’s no issue of race, or religion, or age, or income, or anything, it’s just fucking funny.

And when the shit gets too high, just take off your pants, light a candle and breathe: Hhhhhhhaaaaaaaa….lllllaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllhhhhhhhhh.

Tripper, unfortunately, still spends more time getting into trouble when left to his own devices. Tonight I ran out to get Thai carryout, and when I got home, the paper towels I had placed over my bowl of tomatoes were shredded into pieces on the kitchen floor. Little fucker. (I love mint beef salad, so I order it with extra dressing, and pour the whole thing over two enormous tomatoes that have been cut into wedges. Nom.)

One of the things we’re remaining consistent with, as pertains to Sir Tripper, is keeping him in his crate at night. He loves to bark up an alarm at anything, so keeping him confined reduces his exposure to shifting light, shadows, the sounds of cats outside, etc. It’s bad enough before we go to bed that our reflections in the large dining room window send him into Freak The Fuck Out mode.

But.

There is this one thing he’s taken to doing, smack in the middle of the night, and it sounds like a small prison riot. We’re not sure exactly what he’s doing, or if he’s even awake while doing it, but as I crawled back into bed after one of his clangy outbursts, I had the funniest image in my mind: he’s performing a Phil Collins-esque drum solo out there.  There’s banging and scrabbling and the sound of furious paws of fury (but no throat noises or barking), it lasts about two minutes (just enough to really wake you up) and then all is silent.

Maybe he’s having a Michelob Light, the night did used to belong to them…. At least now, when he wakes me up, I half-grin at the situation.

And, as a child of the 80′s,  I have several heart-mind-humor associations with Phil Collins – but one of my favorites is a piece done by Starlee Kine.  If you’ve never heard the episode “Break Up” on This American Life, go stream it and enjoy.

As we hibernated indoors yesterday, away from the stifling humidity, most of our energies wound up in the kitchen. I had been wanting to make Peter Reinhart’s recipe for Casatiello, and Italian Brioche, studded with bits of spicy salami and gouda cheese. What I love about his book is the complete thoroughness of instruction; he describes the process of how the dough will evolve, and what to expect. This dough has a high butter content, and after the butter has been added, the dough is very sticky, and altogether messy, resembling cookie dough. His instructions tell you to work the dough for 12 minutes, for in that amount of time the butter will distribute evenly and your sticky mass of dough evolves into a beautifully smooth, tacky ball that cleanly rotates around the mixer bowl. It was definitely one of those angels-singing marvel moments as I watched it happen. I baked it in a square springform pan to make one loaf; you can bake it in bags and in smaller sizes more typical of Brioche, too. It’s delicious, and made me wonder about other cheeses and even adding snippets of fresh herbs, such as the French tarragon that is always looking for something to creep into…..

In-between my dough mixing and shaping, James took over the kitchen and used the mixer’s food grinder attachment to make an amazing tomato sauce. The food grinder is great, because you get all of the pulp and meat and juices of the tomato, while efficiently discarding the seeds and skin. We have almost all heirloom tomato plants, and the flavors of these tomatoes are out of this world. Describing a slice of Carbon uses similar language as describing wine… smokey, bold, strong finish. So when you mix all these robust, intense flavors together, and cook them down all afternoon, you have a sauce that literally sings to you. He also incorporated caramelized onions and banana peppers, plus some sauteed chicken tenders. As James put it: summer in a bowl. It was excellent.

So where’s dessert? Well, this is a good example of how mistakes happen – even to those of us who’ve been cooking and baking for over 30 years. We had leftover egg yolks, because earlier this week, James had made zucchini bread, and one of the most awesome ingredients he uses is candied nuts. He’d done both pecans and walnuts, and the candying process uses a bunch of egg whites. So, what to make with egg yolks? Well, certainly a custard comes to mind – and with the heat, why not ice cream? Sounded good to me. Some things you take for granted, some things you don’t think about, and sometimes, even when you’re standing right there at the stove, stirring your mixture of cream and sugar and eggs and bits of natural vanilla bean, you take your eyes off what you’re doing to talk to your spouse, and the next thing you know, you have bits of cooked egg separating rapidly from your liquid. Gah. I tried plunging it into a water bath, stirring madly, but there are chemical processes that just don’t reverse themselves. I pitched a fit, pissed-off with myself for forgetting how quickly chemistry can happen, and then had to decide what to do.

I decided to give it a try, anyway, because the flavor was amazing, and not eggy, but the big question was texture. I chilled the custard, then put it in my Krups machine that I’ve had for 20 years. And waited.
It never froze. I think it was the fact my custard was too warm, still. So what to do? This is when experience is a good thing, because it makes you more resourceful. Rather than focusing on the failure of ice cream, I focused on what was wrong with my dish, and what could I turn it into? I had it: Milkshakes. I strained the custard through a sieve, removing the bits of hardened egg proteins. Then I added frozen strawberries to the blender until it was completely full. I figured that if any of the egg had made it through the sieve, the texture would be masked by the presence of strawberries (and keep in mind, the mixture never scorched, and was utterly, vanilla-ey delicious, despite the overcooking.)

The result was stupendous. My husband declared it to be one of the top 5 milkshakes of his life.

What was leftover was poured into a dixie cup, popped in the freezer with a fork in it to make a makeshift ice cream bar. The texture on that might be a bit grainy, but at least we know it’ll taste good!

Now it’s Sunday, and I think I’d like to go out for brunch.

Did you hear about this story? Well, I was at least glad to get more details this morning, as I went to bed scared shitless because of the activity surrounding it in our neighborhood.  I was getting ready to turn everything off and go to bed, and I heard some strange noises outside. The dogs heard them, too, but didn’t get too alarmed (and they bark at almost everything), so I didn’t think much of it. Then, a cop car with lights & sirens on flew down our street. Like, at least 60 mph. (I thought, huh, he’s going to realize he went BY Crazy Cat Lady’s house any second…. since that’s where they normally stop.) Nope. I’m turning off lights, and BLAM, there goes another cop car, in the other direction, no sirens or lights, then two MORE cars go by, with just lights. And the sound of a helicopter grows closer.

Now I’m a little skittish. As are the dogs. They are burfing and running from lookout point to lookout point. I am locking and checking everything and turning off lights as fast as possible. (If someone’s in our back yard, I don’t want to be lit up like a shiny pink target through the windows.) Our house is right by an elementary school, and in the parking lot, I see a huge convergence of  cop car lights at all sorts of crazy angles, lit from overhead by the copter. THEN they all peel off and are driving back down our street! They turn on the corner, another cop car meets them (this is all now just one backyard and across the street from our house), the copter is circling, and I hear POWPOWPOWPOWPOW like, fifteen times, and while they sort of sound like firecrackers, in my mind, there could only be one explanation: gun fire. And THEN, the copter keeps circling and the cars start backing up to leave like they didn’t get the person (though it would seem they did, now that I read the news bite)  and after the hubbub seemed to be moving away, I finally let the dogs out for one quick potty break, and put myself into bed, where my sleeping husband continued to doze, missing all the excitement. (I did try to see if he would stir and wake up after the gunplay, but he had taken a Tylenol PM and was out for the night.) Had it turned into a Shotgun Needed! sort of night, I would have tried harder, of course. I was just terrified we had bandito(s) in the greenhouse, hiding.

This morning, I reflected on the fact that was quite the run in the nighttime cold weather, from Popeye’s to our neighborhood. It’s not that far distance-wise, but there’s a pretty big hill, slick spots everywhere and I just can’t comprehend how all of that could have been close to worth it – what could the till be at Popeye’s? $100? Now the dude’s in a hospital bed, in critical condition. Another drain on the system, for who knows how long.  It blows my mind that we are neglecting students’ education, not putting the money into education properly, instead emphasizing test scores over actual learning, yet we’ll pay so much more in the long run with the less-desirable public services – prison, policing and officers involved in shootings, court system, hospital bills.  Our priorities as a nation are fucked up.  I don’t understand how we can be so logically challenged. I realize that even with massive overhauls, there will always be criminals, but I’m watching my husband slog through a classroom of kids who could care less about performing on state-mandated tests -  yet they know how to do the work, and get it when he uses an analogy of their apathy to them. It’s somewhat ironic: If you went to Popeye’s and ordered a bucket of chicken, ten pieces, but they put 6 raw ones in and gave you only 4 cooked pieces, you’d be mad, right? You didn’t order raw chicken! Well, that’s what you’re giving me – only 40% of your ability, when I know you can do 100%. They all nod. Yes, they’d be mad. Nobody eats raw chicken.

But they just don’t care. Get a gun. Rob the joint. It’s somehow, technically, easier. Again, logic is defied. I can only shake my head.

James and I had a hilarious conversation the other night which will probably lose oodles in the transcribing.

He was going to bed and was very tired; I was standing next to our bed, and saying goodnight. He said something about did I see that Kathy Bates was going to be on a tv show in the latest EWeekly? I said, Yes, I did see that, what show was it?

At this point, he’s got his bipap mask on so he’s really drowsy and doesn’t want to have a big conversation. I start guessing various shows we watch.

“Big Love?”

shakes his head ‘no’.

“24?” (no) “Big Bang Theory?” (no) “Nurse Jackie?”

He makes the sign for “OK” with his thumb and finger. Now we’re playing charades. OK! OK? Nurse Jackie? (no)

O? O? Zero? He’s nodding. Zero. Then he makes the sign again. O? Zero – O. Huh.

He’s moving on.

Draws letters in the air with his finger. Except the letters are right-ways from HIS perspective.

P? NO! F? Yes!

ZERO OF?! NO!

Somehow we get some more letters. an I. C. E.

He’s lifting his face mask to tell me this is easy. I am laughing so hard I can barely speak.

NCIS?

NO.

Ice. Zero O O O O F

Ice.

My sides hurt and tears are streaming down my face, as I lean against the bed in pain. I declare I cannot understand how we watch any show named Oof Ice.

Finally, exasperatedly, he tells me. The Office.

Oh, yeah. The Office! OofIce!

And then I made myself a small dish of Tin Roof Sundae Ice Cream and proceeded to collapse in laughter all over again. rrrrrrrrOofICECREAMSUNDAE!

We’re weird, but hey. Laughter is good!

You know when you’re alone, and you make a face or react to something, and you don’t censor your muscles or reaction or words, because nobody can see you?

The other night, I was making chili for dinner. It’s been freaking cold, and it sounded like a great, quick meal. James was in the living room, on the couch, and just barely in my line of sight when I was standing at the stove. The television was on, and we’d finished our conversation. I pulled the chili seasoning packets out of the pantry – there was a small amount of “HOT” powder left, and a plenty of “Medium-Hot” in another package. (By-the-by, we get a lot of spices and seasonings from Penzeys over in old Overland Park – it’s a cook’s mecca!) I put the remainder of the Hot powder in the pot, and then started to shake out some more of the Med-Hot.

That’s when it happened. The bobble. The lurch. The shifting weight, while negligible, threw me, and suddenly I found myself dumping in a quite goodly amount of the chili powder. I felt my face contort into a “WHOA WHOOPS OH FUCK” and simultaneously,  my brain was thinking, “JWo isn’t seeing this, just don’t say anything, carry on, get control of the bag.”

Then I hear, from the living room, “That’s not a good face!”

Whups. Busted. Not that it wouldn’t have become apparent once the meal was served! It was some damned spicy chili, but I will say, those Penzeys people make a helluva spice – the depth and robustness of the peppers gives it a huge full flavor, they don’t rely on just straight hot peppers to flame it up. So it could have been a lot worse. But we had bellies o’ fire and relied on the oyster crackers a little more than usual!

“I think Donald Sutherland is fairly sexy, in the same way I find Christopher Walken and Tommy Lee Jones all Old Man Sexy.”

“No, you find him sexy in a Kiefer Sutherland kind of way.”

“NO, he is like a wiser, more experienced, less DRUNK kind of Kiefer, and that IS sexy.”

I think if both the Sutherland men were smoldering their eyes at me and asking me to choose, I must say, my early-onset proclivity for Walter Cronkite and Ted Knight would win out.  That and the fear Kiefer’s foreplay would consist of ripping a lamp cord from its base and shouting, “WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?!!!!!”

When we moved into this house nearly 7 years ago, I chirped constantly about how our neighborhood is ‘such a mix!’ because, well, it was. And still is. There are people who’ve lived their entire lives in the same house, back before there was a shopping center at 99th & Holmes, there are people who’ve just moved in, renting a house, there’s a gorgeous mansion-like home sitting on four acres of land, and then? Then there’s the batshit-crazy cat lady across the street, and now – with glitter! – another relative of some sort living next door, in the house on the corner that used to be owned by the bank and now enjoys a driveway full of cars, parts, crap and then some more crap.  This would be the same family who hung outdoor Christmas light netting haphazardly around the top of their living room ceiling. And the same family that post-Thanksgiving, had about 6 bottles of Seven whiskey in the recycling. And the same spot where I happened upon the Crazy Drunk Guy (who is the primary resident, I believe) in handcuffs on the side of the road when I came home one night. (with two cop cars and plenty o’ po-lice.)  There is a third character in this motley crew, and he has been on crutches for about two years. Damn leg must keep breaking? I dunno. I may also have already mentioned the main form of entertainment for these fantastic contributing members of society is to sit in a lawn chair in their driveway & drink beer, while listening to classic rock coming out of the speaker in the trunk of a car.

The good news – besides our home value declining while city property taxes went up – is that these folks mostly swirl in their own toilet bowl, and keep their festivities contained to the two residences. Until last week.

Last Friday night, I was getting dinner ready & the doorbell rang. James had just come in the back door from the garden, and I asked him if he’d go take care of it, as the doorbell rang again. The half of the conversation I could hear was…. odd and interesting at best, and then I could tell it was ratcheting up a notch. The fact it ended with “If you don’t get off my property, I’m calling the police,” wraps it all up.

So, Crazy Drunk Guy (from the corner house, handcuffs, shit everywhere) comes to the door with a kitten on his shoulder. Like some sort of wackadoodle white trash pirate, I guess. And a broken broom handle stick that’s been out by the street by the road where the garbage is picked up, like, forever. (that’d be our contribution to the neighborhood trash. a broken stick.) And this motherfucker, in his drunken slurred state, accuses my husband of beating a kitten to death in the street. (I’m sorry. I have to stop and laugh. Again. Preposterous and crazy all at once.) With what, you ask? An 18″ stick.  How do we know this was the weapon? Because CDG asserts that it had blood and fur ALL over it. James asks him if that’s the case, where is all this blood and fur now (as the stick has nothing on it.) “It fell off,” CDG replies.

Ahhhh. All that time spent in the driveway drinking beer does NOT sharpen one’s CSI skills. James tries to jog the alcohol-deadened logic button, that a dead animal found in the street was probably hit by a car. To no avail. CDG is lookin’ for a fight. James tells him he doesn’t appreciate all these cats running around OUR yard, when we’ve put in the time and money to build a fence to keep our dogs IN and even more money to vaccinate and keep our dogs healthy, which is something they obviously do not do, as they don’t even put a collar on ‘their’ cats.

Now Crazy Cat Lady decides she needs to get on the action. She’s halfway across the street and yelling about how she only has ONE cat.  James points out that it’s bullshit, because she has a swarm of them around her house at all times and she feeds all of them. (Hearing CCL start to scream, Crazy Drunk Gimp (CDG 2.0)  grabs his crutches and starts making his way from the corner house – oh yes, he’s a regular white knight. Of course it’ll take him half an hour to roll up on our asses, and the fact we can see him coming does nothing to create more intimidation, just comedy.)

“Do you want them to starve?” she brays, an unhinged skeleton trapped by demons, and he, of course, says, “YES.” Because at this point, there is no logic, there is no even playing field here, it’s like trying to play tennis when half the court is a swimming pool. At this point, they are ordered off our lawn under threat of police intervention,  back to their never-ending life cycle of bottled beer, flea-laden feral cats, and classic rock enjoyed in a lawn chair.

Wisteria Lane, we ain’t. Such a mix.

Boy, I’ve been having a doozy of it. Between workload & being sick (hey! I think I’ve recovered – last night was the first night of sleeping all the way through the night without coughing!) – I’ve just been an extra bit stressy. Which makes my temper a bit shorter, and it makes me move into blunt whack-a-mole mode.  When there’s a ton to do, and other people are dilly-dallying or unclear about their direction, I find myself leaning more towards R. Lee Ermey. So far, nobody’s decided to off themselves in the latrine, so that’s good.  (this would be me making a reference to Full Metal Jacket, btw. I’m sure my husband will chuckle, knowing I just finally saw that movie in the past year.  And he did just remind me this week that I am no Stanley Kubrick.)

SO, even though there are plenty of things that stress me out & piss me off, let’s talk about the latest new thing that happened today. Some douchebag decided to put THEIR extra trash bag in OUR driveway. We already had two bags out, and since we didn’t plan for Douchebag Drop-Off Day, we didn’t put a trash sticker on the third bag because IT WASN’T THERE. But now we had to haul it back from the curb and wait until next week.

Oh. Yeah. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  I looked at the bag. If there was any indication that there was something in that trash bag to indicate who tossed it there, I would have been in it in two seconds flat.  Not sure what would have happened after that, if I’d have actually taken my R. Lee Ermey act all the way up to someone’s front door, but I sure enjoyed thinking about it.  At the very least, I’d have returned it to them. The nerve!

Tomorrow is a big meeting-day, and then I should get a bit of a reprieve. There’s still plenty of work, but we should get a little breathing room on these high-pressure, hulking huge deadlines. It’s nice to be busy, as long as it stays below the panic line. Spring Break is next week, we’ll be getting some fishing in, I’ll still be working, but there are all sorts of demarcations in time that remind me things are shifting – the time change, the daffodils in the front yard, just waiting to explode, the seedlings under the grow lights winding and waving in nature’s destined journey towards the light, roots expanding and threading into the soil below.

Oh, and if you want to weep from laughter, and you didn’t see Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks last night, it was utterly priceless. Bailey, Play Dead. (I hope this works – couldn’t get it to embed.)

I could hardly catch my breath, I was laughing so hard. (I think it was the :second: playing dead that was so funny, like, OH!oh, hell, no treat yet? OK, I’ll play dead again real quick, mister.) I also really like it when it’s apparent that Dave is genuinely amused. Almost as much as I love  hearing my husband and I laughing uproariously, together. By golly, I almost forgot about that damned bag of trash.

Wow, two days back into the work routine and it’s Hello Stress! Good thing I didn’t resolve to give that up….

Anyway, last night, I was downstairs & had opened the pantry door where we have stored an interesting mix of sundry appliances, canned goods, annnnd the paint that came with the house. The  items are grouped by shelves, at least. Anyway, an empty mason jar fell, and instead of hitting the carpet, it hit the inside edge of the wood cabinet, and shattered. Lovely.

You know how sometimes your brain is just set to “Ricochet”? Well, mine was, as I was picking up shards of glass and thinking about how I really should bring the vacuum down and yet I knew I wasn’t going to, and the rest of the process went something like this:

So, this obviously isn’t tempered glass. Or whatever sort of glass they make that isn’t supposed to shatter into really sharp pieces.

I wonder who invented tempered glass. I wonder who invented GLASS?

Probably some pyromaniac motherfucker, since don’t you have to melt things to make glass in the first place?

So, hell. Is that all of it? I think so. Huh. Well, let’s see. Would I walk on this strip of carpet barefoot?

Yes.

That’s not a good answer, Jennifer. You grew up walking on glass shards.

Hell. I did.

Well, I’ve gotten nearly all of it, and the only way anyone’s going to step on it is if they shimmy alongside the cupboard here, clinging to it like those Indiana Jones Lego characters do on that Wii game. Which would actually be pretty funny.

/end brain ricochet

After that, I went off and did some laundry, and forgot completely to tell the Wo about the breakage. (In fact, he’s learning about it through the blog.  Now he’ll go and shimmy alongside the cupboard, just to prove I missed a piece.)  And yes, I did grow up picking glass out of the bottoms of my feet – my father’s glass studio was just off the kitchen/dining room, and I would often walk in there barefoot, and pieces of glass often made their way out into the house. I still recall being about ten, dancing wildly to a Beatles album and landing hard on a large piece of glass, way out in the living room. Oof.  That’s the only memorable gouging I recall, in fact, but the sudden sharpness cut me to the quick.  And I did learn how to walk into a room with broken glass on the floor. You step carefully, you disperse your weight consciously, and if a piece of glass pressed against your skin, you instantly recoiled, to minimize the depth it would penetrate.

Sure, I could’ve put on shoes. But I didn’t. Some things I just liked to experience the hard way, I guess. It was kind of a personal challenge, to be tough, to not bleed or cut myself. I guess I still do this brevity thing, just not always with broken glass….