living in the limbo between city and country
Today, I thought I’d share a few oldie-but-goodie recipes, each with a li’l twist. All are easy, which–if you’re anything like me in the kitchen–is a good thing. And besides being easy, all are relatively good for you. So here goes:
Chocolate Chili Brownies
First of all, if you’re making a gagging sound, then cut it out right now. This brownie may be one of the best things you’ve ever put in your mouth. (Laine, don’t think I don’t hear you adding, “That’s what she said.”)
We saw one of these too!
Spring, that is. She seduced us here in Central Ohio last week with her warming smile that lightened our hearts. Our memories of digging our cars and houses out from six foot drifts were forgotten as we all went for a walk in the park, where we saw ducks on their own dates nestled in secret love coves down on the Olentangy River. (I’m not making this up.)
The old ball and chain is back this week, Winter with her grey clouds and chilly soul. Winter brings us back inside to contemplate, write, and long for Spring to make a committment.
Snowpocalypse
Snowmaggedon
Dawn of the Snow
Where’s the Plow?
Buried Alive
I Can’t Feel My Butt
One Loaf Left at the Foodmart
Drag Me Out of the Ditch
Broken Snowblower
Flakes of Fury
…
Frontline on PBS recently ran the documentary Digital Nation. It’s a progress report of sorts about the effects on us as we live increasingly more of our lives online. There was a compelling account of South Korean Internet addicts, kids who game nonstop until all that’s left of them is a burned-out shell attached at the navel to the online world. The report noted these sad cases as casualties of the new online age.
Which got me to thinking. It feels like we’re drawing ever closer to living in the Metaverse Neal Stephenson envisioned in his seminal novel Snow Crash. That virtual world in the book is New York on meth: fast, bright, overwhelming, and undeniably urban.
And yet. We haven’t evolved the capacity to exist there. That’s what it feels like to me, some kind of evolutionary leap. For people who thrive in the city, that is. My first instinct is I’m not moving in until I know there will be someplace where I can hide from the rush.
I wonder if there will be places to get away in the ‘Verse. There’ll have to be, people being who they are. There will have to be sanctuaries. We model our world based on what we know, so I wonder whsat shape communities of the online world will take. Will there be a downtown? How about green spaces and parks? Will you be able to visit server farms out in the country? Will you fly your avatar back to your online suburban space?
My cat has ‘roid rage. As in steroids. No, he’s not injecting himself to prepare for Mr. Cat’s Pajamas Feline Bodybuilding Tourney ’10. (First Annual.) I am supplying them to him via a transdermal cream I have to rub into his tender little ear that he folds flat against his head, as if he knows what’s coming (i.e. chilly cream in a sensitive spot) and is battening down the hatches in defense. Hobbes the cat has allergies. To dust, mold, pollen, and Lord knows what else. He’s probably sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. All I know is the cat incessently scratches and grooms, until his skin is a mess of scabs, particularly around the head, neck, legs, back, and armpits, and he’s rubbed himself bald in places. Imagine hearing this at 2:30 AM every night: scritch-scritch-scritch, twitch, licklicklicklick. Pause. SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRITCHLICKLICKLICKLICK.
It’s times like this when I’m donning the latex glove (i.e. to avoid my own transdermal fix) to do the deed that I wonder how this cat would even survive in the country. Picture a tiger cat with thick glasses and an inhaler hanging from his neck shaking his paws at the mice: Hey! No fair! Stop running so fast!
I know a lady who lives in the country, north of Columbus around Sunbury. Her only pets that live indoors are her two beautiful horses who reside in their own stable/training track. Her cats are wild children. Am image that stays with me is watching my friend slamming the door of her rag-top Cadillac behind her, leaving both the roof and windows down. I watched several furry butts disappear into the car’s interior, and I wondered, How does she know they all get out when she drives away?
So maybe surburbanites like me fuss way more over pets, treating maladies and witnessing sometimes bizarre results, like I did the other day.
Hobbes had been back on the cream for about a week. I was sitting in the living room, when I watched Hobbes chase after his step-brother (different litter), little gray Calvin. Hobbes outweighs Calvin by a good 6 pounds. I heard a cry. Hobbes was biting Calvin on the neck so fiercely that Calvin was yelping his protest. Before I could get off the couch to break this up, Calvin kicked himself free and ran. Hobbes pursued. Calvin dashed over to the freestanding pantry and squeezed himself under it. Hobbes tried to squeeze his 15 pound body to go in after him.
So I yelled at Hobbes. It distracted him away from Calvin, who beat an exit while Hobbes wasn’t looking. But then Hobbes spotted Pookie. Now, Pookie is a 17 pound mass of muscle and fur. Hobbes charged right up to him. Hobbes’ tail was puffed, and the ridge of hair along his back was standing straight up. Poor Pookie turned his head and gave me such a plaintive look, as if to say, Help me! before retreating beside the recycling bin. Hobbes had actually backed Pookie into a corner.
I have to face it: my cat is performance-enhanced.
A customer!
I’m often amazed what country life wanders into my slice of suburbia. Mind you, our subdivision was born ten years ago from the corn and soybean fields of the old farms where the owners had finally cashed out and moved on. Centex Homes came in to scrape the ground clean of farm detritus, together with all nutrient topsoil. Sod was applied to lots by vanload of efficient and diligent workers, and we were left with green, tree-free, yards.
By now I have either personally planted (or written checks that make me weak to Oakland Nursery) dozens of trees, bushes, flowers, and groundcover. It’s been trial and error. I had such hopes for the redbud I’d proudly planted; it would greet each spring with its delicate glory. I must have missed the part where I wasn’t supposed to locate it in the exposed northeast corner, subjecting it to a cold, cold demise, and no flowers to follow winter, only a doleful stump.
But bunnies nest in the mulch surrounding the stump. And the other plants are thriving, and tall, and now invite a surprising variety of critters to visit. I’ve seen robins and cardinals and finches, and even red-tailed hawks. The other day I hung a new feeder from my ash tree. It takes a minute for the rumor of free grub to broadcast on the bird wireless, but the word is out, and one of my first customers was a species I’d never seen in my yard before: the downy woodpecker.
Squirrels haven’t moved in to our enclave yet. However, I spotted my first one this past summer. He must have been a scout. I haven’t seen him since. I suppose the birds have a fighting chance at the feeder for at least a little while.
Here in Columbus, we’ve had snow on the ground for nearly two weeks straight. Inches of it, quickly turning into piles as our neighbors shovel their driveways and walks, and the snowplows blast their way through the streets. And then the piles are topped by more inches of snow. In fact, it’s snowing again as I type. Which is fine with me; it’s January in Ohio, so it should be snowing.
When I see all this snow, and the neighbors with their nicely shoveled (or snow-blower-cleared) driveways, my fingers start to itch. I want to sled, and make a snowman, and do all those fun kid-like snow activities. But what I want to do first, before anything else, is clear out my driveway. Not because I like it, but because it has to be done. And if I don’t do it, no one will, because I’ve never gotten my husband to appreciate the value of a shoveled driveway.
(Mind you, my husband does lots of things around the house. And in the fall, he’s the one who usually ends up raking most, if not all, the leaves from the big gum tree out back. He’s not a slacker or anything. It’s just for some reason, shoveling snow isn’t that critical to him, whereas I barely step in the door from work before I’m back out there with the shovel. I just can’t let it lay.)
There are all sorts of good, solid reasons to shovel a driveway, which I list here in no particular order:
1) If the snow is unshoveled, you could get stuck trying to get your car into or out of your driveway. (Especially if the snow plows have pushed a wall of snow from the street across the end of your driveway, which they tend to do.) Getting stuck in your own driveway is always embarrassing.
So, you want a suburban adventure? You want to talk about excitement, thrills, and the wild world of the unknown? You want to expect the unexpected and walk straight into the Twilight Zone? Well, I’ve got your adventure right here:
I just found out I’m pregnant.
Don’t bother asking if this came as a surprise. It did. It came as a big, humongous, almost-peed-myself surprise. Only I couldn’t have peed myself, really, because there wasn’t anything left with which to do so. I’d already spent it all whizzing on that little stick.
And first of all, let’s talk about that stick. It claims to be an accurate and simple test: just wet the stick, and the magic wand will display two lines if you’re pregnant, and one line if you’re not. Sure, that sounds easy. So when I skipped my period this month, I bought the necessary box and did the obligatory pee-and-wait bit, thinking, “Well, whatever happens, at least I’ll know for sure.”
I waited the three minutes, holding my breath the entire time. Then I breathed out until my face was the right color again, and plucked up the courage to look. There was one line. One clear, dark, pink line. And beside that one, there was…half a line? I squinted at the little display window, thinking that there must have been some mistake. I rubbed my eyes and stared at it in total dismay, scratching my head and wondering what had gone wrong with the Universe. Then I gave up wondering and called for my husband.
“Um…honey? How many lines do you see?”
So, three pee-stick-tests later, we finally got a clear result. I am definitely pregnant.
I immediately called the doctor, thinking I would need to go in for a confirmation test of some kind, like they seem to do on TV. The receptionist at the doctor’s office politely asked me what in the world I was talking about, and informed me that all they would do was a test very similar to the pee-stick, and that it would give the exact same result. She said that I needed to set up a pre-natal with my OB and make sure I was eating a healthy diet, and then simply added, “congratulations.”
Well then. Let the adventure begin. The name-choosing, the morning sickness, the shocking of friends and family with the unexpected news, the moments of excitement and of panic, and especially, wondering whether it will be a girl or a boy.
I’ll be taking wagers on that soon.
When I stop by the airport post office occasionally, there are two ways I can go home: the main roads with stoplights and freeway exits, or the back roads that take you twisting and turning behind the runways and through a tunnel under the crossing airstrips.
I like to take the road less traveled. When I take this road, I get to see big planes taking off and landing. I get to see administrative buildings that people don’t normally see. I avoid traffic and construction. And I get to see wild animals.
Slight exaggeration. I’m not talking about bears or anything. But there are patches of open field and trees and hills, the sorts of things you don’t want to build on because they’re at the end of a runway at a major airport. And the other day, driving past, I saw no less than four deer and two groundhogs.
When I lived on the West Side, I took a different set of back roads to get home, and discovered Groundhog Hour. (Unrelated in every way to Groundhog Day, either the holiday or the movie.) This is generally between about 6-7pm, or sometimes 7-8pm as the summer goes on, and it’s the time of day when all the groundhogs are out having dinner. The most I ever counted on the West Side trip home was six groundhogs. Being who I am, I named them according to where they lived (Jack Kerouack by the train tracks, Chief Wiggum by the police training grounds, Tampopo by the flower shop…) I always figured if I ever got hit by a train crossing those tracks, it would be because I was too busy looking for groundhogs to notice the flashing lights.
I was very sad when I moved to the east side of Columbus, because I was not able to find groundhogs, except the one random hog up by the fire station. Now I realize that I just had to find their secret hideouts.
This entire experience makes me wonder: am I a little more city, for being so amazed and delighted at a fuzzy, grass-munching groundhog and a couple of deer? Or am I a little more country because I look for them even so close to civilization?
I’ll have to ponder this. In the meantime, I’ll keep watching for Roger and Victor, who have been named after the characters in that classic movie, Airplane.
So I’m trying on clothes at the department store the other day. I stand in that little two-by-three cubicle and pull on one clearance-rack top after another. Unfortunately, none of them fit, especially the ones marked 90% off. But I figure it’s no big deal; I’ll just go somewhere else. I take the last ill-fitting shirt off and start putting it back on the hanger. The hanger, however, does not cooperate; it gets stuck inside the shirt somehow, and both end up a tangled wreck. I can’t seem to figure out what the problem is. I yank on the shirt, then the hanger, then the shirt again, then the hanger again. No progress. Then I rip that hanger out and throw it on the floor, and grab another one, kindly left behind by the last customer. It doesn’t work, either. So I finally just fold the shirt up and place it on the built-in seat, calmly declaring that all shirts and hangers everywhere can go spend eternity in a very warm place.
Because this is the point at which the real problem unfolds.
It’s time. The rumblings I felt earlier were apparently not just innocuous hunger pangs. The tiny seepage of gas I allowed myself over in the shoe department was, in fact, just a harbinger of things to come. Yes, my friends. The burrito I wolfed down at lunch is about to make a comeback. You know, the one from McTaco’s, stuffed with slimy black beans and all that extra hot sauce? Coming. Back. Right now. And here I am, stuck in the dressing room, trying to get this delightful shirt back on it’s happy-birthday-to-me hanger.
