Perfect Weekend

My Thanksgiving weekend was as close to perfect as is reasonable to expect, a balance of productivity, sociability, and fun.

What makes a perfect weekend? For starters, it’s a four-day weekend. Add to this plenty of mashed potatoes with ketchup; a chance to relax with hot cocoa and toast; and, most importantly, time with a variety of friends.

Our family Thanksgiving gathering was larger than normal. My cousin, Nick, joined us, as did Kris’ sister, Tiffany. Tony and Kamie (and their kids) were actually present and on time. The food was good and, as usual, I ate too much. After dinner, we played games (including a marathon session of Apples to Apples).

Here we're actually playing a game called This vs. That

photo by my mother

I spent a few hours at work on Friday, but it was basically wasted time. There wasn’t a single call or fax. I spent most of my time drooling over comic book compilations. Yes, I am a geek.

On Friday evening, we ventured to the Portland City Grill to attend a wedding reception for my boyhood chum, Andrew Parker, who married the lovely and vivacious Joann Mangold last month in San Francisco. The food and wine were terrific. I was pleased to see Andrew’s sister, Laura, for the first time in twenty years. We sat with Dave and Karen and Andrew and Joann. We had a good time reminiscing and getting to know Joann better. At one point, Dave provided a warm and witty toast to the couple, utilizing his keen Toastmaster skills.

What an odd couple: his face is too square and hers is too round! Heh.

Kris and I worked outside in the cold and the damp on Saturday. We raked leaves and pruned roses. Simon climbed onto the roof of the garage and pranced around, proud of himself. In the afternoon, I dropped by Mitch’s place to help celebrate his daughter’s tenth birthday. Between cake and presents, Zoe taught me how to play Pokemon. I must not have learned very well: she kicked my ass.

I did better playing poker on Saturday night. Sabino hosted a small tournament featuring two tables of five players each. Each player bought in for $22. The winner received $120, the second-place player received $60, and the third-place player received $20. Perhaps the remaining $20 must have gone toward the five enormous pizzas we shared. (Each person also kept $3 to use as an additional wager any time he went “all in”.)

I’ve never really played poker before, so I was a little wary. I spent some time Saturday googling for tips. The most common advice for novice poker players seems to be: play conservatively, fold often, do not try to bluff. I tried to follow this advice, and it served me well. After a couple of hours, only four of us remained. This group played to a virtual stand-still for ninety minutes, and then weariness began to take its toll. I began to fold hands (such as K-7) with which other might have at least paid to see the flop. Several times, I threw away what would have been a winning hand. Goaded by these poor choices, I started erring in the opposite direction, semi-bluffing on hands that ought to have been played more conservatively. In the end, I went all in with a suited ace-queen (after a flop that turned up another card of my suit and a ten or a jack), but didn’t even get a pair. I didn’t care; I was tired, and I’d had a lot of fun. I’m not the kind of guy who often gets invited to play poker, but maybe I’ll get another chance sometime.

Sunday was a slow day. After enjoying hot cocoa and toast, I finished the leaf-raking project. We took some scones to John, our neighbor across the street, as a thank-you for some home-made grape juice he’d given us a couple weeks ago. He was happy to take a break from pruning his cherry tree so that he could tell us about his trips to Alaska and New Zealand. He also gave us mulching tips. Tom and Roberta, the older neighbor couple next door, came out to join the conversation. They offered advice on pruning fruit trees and propagating grapes. Tom fetched us a large winter squash picked directly from his garden.

For dinner, Kris and I made our favorite steaks. Later, I sat in a hot tub and read comic books. Actually, I read a lot of comics over the weekend: Jonah Hex, Persepolis, Elfquest, Thor, and Doom Patrol. I am a comic book geek.

Hot Cocoa and Toast

Ah, what a lovely Sunday morning. What a fine thing it is to have slept late, lingering in bed with my wife by my side and the cats at our feet.

We slide out of bed and tumble downstairs. Kris feeds the birds, and we watch through the windows as the finches and jays and chickadees compete for the various seeds. Kris brews a mug of tea, then a second. We sit at the dining room table, looking at Walnut, the fat squirrel in the tree, as he forages for nuts and seeds in the feeder. The jays wait impatiently for him to leave.

“Isn’t it funny how he hides his peanuts,” I say. “Look at him climb down the tree and hide them in the lawn. He’s lucky there aren’t any cats around.” While he’s on the ground, the jays fight a peanut battle, squabbling over the tastiest treats.

“Look at that!” exclaims Kris. “It’s a bird of prey. It looks like a falcon.” She runs to grab the bird book, from which we learn that the bird is, indeed, a peregrine falcon.

Uncommon in open areas, especially near water. Nests on cliff ledges or (recently) on buildings or bridges in cities. Solitary. Hunts from perch or from high in the air, stooping on prey at very high speed…Feeds mainly on small or medium-size birds. Sleek and powerful, with very pointed wings and relatively short tail. Prominent dark “moustache” unique; also note uniformly patterned underwing. Voice a series of harsh notes rehk rehk rehk…

Why is a peregrine falcon sitting in our walnut tree? The squirrel doesn’t like it and, in a startling display of bravado, makes a sort of lunge at the bird, which is easily twice its size. The falcon is cowed, or willing to humor the squirrel. It sloughs from the tree and curves away on the strength of three or four wingbeats. A marvelous sight.

Not our falcon.

“We have a great house for birds,” Kris says, and I murmur agreement.

“What shall we do today?” she asks, finishing her tea.

“I have no motivation,” I say. “All I want to do today is to lay around the house.”

“That’s fine,” she says, “but promise me you’ll finish raking the leaves.”

“I’ll finish raking the leaves, but not until this afternoon. I want to move slowly. I want a hot bath. But first I want some hot cocoa and toast.”

Nothing is finer on a cold November Sunday than hot cocoa and toast, the preparation of which is almost a religious ritual: retrieve the blender and the toaster, plug them in, heat the milk on the stove, toast the bread ’til it’s golden brown and then slather it with honey, cut the cocoa tablet into chunks and dump these into the blender, pour in the steaming milk, turn the blender on.

Nothing is finer on a cold November Sunday than hot cocoa and toast.

While I wait for the cocoa to froth in the blender, I fetch The New York Times from the end of the sidewalk. “Hello, Nemo. Are you hunting birds?” The air is brisk, the grass is damp; I do not want to rake the leaves. The paper has a fine heft. I peel the two plastic bags that protect it and, as I walk back up to the house, I scan the headlines.

Nothing is finer on a cold November Sunday than hot cocoa and toast and The New York Times. Nothing is —

Holy shit!

On the counter, the blender has become a fountain of hot cocoa. I drop the paper and punch wildly at the buttons. The cocoa-spout continues. Why? There’s the problem: the blender is not gushing from the top, but from around the base. The pitcher on top of the blender has started to come unscrewed, and the hot cocoa is spewing from the bottom, all over the counter, all over the toaster (plugged in and toasting!), all over the floor. Screw the top back to the base! Unplug the toaster! Quick! Where’s a towel? The bathroom!

“I’m not messy!” I call to Kris. I’m not messy is one of my common refrains (others of which include I’m not clumsy and Kris Gates is always right). “I’m not messy” actually translates into “Oops, I made a mess again” because, in reality, I am messy.

Here’s Kris. She’s taking stock of the situation. “Why are you using a nice bathroom towel to mop this up?” she asks. “There’s a whole stack of kitchen towels on top of the fridge.”

“Well,” I explain. “I lost a lot of cocoa. There are probably two cups on the counter.” I direct her attention to the black cocoa-fall trickling down the cabinets.

“Oh my god,” she says. “I’m going upstairs.” And she does.

Why do we have so many things on the counter? I have to move them all, wipe them all with hot water. When I’ve moved everything, I’ve revealed a small pool of hot cocoa.

When I was nearly done with cleanup, I remembered to snap a photo.

Five minutes later, I sit down at the table and spread open The New York Times. I read about Elia Kazan while drinking tepid cocoa with toast.

Ghost of Thanksgiving Past

I saw a ghost today.

I was in line at Costco to buy my ritual Polish dog when I saw my father standing three places in front of me. My father has been dead for more than a decade.

I knew it was him instantly: the big belly hanging over his belt, the tangled mop of hair, the shuffling feet. He was wearing one of his solid blue dress shirts (tucked sloppily, as usual), dark blue trousers, and a pair of worn dress shoes. He looked the same, he moved the same, he even smiled the same.

For a few moments, I literally stopped breathing. I watched Dad move forward in line. He scratched his nose like always, itching it; I expected him to take out a hanky and blow. When he reached the front of the line, he smiled at the worker and made some inaudible joke. The worker laughed. Always the clown.

And then it occurred to me: this was not a ghost of my father, but a ghost of my uncle Norman. His voice was quiet, his manner shy. Still shocking, but less so than it might have been.

I could breathe again.

My father (Steve), my grandfather (Noah), and my uncle (Norman) in 1983.

It has been ten years since my father died, and about fifteen since my uncle Norman passed away. In that time, I have never seen a single person that reminded me of either of them. It’s easy to pick out strangers who remind me of friends or, especially, of acquaintances, but I never encounter strangers who remind me of family members. This is probably because I know family members so much better: it’s easy to spot little differences that reveal a stranger’s dissimilarity. This man, this ghost, did not possess dissimilarities. Everything about him indicated that he was a family member, some lost cousin or uncle.

I watched the ghost shuffle across to the soda fountain, then to the condiment dispensers. I watched him carry his food to a back table. “It’s your turn,” the lady behind me said, shattering my reverie. I’d forgotten all about my ritual Polish dog.

On the drive home, Robert Greenberg expounded upon Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture, one of Dad’s favorite compositions. Again I sunk into a nostalgic reverie, remembering him, remembering the things he did, remembering Thanksgivings of long ago.

(From the archives: another remembrance of my father on Independence Day)

The Great Book Purge

“Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” — Kris

I’ve been quiet around here lately, but that’s a good thing. I’m tidying the nooks and crannies of my life. For example:

We have many bookcases with many shelves. To be precise, we have eighty-five bookshelves of about thirty inches each. That’s approximately 2550 inches of books, or about 213 feet. That’s a hell of a lot of books.

The recent change in my mental outlook has allowed me to realize that I don’t need to possess as many books as I once did. It used to be that I felt the urge to own any book that looked remotely interesting. No longer. Nowadays I’m more interested in purchasing high-quality copies of books that I already love or want to treasure. Girl With a Golden Earring? A low-quality book group selection that I certainly don’t need to keep. Moby Dick with woodcut illustrations? A keeper! Most books I can find at the public library.

Spurred by Live Simple, I’ve scoured our bookshelves in an attempt to free space. To do this, I deliberately shut off my sentimental faculties. “But that was a gift from Joel! But that was a book that I read when I first met Kris! But that was my favorite book when I was twelve!” So what? If it’s not a book that I want to re-read or to keep as reference then I set it aside to purge. Kris vetoed some of my choices, and I kept books that I knew would be difficult to replace (The Dune Encyclopedia is highly collectible and out of print), but to the extent that I could, I was ruthless in my culling. As a result I’ve purged hundreds of books. (This sounds impressive, but really it only freed about twelve shelves of space. I still have seventy-three shelves filled with books.)

The Great Book Purge is but one example of the recent changes in my life. There are others, and they’re all good. I am happy with this place, this new me that I’ve found.

Today was a big day at Rosings Park, a day we’ve awaited with much anticipation. It was the day of the New Range. Exactly at noon, we took receipt of a brand new Maytag Gemini Precision Touch 750 gas double-oven range. Good-bye, old range, with your unpredictable heating and igniters that didn’t work; hello, new range, with your continuous grates and two separate ovens!

After the range was installed, and I had tested it with a can of bean-with-bacon soup, I headed out to purchase a light fixture for the study. As you may recall, I’ve been coveting a specific art deco slipper-shade lamp from Rejuvenation.

Alas, dear light fixture, I want you NOW

I wasn’t able to fulfill my dream today, however; the lamp is a special-order. Dejected, I drove home and purged the encyclopedias.

Sssssssssssssnake!

I just got back from a walk with Jason. On the way, I picked a snake up from the road. It seemed stunned when I found it, as if it had just been run over (an SUV had drive past a couple minutes earlier). I haven’t examined it closely, but it seems to have a broken spine a couple inches up from the base of its tail.

It’s a small snake, maybe a foot long, and actually rather pretty: dark brownish with two thin yellowish stripes down the side of its body. I’m glad I was wearing my gloves, though, because it stinks vaguely of cat shit.

Jason said that Maren is obsessed with snakes and death and things of that sort. “She’s a four-year-old goth,” I told him. “I’m going to patch up this snake and give it to her.”

I don’t know if this snake can be patched up, though. It rested in my hands for most of the walk, but toward the end it became active, trying to slither away. I suppose I ought to let it free for nature to do as nature will, but I sort of miss having a snake. (We had Sanderling, Kris’ childhood snake, for a decade before it died about five years ago.) Snakes are rather unresponsive pets, but they’re fun. They’re exotic. Kids love them.

Toto loved Sanderling. We kept him in a glass aquarium with a wire screen for a lid. Toto would perch on the wire screen for hours, staring down at the snake, watching him crawl around. Sometimes she would try to grab the snake through the glass. She never succeeded. I’ll bet Nemo would love to see a snake.

I’ve placed my new snake in a bucket on the back porch and covered it with grass. If it has not escaped by the time I leave for home, I’ll try to transport it in the car. I wonder if we still have that old pink plastic animal carrier at home. The snake has to have someplace to live.

And what would one feed a snake this small? Sanderling was large enough to consume small rodents, which was always a gruesome sight, but I suppose this sort of snake eats crickets and the like.

Natural Sleep, and First Frost

“I’m trying something new,” I told Kris last night as we were getting ready for bed. “I’m taking Sabino’s approach to sleep.”

“What’s that?” she asked, frowning.

“Well, Kim and Sabino don’t use an alarm clock. They rise when they wake up naturally.” She furrowed her brow, full of doubt. “It works! Sabino’s never late to the office. I didn’t set my alarm last night. I just got up when I woke at 5:15.”

Kris did not reply, but turned over to fall asleep.

As I do every night, I checked the time before I closed my eyes: 10:45. As I do every night, I computed my expected wakeup time based on my typical sleep cycle: 4:45 or 6:15. “Hm,” I thought. “Maybe I should stay up another half hour so that I wake at 5:15.” My normal wake-up time is 5:30, but I’m okay getting up fifteen minutes earlier or later.

I dreamed of cats from outer space, cats with unspeakable powers. I slept well.

I woke at 4:48 and thought, “Maybe I’d better get up now. If I go back to sleep, Kris’ alarm will wake me in the middle of my sleep cycle, and then I’ll be tired the rest of the day.”

I didn’t get up. I fell back asleep. I dreamed of a church service at which Pam and I were arguing together against Joel and Kris regarding an esoteric point of Catholic dogma. Pam and I won the debate, of course, and celebrated with an asparagus pie.

I woke again to discover Toto sitting in front of the clock. “Move,” I said, pushing the whiny blob of black fur aside. “Uh-oh,” I said, elbowing Kris. “I guess maybe Sabino’s sleep method isn’t the best for us. It’s 6:17.”

6:17! While this was exactly the time I had expected to wake, it was also three minutes before I needed to leave in order to be on time for work. “I guess you forgot to set your alarm,” I said. Kris muttered something under her breath and stumbled downstairs for her shower.

On Monday night at our football gathering, some of the older kids played outside on Ron and Kara’s deck. “It’s icy,” they said when they came in for dessert.

“No it’s not,” the adults told them. We knew that we’d just had a rainstorm a couple hours ago, and that a heavy layer of cloud cover meant that temperatures wouldn’t drop significantly. Besides, there were no freezing temperatures in the forecast.

“Yes it is,” said Harrison, but we ignored him.

After dessert, I went outside to play a little with the boys. They were taking turns sliding across the icy deck. “Well I’ll be darned,” I thought. “It is icy.” I took a turn skooching my shoes across the slick spots. Before I went back inside, I looked around the yard for other signs of freezing. There were none. Somehow an isolated patch of ice had formed on Ron and Kara’s deck. There were no signs of frost on the drive home, either, though the sky was completely clear.

On Tuesday morning, however, it had frozen. The grass wasn’t too crunchy, but the car windows were frosted. Here at the shop, the thermometer read -2.8 degrees centigrade. I didn’t expect frost this morning, either, and I didn’t find any until I started the car. Though the other windows were fine, the front windshield had a thin layer of the stuff.

The first frost to me means winter is approaching, and so it is. The rains have come. Nights are cold. Darkness reigns supreme.

Voluntary Addiction

I’ve begun playing World of Warcraft again.

My return to the game has led me to wonder: do most people struggle with low-level addictions, or is there actually a type of addictive personality? I don’t just mean addictions to drugs or tobacco or alcohol, but addictions to little things: coffee, chocolate, ice cream, and computer games. How common are these small compulsions? Or are there simply People Like Me who are more susceptible to addictions than normal folk?

My life has been filled with addictions since boyhood. What are collections if not manifestations of addiction? My web-surfing? That’s a sort of a addiction. My collection of comics? That’s also an addiction. My library of books? That’s a rather large addiction!

Does it take a special personality to succumb to addiction, or does everyone suffer from these compulsions, if only to a small extent? I’m curious.

You may recall that I became addicted to World of Warcraft earlier this year, spending fully ten percent of my life playing it between last November 23rd and April 15th. At the height of my addiction, I spent twenty percent of my life in game: four or five hours every day.

As may be expected, I’m wary about playing again. Addiction may rear its ugly head once more. The World of Warcraft experience is so fun, so immersive, that even six months after having quit the game cold turkey, I found myself dreaming of its virtual environments. I longed to roam the savannah and the jungle and the mountains defeating gnolls and the like. So I’m giving it a chance.

I have been back in-game for ten days now, and have been pleased with my restraint. I have placed limits on myself. I have a kitchen timer by my side, and it serves as a constant reminder not to become swept up in the game. I stop playing after designated periods of time. I spend days between each play session. I don’t do “just one more thing” before logging off for the night.

I am exercising moderation.

My goal is to limit play to between seven and ten hours a week. This may seem like a lot, but an ancillary goal is to take time from other wasteful activities rather than from those things that are important. So long as I trade web-surfing time or comic-book-reading time for World of Warcraft-time, things are fine.

It’s been great fun to start a new character on a role-playing server, adventuring with both Joel and Scott, as their time allows. I do not regret this decision.

Yet.

Now that I’ve managed to stabilize my weblog, I’m gradually bringing others back on-line. My brother Jeff returned last week, and the Mirons made a new post over the weekend. Welcome back!

(And stay tuned for the debut of Amy Jo’s weblog…)

Messenger

It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m driving home from work. I’m a little blue: I’m tired from lack of sleep, I’m sick, I feel fat. My mental energy is sapped. I am a mass of melancholia. As I enter the last straight stretch before Oregon City, I glance to my left at the open water of the Willamette.

There, in the center of the riverway, is a bird (a duck? a goose?), flying parallel to the road and at exactly my velocity. The bird is skimming the river. Its flight is an arrow. From time-to-time a wingbeat grazes the surface of the water, scattering flecks of white. We travel in tandem at fifty-three miles per hour, the bird slightly ahead of my car. We race past the trailer park, the motel, the marina. For more than a minute, we seem to be joined by a fixed but invisible cable.

It is a thing of wonder. A thing of beauty.

It is exhilarating.

When I go over the hill and enter Canemah, I am no longer blue.

I Heart My C-PAP Machine

Since July 27th, I’ve been using a C-PAP machine to cope with sleep apnea. I’ve used it every night, but have been disappointed because my quality of sleep hasn’t improved as markedly as I’d hoped. “What would happen if I stopped using the C-PAP machine?” I’ve wondered. Last night I got the answer.

I’m still sick, but now the illness has spread beyond my throat. My sinuses are stuffy. Since the C-PAP machine requires the user to breathe through the nose, it’s impossible to use when one has a cold. I slept without it last night for the first time in three months. This morning, I’m exhausted.

Here’s how a typical night works when I use the C-PAP machine:

I take between one and three mg of melatonin a half an hour before bed.
When I’m ready to fall asleep, I strap on the breathing mask. I fall asleep within a couple of minutes.
I sleep soundly for most of the night. Occasionally I wake because the mask has slipped and is leaking air. Else, I wake maybe once each night.
About once every couple weeks I have to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.
When I wake in the morning, I’m not exactly refreshed, but I feel okay. I certainly don’t need naps during the day.

Here’s how I slept last night:

I took three mg of melatonin at bedtime.
It took a while to fall asleep, but I was out by 10:15.
I woke at 11:45.
I woke at 1:15 and had to go to the bathroom.
I woke at 2:45.
I woke at 3:45.
I woke at 4:15 and had to go to the bathroom.
I woke at 4:45.
I woke at 5:15.
When I got out of bed at 5:30, I was exhausted. I’m still exhausted.

Last night is typical of my sleep pattern before I got the C-PAP machine. It seems that the time and expense have been worth it after all. I’m generally not as wholly rested in the morning as I ought to be (this could be improved by getting an extra half hour of sleep, I think), but at least I don’t have to take naps during the day. There’s no question that I’m going to have to catch an hour of sleep at some point today. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I need to drive to Salem and back shortly; that’s going to be a challenge.

Friends and Neighbors

The Chinese man who owns the dry cleaners helped me carry my clothes to the car today. He scolded me for laying the garments on the back seat. (I make one large dry cleaning trip per year, which means transporting a score of shirts, a dozen pairs of pants, and various sundries. I typically stack this mound on the back seat.) “Hang like this,” he said, demonstrating the proper method.

“This your first time here?” he asked, looking at me as if I were a novice at the whole clothes-cleaning thing.

“Second,” I told him.

He nodded and stroked one of my shirts. “Good quality clothes,” he told me, which left me wondering: what does this mean? Despite my wife’s opinion, is my taste in clothing impeccable? Or — and I fear this to be the truth — do I have the same fashion sense as an elderly Chinese man? Does the dry cleaner guy also buy his clothes at Costco?

On the drive home, I decided it might be fun to be a dry cleaner, but an immoral dry cleaner. Imagine! I would never have to shop for clothes again. I would have an entire store filled with garments from which to draw my wardrobe. A nice dinner out? This shirt looks perfect, and it’s not due to be picked up until next Tuesday! Some people fantasize of stealing cars or robbing banks; I dream of borrowing other people’s clothes. (Especially woolen clothes!) My evil-o-meter just doesn’t go very high, I guess.

At home, I stopped to speak with the neighbor across the street. He was wearing a t-shirt which proclaimed in large type: GET IN THE BOAT. John is a retired teacher. He spends his autumns in Oak Grove, but he winters in New Zealand, and then spends the bulk of the year on his boat in Alaska. Today he told me all about his boat generator and how he wants a new one. (“There’s a new Honda model that produces a regular sine wave,” he said. “You can even plug a computer into it!”)

John turned the conversation to my car, and as usual I bemoaned the sorry lot of my Ford Focus. It’s just not the right car for me, and yet I’m not likely to get a new car any time soon. I’m a “drive it til it’s dead” kind of guy.

“Keep the oil changed, and it’ll last forever,” he said.

“Oh, I keep it changed,” I said. “I change it every five thousand miles.”

John shook his head. “That’s not often enough,” he said. “You need to change it every three thousand miles.” He frowned, then turned and walked away. I wanted to protest: for twenty years, I’ve changed my vehicles’ oil every five thousand miles. I’ve never had any trouble! I take care of my cars! I felt I’d failed some crucial test of manhood, as if I’d fallen in his sight.

As I walked to the mailbox (carrying three bundles of dry cleaning), John stopped at his front door: he turned to smile at me and wave.

I spent my evening skimming the library books I’ve had checked out since July: Cooking By Hand, Slow Food, The Elements of Taste, The User’s Guide to the Brain, The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. I soaked in a hot tub and browsed. Then I sat in bed and browsed. I still feel sick, so I went to sleep early, my C-PAP mask and my eyecover dutifully in place.

Kris woke me from a light doze. “You have to listen to this,” she said, handing me the telephone. Jenn had left voice mail earlier in the evening that went something like this (the following is a reconstruction, not a transcriptioin — Jenn is the narrator):

Harrison came up to me tonight and asked for a bath. “You don’t need a bath,” I told him. “You’re already clean. You had a bath last night.” Harrison whined. “Please. You don’t have to wash me. I just want to soak in the tub. It’s so relaxing.” “Alright, J.D.” I said. Harrison laughed and said, “Good one, Kris!”

Maybe this is only funny for the Gingeriches and the Roth-Gates. It’s pretty funny, though. Now I need to go back to sleep.