MUSEUM MUSINGS AND AN IMPRESSIVE TRICK WITH A FRUIT BOWL

Oh, man.  Another normal day with nothing exciting to tell you.

Other then some jaywalking and one security breach (not me this time), today's trip to the Museum of Fine Arts is surprisingly normal.  As a matter of fact, it is shockingly uneventful. 

My friend and I find a parking space at Wellington Station, the subway arrives almost instantly, we change subway lines without a problem, get on the correct of five possible green line trains, find the museum without missing a beat, no lines, no crowds, see everything we want to see, have lunch up the street, hop the T back (which again arrives instantly), and arrive back at Wellington without running in to any weirdos on the train. 

Okay, a couple of funny things happen; well, I think they're humorous, so I'll tell you and you can decide for yourself.

Almost instantly after entering the MFA, my friend sets off an alarm that sends a security guard our way.  She is standing in front of the biggest painting we have ever seen, The Passage of the Delaware by Thomas Sully.  This canvas is at least twelve feet by fifteen feet.  (Okay, I looked it up -- It's 12.2 feet by 17.25 feet.  Good guess on my part.)  Here's how it all gets started:

Friend:  "I wonder why this painting is so big."

Me:  "To make it life-size.  (I don't know if this is true.  It's probably bullfrik on my part.)

Friend:  "Life-sized?  No, they're larger than life-sized."

Me:  "No, they're life-sized."

Friend:  "Let me see!"

She walks over to the painting, gets a little too close, strikes a pose like one of the guys in the painting, throws her arm up to mimic him, and … BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!  I move away from her like I don't even know her when I see the uniformed lady heading our way.  I might even whistle a little, you know, like Flick and Schwartz do when Ralphie's mother arrives to the fight scene in A Christmas Story and hears her son swearing his head off at Scut Farkus.  That kind of whistling.  Some fast talking and several apologies later, the cuffs are unlocked and my friend is free to finish the museum tour.  Good thing since we were only in the second section.

We venture to the Samurai exhibit, which is only there for four more days.  It's really impressive, with life-like warriors riding life-like horses and wearing life-like expressions while posed in life-like movement.  My friend notes that some of the warriors on the display seem awfully short.  I hold my breath wondering if she's going to breach the laser sensors and stand on the podium next to any of them.  I have to admit that if she were to do that and get us in trouble again, it would be the coolest thing EVER.

We move along through the museum, seeing some stuff, missing other stuff, me sharing what little expertise I have on such things as the mummies Tabes and Nesmutaatneru, French Impressionism, and the Copley painting Watson and the Shark.  But mostly we are just having fun. 

The Hippie Chic exhibition?  You probably have better 1960's clothes still hanging in your closet.  As a matter of fact, my friend and I recognized a few pieces of clothing as possibly our own along with the groovy shag carpet we all had at some point.  The music they have chosen is fantastic, but the exhibition is tiny and doesn't really touch on the true range of styles from the Age of Aquarius or the Flower Children.  I'm not sure anyone who actually lived through the 60's and 70's participated in the display set-up.  I do recognize Peter Max prints on some of the stuff, but so much is missing -- smiley faces, polka dots, big stripes, Dr. Scholls wooden sandals, flowers in the hair, bell bottoms, white vinyl boots, Twiggy make-up.  It's worth a look but not worth a separate trip -- If you go to the museum, though, definitely check it out.

There is a lot of construction and revamping going on, so we have to double-back in order to get to the Contemporary Art wing.  We know we will miss a lot of things, but we see most of it.  The museum either needs to be done in a two- day tour or as a speed-reading exercise.  There's so much, too much.  We spend hours there and that's even by avoiding the rooms full of pottery.

I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention the two most impressive statues, though. 

The first, a giant statue of Juno, is so incredibly large that she had to be lowered in through the ceiling upon delivery.  There are pictures to prove the story we have heard (downstairs from the security guard as we engage her in conversation to prove we really do respect art and aren't just there to pull shenanigans).  Juno weighs thirteen tons or 13,000 pounds or something like that, which is amazing.  I also notice that she isn't quite square on her pedestal, and I instantly become obsessed with the fact that after all the work it took to get her here, the least damn thing the curators could have done is make sure she's sitting squarely on the display stage.  She's in an Egyptian room, which is kind of creepy since she doesn't belong there.  Obviously it's the only place she'll fit.

The second statue we encounter in the Greco-Roman area (where Juno belongs but isn't).  This is the statue that garnered much conversation when the seventh grade visited in June, but my group never made it through that room (thank all the gods of every era for small favors).  In the Greco-Roman exhibition, there is a statue of a man holding up an entire bowl of fruit with his penis.  That's right, you read that correctly.  An entire bowl.  With his penis.  Fruit … with his … um … fruit.  Oh sure, his arms have been broken off and his hands are clearly visible on the sides of the bowl, but the floating hands are just decoration.  Honestly, his impressive appendage is performing Herculean tasks of lifting and balancing. 

It's unnatural, it's disturbing.  Of course my friend and I each take a picture of it to snicker over later.  We are, after all, only so mature.

In the scheme of things, though, for us anyway, this is considered an uneventful trip.  We've have one breach of security, share some history lessons, realize our clothes are more museum-worthy than closet-worthy, decide that we are as talented as some of the artists on display, and see a sculpted phallus perform waiter duty. 

You know, stuff most people see every day. 

I don't understand why people want to go places with me.  Nothing interesting ever happens when I'm around.  Wink wink, nudge nudge.  You know what I mean?

AU NATURAL PRODUCE

So… I'm trying to find out what the deal is behind these chain natural/organic food markets.  I mean, besides the fact that they're known on the sly as something like Entire Paycheck Markets. 

Here's the rest of the story.  I have to go to the market this morning to get cake mix and frosting and candles.  I forget the candles because I'm an idiot.  I am expecting just me and the youngest for his birthday dinner, and we're planning on getting calzone. 

Later I get a text that my daughter and her significant other will be coming for dinner.  I decide I should add a salad to the deal.  I have lettuce and one tomato, so I decide to go to the store again.  Not wanting to be seen in the same market twice on one day, I decide to avoid the big chain supermarket and go to the chain natural/organic market.  After all, they're supposed to have superior vegetables and fruits, right?  That's what I've been led to believe, anyway.

I walk into Entire Paycheck Market, all set to pay a little more for veggies.  I've been in here several times before and found their prices to be almost competitive but still very palatable.  Instead, what I find today is nothing short of highway robbery:  $3 for a small package of lettuce, $2 for a cucumber, $11 a pound for fresh mozzarella, and on and on.  I might as well just order the salad from the restaurant along with the calzone because it's going to cost me $20 just in vegetables by the time I'm done.  I don't even dare look at the price of the tomatoes lest I have a stroke.

I return the basket, still with empty plastic produce bags inside, to the rack and walk out of the store.  I drive about 300 yards down the street and go to the big bad consumer-driven supermarket, instead, the same one I was in this morning.  I get cukes, tomatoes, mozzarella, and feta cheese for a little over $8.  Oh, yah yah yah GMO yah yah yah.  But at least I still have some money in my pocket.  I arrive home triumphant.

Until I remember that I forgot the birthday candles.  Again.  I told my son he's getting whatever candles are left in the birthday tin.  I don't even care what the numbers are.  I cannot be seen a third time in the same day in the same grocery store. 

I start wondering just how much better is the produce at Entire Paycheck Market?  Is it really a superior product?  What exactly is the significance of natural vs. organic?  Obviously organic has certain restrictions on the product and some of the growing procedures, but there is no restriction on the fertilizer used.  The animals that produce the waste that becomes some organic fertilizer -- some of these are animals GMO-fed.  Does that mean the toxins are in the ground?  Even manufacturers of "organic fertilizer" admit that there is no way to know nor prove nor regulate if the ingredients and process are completely "organic." 

Here's my biggest problem, though.  If the organic farmers aren't spending money on all the chemical additives and all that soil enhancing nutrient stuff, shouldn't their costs be less?  Shouldn't the organic produce market be more competitive, or are the people involved in the organic chain jacking up prices because we're all scared to eat supermarket produce?  Is it just hysteria price gouging?

Let's talk natural produce.  Do you know what natural means?  It means it was grown.  That's all.  That's it.  Nothing else.  No special regulations, no ban on GMO's, no special growing or certification requirements apply.  Natural is the same thing as picking up any other piece of produce that wasn't created in a lab or on a manufacturing line. So how is it remotely honest to charge more for something "natural" when the designation is simply universal?  This seems like a bait and switch.

So I start wondering if maybe this organic market that is now a chain itself (though it seemed to rail against the chain stores of its time) has some sort of great historical significance that makes them a company worth paying extra for, like perhaps they may be great humanitarians.  What I discover is that the people who started the company originally lived in their store after being evicted for keeping large quantities of food in their house.  When they moved to the market, they showered in the store's industrial Hobart dishwasher using an extension hose.

Um.  Gross.  Abso-fucking-lutely dis-fucking-gusting.  Skin cells, fecal cells, urine cells, hair cells, ear wax cells …. All mingling with the food products.  Maybe I'm the only one shocked and revolted by that.  I suppose you can argue that the founders truly were au natural with their products, which makes them at least whole-heartedly committed to the truly organic, natural experience, I guess.

I understand that this chain's mission is to help others, to charge high prices to cover their bottom line plus all the outreach they do.  That's wonderful!  But I would rather pay $2 for lettuce and maybe $1 for a cucumber, then maybe drop $1 in their mission/outreach contribution bowl.  This just seems too much like taxes to me.  I'm forced to give, but I don't really know if my giving is actually getting to where it claims to go.

Okay, okay, so this whole blog entry is really just me bitching about high prices at one chain that claims its produce and products are superior.  But honestly, even organic doesn't necessarily mean pure. Natural just means it came to the store via the normal routes: grown out of some kind of soil-like material.  I suppose I'm confused by the syntax, and that's where my fascination comes in.  It's like saying there's a huge difference between a lie and a fib. 

Can I shop somewhere else?  Sure, and that's ultimately what I do.  I don't make a huge deal out of it.  I don't throw the basket across the store and scream, "What the hell are these prices?!" even though I want to.  I'll just take my business elsewhere.  But I'm certainly allowed to bitch about it, and since this is my blog, well, damnit, I think anyone who falls for the natural and organic bullshit is just fooling himself.  It's all the same.  It really, truly is.

It's kind of like screaming that one political party is better than the other.  They're all stuffed with nonsense and sprung right up from huge piles of (bull)shit, just like food.  The only difference is that we devour the food; our government is going to devour us.  Maybe that's the natural process of things.

If you want to debate this further, you'll have to check in later.  I'm going to go hose off in my dishwasher now.  I hear it's the rage of all the organics out there, or at least the ones making a decent buck off it.

That's my bite off the apple.  I think I'll chew on it for a while.

PROGRESS CAN BE A WONDERFUL THING

Progress is a wonderful thing.  That is, until progress gets in the way of sleep.

(Worse than my room - for now)

I have been tearing the spare room apart and moving furniture around between three bedrooms upstairs.  The rooms are small and each has at least one sloped wall, so this is all taking some major finagling.  It also involves sifting and sorting through fourteen years' worth of random work papers that need to be filed either in the real file cabinet or into the circular file.  Oh, and the multiple shelves of books that need to be pruned are also on the to-do list.

The other day before going in to Boston, I thought it would be a bright idea to empty every pair of shoes I own onto my bed.  Sure, they're all still in boxes, and, thankfully, foot surgery a few years ago prevented me from amassing a huge repertoire (I only have about thirty pairs).  I carefully sorted them out into piles by color, knowing full well I would probably be home around 4:00, or 5:00 at the latest, knowing me.  Plenty of time to put it all away.  Somewhere.

I got back from Boston at a reasonable hour, but then I hung out at my friend's house for another hour or so.  After that I came home, had some snacks, played with pictures I took in the city, and wrote the blog.  Then I watched a movie.  More snacks.  I finally decided I'd had enough around 1:15 a.m., trudging up the stairs completely spent from the sun and the amount of walking I did.

I forgot about the shoes.

I moved all the boxes into the spare room so I could sleep.  This was a wonderful idea until I got up in the morning and realized that the progress I made in the spare room was now impeded by the stacks of shoes I put in the way.  So the shoes moved to another part of the room.  Then they moved back into my room again but on the floor (still ironically blocking access to the bed). 

(Worse than my closet - for now)

I didn't want to make the same mistake twice, so before the work stoppage this evening, I moved the boxes of shoes yet again to a space in my room that was recently vacated by racks I moved into the spare room.

Eventually my shoes will find a permanent home that does not involve shorting my sleep time.  Until then, I will continue to move the shoes around and call it exercise.  And maybe, just maybe, I might learn that one project at a time is something to seriously consider.  My way of doing multiple things on the fly may create aggravating sleeping conditions, but when the chaos finally settles, everything ends up being done at the same time.

Method to my madness?  Maybe.  But I think my solution is a "shoe-in." 

B IS FOR BOSTON AND BULGER AND BITCHES AND BEER

Another successful trip to Boston! 

My friend Sal and I like to do odd things in Boston: look at tall ships, go to carnivals, and watch Corpse Flowers bloom.  Today we decide to check out the second annual WGBH-Boston Globe Summer arts Festival and various other activities competing with this event.

First let me say that the set up for all of this activity is kind of strange.  There are things happening on the Greenway, in Government Center, and at Copley Place.  These places are about three miles apart, which isn't very family-friendly as it requires lots of walking or trips on the subway, neither of which option is conducive to families with small children and strollers. 

For walkers like Sal and me, this is no problem whatsoever.

We park on the waterfront in front of the courthouse where the trial of the Marathon Bomber and the trial of the infamous mobster Whitey Bulger are both taking place.  We always park here.  The Seaport is our 'hood in the city.  There are news vans parked along the main street -- every local news station in Boston -- but there is no one in any of the vans.  Apparently they just leave them there all weekend and pick right back up on Monday morning, making their ways to the vans and staying in there all damn day long.  

We head across the bridge to the waterfront and cross to the Greenway (where Sal tries to buy kitchenware, but we leave without it because we'd have to carry it and it's still early in the adventure).  We continue to cross streets and trudge through Faneuil Hall Marketplace.  When we reach Government Center, there appears to be some kind of Latino festival going on.  There are rides everywhere, and I drool over the Scrambler but do not get on for a ride because it's $4.  For anyone over age 45, the Scrambler is the old Merry Mixer, the same exact ride that is inside the Psychodrome at Canobie Lake Park.  It remains my all-time favorite ride. 

Eventually we start the long walk toward Boylston Street.  We walk around the Common where last year a hawk was just sitting on the fence, happy as can be, three feet from Sal and making direct eye contact with her, probably sizing up whether or not carrying her away was feasible (I'm betting  on … MAYBE).  We pick up Boylston at number 80.  We are going into the 500's.  We avoid the subway because it's a beautiful day for a walk, maybe a little too beautiful as the day heats up to swazz levels.  

We arrive in Copley Square in time for the Irish Step Dancing presentation.  Everything is fine except for the two toddlers that no one seems to own, dancing and running at the low stage and causing a distraction to both audience and performers.  Some people might think this is cute.  I want to smack the parents of these unsupervised children and, to be honest, I kind of want to smack the kids when one of them screams into my friend's face, "MOVE!!! I WANT MY MOOOOOOOOM!!!!" with her cutest Regan from The Exorcist impersonation.  

We peruse around Copley, score some free shit, and start walking further up Boylston Street.  Sal was here when the Marathon bombs went off.  By sheer screwed up luck, she was not exactly where she needed to be at the exact time, and was not standing in the exact bomb zones when both went off.  She was running a few minutes late and was almost there, close enough to see, hear, smell, and understand what was going on, close enough that her companion, who was in the Pentagon during 911, knew precisely what the sounds were and ushered her immediately the other way without argument.  It is important to pay homage to lives lost and hers saved, so we continue on our way until we've seen enough. 

We cut over to Newbury Street, a huge tourist area, and discover people don't walk as fast as we do.   This royally sucks wind as we try to ease our way around throngs of people who seem to prefer standing still and shuffling along to actually making progress.  Eventually the streets clogs clear a bit, and we are back near the Swan Boats.

We cross into the Common, hit the public bathrooms for a quick rest stop, then head toward the financial district.  I haven't walked this way in many decades, not since I was a kid and I did some Christmas shopping with a Girl Scout troop in Downtown Crossing.  I am disoriented until we end up on Summer Street, emerging eventually at South Station.  She and I weave our way back to Atlantic Avenue, back to Northern Avenue, back to the Moakley Courthouse, and back to where we started.  We have hiked a lot of miles.  The heat and sun are getting the better of me.  If I sit down now, I won't be getting up again, so we press on, past the parking lot, past the car, and past the Institute of Contemporary Art (off which the Red Bull Cliff Diving Series takes place in Boston), and soldier on.

Final Destination:  The upper deck of The Whiskey Priest.

Two ice cold beers apiece and sandwiches later, we are ready to get our parking tag validated.  This is when it all becomes worthwhile.  All those parking garages we passed at $18 per hour, all the clogged Saturday traffic and fights for "premium parking", all become fodder at this point.  We are parked in a nearly empty lot, and the validated ticket brings our day-long safe parking to a whopping total of $8.  Even better, the direct access to the highway home is a quarter mile from where we are parked, through one light and down a ramp.  It is, by far, the easiest highway access in the entire city of Boston.

The next time we go in, we're going to have to clock our foot mileage.  Sal claims we did six miles.  I think we did seven.  This is our biggest and most heated debate of the day.  You know, important, earth-shattering stuff. 

Even when we don't really do anything, we are always doing something.  We do a little sightseeing, some reminiscing, some drinking, and we get ourselves some free shit (like a tote bag that says Boston Ballet on it and a free s'mores granola bar and an ice coffee with vanilla creamer in it).  Mostly, though, we get exercise and laugh our fool heads clean off.  Of course, we could've stayed home on her deck and had a few beers and a ton of laughs, but that would defeat the purpose of telling everyone we are in Boston when I tag her near the Tea Party Museum, or defeat the purpose of snapping a picture of what resembles a giant nipple outside of the Federal Reserve, or defeat our small victory when calling the idiot who coughed in our faces a bitch.  Can't miss moments like this.

Besides, without a few tales, this blog would be mighty sparse.  That's why we're planning another trip into the city for later in the week.  Just a warning, Boston; you should probably be prepared.

CHECKING MY EMAIL ... SORT OF

I'm taking another class this summer.  It's an intensive class, five straight days, eight hours plus an hour ride each direction, making it easily a ten-hour day,  I know the professor -- I took two courses with her last summer and gave myself pneumonia trying to keep up with her.  I know already I will be working my sorry ass off for this class, and I absolutely cannot wait.

I ordered the five books I have to read, and I'm going to get through them all next week because the course starts the following Monday, and the more I have done ahead of time, the better for me.  In the meantime, though, I have to gather a bunch of materials (paint samples, nicknacks, magazines, small boxes, objects of ephemera) and do some prep work.  Supposedly there will be an email telling me how to connect to the online portion of the course to accomplish this prep work, and the email is due out by today.

I check the university email often.  I am turning into the homestretch of this degree starting in September, and I'm anxious to keep in touch with the Powers That Be and make sure I don't screw up my credits by missing something important, like the Spanish translation test I have to pay for and pass sometime this fall.  I cannot lag behind in the next ten months or I'll never make it through, so I do what I always do:  I open my grad student email account and ...

Nothing.

I get that stupid beeping noise that happens when you try to get the computer to speed up and it clearly has no intention of doing what you ask of it.  I try it again.  And again.  I keep bouncing to Outlook 365.  I click on Outlook 365, assuming the new link will work.  Still I get nothing but error messages, and now I cannot even sign out of this supposedly updated, new-fangled Outlook 365.  I have tried to sign in no less than eight times in a minute.

I finally manage to get in through the school's own link from its home page and through the drop-down menu under some obscure tab.  I slog through random Amazon emails because the company managed to get my email address when they duped me into thinking they would give students free shipping on text books.  Yeah, all students except for me.  (Amazon assholes.)  I scroll and delete and delete and scroll and bob and weave until I am finally at the fresh, new university email.  All one of it.  I hope it's from the professor.

Sadly, it is not.

The email is from the school's IT department, informing everyone that their university email will be down, and to email them if anyone has any problems.

Uh.... I thought this was an institution of higher learning.  Who the frik emails thousands of students to inform them that their email is not going to be working?  I mean, seriously.  Who does that shit?  Are you stupid?  That's like calling me on the phone to leave me a message that my phone isn't working.  Dude, I know that; it's why I can't get your call.

So, here's to the IT idiots:  Dudes, the email isn't working; this is why I can't get your email message that my email isn't working.  Post a notice on your damn homepage that email isn't working.

I may not be a genius. but I'd like to think I'm relatively intelligent in an "able to wipe my own ass most of the time" kind of way, in the "my knuckles don't drag on the ground too often" grouping, in the crowd that is just a few steps above "wild boars chasing truffles" bandwidth.

But emailing the email messages that email isn't working with the email system?  Dudes, that's just fucking retarded.   (I emailed them and told them so.)

GROCERY STORE FREAK OUT

I've said it before; I'll say it again:  I am flypaper for freaks.

My son complains that there is never any food to eat in the house.  This puzzles me since I spend hundreds of dollars at the store, don't eat a whole lot myself, yet the food I purchase disappears.  Someone seems to be eating the food; I know it's not me.  I'm not really sure who should be accepting blame for the fact that "there is never any food to eat in the house."  I think maybe we have hungry ghosts or voracious mice.  For son's sake, though, I head to the grocery store yet again to restock this non-existent food supply.

When I go to the grocery store, I always park in the same general area -- away from the main entrance, but close to the building.  I would rather walk across the front of the lot than venture to the back of the lot.  (Strangely enough this ritual is reversed for department store shopping, where I park directly in line with the entrance but far out into the lot.  For the mall, I always park by an anchor store, avoiding the central entrance parking spot tag-like shit show.)  I have two grocery stores where I shop: one for emergencies only (high prices, minimal selection) and one for regular shopping. 

I am at the regular shopping place today, so I pull way off to the side into one of the spaces about fifteen rows back.  I do the usual pull-through as I hate backing out of spaces; when I'm ready to leave a place, I want to rock and roll without having to look back.  To quote Gumball Rally, "What's behind me is not important."  Unfortunately, what's in front of me isn't important, either.  Directly across the parking lot lane is a man of about seventy with hair the same length as mine (between collar and shoulder), except his is glossy with oil and quite gray.  He is standing beside his vehicle, staring at himself in the side window, and he is combing his hair with one hand and forming it into some kind of Elvis quaff with his other hand.  Combing, combing, combing.  Big date combing.  Primping, primping, primping.  Big date primping.  He is dressed like a Goodwill Lumberjack, but not a hair is out of place.

I lose sight of Goodwill Lumberjack man when I enter the store.  Good sense and logic should clue me in that this will not be the only nor the culminating weirdo encounter.  I am in the health and beauty aids aisle, minding my own damn business near the sanitary products, when I hear a male voice.

"Kind of expensive, huh?"

I jerk my head up.  There doesn't appear to be anyone near me, so obviously thus conversation starter is not for me, right?  Right?!  Then I hear the voice again, closer still, sneaking up behind me while I am pricing out Tampax Original versus Tampax Pearl, like at my age it makes some kind of freaking difference.

"That stuff is expensive.  Takes all our money, huh?"

I suddenly realize that the voice is speaking to me.  I mean, he must be because he and I are alone in front of the entire Kotex display.  I see the man has maybe four teeth on the top and maybe three on the bottom.  His glasses are as thick as the bottom of old soda bottles.  He is wearing a baseball cap with something written on it that has since faded with age and weather and wear.  His coat is the zip-out liner of an old snorkel-style winter parka, and the silver insulated shoulders are torn to shreds.  The man has a queasy aroma surrounding him; as a matter of fact, he smells of urine and armpits.

Fucking great.  The damn wino wants to chat with me about the finer price-comparison of female sanitary products.  You have to be fucking kidding me.  I am flypaper for freaks.  They attach themselves to me.

I smile and say, "Yuh," or something that remotely sounds like that.  As he passes by, the stench just about knocks me off of my feet.  I wait until he continues around the corner and start swatting at the air in front of me.  I am desperate for a breath of fresh air.  I can still smell the man one aisle over, the aroma wafting through the air like a shitty diaper that has been percolating in an enclosed car on a plus-one-hundred degree day.  Yes, yes, yes, I am mean-spirited and judgmental, and for that I am sorry.  But for the love of Earl, I am in a grocery store and now I feel like I might lose it and hurl.  Not really conducive to me spending more money (or any money) on food today. 

Now I start to feel like an asshole because I thought those awful things about Goodwill Lumberjack before this random stinky store stalker guy.  Part of me, anyway.  The other part of me starts muttering away:

"Why the fuck do these people always talk to ME?!  What is it?  Do I have a sign on me that says 'Please talk to me, especially if you smell like urine'?  Really.  Seriously.  Who approaches random people and strikes up a conversation in the store? Who the hell wants to talk to me while I'm shopping?!  Shit.  I DO.  I want to talk to me while I'm shopping because I am talking to myself.  Out loud.  I am unfit to be in the aisles of Market Basket.  I am unfit to be out in public."

Oh.  My.  God.  I am talking to myself in Market Basket.  Apparently I am not the fly paper; I AM THE FREAK.

I finally make my way to the check-out line where I am behind a woman with as full a carriage of stuff as I have.  Suddenly a young woman appears with about six things in her arms.  I assume that she is expecting me to say, "Oh, you go ahead of me, sweetie.  You only have a few items."  But I don't say that.  I don't even bother making eye contact.  There's a goddamn EXPRESS LANE a couple of registers over, and it's not even backed up at this hour of the morning.  It takes every once of fiber for me not to smack her across the face and point her toward the far end of the row where the express checkouts are.

When I get out to my car and start loading the bags inside, I realize the moron at the register packed my bread in with the two half-gallons of milk I bought.  I mean, of course she did.  Of.  Course. 

Life should not be this hard.  Shopping should not be this much work, and this is precisely why I avoid the activity like it's the damn Black Plague.  Sometimes I'm the freak, and sometimes I'm the fly paper.  Either way, there are thirty-eight days until my kid goes back to college and I can go back to ignoring the grocery store.  It's probably safer for everyone that way.

I AM WRITING THIS WITHOUT MY FRIEND'S PERMISSION; I HOPE WE ARE STILL ON SPEAKING TERMS

I need to keep disguises in my car. 

Honestly.  This isn't even debatable anymore.  As soon as Halloween stuff hits the market, I'm buying fake wigs, hats, helmets, clown noses, and Groucho Marx glasses with the moustaches attached.  It's all staying in my car.  All of it.

You see, when I'm out with my friend, we have a bad habit of running into people we do not want to speak to … ever. 

Once in CVS we ran into an ex-acquaintance who had gone off the mental diving board clear into the deepest, darkest end of the sanity pool.  She acted as if it hadn't been months since we stopped taking her multi-hour, rave-filled phone calls.  Chief Crazy Woman (as she should be known) looked at my friend and me, and said, "Where are the tissues?  I can't find the tissues in this place!"  Then she sneered at us, giggled maniacally, and started talking about her kids like it was still 2010. 

The next time we spotted Chief Crazy Woman, we were in Kohl's.  My friend and I nearly ran CCW over with our shopping carriage, which we quickly ditched so we could run into the nearest aisle.  Turned out to be house wares.  Being short, my friend and I couldn't see over the pillow and bed spread displays, but it didn't matter because CCW was a hunched over, scrawny witch.  My friend and I moved carefully from display to display, spotting CCW again near the boys' department and again in an open walkway between purses and underwear.  Eventually we hid behind the racks of infant clothing because we knew it was the one place CCW wouldn't need to shop.  Just for the record, do you have the slightest idea how hard it is to hide two full-grown women behind teeny tiny little jumpsuits?  Thank goodness CCW is half-blind.   

This sort of crap happens to us every time we're together.  We run into students at Orange Leaf.  We have the restaurant manager who thinks we're throwing a rehearsal dinner for ourselves.  We get caught in tornados in the middle of Squam Lake.  We get busted raiding the neighbor's pool.  People around us at the beach just randomly fall over.  Wild animals parade around when we're sitting in the lawn chairs trying to enjoy the great outdoors.  Dick Nixon the Groundhog gets grazed in the head by a .22.   On and on and on.

Really.  You can't write this stuff; it writes itself without any encouragement from us whatsoever.

Tonight we are on a quest to Staples.  My friend needs a printer, and I need folders and a silver Sharpie. (Of course, wide-ruled notebook paper is also on sale.  I consider it a victory when I only buy two packs instead of the five I can buy for only fifty cents each.  Hey, I said "Two Pack" and "Fifty Cent" in the same sentence.  I'm just pointing that out.)  I have just gotten home from the gym, so I'm a little ripe around the edges.  Okay, I'm ripe in more places than just edges, but we're in a hurry to get to tax-free New Hampshire for the supplies.  I change from yoga pants to capris but leave on the sports bra and workout shirt.  What do I care?  We're only going to Staples, right? 

Wrong.  Oh, so wrong.

On our way back from Staples, just as we're pulling toward my friend's driveway, she notices a visitor.  It's not Chief Crazy Woman, but it's her evil spawn twin, Looney Toony Relative.  LTR is sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on the front lawn, texting my friend that she is there "waiting, waiting, waiting."  My friend texts back, "Go home, go home, go home."  LTR apparently wants to become my friend's personal pilot fish.  In short, she is the current CCW. 

My friend ducks down in the passenger seat, I swerve back into the main road, and we continue along, stupefied.  A little background:  LTR is the same relative for whom my friend put on a children's bike helmet so she wouldn't be recognized when we had to drive down the street where LTR lives.  If only we had a helmet with us at this moment.

We do the next best thing.  We head to the nearest bar.  Installing the printer right this moment is not nearly as important as is escaping the human pilot fish.  I steer toward Chili's.  My friend is clearly in need of an ice cold beer, and so am I.  We walk in, knowing we are only going to stay about thirty minutes, so we head to the bar, which is completely crowded.  We grab a table, sit down, and relax for about ten seconds, when I see my friend wave slightly, turn to me, and roll her eyes. 

Her soon-to-be ex and his latest paramour are sitting next to us. Right next to us.  Practically in our laps next to us.

There is no place to duck and cover.  There are no tissue aisles, no house wares, no pillows, no bedspreads, no infant clothing racks, no helmets, no wigs, and no hole to swallow up either us or them. 

We order two draughts, shake our heads, and bust our guts laughing. 

We have carefully avoided one weird situation only to fall deeper into The Twilight Zone of FuckedUpVille.  These things seem to happen to us with alarming frequency, and this is exactly the reason why we need to keep disguises handy.  If we have disguises, maybe Chief Crazy Woman would not seek our help finding tissues,  Looney Toony Relative wouldn't scope us out driving by while she occupies someone else's Adirondack chair, and mistresses wouldn't surprise us in bars.

Who the hell am I kidding?  Of course this shit is going to keep happening to us.  But the wigs and masks and clown noses might make it all just slightly less surreal.  Until that happens, I'd like to raise a glass to my friend and simply say, "Cheers -- you make me laugh my fool head off!"  Friends like this are rare, and you should covet them and protect them when you are able.

Girlfriend, this disguise is for you!

SWEATSHIRT MAZE

I start tearing my room apart today.  Not the spare room; not the living room; not the den; not my son's room, and not the basemen, all of which should be priority.  My room.  Apart.  In pieces.  A shambles.  Of course, if you've seen my room you would know it is pretty messy most of the time anyway, so what's the big deal, right?

I rearrange the television, which doesn't sound like a big deal except it means moving furniture and piling tons if sweatshirts on my bed.  I have more sweatshirts than a clothing store.  My problem is that I have acquired some on my own, and I have shanghaied several from the piles of clothes my kids are donating because they've outgrown the stuff.  This latter reason is my downfall.  It is how I've managed to acquire multiple lacrosse team sweatshirts and multiple Bay State Games jackets.  

I realize that if I ever intend to sleep, I need to take the multiple piles of  sweats that litter the bed and carefully move them:  sweatshirts, hooded sweatshirts, zipper sweatshirts, fleeces, zipper fleeces, and sweatpants.  Moving all of this clothing causes me to see the tops of the bureaus for the first time in several years.  Once the dust has resettled, I am shocked that the bureaus are blue.  I mean, I suppose I knew that fact since I painted them, but it shocks me that the color hasn't faded and irritates me that I have to dust to find out this coveted piece of information.  I thought for sure I had enough stuff piled up to prevent any dust from ever hitting the surfaces of those pieces of furniture, anyway.

I now have a giant sweatshirt maze in my room.  It's not a true-to-scale maze.  As it is, small children and dwarfs and midgets and vertically-challenged people might disappear into the sweatshirt maze, vanishing as if they are socks in a dryer.

The bad news is that I need to navigate past these clean, warm clothes to get to my sort-of clean, ice cold bed (the air conditioner is on).  The good news is the big job, the one involving tearing the room to workable pieces and putting it back together, had already been broached.  There's nothing to do now but procrastinate with the remainder of the job … and watch television.  Damn good thing I moved the TV to where I can actually see it.  

WHEN THE WEATHER BREAKS, AND WHY IT MIGHT AS WELL BE ME

The weather has finally broken.  It did so here with no pomp and zero circumstance.  Towns around here had some fierce storms over the weekend, but here the day is humid off and on until sunset, and then it becomes tolerable right after dinner.  I run around opening windows and turning fans on.  It still feels sticky in here, damp and humid, but the cool air feels good.

The rest of the week is supposed to be kind of iffy.  Humidity returns Tuesday and Wednesday, then less for Thursday and Friday, then back again Saturday and Sunday.  The weekend might be nice for the beach, but the rest of the week looks kind of questionable. 

Do I care?

Not a wink.

You see, this is the time of year when I can go from sedentary to on the road in less than sixty seconds.  Outdoor gear means flip flops and my car keys.  When someone says, "Meet us at trivia," I can be there in twenty minutes including a fifteen minute travel time because I don't have to spend a lot of time getting into winter gear just to go outside. 

I am still waiting for that elusive Blue Skies From Start to Finish day.  Every day either starts, ends, or is interrupted by dismal looking clouds.  I want to look up in the sky and see nothing but blue.  Nothing.  When that happens, the summer will truly be complete.

In the meantime, I'll keep myself busy sitting on the patio even if it's overcast.  I'll walk around in bare feet even if the sun hides behind clouds.  It's my Civic Summer Duty (or my Summer Civic Duty). 

It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.  Might as well be me.

MY QUEST FOR ICE CREAM

My quest for ice cream is bringing up some conversations about different franchises and stands where we used to get ice cream when we were kids.  

When I lived in Southern New Hampshire, our favorite places to go were always Hayward Farms and Blakes.  We'd throw in HoJo's (Howard Johnson's, for the uninitiated) every once in a while, the only place where I would eat peppermint stick ice cream.

Around here in NE Massachusetts, we've had ice cream places come and go.  There was Sid Whites by the duck pond (not to by confused with White Farms in Ipswich) and we had a Friendly's until it closed unceremoniously.  Richardson's is one place I've never had ice cream because the cow poop smell from the on-site cows makes it impossible to eat chocolate anything without believing it smells, tastes, and has the consistency of cow dung.  There was the Rose Glen Dairy (post-Sid White), and a couple of shops that have tried desperately to stay open by charging an arm and a leg for a simple ice cream.  Sarkisian Farms sells ice cream but it's actually a driving range that used to be a vegetable and plant stand.

There are the old stand-bys, like Treadwells (though it has moved) and Dairy Queen and Mad Maggies and Benson's and Mac's and Dairy Maid (where they serve the largest "small" ice cream I have ever encountered).  And if you're really desperate, McDonald's serves up a quick soft-serve and Wendy's has a variety of ice cream concoctions, though I haven't set foot in a fast food restaurant in over a year, maybe longer, so I could be lying.  And now frozen yogurt is everywhere.  I have become partial to Orange Leaf and am more and more hesitant to try the imitators.  Their pomegranate, wedding cake, and brownie batter are easily to-die-for flavors.

I suppose it's only fair to blame all of these places on my eclectic ice cream palate.  I've gone through several "Favorite Phases."  For a while, I loved vanilla, then chocolate, then chocolate chip, peppermint stick, and now my current favorite -- chocolate chip cookie dough.

That being said, I'll add to yesterday's blog and simply say that I need to replace the carton of mint chocolate chip I bought "for my son" last week.  It has gone from a full container to one that holds a few spoonfuls.  You cannot truly blame me as it has been ridiculously hot this past week, and the ice cream stares at me every time I open the freezer to get ice.  This time, though, I will buy myself some ice cream, too.

I'd take all the blame, but the ice cream case at the supermarket shut down last week during the hot spell, and they lost thousands of dollars worth of the frozen desserts.  The only case left intact contained Ben & Jerry's and Brigham's and Edy's.  So, you see, I was just helping the store out by buying ice cream; it's one less carton they have to worry about.

That's the "scoop." 

MINT CHOCOLATE CHIPLESS

I bought ice cream the other day for my son.  No, really.  I got a kind that I don't even like that much:  Mint Chocolate Chip. 

I left it untouched for a day or two, but it just got so bloody hot here that I started salivating looking at the container.  So I opened the carton and scooped out some mint chocolate chip ice cream.

It was delicious.

The next night, it was still hot.  I grabbed a bowl and scooped out more mint chocolate chip ice cream.  I would share the ice cream with my son, but first he was at work, then last night he left for the weekend.  Last night it was the hottest of all, so I had a little bit more mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Tonight I arrive home from a hot day of river bank exploration, tower climbing, restaurant eating, and bail avoidance.  I immediately shower -- Do not pass Go; do not collect $200.  I watch a little TV, download some pictures from the latest misadventure, suck down ice water like it's going out of style, and …

Eat another bowl of the mint chocolate chip ice cream that I apparently am not supposed to like very much.

The bowls may be small, but so is the carton of ice cream.  It is now officially half empty, and yet still half full.  By the time my son returns from his weekend, I will have to buy another carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream to replace the carton that I apparently do like more than I claim to. 

I'm blaming the heat.  If I had my normal wits about me, I'd have bought chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and called it a wash in the first place.  I'm innocent, I tell you, innocent!  Heat waves and ice cream naturally go together -- I'm just a victim of circumstance.

One more day of this hot weather, though, and the circumstantial evidence will be long gone, anyway.  Like it was never even here.

Where's that scoop, damnit?  I'm going in.  Again. 

.