Miscellanea

Just realized I still haven't told you guys about the pie.

It all began about 18 months ago. Beeeej, whom you can find elsewhere on LJ, is a rabid hockey fan and borderline Cornell alum of my acquaintance through a humor site (topfive.com) to which we both contribute. I am an enthusiastic UMaine alum and generally abhor sports like nature abhors vacuums, but I can't not catch a little school spirit whenever Frozen Four time rolls around and Maine hockey is in the mix. (Makes it kind of hell living here in UNH Wildcat territory, especially the year I was assigned to go to Durham for the newspaper to catch the returning Wildcats after UMaine defeated them ... again.)

This story has nothing to do with the Frozen Four specifically. It has to do with a Maine-Cornell game, and a bet. I put up my famous homemade eggnog (Pegnog, for those in the know) against Beeeej's famous homemade pecan pie. Our mutual friends on a TopFive-contributor discussion forum (that's a high-falutin' way of saying "work productivity eliminator") who have sampled one, the other or both products will tell you that each is the best of its kind. (Now accepting orders for Pegnog -- be the first on your block to serve it at your holiday party!)

Long story not short enough, Maine won the hockey game (I don't remember the score, but I'm sure Beeeej could pull that info for you in a jiffy, along with the goals, assists, height, weight, inseam, turnons and turnoffs of individual players) and I won the bet. And thus began my long vigil waiting for Beeeej to make good on it. 'Cause you see, he couldn't just box it, tape some bubble wrap around it and make it absolutely, positively get here overnight, all the way from Manhattan to the NH Seacoast. No, he insisted on handing it over in person.

So there was a mild effort to have me drive to Providence, R.I., one weekend when he was going to be there on one of his myriad trips out of the city. Dude travels more than anyone I know. (And he knows EVERYONE. EVERYONE.) But see, I have this weekend job on the graveyard shift, and driving a couple of hours to an unfamiliar city after getting out of work at 7 a.m. didn't appeal to me.

There might have been one other attempt at a hand-to-hand exchange. But aside from being fodder for occasional good-natured ribbing among our invisible computer friends, mostly it was a dormant issue. Then, out of the blue, a month or so ago, Beeeej announced he would be in NH in September, and could I arrange for pickup? Oh yes, I certainly could.

Better yet -- a couple of weeks later, he announced plans to be in Hudson, NH, the following Sunday for a lawn party he attends every year at the home of a college friend's parents, and is that close enough for me to drive for pie? Let's see ... since we made the bet, gas prices have probably almost doubled ... I try to avoid going to that area of NH for personal reasons ... I'd be driving over after my graveyard shift ... but hey, free food BESIDES the pie ... so, OK.

That was two Sundays ago now. After I got past the willies at having to drive so close to my short-time home in Nashua (reeeeeeally unpleasant personal drama at that place back in '96), I had a nice time as the only gentile, near as I could tell, at the largest gathering of Jews in New Hampshire. (Hey, that was how they described it.) Maybe even outside of NYC or Miami. It was worth it for the cabbage salad alone, and I got to meet a lot of nice folks.

But yes, there was also PIE. Now, I am not generally a pie person, but I like a good pumpkin or pecan pie, especially around the late fall/early winter holidays, but I will not shun a good pecan pie at any time of year. Beeeej had slaved over the oven the day before, amid party preparations in July heat, to make good on the bet, and had the foresight to write "DO NOT SERVE" on the aluminum foil cover so the caterers wouldn't, you know, serve it, and wouldn't you know, they didn't. And here is the photographic evidence (that's the pie in the front):

Which really isn't photographic evidence at all, 'cause it's just Beeeej and a pie, and there's no actual proof at all that I was ever there. But I was, and once back home, after waiting like a half-day for the perfect hunger moment, I dug in. And I was having piegasms for like two, three days. For it was, in fact, damn good pie.

But the letdown lingers on. I mean, after an 18-month buildup, it's hard to let go, y'know?

Every time I hear this, I tell myself if I hear it one more time I'll scream.

This is me, screaming, after hearing it again tonight, a neighbor's reaction on the local news to a violent tragedy -- in this case, a double homicide in West Paris, Maine, very near where I spent my summers as a child. In fact, one of my best childhood friends spent part of her formative years there.

I'm tired of seeing people on the news after events like this saying something like, "This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen here." Often, they're people from somewhere else, somewhere more populous, somewhere with a higher crime rate, who came to these places thinking they could escape it completely. I'm tired of people thinking that moving to an area like Bangor or West Paris, Maine, or Exeter or Colebrook, NH, or Rushville freaking Indiana, will insulate them from the world's ugliness.

Here's a news flash: Ugliness is everywhere. The inner city doesn't have a monopoly on that. Beautiful, out-of-the-way places like Maine, New Hampshire and ... well, other beautiful, out-of-the-way places don't get a pass. Babies get cooked in ovens in Lewiston, Maine. Unstable people go on murderous rampages in Bangor, Maine, and across northern New Hampshire. (And some of those occurred in the '80s, even before the Intertubes!) Husbands kill wives, and wives husbands, and parents children, all over the place. Sure, the incidence might be lower here (hence, the higher crime rate where *you're* from), but we're part of the world, too. Violent crime doesn't leave a bag of burning dog poop on our front doorstep, ring the doorbell and run away snickering. It comes in, makes itself a sandwich and puts its feet up on the coffee table. Hell, sometimes it has a key 'cause it grew up here.

So if you're from, say, South Central Los Angeles, or Washington D.C., or Roxbury, Mass., and you're thinking it would be really nice to move to the greener grass, oh, by all means come. The air is cleaner, the sky bluer and water clearer. But just don't think for a minute that what you're trying to leave behind won't follow you over the rainbow.

"This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen here"? This kind of thing shouldn't happen ANYwhere.

In the words of Jimmy Buffet, I blew out a flip-flop today.

Did not, however, step on a pop-top. I was wearing the newest of my vast collection of Okabashis -- black thongs. For some reason, one or the other of them has been flipping under my toes repeatedly. Can't figure out why; never had that problem with any of my other pairs, including the turquoise thongs I've had for like five years. (Should I worry about Okabashi? Seems like the quality is slipping.)

Well, today coming back in to work from the lunch break, the rubber thong that connects the sole to that V-shaped part that goes over the top of the foot broke, permitting the flip-flop to flap free, or to flip-flop like a presidential candidate.

Normally, I have at least one other pair of sandal-esque footwear in my car, because I often bring a change of clothes for other eventualities, and I don't know how to pack light.

Not today, however. (Oh, I'm pretty sure there's a pair of sneakers in there somewhere, but that would have required excavation, and besides they would've looked ugly with what I was wearing. So, no.) Left the reusable grocery bag with like three pairs of Okabashis in it at home on my bed.

Rain on your wedding day, Alanis? That's coincidence. THIS is ironic.

I spent what was left of the day either hopping awkwardly on my right foot or sliding my left foot around gingerly when the packing tape employed to fasten the thong didn't hold for more than a few seconds. I'm pretty sure the job, like most everything else, called for *duct* tape.

I stopped at a Walgreens after work to replace the Okabashis with a $1.99 pair of nondescript black thongs so I wouldn't have to stop at home before heading to the beach for my walk.

And ended up walking barefoot on the intertidal sand, anyway.

So I'm lying here trying to sleep just now, and I start to hear some kind of noise up in the vicinity of the ceiling. Squirrel on the roof? I think. I can't remember there being any trees that would scrape leaves against it, and there's no wind to propel it, anyway.


Moments later, I hear a rustling below me; sounds like it's beside my bed, on the floor. The man of my dreams, sneaking in for ... well, probably not. Some kind of nocturnal animal beneath the floor? PLEEEEEEASE don't let it be a skunk.


I again let it go, and, nearly awake now, I decide to check my e-mail one last time before trying again to drift off. I feel something brush against my arm and flutter in the glow of the laptop monitor: It is a giant moth. GIANT, I tell you. I flail my pillow around, strike the winged beast several times mid-air, and finally it gives up and plummets 1, maybe 2 feet to the floor. Where it will remain until it decomposes, 'cause ain't no way I want to deal with a giant moth corpse.

But wait...

(Moments later; loud stage whisper) OH MY GOD! I can hear it moving! It was just stunned! Pinin' for the fjords, maybe! It's ... it's ... it's on the wing again! AAAAAARGH! AAAAARGH!

THUD! WHACK! CRASH! Papers, writing implements and assorted other miscellania go flying as I thrash my pillow blindly in the dark, invoking The Force. What's that by my leg? SLAP! (silence ... so far) There; pretty sure I got it dead that time.

Somehow, at least, I managed not to destroy my laptop in the commotion, despite my panic.

But great. Now I'll never sleep. And I have no idea where the body is.

(later still)

WHOOSH! *AGAIN* it rises! *Again* it falls. What's it gonna take, buckshot? Dick Cheney in an orange vest?

Let me just make clear, I am anti-Meangirl. Decades before the Tina Fey movie by that name (except that she used two words instead of my one-word affectation) about extreme high school cliquishness, I had my own experiences on the receiving end of Meangirls.

There was Karen G. when I was in, I think, middle school. I still don't know what her beef was with me. All I knew was she was "after" me. I still remember her chasing me down York Street threatening to beat me up, and being in fear for my life and honing the avoidance skills I would often employ later in life. Also, Gina D. -- my memory of her dispute with me is even fuzzier, but writing about Karen conjured up Gina's image as well. Huh.

In high school, I don't remember any actual humiliation at the hands of the *cool* crowd; just phone calls to try to get me to do their homework for them. But I was the designated runt in one of my own posses (there were two or maybe three posses), and suffered, usually, in silence, when S, L, B and sometimes even C used me as a verbal punching bag. The analogy is sort of apt; I might have whined a bit, but truth is, I never counterpunched, just ... took it.

I claim some measure of eventual victory against that latter group. When I returned home for one of our class reunions -- the one at that place over by the high school, in that development where my cousin lived (was it still called the Beau Rivage then?), maybe our 10th year? Not sure, but anyway, it started in again. I, like them, had been through college and a few years in the real world by then, and thanks to some personal growth triggered by events I'll not write about just now, I'd developed some amount of confidence and self-regard. So when it started to feel like high school again, I told them that if they kept it up, I was leaving. At one point, I believe I actually did get up to leave. Now, I don't know why this held any sway over them, but they did; they stopped. Was that all I would have needed to do in high school? Of course, I'll never know, and I've since learned that standing up for myself certainly doesn't always yield the desired results, but that night I learned that it *could*.

This comes up today because of a workplace situation in which I recognized my own inner Meangirl -- at age 50, no less. At my sporadic job, where a platoon of temps work in ever-shifting smaller squadrons on projects of short duration, usually a month or less, groups of coworkers are seated around long tables at individual computer workstations.

At the latest one, which wrapped up tonight, there were a few of us who were more, shall we say, boisterous than some others, and one woman whose response was to overcompensate in the other direction and play strict librarian. This trait emerged shortly after we were moved from an alcove (where she, yes, even she, participated in the chatter) out to the main part of the work area. No connection between our noise and the move, far as I know.

Yes, yes, it's supposed to be a quiet workplace, the better to foster concentration. FINE. But zero tolerance? Please.

With the original table configuration in the new location,  the librarian, seated at the end, repeatedly admonished one of my more talkative cohorts -- OK, my MOST talkative cohort, who sat near her -- with a loud, staccato "SHHHH!"  Of course, when LIBRARIAN wanted to chitchat, it was OK. Anyway, the constant shushing prompted TC to change seats and move to the empty station beside me -- fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it.

Long story short, TC and I were duly chastised last week and split up (TC was moved back toward librarian, though not directly beside her as before), and we sucked it up, licked our wounds, were zen about it, and things became 9,000 percent quieter after that. But still there was occasional chitchat around the table -- brief and not any worse than any neighboring tables. If librarian had any complaints, I didn't personally hear them.

Until the other day, some two weeks later, when she inexplicably took the seat beside me, the one formerly occupied by TC. I think there was some mumbling about the A/C making it cold at the end of the table. We weren't long into our shift before I turned to comment on something to my LESS-talkative cohort beside me, and had barely spit out five words when "SHHHH!" (Childish humor digression: "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Interrupting cow." "Interrupting cow wh--" "MOO!")

This happened two or three more times during what remained of our time on that project, and always when I had only emitted a few words.

Ire toward the librarian originally was confined to TC and, to a lesser extent, others at that end of the table who had been privy to the shushing if not direct targets, and for TC, it only intensified. My own reaction, as someone who had not been directly involved, was largely confined to eye-rolling. But then, during break last night, TC presented for us her impression of librarian's strange, ducklike way of getting out of her chair and walking around. (Some ergonomic exercise, I assume.) Back at the table after break, I gave in to my baser self and added sound effects to the visual humor: "Quack! Quack!"

OK, so not my most withering attempt at mockery ever.

And then today, when we again were mocking her during one of her strolls, it hit me -- we had become Meangirls. I mentioned this to TC (while the librarian was waddling away from the table, of course) and she agreed. She also commiserated on having been the brunt of such treatment in high school. I reflected on this afterward.

I'm not proud of myself for this, but at this moment, I am only slightly disturbed that our own experiences at the receiving end did not prevent our deriving satisfaction from being on the giving end.

Finally! I remembered to bring one of my reusable grocery bags into the store with me yesterday instead of forgetting it on the front seat of my car.

I decided several weeks ago to make a more conscious effort to forgo paper. I abhor plastic except in very specialized circumstances like chili or Southwestern corn chowder from the salad bar and other stuff that could pop open and leak, so that wasn't much of an issue, but I figured, maybe it's time to take another step to reduce the old carbon footprint. (Size 7-1/2, btw. Size 8 in late afternoon.)

Trouble was, I would hop out of the car without thinking and walk all through the store, mindlessly throwing stuff into my shopping cart, only realizing as I approached the checkout that I had forgotten the reusable YET AGAIN. I was getting headaches from all the mental dope slaps.* But so determined was I that when this happened, I would still forgo the store-supplied bag and juggle my purchases out to the car. Luckily, I usually don't buy more than an armful in one visit.

This also would happen at Wal-Mart, which sells my reusable bags of choice (less logo-y, you know, and also black and kind of edgy, 'cause I'm nothing if not edgy). And when it did, oh look, there they are, right with the impulse items at the checkout, so I'd just buy another one and save a plastic bag. So now I have a collection of like six black reusable grocery bags.

And of course, I have developed a habit of using them to carry pretty much everything *besides* groceries. So that when I *do* remember to take one into the supermarket with me, I have to empty it out first.

*Which raises the question: Just how resistant AM I to behavioral conditioning, or whatever the correct term is? Like, sheesh.

When you go to the beach and it's not crowded, maintain a minimum 50-foot buffer between you and anybody else.

I'm talking to *you*, pack of college kids who have no concept of personal space and parked your towels like 3 feet away from me yesterday despite the unoccupied huge tracts of sand extending all around me. I bet you do this in sparsely attended movies, too, taking the empty seat beside the only other person in the theater.

I know I'm 50 and therefore invisible (memo to me: topic for another blog), which I guess is why I was fantasizing about emptying the sand from my blanket right in your faces. I'M HERE, DAMMIT. I WON'T BE IGNORED, DAN.

Granted, it did get kind of entertaining when the scruffy-looking contemporary of yours left his friends, oh let's call them greasers, and tried to bum a ciggy-butt from one of you, let's call you socs, and you started messing with him, offering one in exchange for what sounded like a "B" or a "bee," which I think meant "beer." Greaser dude was all into it till he figured out he was being messed with, then he got all belligerent and stuff. Eventually he toddled off, but not before politely bidding adieu to the lady socs in your party.

So off he walked with his greaser friends, then thought better of it and decided, no, I WILL have satisfaction, and toddled back to take you on, soc who was messing with him, threatening to "murder you" and what-not while you and your soc friends just laughed. Just as I was debating internally whether to log off my mobile e-mail to free up my cell phone camera for documenting fisticuffs, either for the news or for evidence at the eventual trial, his two greaser buddies finally appealed to his better nature and persuaded him to leave -- but again, not without politely acknowledging your lady socs. So gallant, he.

But guys, you can't always count on a greaser in attack mode to save you. Keep your freaking distance, or I swear, next time, it's a face full of sand.

The first time I went to New York City overnight was after 9/11. Before that, I'd visited once, in 1986 -- jumped at an opportunity to attend David Letterman's show, then at NBC, on a work-related trip to cover a local man's appearance on it for my newspaper. But that was an in-and-out trip on the same night, with a limo ride to and from the airport in Newark, and the tall buildings, while fascinating in the way they formed a manmade canyon that let in little of the late-afternoon June sun, intimidated me. As did all the people, all those scary New York people.

I'd been through it one other time, on Amtrak, in 1992 or thereabouts. Stopped at Penn Station, but didn't get out to see the city. Not that I would have: I was afraid of NYC, all crime and rudeness as far as I knew. Sometime in the mid-'90s, I actually even made plans to go to the city for an informal gathering of Internet acquaintances, but backed out at least partly because I was afraid. Me, who'd had no problem driving on LA freeways in a rental car. Afraid -- somehow, NYC always seemed like this fortress whose walls contained all manner of frightening things. How would I get around? Where would I stay? How would I know if it was in a bad area (or should I say, a *worse* area, because all of Manhattan was Big and Bad to this girl from a Maine mill town now living in New Hampshire)? What if I got mugged? Boston was about all the city I could handle, and even that was frequently scary.

But then the planes hit and the towers fell. History was happening some five hours away, and I was a reporter, after all; this was something I should witness. I had new Internet friends who lived in NYC, still a fortress but now with a gaping wound. Also, with tourism pretty much trashed by the attacks, hotel rates were within my range, or close enough. Going there became my prime directive. I sucked it up, figured out that the best way for me to get into the city was by commuter rail from New Haven, and went. This was in October 2001. The 18th or 19th, I think -- I had purposely decided not to go on the 11th for fear of another attack on the one-monthiversary. I went behind the walls of the fortress and found it surprisingly accessible.

I have no grand point to relating this other than to regurgitate on or about the fifth anniversary a memory imprinted indelibly on me, even if I have trouble remembering some details. And, well, I have this blog now. I might as well do something with it besides indulge my depression in posts locked from everyone's view but mine.

A priority for me during that trip, as for all of the tourists who were starting to dribble back in and of course for New Yorkers, was to make a pilgrimage to the still-smoldering Ground Zero.

My first visit there was with my Internet friends. I remember an acrid-sweet smell wafting from the site as we walked at night along the perimeter, at the time still a couple of blocks away, delineated by sawhorses (forgive me; I've forgotten the names of the streets around there now), looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sense of it, to get a handle on it. I kept overlaying the map in my mind from the news coverage on top of what my senses were perceiving to try to understand what was what. I had no real reference point; the only time I had personally seen the towers had been from the air, strangely just a few months earlier, when I had missed my planned flight to Las Vegas via Cincinnati and ended up on a flight that connected in Newark. That flight from Manchester, NH, to Newark left me with a freakish memory in retrospect: As we flew down the Hudson in what must have been the smallest jet ever made, the flight attendant pointed out the World Trade Center (not that it was hard to pick out), and I made some flip remark about how easy it would be for a plane to fly into those buildings. I didn't mean fly into them *deliberately*, necessarily, but that remark haunted me when it was jarred loose in my head at some point after the attack.

As we walked the perimeter during that first visit to Ground Zero, I also remember being inappropriately giddy and making nervous jokes that, in retrospect, I hope didn't offend anyone within earshot. I went back another day that week in the daylight and found myself -- my reporter's sensibilities offended by signs admonishing visitors not to take pictures of a very public disaster scene -- surreptitiously snapping shots at one point of entry to the site with my digital camera. At another point, not surreptitiously, I stood on a planter on another street farther away to get photos that captured as much of the site as possible. I was overwhelmingly moved by the impromptu memorials, the wall close to the site that stretched around a whole block and another one up at ... damn, what's the name of that park? I want to say Union Square; is that one? Up around 14th Street somewhere? Early in the aftermath, that park or somewhere near there had been the line civilians weren't supposed to cross, and a memorial had sprung up there.

I think it was during that second visit to Ground Zero that I had an encounter with a New Yorker Not Of My Acquaintance. I had become disoriented looking for the subway station to get back uptown to meet up with my Internet friends for dinner, and was wandering somewhere around, as I recall, City Hall. A man with glasses discerned my situation and directed me to follow him -- no easy task, as he kept a pace about twice as fast as I was comfortable with. My impromptu guide stayed what must have been a comical-looking several paces ahead of me, turning around periodically to talk to me, or rather yell to me, as he kept walking at that inhumane speed. That was how he told me of the many friends he'd lost in the towers. As I recall, he was from Staten Island, and a lot of his neighbors worked in the towers. I just remember listening reverently as this guy who had no idea who I was spilled what must have been his deepest pain in brief bursts as he turned around every few steps. He never looked me in the eye; he just kind of talked at me, like this was now part of the tour of Lower Manhattan.

I also did some more conventional touristy things during that trip, doing my part to bolster the NYC economy. One Internet friend and I took the Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. I got a ticket into Letterman's audience, no doubt easier for the lack of tourists, and did some souvenir shopping around his Ed Sullivan Theater. Those souvenirs remain prized possessions -- a mug with a graphic rendering of the Twin Towers and, especially, a T-shirt bearing the FDNY logo. It's my favorite T-shirt now, and I make it a point to wear it every Sept. 11.

I've been back to NYC two or three times more since that first visit. The April after the attacks, when I heard that they would be shooting twin beams of light into the air as temporary stand-ins for the towers, I wanted to see that for myself. I sat on the sidewalk on a nearby street near the new perimeter, a couple of blocks closer than the previous October, as I recall, and just looked up into a beautiful April night sky pierced by the twin rays. It was night, and I was alone, yet I felt none of the fear that had once kept me from visiting the city even in daylight. I remember noticing trees along the sidewalk -- those small, perfect trees that cities bring in for aesthetics -- and being impressed that a hard city like New York would make room for nature. (Yeah, I know -- Central Park.) One such tree, with a yellow ribbon tied around it, formed the frame for my view of the lights and for one of my favorite Ground Zero photos.

That's the last time I went to Ground Zero, and I haven't been back to the city since almost a year after that -- I think, about three or three and a half years ago. Now, finances are a much bigger issue for me, so a hotel stay is out of the picture. I can't take time away from work, and I can't justify spending the train fare even for a quickie visit. I imagine a day will come when I get to go back; I have yet to fulfill a childhood wish of catching a Broadway show, after all.