Tabla ImmundaAt work, the office is a place of some comfort. I have been there that things have a place, now: a balance has been struck between the mountain of stuff and the spaces for it all, and there is a little bit of harmony at the end of the day. Cleaning up is easy, and the light is gentle except when the solar geometries knock sunlight straight through the window, or we decide to light the surgeons lamping. We rarely do that. I must say, too, the office is quite warm; sometimes, coming back from a jaunt is walking into a wall of air. It bothers me less than the other, I think.
We have a whiteboard, of course (ah, academia). This wall of malleable paper is ever useful, but we've found it to collect paraphernalia in the corners (much like everything else): names, times, salutations. That sort of thing. Some time ago, this gentle gloss of history threatened to overwhelm the usefulness, so up went sleeves and out came the cleaning solution and paper towels. Soon, the wall was white, white, and eager to take new knowledge. It only took days before someone wrote salutations on it.
At home, the office is less so. It is full of things, but they have no places, and there is still too much stuff in here. I am pruning it out, putting things in boxes for the attic or bags for the curb. It's coming along. I took the whiteboard down to the kitchen hallway, and it's getting much better use as a shopping list.
One of my co-workers has whiteboards that they do not use. I use them; I occasionally walk in to put new hints to wonders on them. Today, I entered to erase them all, every one, to replace them with a single word.
Spoons CollectedIn the kitchen on the ledge above the stove sits a jelly jar. It is full of spoons. There are people who collect spoons as keepsakes; little memorial implements that sit in cases of glass and walnut. There is nothing wrong with this; the people I know who do this are as reasonable as all of the other people I know. The spoons they seek are usually spoons that have emblem, or token. They are not meant to be used as tools. My spoons are tools.
These spoons of mine up atop the stove are not the spoons from the drawer; there are spoons there, too. The spoons in the drawer with the rest of the tableware are all spoons akin, the larger sisters for soup and the little brothers for other things. They are useful spoons for set work, but I find myself grasping for spoons a lot in the kitchen, and it has been useful to have a second set, mongrel, collected there out in the open easy reach of the jelly jar.
I do not remember how they started, those spoons. I know that I have one spoon from the first set of table ware I ever bought for myself and my housemates (a disaster, with lessons). I have odd lot spoons from yard sales and thrift stores that looked interesting, and were reasonably sturdy (it does not do to have a bendy spoon). I have two round bowls of spoons, good for oatmeal, and a mess of others, good for other things: coffee or tea, taking tastes, erstwhile percussion.
Recently, someone was parting out and giving away a full set of implements: spoons, forks, knives, more spoons. This netted me tools for meals in the office, with great thanks. This also brought me two spoons. The first is small and sturdy, meant to perch upon a small cup of strong coffee. The second is strong, proud and thoroughly simple in its institutionality. It's good for pulling up ice cream. It feels solid in a cup of coffee.
It has a strong back, that spoon: it is welcome.
CrittersUnits are useful things. We track time with shadows, seconds, hours, years in pairs. Distance can be handled with bits of wood or the more malleable measure of hands. I have found new units these past weeks, out in the garden: parsley plants.
A groundhog is one and one half parsley per day.
I stomped into the garden after the groundhog brandishing a hoe. The groundhog was utterly unimpressed by this. I smacked the ground and hollar'd a bit, which the groundhog may have found amusing. I flicked pebbles at it. In retrospect, I imagine turning the hose on the thing might have been more immediately effective. In any event, it has not been back, so I think I may have sufficiently unhinged it. Which brings me to my second discovery:
Rabbits are half a parsley plant a day.
At least that, anyway: I only had two parsley plants. I think the rabbits were being kept at bay by the groundhog.
I haven't seen the rabbits in a few days: a carnival of kittens has moved in. They dance and tumble in the brambles, and chase ghosts around the bases of the trees. They find me strange when I appear on the porch.
And if the cats move on, I can start rooting for the hawk again.
SwitchesUpon the wall of my house is a light switch, and it does nothing. This is not entirely accurate; it may do something, and it may only be that I do not yet know what. From the stories I'm told, every house has one of these, and it may be that if you have not yet found it in your own home: it is only a matter of time until the discovery. I have only one. I sometimes flip it as a I walk by, but I always flip it back. I always flip it down when I am done with it, for down is off, and that is possibly safer.
I have no issue with this switch. The problem is with the switches wired in pairs, each controlling a lamp or lamps. I have no less then four of these pairs scattered throughout the house (Mr. Bit has more, as his house is bigger, so he suffers more the malady). I have an yen to keep them consistent: down is off, you see, and this sometimes means taking the stairs in the darkness.
Mr. Containment has discovered another solution: intelligent switches. With these, the bottom is always off, and the top is always on, regardless of the combinatorics. I do not like these, though. It is not that I worry that, should I put them in, I will be unable to turn on the lights when the power is off. Rather: it is more complexity. The house is a simple machine at the moment, and I understand it well. Well, some.
Because of history, family, and community, I have long been thoughtful of Euler's Formula. Today, circumstance brought myself, a blackboard, and Mr. Creed in close proximity. He has oft threatened to explain the thing to me; today he did. It took him five minutes. The world is a little richer now.
As for the switches, I am learning to leave them as they fall, up or down the stairs. It is late enough now to throw them, and climb upwards toward sleep.
Fizz, SummerIt is hot. We are in the process of trading one heat for the other, here; the air is turning from a warm licking of syrup to the hot dry heat of ovens. The night sends teasing breezes through the window, and the ceiling fans prove more reliable. There are few lights on, and the kitchen is still hot from cooking. A good time for the porch.
I have touched on this before: growing up, there was a soda shop at the end of the alley from my Grandmother's house, and we would often find ourselves there on nights like these, all those years ago on the other side of the Commonwealth. I remember seeing the word "Phosphate" in the corner of the menu board, over a small collection of flavors. I asked the counter lady for a chocolate.
She leaned over the counter to look down at me with a stern face. "It's not sweet," she said. "You won't like it".
I drank it anyway: seltzer, chocolate syrup, and and a touch of phosphoric acid. She was right: it was bright, and tart, and while I wasn't sure I liked it, I drank it anyway.
I make them these days with seltzer water from the store (there was an unfortunate brush with a seltzer bottle some time ago: the store bottles are easier). I should be using U-Bet syrup, and I can occasionally find it here, but I always use Hershey's: this is a drink of place, and I do not live in New York City (I will admit, too, that I more likely use Hershey's because I always have - the drink is like that, too). I do not have any phosphoric acid, but that's all right. I'm not even sure where to get some, at this point (that is to say: I've not get gotten around to looking). Pour seltzer into a glass: glop syrup in, and stir gently. The drink is crisp, refreshing, and deeply strange. Add some milk for a dessert with a stranger name. In the clutter of the cabinets, I could find no straws, but that's all right, too.
So I sit on the porch with a chocolate phosphate, the air rattles in the trees, the lantern sways a little, and a fat red moon rises in the sky.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Commentary accepted at pen@goob.com, although the traps are agressive and the pointy bits simply drip with dark liquour. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.