Suzie's Doll

It began with bathrobe shopping.  I have more difficulty finding a bathrobe I like for a price I like then, well, then I don't know what, but it's difficult.  Last time I needed a robe, after I'd worn myself out searching, I was stopped dead in my tracks by some fabric.  I couldn’t resist those kitty faces purring out at me from thick fleece, and I bought the requisite yardage.  Unfortunately, I used a new pattern and it ended up too big.  Still, it was warm and comfy, and I wore it for years.

This year I finally got tired of looking like a giant fleece bear with kitty cats all over her.  I wanted a change, something prettier and less gigantic.  I saw the softest, sweetest red flannel with leaves entwined all over it, and a few days later, and voila!  I’m wrapped in a cheerful, scarlet robe.  There were just enough scraps left over for a doll’s nightgown.

Have you ever sewn doll clothes?  The seams can be little tricky, picky things.  On the other hand, you don’t have to worry an armhole being a bit tight or loose.  A doll won’t complain if that stiff lace you’ve had for a million years is scratchy, and, most of all, a doll won’t care if you decide the task of elasticizing the wrists is too finicky.  In fact, if you don’t have a piece of fabric quite long enough for the sleeves, a doll won’t whine if they become 3/4 sleeves. What, a doll’s arms are going to get cold? I don’t think so.

During the course of making this little nightgown, the weirdest thing happened.  Okay, if you don’t sew, you might not think this is a big deal, but if you do sew, listen to this.  My spool of thread and my bobbin ran out at exactly the same time!  Not only that, they ran out just as I finished a seam.  I am not kidding!  I’d already bought a matching spool of thread, so I could fill a new bobbin and not miss a beat, but still, what are the odds?  They are astronomical, that’s what they are!  In fact, if anyone else has ever had this happen, let me know!

Anyway, do we have a doll that requires a nightie?  Yes, yes we do.! My Perfect Granddaughter loves her American Girl Doll.  (Hey, I’m a grandma; of course I got her one.) 

Suzie is an avid reader, as you can see below, and we don’t mind if she falls asleep with her face smushed against a book now and then, but, horrors!  Do you see Elizabeth Cole wedged between Suzie and the wall?  Elizabeth has fallen asleep in her clothes! 

 

  

She obviously needs this nightgown.  It will be folded, wrapped in tissue paper and make an appearance in Suzie’s Christmas stocking or perhaps under her Hanukkah menorah. 

 

 Yes, as I have mentioned before, we celebrate everything. We try to up our chances of Santa coming down the chimney or the vial of oil lasting seven extra days. I mean the chances of those things happening are barely greater than the chances of having your spool and bobbin simultaneously run out of thread.

Happy Season of Miracles to you!

Let Sleeping Cats Lie

Wumpus is my new cat, my replacement cat, my a-bit-weird-even-for-a-cat cat.  He is gray tabby on the top and white  bunny on the bottom.  His full name is Wumpus Boris McCoy, but he’s known as Mr. Puss or Wummy or Wum Pudding. 

You’ve heard the saying Let Sleeping Dogs Lie which means, I suppose, that if you suddenly wake up a sleeping dog, it will be startled and will attack you.  I don’t know about that.  All the dogs that I’ve known, if you startle them away, they’ll lift their bleary heads to look at you, flap their tails a couple of times and then go back to sleep.  That’s about the extent of their ferociousness. 

On the other hand, if you startle a sleeping cat, well, then you’ll see some action!  Faster than a speeding  bullet, it will twist itself into a pretzel and sprint away (unless it was the dearly departed Elaine, in which case you’d feel the searing pain of a claw ripping down your hand before she fled).   In most cases, dog or cat, the adage doesn’t seem to be much of a warning for not letting the animal lie there like a lump on the carpet.

The big threat, really, is that the animals won’t let YOU lie.  You want to get an extra hour in the morning?  Unh uh.  A dog will, well, I don’t know what a dog will do because I’ve never owned a dog, but a cat will meow at you, just out of reach until you get up and feed it.  Or it will walk right over you and, just as you're drifting off, over you again, and as you feel the comfort of your bed, over you yet once again, or it will sit on your chest, suppressing panic as you begin to suffocate, or put it’s nose one millimeter away from your nose until you are awakened by staring.  We had one cat that would sit on the night table and push things off one by one until you got the hint.  There went the pen, smack, rollll; then the keys, jingle jangle; then your watch, thump.  Even if the cat suffered from, let’s just conjecture, being propelled off the nightstand at that point, you were good and awake and looking for your watch before you stepped on it. 

Wumpus, however, oh, Wumpus is the gold standard of cat.  (Well, okay except for that one time he threw up all over the quilt I’m working on.  I SAID gold standard not platinum standard). 

 

Here's Wumpus on the rinsed-and-yackless pocket quilt.  You can see
both the tabby half and the bunny half. Both halves are bunny fur soft. 

Wumpus will let you sleep and sleep.  He will lie on the bed next to you purring until you feel like getting up.  With Steve here for a week taking his spot next to me, he curled up at my feet until I rolled out of bed.  One morning it was at the crack of 8:00.  A couple of times, if he’s been particularly hungry, he has awakened me, I admit, but he’s done so in a particularly peaceful manner and only after 7:30 A.M.  No noisy yowling or throwing of jewelry for him.  He pads right up to my face and touches my eyelids with his little pink nose.  Kisses on the eyelids:  it’s a charming way to wake up. 

In return, I always waken Wumpus Boris with a gentle petting.  Usually, I let sleeping cats lie. because, well, what would you wake them for? 

P.S.  Huh, I just wondered if the adage meant to say Let Sleeping Dogs Lie as in "not tell the truth."  That would have to be a different Blog post altogether. 

 

Home Cooking

There it is, a full half page in the magazine: “Enter Our Recipe Contest!  My Mom makes the best . .  . .”  I’m about rolling on the floor laughing.  Gimme a break.  My mother’s cooking explains in part why I so painfully thin as a child, thin enough that she pried open my clamped teeth and poured down disgusting tonic from the doctor designed to make me hungry.  Blech!   How could it make me hungry when it made me retch?   I know firsthand how to cure childhood obesity:  serve my mother’s cooking.  

Fundamentally, we ate a healthy diet.  Every dinner saw salad, a vegetable, a starch and meat on the plate, but here’s the thing.  The salad was -- and I mean every night -- a wedge of iceberg lettuce with a blop of bottled dressing on top.  The green vegetable was boiled until there was nothing left but stringy fiber.  I was an adult before I learned that, yes, vegetables have flavor, and what’s more, I like them.  Meat, the cheapest cut on sale in the about-to-expire bin, was cooked, to be kind, well done.  Any lurking germs were good and dead along with any flavor.

My parents were in early adulthood during the Depression.  The mark it left on my Mom, the mean, black mark was never erased.  It was too bad, really, because when the time came that she could afford to buy new, pretty clothes and tender, flavorful meat, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.  To the end of her life, she was, let us say, careful, with her money.  Clothing was worn until it had holes in it and then was darned.  My Dad told me that if you'd ever been hungry, really hungry, any food was good.  He was happy; she was happy; we kids never knew any better.

On top of the quality of the food, my Mom wasn’t that much of a cook to begin with.  Conscientious, yes -- we certainly never went without -- but intuitive, inspired, creative in the kitchen?  Not so much.  Her best meal, our “company meal”, was brisket, frozen green beans, potatoes and packaged rolls. The green beans and potatoes were fine.  The rolls often suffered from distraction with the company and got burned.  The brisket, I must say, was unparalleled.  It was indeed a show-off piece, and I often am asked the secret to its tender succulence.  However, it wasn’t brisket every day, let me tell you.  It was thin, tough pork chops or dry meat loaf. 

Yes, dry.  The brisket might be covered with a can of brown gravy, but the meat loaf was served as it stood, not even ketchup to tease the taste buds.  There was no ethnic food. Oh once in a while spaghetti made it on to our plates, soggy and limp, covered with a jar of something.  French food?  No sauces were stirred in our kitchen.  Indian?  She didn’t do spices. 

 

So how did I grow up to be big and strong and definitely not painfully thin?  Hey, there was ice cream. 

Pizza Night

When my neighbors moved into the house next door, they had three children under three and both of them worked.  Oh, yes, they were in a state of constant exhaustion.  By Friday evenings, they had no energy for painting the town red or even pale pink.  Thus came the tradition of Pizza Night. 

Every Friday night Cynthia would make pizza, the children would run around until they dropped, and the parents would share as many quiet moments as they could manage between diapers, skinned knees and worn out toddlers. 

Steve and I have been shamelessly mooching off Pizza Night for 12 years.  I usually bring a salad for Cynthia, Steve and myself (Richard doesn’t eat anything green), and Steve would nab a bottle of wine.  We’d scarf that pizza and have a glass of wine or two or, well, who’s counting after two?  At the end of the evening, we had only to stumble up the hill between our houses.

Pizza Night led to putting in concrete steeping stones on that hill.  It led to my working with a couple of the children on their reading (and, by proximity, half the neighborhood).  It led to Steve building Boy Scout pinewood derby cars with their boy (again extending to half the neighborhood).  If nothing else, it led to endless experimentation in pizza-making.

The three children grew older; money and energy and the neighbors’ social life increased.  We are frequently out of town; in fact, right now Steve is working out in Washington State.  We lived in Russia for two years; that’ll put a crimp on a weekly get-together (although Cynthia and Richard did visit us in Russia where we enjoyed hatchapouri, a sort of Georgian pizza).  While no less welcome, Pizza Night occurred sporadically.

When Cynthia invited me for pizza last Friday, of course, I said yes.  But, alas! come Friday, Richard had caught some nasty bug.  What could we do?  The children must still eat, therefore pizza must still be made, so Cynthia prepared the children’s pizza and then climbed those stairs and brought the fixin’s over here.    

Because she is a doll, Cynthia thanked me for allowing her to make pizza at my house.  I graciously accepted her appreciation.  (Okay, what I really said was, “You’re thanking me for allowing you to bring food over to my house and make me dinner?  You’re welcome.) 

Two mini pizzas (made on store-bought naan this time; isn’t she clever?) and two glasses of wine later, we had pretty much covered politics (hope the right side wins), child-rearing (the children scooped up tons of As in school) and the marriages of half the neighborhood (hey, we’re only human). 

Here’s the thing.  I don’t even like pizza all that much, but I wouldn’t miss a Pizza Night for the world!

RIP, Little Chippie

After I dragged my big purple suitcase (okay, my son-in-law calls it a steamer trunk) up the stairs a week ago, I reached into the bedroom hall to flip on the light, and there against the white wall was a shadow puppet of a chipmunk pussyfooting (I know, right?) its way from my son’s room into the laundry room. 

I did what anyone would do.  I ran down the hall and slammed the door, trapping it inside.  [Spoiler Alert: this story does not have a happy ending for the chipmunk.]

An hour or so later, I grabbed my cat Wumpus and shoved him into the laundry room for a close up and intimate visit with Chip (or maybe it was Dale).  As I tried to relax in a deep tub of hot water, I was serenaded with background music of continual and plaintive meowing.  Wrapped in my fleece robe, I released Wum, and he dashed directly to his food bowl. 

Later that night he sniffed at the slot beneath the door.  Yes, Mister, you were supposed to do something about it.  It seems he is quite good at bringing chipmunks in through the (temporary and now dismantled) cat door from the porch in order to frolic with them around the house, but, like oh so many men, once he’s had his fun, he loses interest. 

The next day I emptied my suitcase and watched the development of quite a mound of dirty clothes.  My laundry room is more of a large closet really, so putting the clothes in the machine while standing on tip top hoping a small rodent wouldn’t run over my feet was not acceptable.  I headed to Home Depot where they do not sell anything called a chipmunk trap.  I thought  an old-fashioned mousetrap (they make some that are huge) would be the most effective thing, but I was afraid I’d snap off a finger baiting it or a toe walking around it.  Instead, I bought a set of those enclosed rat traps where the animal dies tidily inside -- blech.  I added a couple of peanuts to the bait (thank you, Google), tucked them around the washer and dryer and let the laundry build up two more days.

Okay, eventually you need clean underwear, right?  And the peanuts in the traps remained steadfastly untouched.  Hey, when I’d gotten home it was dark; I was tired; I was hungry -- maybe I imagined the whole thing.  I opened the door and stuffed in the first load.  Let the chip(munks) fall where they may.  My hope was that if the thing was in there, it would venture out, Wumpus’ interest would be rekindled, and the final skirmish would begin.  My fear was that Chip (or Dale) would burrow into the wallboard and bear a litter of adorable babies that would infest my house.  Again, blech. 

Two more days went by.  Wumpus occasionally sniffed around the area of the laundry room, and now the laundry was at least fitting inside the hamper.  I draped a damp dishcloth over the washer to dry out until I got to it.  The room developed that damp, moldy dishcloth smell.  I ran the appropriate load.  The smell persisted.

I craned my neck behind the washer and dryer.  Nothing.  I took a flashlight and looked underneath, a scary process lest something run out at my face, but all I saw were wayward fabric softener sheets.  I rarely use softener sheets, but apparently when I do, they scamper underneath the washer and dryer to lead silent yet festive lives.  I dragged the dryer out a foot or so (all the room there is).  Nothing.  I dragged the washer out a foot or so, cringing to look.  Nothing. 

Denial is a great place to live, and I had all but decided, indeed, there was no little chippie, but the the smell persisted into day five.  *Big sigh*  There was no way it was the aftermath aroma from wet dishcloths.  More surveillance.

YIKES!  Was that a piece of string?  Nope, it was a tail!  BLECH.  When I’d moved the washer, Chip (or maybe that was Dale) got dragged out and pushed under the vacuum cleaner.  Now I could see a little tail curling from under the brushes.  At least he (or she) didn’t get cut in half when dragged under heavy machinery.  *Involuntary shudder at the thought of having to clean up chipmunk parts*  Fortunately a body bag was readily made from an inverted plastic baggie, scooping and turning it right-side-out so he (or she) slid in. 

Crisis over, and smell and body disposed of, I went to watch TV.  The thought sat in my head that a dead chipmunk had been desiccating away in my laundry room for a minimum of three days.  For about 20 minutes I managed to ignore the fact that it was time to wash the laundry room floor.  I don’t know how often you wash your laundry room floor, but I cannot remember the last time I did so. I mean, all I do is pad around in there in my socks while stuffing clothes into the machines; how grimy can it get?  All I can tell you is, those softener sheet dancing around under there, they kick up a lot of dirt.

Anyway, my laundry room is now certifiably clean.  My clothes are washed and put away, and Wumpus walks around, tail held high, as proud as if he actually accomplished something wonderful.

 

Goodbye, little Chip (or Dale):  RIP.

Go, Go, LIGO!

The last time I was here in Richland, WA, I took the trusty time machine back 70 or so years and visited the B Reactor on the Hanford site.  I sat at the (non-functional) controls of the country’s first nuclear reactor; I stared into Fermi’s office; I looked up at the rods and rods and rods and rods that were used to make plutonium.  Good times, good times.

Last Friday, I took the time machine ahead, only a couple of years,to be sure, but that was far enough.  We ventured into a different part of the dessert to tour LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory).  The site isn’t much to look at.  It’s composed of a couple of buildings (nice landscaping, though) and two long,  l  o  n  g concrete tunnels.

[Insulating concrete tunnels housing the beam tubes.]

 

In those tunnels? Oh, my!  Inside those insulating tunnels are two tubes. The physicists shoot a laser beam from a central point which they split in two. The split beams shoot down the tubes, bounce off fancy, sophisticated mirrors and return. The light is collected, and the light waves measured.  The instrumentation will filter out -- are you ready for it? -- all the gravitational waves from the earth.   Yup, all the trees falling, the trains roaring, the planes flying, all will be filtered out, and only the gravitational waves of space will be recorded. 

 

And what, you ask, will that show?  Oh, my friends, it will show a star going nova, a black hole imploding, or even, maybe, the Big Bang. 

 

 

[The control room at LIGO where discoveries will be noted on these monitors:

or is it the control room of the Enterprise?  Warp speed ahead, Mr. Sulu!]      

 

And speaking of finding the Big Bang, this, right here in the tufts of scrub, in the shadow of the nuclear waste vitrification plant, this would be a great setting for an episode of the Big Bang Theory.  Can you see it?  Wallowitz and Kuthrapali lost with the lizards.  Leonard wandering through the B Reactor and Sheldon lost in the rat refuse of those long, concrete tunnels. 

Ain’t science grand?!

Glorious Food

In England it’s fish and chips in the days they were wrapped in day-old newspaper that got good and greasy as you plucked the crispy pieces from the folds.

In France, it’s sauces and wines.  And macaroons in every flavor under the sun.

In Russia, it’s blini -- mushroom blini with full fat cream sauce, juggling the hot foil from the street vendor.

In the Northern Cascades?  Fruits and vegetables

Okay, fruits and vegetables don’t sound all that exciting, but when you can smell the fresh arugula, a new world sits on your tongue.  The apples are as sweet as honey, and peaches and pears juice down your chin in sugary juice that’s better than candy.

Susan was my exploration partner when we were both expat wives in Moscow.  There we walked all over the city.  From here in Richland, it was a matter of a day’s drive to visit her home in Twisp, WA, doorway to the Northern Cascades.  We visited the shops in Twisp and near-by Winthrop.  We read and crocheted and talked and laughed.  We walked every day.  It’s just possible that my memories of the Northern Cascades would be dominated by magnificent vistas if it weren’t for the windy tide of smoke from the surrounding wildfires, but I think no matter what, the Cascades equal the cascade of flavors from the yummy freshness of food that actually made me excited to prepare it. 

The enthusiasm has carried over a bit, and back in Richland today I made a little lunch of ripe tomato and avocado slices drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and whole wheat crackers with aged Irish cheddar.  There may also have been cookies involved, but I'm not sayin'.