NaNoWriMo

I've been meaning to write about my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) experience since its conclusion, but seeing as it's the middle of December now, I guess you already know one key fact about it: it has not upped my literary output.
NaNoWriMo is a simple idea: try to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days, specifically November 1st to the 30th. I've tried in previous years but never got very far. (The first year, in fact, was when I got diagnosed with Crohn's; nothing like getting a colonoscopy in the middle of the month to render one less excited about producing a novel.) This year was the first one in which I actually signed up as an official participant at the NaNo website. It wasn't to give my attempt more credibility and thus to motivate myself to stick with it, although that proved to be a side benefit. No; I signed up because Neil Gaiman had agreed to be among the writers who would send out pep talk emails over the course of the month, and the thought of getting an email from, you know, NEIL GAIMAN was irresistible.
I started the month full of enthusiasm (I think; I can't really remember back that far). I bought a couple of new notebooks and a couple Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball pens--my favorite. The notebooks were the toughest to pick out. I like the Mead Fat Lil' Notebook (known in Spanish as "Cuaderno Fat Lil'," according to the back) because they fit well in my purse, they've got lots of pages, and they're spiral-bound, but they are kind of bland, with solid-color covers in conservative shades. I was sorely tempted to buy a notebook whose cover featured a big-eyed Siamese with an elongated neck and the caption "Yes, I am that fabulous." But the Fat Lil' won out in the end because the Siamese was kind of disturbing.
I wrote in the mornings before work; I wrote faithfully, purt near every day, but had a tough time reaching the target daily word count. This may have been because I was writing and not typing, but I compose better that way. I think my thoughts arrive at writing speed, not typing speed. Later in the day I would enter my work into the computer to get a word count. This was a distressing exercise because usually, when I am working on a story, I use the typing stage to create a second draft--I'm altering as I go. (This entry is a case in point--its original draft was written in the Fat Lil' and is ever-so-slightly different.) But I wouldn't let myself do this for my NaNo project lest I lose precious words in the editing process. I had to just grit my teeth and type whatever I'd written, regardless of my low opinion of its quality.
And the quality was very poor indeed. I'd begun the project with one plot in mind--a second attempt at a story I'd thought up for last year's NaNo, plus a twist I was really jazzed about, an idea that had fallen from the sky in late October. I could hardly wait to begin. But in the actual process of writing the idea lost its savor. To keep myself going I started importing more and more from my own life, changing friends' names and barely fictionalizing details. The last 10,000 words, my desperate race against time, were a dream sequence only vaguely related to the rest of the plot.
Oh, those last 10,000 words...I had been plugging away, as I said, every day, falling further and further behind where I needed to be to keep pace. I wasn't being very faithful at typing up my work, however, so for a long stretch I didn't know my word count. On Thanksgiving I had a marathon typing session and discovered I was at 20,000 words--more than I'd ever managed in previous years, but far behind where I needed to be. So over the holiday weekend I abandoned the notebook and typed. And typed. And typed. Over three days I got out 15,000 or so more words--again, not quality stuff by any means, just quantity. Sheer verbosity, with the occasional glimmer of something interesting (but not enough to make me want to go back and read any of it).
Now I'd done 15k in a weekend. Could I do an additional 15k over the course of five weekdays--when I was at work during the day and had class and other obligations at night? When I was already feeling some ill effects from sitting in front of a computer screen most of the weekend?
I managed 5000 more words Monday through Thursday. No problem, though, right? I had until midnight on the 30th. At peak over the weekend I found I could churn out a thousand words an hour if I really, really pushed myself. I got off work at 4:30...at some point I'd have to eat...I figured I had seven uninterrupted hours in which to write. Maybe I could do it. I was too close to give up now, anyway. I had to give it a shot.
That's why the last 10,000 or so words were a dream sequence, really several of my own dreams strung together with some other elements--the Corpus Christi Carol, for one--thrown in. I'm sure it would make a fascinating psychological study if I could ever stand to let someone read it.
At 11:59 and 30 seconds I dumped the whole thing into the NaNo website's word counter and...
49,681.
Five more minutes and I coulda made it. That's all right--I got lots of sympathy from my fellow NaNoers at that weekend's Thank God It's Over party. They felt my pain.
That's another great aspect of the experience (and yes, I think it was a great experience, my griping about so-close-and-yet-so-far notwithstanding)--the chance to meet other Cincinnati writers. Throughout the month we had "write-ins," announced in the website forum, where folk could come together and work. There's nothing like a whole bunch of people all feverishly typing to keep you on task for a couple of hours.
Interestingly, the first write-in was held at the Speckled Bird, the neighborhood cafe, so of course I went. And there of course as I was sitting with this group of writers I did not know, I kept seeing people I did know--friends in the neighborhood. So every few minutes I'd look up and wave to Chris, or Bill, or Des--and after a while I wondered how this looked to my new writer friends. Did they think I was like Norm from Cheers?
I'd also mentioned to one of the writers that I lived down the street--and pointed in the direction of my house. But when I was leaving--at the same time that she was--I didn't go in that direction. I went over to the JFCCCH to walk Cori. Luckily she didn't ask me about this. I would have had to say, "No, I don't live there. I just occasionally go in their house and walk their dog."

Eulogy

A buddy of mine died today. He was the guy I felt closest to at Our Daily Bread--we had a good rapport. He was our porter, which meant mostly he sat by our receptionist's desk and did little odd jobs for her. He helped her stuff envelopes, or would bring the mail to those of us in the office, shuffling across the floor. When I'd come in at the start of the day I'd smile and say hi to him. And he'd turn around like he was trying to figure out who I was talking to. And if I was walking through the place I'd hear him sing out "Ann--gela!" But of course if I looked over at him he'd be looking behind him again. (He played this game with his nephews too. Several times a day I'd hear him give that same kind of teasing call to one of them. It was one of the ways I knew all was well with the world.)
I remember probably my first week of working there, or close to it, I sat next to him at the front door in an effort to get acclimated to the soup kitchen environment. He greeted everyone who came in, usually with a nickname. "What's up, Grumpy?" "How's your kid doing?"
"How many of the people here do you know?" I asked him.
"I don't know any of 'em," he said seriously. Then he went back to greeting everybody.
Two things he was known for in particular. One was his Li'l Rascals face. He didn't have any teeth, so he had no problem getting his lower lip all the way up to his nose, pouting it out as he did it so his lower face was all frowny lip. Then he'd turn his baseball cap to the side, squeeze his eyes shut and slump down so his stomach stuck out. He adopted this pose if anyone tried to take his picture, and often he did it just because.
The other thing he did was set off the loon call in the office. Our volunteer coordinator had bought a stuffed animal loon who would give its weird call--ooOOOooo--if you pressed down on its back. This my buddy enjoyed doing. He never grew tired of hearing it. We got treated to a lot of loon calls when he was around. Not too long ago he started doing something new--slowly tipping his head back and opening his mouth wide as it'd go when he set off the loon call, so it seemed like the noise was coming out of his own throat. Then it became an in-joke greeting between us--I would mime his loon call move, he would mime it back to me. This was especially great in the middle of a crazy day (it's always a crazy day in a soup kitchen). My desk is so positioned that I could look out the office door and see him sitting by the front door, clear across the lower dining room. On a tough day I'd catch his eye, tip my head back, open my mouth as wide as it would go--ooOOOooo. He'd do it back. We'd giggle and I would get back to work.
Sometimes I'd look up from my computer and see him standing expressionless in the doorway of his office--no telling how long he'd been standing there. I'd roll my eyes and he'd crack up. Or he'd be behind the door and would slooooowly come peeking out, only to duck right back. (This was another sign he spent a lot of time entertaining his nephews.) I would mimic him then too, playing hide and seek behind my computer, until we'd both crack up. "If I can make you laugh, I know I've done something right," he'd say. He seemed really proud of himself when he said it, too, and I knew this laugh during a tough day was his gift to me, and he was glad to be able to give it.
He had a lot of tough days--he was sick a long time--and there wasn't much I could do to lighten them for him. "I'm not feeling too good, Angie" was something he said often. And sometimes when he'd be walking out of the office after bringing us the mail (holding it out and then snatching it out of reach a few times before relinquishing it), he'd stop and close his eyes and wobble a little before continuing on.
A couple of weeks ago he gave me a little white teddy bear that's sitting now on my desk. "What are you gonna name it?" he asked me later that day.
"I don't know. I don't think I ever really had a teddy bear as a kid. My favorite stuffed animal back then was a rabbit named Bunny Baby."
"Then name it Bunny."
So I have Bunny to remember him by.
He gave our volunteer coordinator a musical snowglobe that he won at one of our weekly bingos. It "snows" iridescent sparkles on a pair of giraffes, and it plays "Everything is Beatiful." When he came in for a visit to the office, often or she would wind it up, and he would dance. So she has that, and the song will make all of us think of him when we hear it.
Everything is beautiful in its own way.

On the absolute last day I can get away with posting this

A poem by Dylan Thomas.

Especially When the October Wind

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make of you the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

---
Why do I love this poem so much? For one thing, it sounds so good recited. The line about the "wordy shapes of women"--you start smiling as you say it and the smile comes through in your voice. Try to count how many times a letter ends one word and begins the next: "sea's side," "and drains," "Shut, too"--these combinations force you to slow down, to linger over each word as you speak. And all the alliterations make music as well.
It took me a long time to notice the rhyme scheme, since it's full of near-rhymes. It also took me a while to figure out that each line is ten syllables long.
This site goes into this poem into a bit more detail.

Actual In-Print Writing

A review I wrote of Stephen Catanzarite's book on Achtung Baby is now up at CityBeat.
I had to shorten it to get the word count to something reasonable. One cut broke my heart--I very much wanted to quote Inigo Montoya in the section describing how Catanzarite cites Yeats' "The Second Coming": "I do no' think it means what you think it means."

Peculiar Hypotheses I Tend To Credit

When I was a wee lass my mom and dad took me on a trip to New York because my dad was going to a special training there in the summer. I think this took place in the summer between kindergarten and first grade, which would have made me five, but I don't remember exactly. I do remember that before the trip I had befriended a neighborhood cat, an orange tabby I called Tiger. I was heartsick about leaving St. Louis without saying goodbye to Tiger, and I was sure he wouldn't understand my absence. Sure enough, I never saw Tiger again. When we returned from New York in the fall, my sister told me that Tiger had come by looking for me several times, and then finally gave up.
For many years after that, no neighborhood cat would give me the time of day. I'd try to coax them to me, but they would just run off. I was convinced it was because they had all heard how I'd misused poor Tiger.
I tell this story because there's a cat named Thomas who hangs around my new place. He would always dash into the shrubbery or under the parked cars when he'd see me coming. This went on for weeks until I decided to put some effort into making friends with Thomas. Now that I'm a grownup, I know the way to a cat's heart is through his stomach, so I bought some cat treats. It still took a while, but he's gone from total disapproval of me to wary friendliness to being outright demanding.
And since becoming friends with Thomas, I have noticed something curious. All the strays I've encountered lately have been exceptionally cordial. As soon as I stoop down and do the "here kitty" routine, they come right up to me to be petted--and I'm not carrying around any cat treats, either. I'm beginning to wonder if my childhood theory is right, and cats do spread the word about the trustworthiness of particular humans.

Lectionary Stuff

Here is what we read Sunday at Mass. Some things struck me on this go-round that I hadn't noticed before:
1. Isn't it interesting how there's a molten calf in the first reading and a fattened calf in the Gospel?
2. That numerical progression in the Gospel is great: one out of a hundred sheep, one out of ten coins, one out of two sons. I can imagine the original hearers going, "I wouldn't leave ninety-nine sheep to chase one!" but having no such trouble with the coin story, and then by the time the story of the sons comes around they're totally sucked in.
3. Before we got to the readings Father mentioned how God and Moses sound like parents when a kid has gotten in trouble: "Let me tell you what your son did today...!" First God complains to Moses about "your people," and Moses answers by giving them back to God by calling them "your own people." Same motif in the Gospels, but the situation is reversed if we equate the prodigal son's father with God: this time, the elder son calls his brother "your son" when he's talking with their dad but the dad turns around and calls him "your brother."
By the way, the woman who did the first reading at our Mass did a marvelous job. When she got to God's line where he's quoting the Israelites worshipping the calf--"This is your God, O Israel,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt!"
--she gave it such a mocking tone, like one kid on the playground repeating another kid's words in singsong, that she got a giggle out of the congregation.

Continuing Adventures Of This Week

Lured by the promise of an ArtsyFartsyJesusFreak Woodstock, I went camping this weekend to an event known as "GratisFest." It featured bands like Jake Speed and the Freddies and The Pomegranates and The Psalters; primary-color-themed art projects; and a half-pipe for young skater dudes and chicks. I haven't been on a camping trip since I was, oh, one. But I had a supremely easy time of it--all I had to do was buy a sleeping bag and a cooler and borrow D.'s flashlight. My friends G. and T. let me sleep in their tent and eat their food; I didn't even have to drive, I just bummed rides to and from rural Indiana.
The first evening I helped serve ale in the makeshift pub (Price: "a penance a pint"). I stepped outside when the dusk was all gone and only night was left. There were STARS. There was even a MILKY WAY. Jake Speed and the Freddies paid tribute to the sight with a lovely rendition of the Woody Guthrie/Wilco classic "California Stars." I had brought along an H.A. Rey starbook borrowed from the library (growing up I had a copy of his Know Your Stars); I used it to make exceptionally futile attempts at identifying constellations. Over the course of the weekend, I managed to find Scorpio--that was all I gained in constellation knowledge.
The first night, Friday to Saturday, I did not sleep well, so my Saturday passed as follows:
Got up
Sat in a chair
Ate tasty food (eggs and cheese in a bagel)
Napped in the tent
Sat in a chair some more
Ate tasty food (pasta salad with tomatoes and green olives)
Napped some more
...You get the idea. I also went for a couple of walks in the fantastically picturesque woods, trying to identify elm and black walnut trees.
Saturday night The Pomegranates staged a triumph. They made me miss Pants terribly though, because she was the one that introduced the band to me, plus there was a redheaded girl dancing in front of the stage and for a fleeting moment I thought Pants had come to town to surprise us all. Alas, it was not so. But The Poms were simply incredible, particularly considering the audience was probably 75% musicians, so it would have been rather an intimidating show to play, I'd think. I expect great things from this band.
Walking back to the campsite (which by the way consisted of most of my friends and neighbors) after the concert I happened to look up as I wandered through the corn fields and saw some shooting stars. I thought--not for the first time--that I've been given a great life.

When The Stars Fall From The Sky And The Moon Has Turned Red

I've been waiting to post until I have time to write a full account, but it doesn't seem like I have the luxury of time, so I'll just have to do this in snippets.
Last week I watched the moon cease to exist. The lunar eclipse was very odd, here in Ohio. Unsettling. My friend K and I wandered through Norwood, camping out on one neighbor's porch after another, trying to keep it in sight as it sunk in the sky. When I left the house at 4:50 am, there was already a tiny bite out of the top, like out of a glowing chocolate chip cookie; the bite grew larger and larger as we watched but not very quickly (the earth it moves fast, but not all that fast) so mostly we paid it little attention, we just chatted amongst ourselves. But when there was only a tiny sliver of light left at the bottom, we kept our eyes trained on the moon, even as we had to keep finding higher ground since it was sinking fast into the trees. Then it was red, like a coal after a fire--streaked with red like that. We watched and waited for the sliver of light to return at the top but the earth it is very very large. The sky meanwhile grew lighter, the moon sank lower, and it grew more non-descript. Think of seeing the moon out in daytime, and then imagine the light cast on it by the sun is gone, and you'll get a sense of how not-bright it was. There came a point where we weren't sure we were looking at the moon at all, and so we went home without seeing it return. We wondered if it would ever come back.

Stormchasing

It continues to be--to use the technical term--darn hot in Cincinnati.
My friend Charlie has been trying to convince me for some time to listen to Mr. Rhythm Man's show on WNKU, which goes from 6-9 on Saturday nights. I can't get 89.7 in my house, so I decided to go out driving and tune in on the car radio. There were dark clouds off in--well, I don't quite know my directions here yet, let's call it "the southwest." They were clearly rainclouds, and there was clearly rain in them, and they were clearly passing my neighborhood by. So I decided, having no particular place to go, to follow the storm--with the hopes of feeling even just the most incremental bit cooler.
I learned a few things. One, Charlie was right, Mr. Rhythm Man does him a mean show. It made an excellent stormchasing soundtrack. Two, Cincinnati is not the sort of city where you can say "I think I'll drive southwest tonight" and have your desire reach fruition. One road I followed for a while terminated in a park. Another steadfastly refused to permit me a left-hand turn. There seem to be a great many parts of the city that are only accessible from one street, and if you don't happen to know exactly where that street is, well, too darn bad.
So it was an informative as well as an entertaining evening. Never did catch up to the storm, but I got to watch the steam rising off the asphalt in thick clouds.

Phone Conversation

Me: So what's your brother teaching?
Other Person: Arthurian Legends.
Me: What?
Other Person: Arthurian Legends.
Me: Oh! The phone reception was bad; I thought you said "Art Theory and Weapons"...but that's the same thing actually, isn't it?

Confidential to S.B.: Welcome back to the States, Sotha!

Easily the winner in the "Most Inappropriate Comment To Make To A Child" contest

I was sitting in a cafe the other day when a mother with two young sons came in. The younger, who was maybe 1 1/2 or 2, was at that stage where running around and making random loud sounds is what a good time is all about. His mother tried shushing him once or twice, but not in any way that proved effective. Then he went over to her and presumably tried to get something out of her pocket (I didn't see exactly what happened), because she said to him, "Stay out of my pants, unless you have dollar bills."
...
I just...I can't even count the number of levels where that's so wrong.

The Nylons make me happy.

Lookee what I just found: The Nylons' guest appearance on the short-lived record company sitcom Throb.
Go. Watch it and come back and agree with me that this is great.
After finding this, I went on a spree, looking up other Nylons songs on YouTube. Couldn't find much actually by them, but heard plenty of a cappella groups, collegiate and otherwise, singing songs in Nylon arrangements--"Up the Ladder to the Roof," "Me And the Boys"...That last one's a curious case, because it was a song written by The Nylons (or just Paul Cooper I think) about being Nylons. So it's bizarre to hear another group cover it, especially when they get to the lines "Where we're coming from/We're born to run/We run, we run like NYLONS!"
But hey. Anything to keep the Nylon spirit going.

Not quite a month between posts, so that's good.

Got word of the passage of another good dog--Robbie, a sweet and sincere floppy-haired fella who lived for two things: to be loved and to torment his big sister. In my prayers I am entrusting him to the intercession of St. Puppy-Pants.
I also tried to be extra kind to both Cori and Chili the night of Robbie's passing, in his honor. I took them both out for walks. Normally I only walk Cori, and Chili gives me the look of utter devastation only boxers can give as we leave. But this time I came back for Chili and hooked him on the leash. (I had to walk them sequentially--there's just one leash.) I was naive in thinking I could make both dogs happy this way, however. As soon as Cori saw we were leaving without her, she started snapping and growling at Chili something awful. Never mind she had just returned from a walk some .5 seconds ago; another dog was getting a privilege she wasn't! They crack me up.
Did I ever tell you about Maay-BEHH's nun friends who wanted a biblical name for their dog? They named him Moreover. (Just pretend "dogs" is singular in that citation.)

Another Plug

For the Fourth I went to my landlady's mom's house. We travelled together--me, my landlady and my landlord (Mr. and Mrs. Landpeople)--to Cincinnati's West Side. Now, understand that throughout my childhood, the Fourth of July meant one thing and one thing only--a backyard picnic at the Roeger's house. The Roegers and my mom and dad and a few other folks were part of a post-high school circle of friends called the Discussion Club; though over the years as the members had children and then grandchildren they wouldn't get together for their regular meetings anymore, they still convened once a year at the Roeger's, that family being the one with the biggest yard. (And with all the children of Discussion Club members, and then the children getting married, and then grandchildren, a big yard was essential). We'd pile in the van and drive out to this ranch house and play badminton and eat barbecue and go get sodas out of the coolers in the garage, and then it'd get dark and we'd chase fireflies. I especially remember the kid's room filled with Sesame Street toys, and playing Robin Hood with one of the few girls about my age who came--we made bows and arrows with twigs and rubber bands. Sometimes a teepee would be set up, and then we played Indians. For some reason (influenced I guess by the packaging on another kind of TP) I thought "White Cloud" would make a good Indian name for me.
Anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Landpeople and I went out to the West Side--the Best Side--and I got to meet Mrs. Landpeople's kith and kin. But where did we go but a ranch house with a kids room filled with toys (including the same Fisher Price airplane I used to have), and with a big backyard complete with shuttlecocks strewn all over? Coolers by the garage, the works.
Mrs. Landlady could hardly have known that by inviting me, she would teleport me back to a childhood memory. But nostalgia trip aside, it meant a lot to me to be invited to a family Fourth of July gathering.
So now that you know what a great person my landlady is, here's her website in case you're ever looking for someone to do some photography for ya.

Ice Cream Truck.

Hot day, walking up to the store.
Little boy up the street, maybe 9 or 10. He's standing by the trash can at the curb wearing that little boy expression that says, "Mom asked me to do something a minute ago, but I can't remember what it is, and...oh, look! There's a bug!"
As I approach, we both hear chimes in the distance. Tinny music, bells, whistles. His expression changes--he is the wanderer in the desert catching sight of an oasis. He looks at me, but he whispers the secret to himself, as though he can barely believe it.
"Ice cream truck," he whispers.
"Ice cream truck," I confirm.
He tears up the steps to his front door. You never know when the tinny music will fade. "ICE CREAM TRUCK!"

Plug

'K, I was thinking of just writing Kevin a thank-you note for how he took care of my car for me this week, but thought--no, I'll write him a li'l testimonial instead.
I took a trip this week. Every time I get ready to go on a trip, my car starts acting funny. This time, I think it's because it knew I was renting a car for the trip and it was jealous. Whatever the reason, it was making an obnoxious squealing noise. No problem, though, right? For a week I was going to be a two-car household of one person. What better time to take a car in to get checked out? Except of course that I was going to be, yes, away on a trip. So I asked Our Glorious Leader (remember? He knows about cars) to help me. He works on cars, but his specialty is the outside, not the inside. So get this: he took it for me to a place--Auto Foreign--that does work on car innards, and then when the work was done, he picked it up and brought it home for me too. Isn't that so cool?
A guy like that deserves to have a plug for his business on this blog, so:

Visit Center City Collision!

The car's fine, by the way. Apparently the car has an early-warning system to let you know when the brakes are going out--they start squealing. "If you hadn't taken it in," the guy at Auto Foreign told me, "it would have started grinding."

St. Puppy-Pants

We had a loss in the family this past week. Go to Bean's Blog (the June 10th entry) to read all about it.

Overheard

As I walked to the Speckled Bird last night, two little boys were walking in front of me.
Boy #1: Man, I can't wait until I get my next corn snake.
Boy #2: (no reaction; has heard it all before)
Boy #1: I think I'm gonna name him Sly.

Today

A conversation I had at work today with a fella in the dining room:
Him: Can I ask you a question?
Me: Sure.
Him: If Jesus were to ask you to marry Him, would you say yes?
Me: How about if I cross that bridge when I come to it?

Dogs

I'm officially in my new place. I moved Ascension Thursday, which is an auspicious date for a move, I think. (I was shooting for Brian Eno's birthday, but didn't make it out in time.) For anyone reading this in the neighborhood--I'm planning the Bring Your Own Chair Party for Saturday, June 2nd.
Two dogs live upstairs, which is one less than I'm used to. When I go back to the JFCCCHouse, Cori, the littler black dog, gets all excited; she knows she can guilt-trip me into taking her for a WALK. That's not quite true--when I hook the leash to her collar, she reaches back and grabs it in her teeth, so technically she takes me for a walk. Another fun Cori fact: it takes 5 YipYaps--breath mints for dogs--to eradicate her dog breath. For an hour or so, anyhow.
This weekend I'm watching my motorcycling friend's dog. I'll take her to work with me on Monday because she's small and likes to ride around in a pouch. The guys at the 'Bread are gonna go nuts when they see that.

Ice Cream and Swords

The Ice Cream Social last week went very well. We had a good team of volunteers in to help us; a couple of them mentioned having handyman skills as well as ice-cream-scooping skills, so we put them to work hanging a plaque in Cooie's honor. Overheard while they were thus engaged in that task: "Don't get it out of whack now. We want to keep it in whack if at all possible."
The miracle of the loaves and fishes got transmogrified into the miracle of the ice cream and bananas. Not only did we serve 259 bowls of banana splits and sundaes, but when everyone was absolutely done with as many helpings as they wished, we had maybe two cups left in the bottom of one tub of the donated Graeter's, so it was a perfect amount. Plus, I had gotten some emergency backup Kroger brand (with money donated by the volunteer team's company), so we have enough for another Ice Cream Social next week, if we so choose. I don't think we'll choose that, but at least we'll have a good snack option on the next hot day.
The office staff served the volunteers ice cream at the end of their shift, and so also served many second and third helpings for guests returning to the line. It was my first time working the serving line, I'm embarrassed to admit. If I'd known I was gonna be putting some time in there, I wouldn't have worn heels. A Val quote about the experience at the end of the day: "I think I have ice cream on the bottom of my shoe."
In other news, I'm moving out of the artsy-fartsy JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCultHouse. I'm just moving down the street though, so I'm not actually moving out of the artsy-fartsy JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCult. My new home is the first floor of a two-family flat. It's a shotgun house, and my bedroom will also be the front room. I was up late last night talking to Pants about it. I knew she could relate to any moving anxiety--we're both moving out at the same time. "I'm a little worried because I don't have a dresser yet," I told her, "And I don't want to start out at my new apartment just flinging all my clothes everywhere, like I do now."
"Well, here," she said, "You want to use this dresser? It belongs to the folks whose house you're moving into, anyway."
"That's perfect! It's tall, so I can use it as part of my 'bedroom wall.' I want to separate my bed off from the rest of the front room, and first I thought I'd use screens, but since I haven't been able to find any I was just gonna use bookcases and dressers."
"You want a screen?" She pulled a set of three wooden screens complete with louvres that she had hidden away in her closet.
It was like Princess Bride, you know? "Ah--if only we had a Holocaust Cloak!"
Speaking of swashbuckling--the last couple of weeks I've been introducing Izaac, one of the young'uns in the JFCCCHouse, to all my favorite old movies--Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad (with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.), The Prisoner of Zenda (with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.). I love Robin Hood for its lesson that you can do good things without being a goody-goody, and Izaac seemed to agree.
"Watching Robin Hood makes me wanna be Robin Hood!" he said at one point.
"Except without the swordfights," Zoe (his sister) interjected.
"No! The swordfights are the whole point!" Izaac and I said together.
And I introduced him to Zenda to teach him the lesson that, if you're gonna be a bad guy, at least be a charming bad guy. He seems to have learned that, too. He's been going around shouting "Au revoir, play-actor!" at every opportunity.

Of Bananas and Balloons

For the Ice Cream Social (next Wednesday from 1-3 pm, if you're in the area of Our Daily Bread) we asked for, and got, a case of bananas donated. This means my first successful grant request at this job was paid out in bananas. (Those of you who know what I was paid the first time I was ever paid for a story will especially appreciate this. Those who don't know--it would take far too long to explain.) One case=40 pounds of bananas, enough for one hundred people. That's a lot of banana splits. We've also gotten free ice cream and money to buy syrups, nuts, whipped cream, maraschino cherries, etc. etc.
I love my job.
On Easter Monday my existentialist mentor gave the 'Bread sandwiches left over from her parish's post-Easter Vigil feast and some balloons that had decorated the tables. They were the standard helium balloons, the kind that deflate in a day, but after a week they were still holding up. All but one--one dropped to the floor.
There's this little boy who comes in the office every once in a while looking for Mary Beth, or, as he puts it, "maay BEHHH" (he's like three years old). Actually he calls all of us "maay BEHHH" but it's clear that it's the original maay BEHHH he's looking for. He came in one day last week. It took me a while to realize he was in the office because I could just barely see the top of his head bobbing along on the far side of my desk.
"maay BEHHH?"
"No," I told him. "She's not in right now. Shall we go look for her?"
"K."
So we wandered out into the main dining room.
"maay BEHHH?"
"I don't see her...oh, but look, want a balloon?"
I pulled out the one that had fallen and gave it to him. Then we played a quick game where I would kick it out of his hands and he'd chase after it. This made him squeal with glee. It was the first time I'd heard him really happy.
A couple of days after that we let one of our guests take the whole bunch of remaining balloons--which, yes, were still inflated. You couldn't see his face as he left, just all these pastel teardrop shapes bobbing their way out the door.

Cooie

Here's how my day went yesterday.
Just after 8 in the morning I hopped in my car to go to a workshop on grantwriting I'd registered for last week. When I sent in the payment for the workshop, I'd torn out the whole page in the brochure with the registration form. What I tore out included the "Save the Date" info with the directions to the workshop, but I didn't worry about this. I just figured the workshop would be held at the headquarters of the organization that sent out the brochure. So I went from Norwood, where I live, out 71 to 275 (on a rainy day, this trip took about 25 minutes). I got there a little late, thought it was odd there were no cars in the parking lot, went in to the office and apologized for being late for the workshop.
"But that workshop isn't being held here--it's in Norwood."
"!...I just came from Norwood!"
So back in the car I went. Luckily not much had happened before I got in the conference room at the real location; they hadn't even started the PowerPoint slides yet.
During the workshop one of my co-workers at my old job left a message on my phone. When the presentation was over at 11:30 I listened to the message.
(Background: last week I'd tried to arrange a lunch for sometime this week with my old boss and our regular lunch crew. We'd originally planned for Tuesday, but it was silly for me to plan for Tuesday because I had also planned for my friend Beth, who was in from out of town, to come in to work with me that day. So I'd emailed my old boss back to ask if another day of the week would be better.)
My co-worker's phone message said that my boss had gotten my email, had decided Wednesday would be the day we'd go to lunch, had sent invites to the whole crew--but had forgotten to tell me. By the time I'd listened to the message and called my old co-worker back, they were all at the restaurant already. Luckily the real location of the workshop was fairly close to the restaurant, so I placed my order through my co-worker's cell phone and got there in time to see her starting in on my crab rangoon.
After that I got in to work. We're planning an Ice Cream Social at Our Daily Bread as part of the continuing festivities surrounding Cookie's retirement. It's going to be during the time our regular guests are around; we're inviting donors and friends from all over, so it should be an interesting mix of people. Yesterday we were on the "design a postcard to send out" stage. The Wednesday Craft Lady had recommended the Chiller font because it looks cool in both senses of the word, so I used that to write:
Join us for an
Ice Cream Social!
Wednesday, May 2nd, 1-3 pm
Come help us celebrate and thank
Our Cookie V.!
Then I copied it and pasted it four times so we could cut up the cardstock we were using to postcard size. I used a clip art image of a sundae (I love clip art), enlarged it, brightened it and took away a lot of its contrast so it could hide behind the words and become sort of a subliminal sundae. Deeply pleased with myself, I ran off the master copy, stuck it in our mondo copier in the back room and printed 200 postcards. Then I ran the cardsstock through a second time to print the return address on the back.
First problem: I hadn't waited long enough for the ink to dry. My pretty Chiller script got all streaky. Oh, well, I thought--maybe it'd help people to feel sorry for us if our mailings are a bit imperfect.
Next problem: As I cut the sheets down to postcard size, I saw that the return address didn't line up very well. Sometimes it was right at the corner, sometimes it was a quarter of the way down the card. My postcards were starting to look pretty sad.
And then: I happened to notice as I was cutting that I must have deleted something by accident after I had done the copying and pasting of the invite. One-quarter of the cards now said
Join us for an
Ice Cream Social!
Wednesday, May 2nd, 1-3 pm
Come help us celebrate and thank
Our Cooie V.!
I left these on Cooie's desk. I hope she notices.

Nicknames

One day a couple of my J.F.C.C.C. housemates and I started discussing (I no longer remember why) group dynamics in terms of the personalities of the members of U2. This led to a search online for a "Which member of U2 are you?" quiz. One of the questions on the quiz we found was "Do people refer to you by your nickname more often than by your real name?" I ended up being a Larry, but we decided what tipped me over the edge (so to speak) was that I answered the nickname question in the negative.
In the days after we took that quiz I noticed M. wasn't calling me Angela anymore. I finally asked her, "Are you trying to tip the nickname scale for me?" Yes, she admitted; that was exactly what she was doing.
All this to explain how I've acquired the name "Angie-Pants," or "Pants" for short.
She, in turn--and because she is moving to Japan soon to teach--has acquired a new nickname of her own. You can find it in my blogroll.

The Joshua Tree

The Joshua Tree album just turned 20 this past week. I've been celebrating by playing my tape of it (actually my brother's tape--I stole it from him back in '91) in my car. I've been listening the way I used to listen to albums--over and over and over, letting the auto-flip take me from Side A to Side B to Side A.
I never noticed before how Lenten this album is, and wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't found out it was released this time of year (as Pop was (ten years later, less one week).
I mean, sure, it's got lots of desert imagery, but it's got a lot of wind and rain too. But that's what my Lenten experience is usually like--these forty days are storm season. "In the howling wind/Comes a stinging rain," indeed. And geez, try to count how many references to crosses there are in these songs! I wonder how they'll sound during Holy Week? (Especially "With Or Without You." Imagine that as one of the Seven Words from the Cross.)
I'd forgotten how much I love "Red Hill Mining Town." It's such a pure listening experience--there's no overlaying of memories of hearing it in concert or on the radio; I have no personal connection to the lyrics; I know nothing about the miners' strike that inspired it. But of course I also love listening to the songs that have layers and layers of meaning added to them, like "Where the Streets Have No Name." I can hear something different in that one every time. In Lent, I hear more longing in it than fulfillment. "The city's a flood"--a forty-day flood, by any chance?
Things have been busy at the 'Bread--grant season. Sent out a request for bananas today. We're having an ice cream social in early May; thought banana splits might be nice.

Cookie-ism

The office went out for lunch yesterday to Gold Star Chili. Mary Beth got a to-go box for her Coney dog--white and styrofoam like an ordinary carryout container, but oblong instead of square, like a carryout container got cut in half or thirds. Cookie took one look at it and said, "That looks like a Barbie coffin."

England and Ireland and India (and, er, Mexico) Night

By the way, those of you trying to follow a narrative (ha!) in this blog might be wondering, "Didn't Jeremiah's Aunt say she was gonna go on a trip this past weekend? Is she ever going to tell us about it?"
The answer is yes, I did go on a trip, and yes, I will tell you about it right now--I had a lovely time. We did not talk about U2 exclusively for four hours, but I think we could have talked about U2 far longer than we did. This is what happens when uberfans get together. I've missed having those kind of conversations. The trip was a pause that refreshed, as the saying goes.
Then on Sunday night J. and M. and I were sitting around at the J.F.C.C.C.House. I don't recall how the subject came up, but we all started reminisicing about England. (We've all been to England, all at different times and all before we knew each other.) Actually it was part reminiscence, part one-upsmanship. "I've been to Stratford-upon-Avon," J. would say. "So have I," I would say. "I've been to the reconstructed Globe Theatre," J. would say. "So have I," I would say. "I performed in a show on stage at the Globe," J. would say. "I wrote a new play in blank verse which had its debut at the Globe," I would say.
All right, it wasn't quite that bad. But you get the idea. And the end result is that it had us pining for all things English.
Next thing you know we were calling shotgun for a trip down to Jungle Jim's in the J.-mobile. Jungle Jim's is this foodie paradise, just the most astonishing array of food imaginable. It's huge--we went through what felt like acres and acres to get to the stuff we were looking for. We started off in the cheese section where we picked up some Wensleydale--not that we knew anything about Wensleydale, we had just heard about it through Wallace and Gromit, and in fact they package Wensleydale now with a pic of Wallace and Gromit on it; somebody give that marketing guy a raise--and Blue Stilton--again, not what we knew anything about it, it just said "The King of Cheeses" on the label, and who were we to argue with a cheese?
Then we trekked the half-mile or so to the International section. M. stuck to the India aisle where she sought to reclaim the tastes she remembered from her two years there (in India, I mean. She didn't spend two years in the India aisle). J. and I stayed in the British aisle (hee!) with its Wheetabix and Marmite and Marmart. This last was Marmite--yeast extract--you could draw pictures with.
We brought home for our spur-of-the-moment English party scone-with-blackcurrants mix, clotted cream, salt-and-vinegar crisps, chocolate digestive biscuits, Hob Nobs, the cheeses, crackers and apples. I looked in vain for Orangina; I went to the Mexican section instead and picked out a pineapple soda. We picked up "Waking Ned Devine" from the video store and stayed up way past my bedtime watching the Isle of Man play stunt double for Ireland.

The Language of Stamps

I love commemorative stamps.
I've set up a whole system for the letters I send out.
"Love" stamps go to foundations and other people we ask for money.
Superhero stamps go on thank you letters. For instance, I went to a class on using a grant resource library yesterday and I sent the teacher a thank you with a Superman stamp on it. Cookie had a li'l writeup in the paper; I sent a thank you to the columnist responsible, gave him a Flash stamp.
I've got the motorcycle commemoratives set aside for telling people about the motorcycle ride we're planning for September or October.
For bills, there's always the fruits and vegetables stamps--preferably squash.

The Original All You Can Eat Fish Fry

Today's a beautiful day, as last night was a beautiful night. This morning the snow fell in a combination of dance and fury. Last night the moon lit the top of a low bank of cloud. I hope everyone who was looking for a silver lining saw it.
I went out last night with the J.F.C.C.C.'ers. B. wanted to go out to eat; I wanted to go someplace out of the ordinary and someplace where I'd know they'd use our money for good. Then I remembered it was Friday, and I couldn't eat meat. Fish fry!
B.'s husband (who is also a B; B2 we'll call him) suggested Hartzell United Methodist. I wasn't so sure at first--a Methodist fish fry? It didn't seem quite right--but then he said it was all you can eat. Allrighty then.
Mr. and Mrs. Glorious Leader were out of town, as was another of our housemates, but everyone else from the J.F.C.C.C. House joined the party--M. and her friend T. who was visiting, J. and B. (erm, I guess for this story he's B3). The two B.s would meet us there; the five of us from the 'House piled in the M.-mobile amid merry cries of "shotgun!" and elaborate arguments over shotgun rules. (Does everyone have to be out the door before shotgun is called? Some said yes, some said no. Can you call shotgun for the way back on the ride out? No. Does the driver have veto power? No--the driver has the vehicle; that's enough power.)
On the way we discovered this would be The Very First Fish Fry for many of us, a concept that frankly I have a hard time wrapping my head around. But that meant a Methodist fish fry was a good choice--gotta ease'em in slowly. Plus did I mention it was all you can eat?
We arrived just as B squared did. The parking lot looked like a country church picnic's (I wonder how many of my fellow J.F.C.C.C.'ers have been to a country church picnic?) and the line was out the door. But the line moved fast. As we drew near the money-takers we were getting closer to the actual church part of the building. We could hear piano music and see people sitting in pews. "Where's the fish?" we cried in dismay. Would we have to profess Christ (admittedly not a problem in this group) before we'd be admitted to the dinner? Or was the whole thing a setup--were they just wafting the smell of frying Icelandic cod through the place to lure people to their service? No, B2 explained, they were just letting us sit in the pews until our numbers were called as a more pleasant alternative to standing in line. As he said this, the woman on the piano broke into "It's All For the Best" from Godspell. And the selection after that was from Grease.
We paid our money, got numbered tickets, and sat in a pew. We leafed through the Methodist hymnal and listened to the guy up front call numbers like this was bingo or somethin' (he was really letting us know when we could go get our fish). Bingo Guy was named Harold--of course he was--and he was wearing a shirt that said on the back "The Original All You Can Eat Fish Fry--Hartzell United Methodist Church" with a Bible citation at the end. We asked him to turn around so we could get the verse number. He obliged, shaking his tailfeather to the music as he did so. It was Matthew 15:29-38. The pews were equipped with Bibles, so we looked it up--it was the feeding of four thousand with loaves and fishes.
When our numbers were called, we went into the Fellowship Hall. The smell of fishy goodness was making us hungrier and hungrier, but the end was in sight. We dropped the main portion of our tickets in a basket ("Save the little part for the dessert table!" a church lady admonished) and picked up a plate of cod, mac'n'cheese, cole slaw and bread. The girl pouring iced tea and lemonade knocked over a glass of ice as I approached. "Oh, snap!" she said, to the delight of the My Name Is Earl freaks among us.
I was beginning to lose my faith in the promise of all you can eat fish; we'd already gone through the line and given up our tickets, so how could we get more? Then we got to our table. There was a bright orange laminated fish in the middle of it. On it was another Bible verse about a miraculous feeding--the "and fishes" part of "loaves and fishes" was italicized and underlined--and the words "Want more fish? Wave me!" That explained the people I'd seen at other tables holding brightly colored laminated fish over their heads. No one was waving them, though M. made hers "swim" as she held it up.
The meal was excellent, as was the company, and we all ate a lot of fish. We thought going bowling would be a nice way to round out the evening, but the local alleys all had tournaments and private parties, so we went to Starbucks instead (with a side trip to DQ for some of us) where M. and I explained the -Pants Rule to those who hadn't heard it.
It was a fine evening, and we plan on doing it again next week. So if you're in the area and want some great all you can eat fish next Friday, drop me a line (rimshot).

Friday Round-Up

This week I met Equation Man, who asks for a piece of paper and returns with it covered in numbers. He chatted with me a bit, but nothing he said actually made sense. I mean, the sentence structures existed, it's just that the words were strung together randomly (like the ZooTV newscaster on an old U2 TV special, who said things like, "The category is athletics. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1901 with a free game card, the antibiotics arrived too late for thousands of satisfied motorists; an all-night vigil by protestors met with a year's free subscription. Call toll-free for ex-government salad sandwiches with a choice of fillings"). And now I am the proud owner of a couple of sheets of paper that look like this:
1/16 1/64 046 515 31/64
062 3/64 078 531 9/32
1/52 093 5/64 546 33/64
109 125 7/64 562 9 and 6/16
This week I also learned that Mary Beth's CB handle was "Twisted Sister."
Today we closed up shop early so we could all go to the funeral of the son of one of the people who works here. He was a young man who died suddenly after a short illness. It gave me flashbacks to last year around this time, when I was about a month into my stay at the J.F.C.C.C. House (just as I am now about a month into my time at Our Daily Bread). Then, too, a young man died suddenly after a short illness.
Keep Bouvier and his family in your thoughts and prayers, please.
Going this weekend to Ohio's interior to hang out with one of my old friends from @U2. Very thankful my car is all better.

Friends and Cars and Lucky Money

Had a good week with A., my friend from St. Louis. We hung out with the JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCult kids Tuesday night, Wednesday she came to Our Daily Bread with me, Thursday we went out for sushi, Friday we had a scrambled eggs'n'guacamole breakfast and then she drove home.
I had smelled a sort of burning smell one day the previous week when I was driving; with A. in town I figured it'd be a good time to take the car in to get it checked out (as I'd have access to another car). One of the side benefits of the J.F.C.C.C. house is that Our Glorious Leader is knowledgeable about cars (but then, Our Glorious Leader is knowledgeable about EVERYTHING!. So I dropped my car off with him on Wednesday. That afternoon he called. In the call he used the term "living on borrowed time." Seems there's this thing called an "intake seal" except mine wasn't particularly sealed. And coolant and oil were mixing. And this is not a good thing. The good news is it should be all better soon, which is nice 'cause I'm planning a road trip.
Envelopes continue to arrive in response to our appeal. I have appropriated the role of letter-opener for these envelopes. Opening them is easily the high part of my day. It reminds me of Tet--tearing open the red envelopes to find out how much lucky money is inside.
I was just thinking of how nice it is that this job allows me to make use of some of my less desirable traits. It has been remarked before* that I am good at manipulating others for money and hospitality; if I am doing so for the benefit of a non-profit, it's all good. And taking delight in the acquisition of money? It's not greed here, it's a motivational tool.

*I had a letter of defamation written for me by one of my friends (hi Steve) when I was applying for admittance to a Girls Night gathering. The girls had to make sure I was of sufficient moral depravity to be welcomed to a night of eating, drinking and board games; thus a letter of recommendation would never do. The letter of defamation was a piece of fiction hinting at unseemly conduct when drunk and other proofs of wickedness, but whenever my friends read the line in it that said "She manipulates others for money and hospitality, they'd always say, "Whoever wrote this knows you really well!"

What Soup Kitchens Wish For (And What They Don't)

All last week a local sports club took up a collection for Our Daily Bread of canned goods and personal items to coincide with the celebration of their Open House on Saturday. I brought three boxes (big-screen-TV-size) full of testimony to the club guests' generosity to work today. What was particularly gratifying was that the largest percentage of it was usable stuff--travel-size shampoo, cookies, cups, lotion, razors, combs. Sometimes with drives like this you just get people casting off the unappetizing items that have been sitting in the back of the pantry for goodness knows how long--those that perhaps even came with the house. But out of those three big boxes we only found two things that were unsuitable for giving away--a big glass bottle of cod liver oil, and Classico Vodka Sauce. Yeah, there's no actual alcohol content in the latter, of course, but it's still bad form for a soup kitchen to give away anything with the word "vodka" on the label.
But other than those two things, as I said, it was a wonderful collection, particularly since with the recent ice a lot of donations haven't been coming in.
Another Very Good Thing--that mailing that I wrote about earlier? It was an appeal letter; it got sent out late last week. The first replies came in today (we picked up Saturday's mail--no mail on Presidents' Day). It's lovely to see people being so generous. I hope our donors feel a sense of ownership of the place, that they are the reason why we can do what we do.
A very good friend is coming to visit from St. Louis; I'm gonna put her to work volunteering for a day. I'm curious about how the place will look through her eyes.

About Dentists, Among Other Things

Mr. And Mrs. Our Glorious Leader helped me get to and from work today, for which I am very grateful. It rained yesterday, the rain turned to ice overnight, and then about an inch of snow fell on top of that this morning. Yeah. Our Daily Bread closed up shop at about 1 pm yesterday. I went on traffic.com at 4:30 yesterday afternoon, which is when I'm usually heading home, to see what the conditions were like. "Road hazard: downed power lines blocking all lanes," it said for the route I would have taken.
Things I enjoyed about today:

--Being greeted with a cheerful "Happy Valentine's day!" as I walked in to work this morning
--The little noise of glee made by the Coffee Lady when she saw the amount of her paycheck--she had come in to work a special event we had on Saturday, so she got paid extra
--How pretty all the ice-encased trees looked

Now then--about those dentists. A preacherman came in the other day and we got talking about what he sees as the top issues for the homeless/poverty-stricken in our area. He says one of the biggest problems is dental care--our people can't afford to go to the dentist, and there are no programs in place that he knew of that could help.
We've got a podiatrist that comes in to help people with foot issues--this man is a real saint, he goes to places all over and does this for free. Maybe that's what it would take--some dentist to decide to make assisting the homeless part of his mission. So, if there are any dentists reading this--here's a chance to do something great. This isn't just a Cincinnati issue, this type of help is needed all over.
Someone sent us this article recently. The article includes this quote: “Feeding the homeless only encourages more homelessness." I'm not even gonna begin to tell you what I think about that, because anyone using foul language will be asked to leave.

If You Use Foul Language, You Will Be Asked To Leave!

There's a woman who comes in all the time who usually sits at a table and gripes. She's not talking to anyone in particular, at least no one I can see. I can't tell what she says, it sounds like
"mutter mutter &#@@!$ grumble mutter #$%@ murmur @#$%ing @#$%#@% mutter mutter..."
We have signs posted about foul language, but I don't think this lady can really help herself. St. Mary Beth will get up when the volume of the muttering starts to rise, she'll stand in the doorway with her finger to her lips, and that'll take care of it for ten minutes or so.
Mary Beth got talking about the Pink Panther last week, so M. and I rented it on Friday. I'd never seen the original before, but M. says at her house they watched it all the time. Good ol' David Niven's in it, which made me think that I should rent Prisoner of Zenda and make M. watch that. One of the joys of communal living--cultural exchanges.
Saturday night we rented Catch-22, something else I've never seen (though I read, and loved, the book--as much as you can say you "love" anything with so much insanity in it). That movie will never seem out of date, unfortunately.
Sunday I introduced Our Glorious Leader* to his first full-length U2 concert video: ZooTV Live in Sydney. He was a little disturbed by The Edge's bedazzled jeans, I think, but otherwise he enjoyed it. He encouraged me to comment on anything I wanted to in the course of watching it--a dangerous thing to say to someone with as much love of U2 minutiae as I have.
Speaking of U2...In Christology we've been talking about the Redemption, Christ's ontological personhood and the Trinitarian communion. All of these things make my head spin in class. I'll tell you what, though--after one of these sessions I listened to a U2 bootleg on my drive home. Nothing makes the Vertigo sequence of Miss Sarajevo--Pride--Where The Streets Have No Name sound better than having it follow a discussion of the Redemption, Christ's ontological personhood and the Trinitarian communion. I said to myself, "Oh! That's why it's so difficult to put this stuff in words!"
*Our Glorious Leader is what I call the guy who owns the house I'm staying in, to give people who are freaked out about my living in a JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCult House something more to freak out about.

I'm Gonna Bet You...

Finished my Christology paper with about a half hour to go before class. Writing it became much easier when I remembered I'm taking these classes for fun. One of the side benefits of taking classes for fun is that you can end a paper for a Christology class with a quote like this, which I found on the blog meam commemorationem:
"Of necessity, theological language teeters permanently on the brink of nonsense."
Today at work this fella with an incredible mane of hair and only two front teeth came into the office looking for info on soup kitchens and shelters in the area. As I was printing out the info he wanted, he asked us office denizens, "Do you like mysteries?"
"Depends on the mystery," I said.
"What month were you born in?"
"August," I said.
"So you're a Leo? Okay, here's what I'm gonna do for you" --and he smiled to show off his missing teeth. "I'm going to bet you one dollar that I can describe you exactly right." He made the same offer to V., one of my co-workers. We both declined, but he proceeded to give me an analysis of my personality anyhow. The only thing I remember now was something like "Leos only get in trouble over love affairs."
"Is that so?" I said.
He smiled again and chuckled. "You tell me!"
The staff and kitchen workers had their "Christmas party" today (we've been busy, all right?). There were, I think, thirteen of us that went out to a buffet for lunch. Some betting was going on there, too--one of our guys bet another fifty pushups he wouldn't finish everything on his plate. But when the plate was well and truly cleared off, the one who owed the pushups wouldn't do them. He said he'd eaten so much, his stomach would hit the floor first, and then he'd just bounce.

Snow Day

I don't remember "clearing the snow off someone else's car" being on any list of corporal works of mercy, but it sure should be. Thanks again, Steve.
We got a lot of snow yesterday. It started falling thick and fast around one in the afternoon, at which point Mary Beth told us office denizens to go home. That's exactly how she said it, too: "Go home." Up until then I'd been engaged in what one of my old bosses at P&G calls a "project of guaranteed success." I was making copies for a mailing that'll be going out. It was a project of guaranteed success because the goal was to take one piece of paper and turn it into 3276 pieces of paper. You can really feel like you've accomplished something when you're surrounded by boxes and boxes of paper at the end of the day.
Even though I got to go home early, Our Daily Bread stayed open late again. Another soup kitchen opens its doors today at 4:30, so at least our folks will have some place to go.
When I got home yesterday afternoon I took a nap and then worked on the project whose success is not guaranteed--a paper for my Christology class. I have used every possible means of avoiding work on this paper, including writing a paper for my Church History class. But that happy period of procrastination could not last forever. Luckily existentialist mentor* gave me some information for the paper that I think will prove useful.
I didn't go in to work right away because traffic.com showed a "Jam Factor" of 8.2 or above (on a scale of 0 to 10) on any roads I could take. I waited until the Jam Factor was down around 7 and then ventured out. Driving would have been much easier had my windshield wipers worked properly. But I made it.

*Footnote: I was assigned a mentor for the program I'm in at school. At our first meeting we talked about our backgrounds, and she mentioned she majored in philosophy during the sixties. I asked her what her specialty was, and she answered casually, "Existentialism." She's not actually an existentialist. I just call her my existentialist mentor because it's fun to say, and one should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Hot Cocoa

It's freakishly cold in Cincinnati. I went to an ice-skating party yesterday at Fountain Square, but only stayed for a half-hour or so (maybe ten minutes of actual skating) because I lost feeling in my toes. The best part was that you could skate to one side of the rink and then just stand there; the wind would push you across without your having to exert any effort.
There was a five-gallon Igloo container full of hot cocoa there. By strange coincidence there is a five-gallon Igloo container full of hot cocoa today at Our Daily Bread. We made an executive decision to stay open later in the afternoon because, well, it's freakishly cold. So we put out the cocoa (I'm sipping a cup for quality control purposes; very high cocoa-to-hot water ratio) and put on a movie (The Mask of Zorro).
A woman asked me today if I would be her mother. I turned her down.

Mafia priests

I'm taking classes at The Athenaeum of Ohio on Wednesday and Thursday nights this quarter. My Church History prof is a great storyteller. We got on the subject of people who are not given a funeral Mass--for instance, Mafia dons--because it would be scandalous. So then he told us about a priest who was in an area with a large Mafia population. This priest went on vacation and told his replacement "If someone dies, no matter who it is, bury him." It seems that he had recently refused to say a funeral Mass. Shortly afterward, he'd heard a noise at his front door, went to see what it was and saw someone had left the tabernacle and the statue of Mary from church on his front porch. Then the church blew up. "They have great faith," our prof said, then skipped a beat. "They need to work on their love, but they have great faith."
There was another priest he knew, a Jesuit (our prof is a Jesuit; for some reason most of the protagonists in his stories are Jesuits as well) who was known as "the Mafia priest." He would get a call: "Meet us at the corner of 6th and Market", he'd go, a car would drive by and toss out someone half-dead to whom he would then give last rites. Or this priest would be picked up and hear the confession of the fellow in the back seat who was about to be fitted for cement shoes. "And that's if they liked the guy they were gonna off," our prof said. "If they didn't like him, they'd wait until he had an adulterous night with his girlfriend and then kill him so he'd go straight to hell."

Imtau the Centaur

Normally I'm against electronic devices acting (or being) smarter than I am, but there is one feature I'd like to suggest to any cellphone manufacturers out there: can you put in a little sensor that can tell when someone has tried to set up the Alarm Clock even though her ringer is turned off? Can you have a message pop up saying something like "You might want to turn your ringer on, YOU IDIOT?"
Thanks.
Speaking of oversleeping, I had a dream about a centaur the other night--no doubt because I had just seen Pan's Labyrinth. In this dream I was working in a bookstore/art gallery on a small Mediterranean island, and in the shop I met a centaur whose name was something like Imtau. He didn't look like your standard centaur--he was standing on two legs, and his arms were a little shorter than a human's would be, but they ended in horse's hoofs. He had a very Russian cast to his features. He was resting his front hoofs on one of those high round tables you see people setting their drinks on at art gallery openings. I greeted him and engaged him in conversation. In the course of it I made some innocent remark about cars, and he let me know politely that I might want to be careful about mentioning such things around centaurs--so many horses lost their jobs because of cars, so they're a pretty sore subject.
I then asked him to tell me what other sort of creatures inhabited this island, since I was so unused to seeing centaurs. "We have some insurance agents here," Imtau said. No, I said, I meant the sort of creatures who weren't found anyplace else--unicorns, for example. "Oh, but unicorns can be found anywhere--they're all over the world." Then I woke up.

Accordion Caterpillar Pencils And More

One of our regulars came into the office today, as he generally does several times a day. This morning he sang a song to my co-worker Val and me--it was a blues song, made up on the spot, featuring air guitar, about not wanting to go to jail. But then he got to a part he said would give him nightmares, so he had to stop and walk out.
I had to go to a meeting this afternoon. As I left, the Guy Who Laughs At Shoes was sitting by the front door, and sure enough, he laughed at my shoes. "I know, I know," I said, and he gave me a high five.
Yesterday the Wednesday Craft Lady came to work in the Kids Cafe. She brought in a caterpillar pencil for me--that afternoon's craft. You take a line of circles on card stock like this, except that all the circles are connected:
OOOOO
and you punch a hole the thickness of a pencil in the center of each circle. You put "antenna" on one end and draw a caterpillar face on that circle. Then you color the rest of the line, fold it accordion-style, and stick a pencil through so the eraser becomes the nose of the caterpillar.
We took a quick field trip at break time this afternoon to Findlay Market next door. St. Mary Beth got Coco a ham bone from Kroeger (famous for their sausage), and a peach cobbler at Aunt Flora's (featured on Martha Stewart).

Bingo

Today was Bingo Day, as it is every Tuesday, so we in the office were working with the background accompaniment of "O-47!"..."B-5!" etc.
Bingo is serious business around here.
Tuesdays are also legal clinic day, and once a month a podiatrist comes in. Today was the day for that too. One of our guys came in the office to show off the new shoes he'd gotten from him.
A nun comes in to do nails on Tuesdays as well.
Thursdays are Movie Days, with the big TV getting wheeled out into the dining room.
Today Sr. Mary Beth brought in Coco, her dog. Coco is very popular. These tough guys here, you know, the ones who have to be guarded all the time, aloof and defiant--they see Coco and crouch down and start baby-talking: "Who my good widdle puppy? Who my widdle Coco?!?"
By the way--I call her Sr. Mary Beth, but she's really St. Mary Beth. Says so on this award she just got--they wrote "St." instead of "Sr." They offered to fix it, but Mary Beth, perhaps not too surprisingly, declined.

Puppy-Pants

I'm not going to write about Our Daily Bread all the time, especially when something interesting happens at home.
Recently at the JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCultHouse we pondered one of life's mysteries--why is the expression "Puppy-Pants" (first employed by T., adopted by the rest of us as the catch-all term of endearment for any of our three resident dogs) so darned funny? Can other words become as funny when they are "pantsed"?
M. and I worked out what we believe are the definitive -Pants Rules. I present them to you now.
1. The "pre-pants" word must be multisyllabic--two syllables are the ideal. This explains why "Puppy-Pants" is funny while "Dog-Pants," while funny, isn't as funny.
2. The accent must be on the first syllable of the two syllable word, or the penultimate syllable if it's multisyllabic. "Renee-Pants"--not funny. "Potato-Pants"--pretty funny. But not as funny as it can be, which leads us to the next rule:
3. The last syllable should end in an "ee" sound: "Spaghetti-Pants," "Angie-Pants," "Sammy-Pants"--all funny.
4. The crowning touch--alliteration. This can trump almost every other rule: "Popsicle-Pants" is funny even with the accent on the wrong syllable and no "ee" sound at the end.
So "Puppy-Pants" is the perfect storm of "-Pants" expressions--we've got the right syllable count, the right accent, the "ee" sound and three "p" sounds in a row.
"Poopy-Pants" works too.

Words

People have been asking me this week, "So, are you enjoying your new job?"
I'm not quite sure how to answer this. Last night M. asked me why. "Is it because you're not sure whether you should enjoy a job that only exists because people are homeless and hungry?"
It's probably not as profound as that. It's because I'm just learning the job. Lots and lots to learn.
Today I learned about old typos on letters we've sent out. One letter apparently was trying to say something about "neighborhood shut-ins"--I bet you can guess the typo that was made on that phrase! Something like a hundred letters got mailed before the mistake was found, too...
Another time a guy said to Cookie (the organization's founder), "I think you made a mistake on this letter you sent out looking for more volunteers."
"Oh?" she said.
"You said, 'It's been quite busty around here lately.'"
She was able to cover the mistake up on that one though. Quick as anything she said, "I meant to say that! I was trying to get more men to volunteer!"
Speaking of putting the English language to creative use, Cookie was just telling us about one of our guests who complimented her on her makeup: "Oh! Your face always looks so pretty! Can you bring in some costume-medics for me sometime?"
I think "costume-medics" is a GREAT descriptive phrase, don't you? Reminds me of my friend D. who works at a place dealing with legal issues for people. She gets calls from folks saying, "Hi, I need to get my record 'sponged." That makes so much more sense--I mean, why would anyone want to get their record ex-sponged?

First Day

This blog will mostly be about my experience working at Our Daily Bread, a soup kitchen and hospitality center in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati. Even before I started working here I sussed this experience will be great for a story-gatherer like myself.
Heard this in a conversation with Sister Mary Beth, our Executive Director, at Chipotle the week before I started:
"One of the guys who comes in owned this cat he just loved. When it died we helped him get another one and are helping him with cat food and kitty litter and everything. But last week when his old cat died he brings the body here in a nylon bag, tears just streaming down his face: 'I live in Over-the-Rhine, Sister; I have no place I can bury him.' I agree to help him out. I wasn't gonna bury the nylon bag, so I open it up.
"Now, this man's a veteran. When I look inside—the cat's body is wrapped in an American flag.
"What can I do? When I bury it, I salute."

Mary Beth has seen a lot. At lunch today she told stories of working with three- and four-year-olds at a Head Start-like program. When they were baking homemade Play-Doh one day, one kid took the edge of a piece of paper and started cutting lines with the flour on the table—that's what you do with white powder, right? And another kid, another four-year-old, announced one day, "I know how you get pregnant!"
"All right, how do you get pregnant?" Mary Beth asked her.
"You take the beer out of the freezer, you take the wine out of the refrigerator, you drink the beer, you drink the wine, then you get fat and then you get pregnant."
Other highlights of my first day included a guy who came into the office to sing a belated happy birthday song of his own composition—he was pretty good. I tried recruiting him for my church choir. And the number one question asked by people meeting me: "Can you bake brownies?"
"Yes, I can bake brownies."
"Are they good brownies?"
"Yeah."
"All right, I guess you can stay."
It snowed yesterday. One fella came in asking for some socks. His had gotten all wet in the snow last night.