Monthly Archives: May 2007

With old-fashioned flavor in every bite

Can we build it?

Please enjoy this classic post from the previous incarnation of my website, circa 2000.

Twinkie Lamp

“Are those Twinkies in there?”

Yes; yes, I’m afraid they are. They’ve been in there for over ten years now, I think. I have the dated receipt around here somewhere. When this picture was taken, it was closer to five or six years. But they still look pretty much the same. I mean, you can tell they’re old; you wouldn’t want to eat one. But then, a lot of people wouldn’t want to eat one even if it were fresh.

I got the lamp out of the basement of an apartment building on Highland Street, where it had been abandoned. I claimed it as my own, to furnish my first college apartment. The lamp was empty then, of course, but it was obvious we would have to put something in it. The guidelines were simple:

  • It had to be relatively light, because it was sitting on a flimsy table.
  • It couldn’t involve water, since it is after all an electric lamp and I didn’t feel like making the effort to do it safely.
  • It couldn’t be anything that would require attention, such as an ant farm, nightcrawlers, or food, which would rot or mold or attract pests.

We got a lot of suggestions. Colored sand or marbles were popular; both would have collapsed the table. Potpourri or scarves were deemed too girly. And M&Ms or other colorful candy… well, I suspect that would have become an ant farm in very short order. Finally we put it as the outgoing message on our answering machine: What should we put in the lamp?

My friend Tom left a message later that week. “Twinkies, man, I told you. F—in’ Twinkies.” *beep*

So Tom, Tim and I went to Crosby’s and bought six boxes of Twinkies. That turned out to be way too many, so after we were done cramming them in there, we ate the ones that didn’t fit (almost two boxes). I haven’t wanted to eat a Twinkie since then.

We took it next door to the Kitchen Witch to show Becky. She just laughed and said we were crazy, which was pretty much what she said every time we said or did anything.

Then we took it next door to show Bill at the convenience store. A girl was walking out as we were walking in, and she said, “Those things are gonna mold.”

I said, “They’re not going to mold. There’s nothing in them that mold would want to eat.”

She said, “I know mold, and those things are gonna mold.”

Tom laughed out loud. “You know mold? What does that even mean?” She stormed off, but I knew I was right. They’re individually wrapped, after all, and I’m pretty sure if they haven’t grown mold by now, they aren’t going to.

San Astrapi

Nate

Nate is a big fan of the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. He called the toys to him, and they came: in birthday party goodie bags, from the Grouses, from his grandparents. I don’t even know where they all came from, but he’s amassed a pretty decent collection. Plastic and die-cast, he carries them everywhere.

On Friday, one of his classmates brought a really big Lightning McQueen toy to school. The toy is probably about a foot long, with moving eyes, and a bunch of sound effects: low-fidelity recordings of Owen Wilson’s voice, saying “Ka-chow!” and “I… am Lightning McQueen.” Nate’s toys are all Hot Wheels style: tiny by comparison. O, the jealousy.

So on Saturday, Nate and I went to “the big toy store” to get “the big Lightning McQueen.” He won’t be little forever, so I’m happy to indulge him while his biggest and best dreams still only cost twenty bucks.

We brought the big Lightning McQueen to his friend Peter’s house for a sleepover on Saturday night. The boys put a lot of miles on that car that night. Somehow they knew that one is not supposed to sleep at a sleepover. When I picked him up on Sunday morning, he was at least three hours short of sleep.

I had a hard time getting him strapped into his car seat, because he didn’t want to let go of his Lightning McQueen. We got on the highway and headed south, on our way to Sarah’s parents’ house and then to church. He flapped and flailed in the back seat, babbling about all the fun he had had with Peter, until suddenly the maple syrup wore off and he fell silent.

I looked in the rearview mirror. He was simply stunned with exhaustion, staring out the window with enormous eyes. The sun came out from behind the clouds and wrapped him in an ethereal glow. His beauty took my breath away.

I reached back and touched his ankle.

“I love you so much, Nate.”

“I… am Lightning McQueen.”

White Noise

Nate, Sarah

I have tinnitus. Some folks have it bad, but it’s mild in my case. A faint, high-pitched ringing in the ears, is all; mostly I don’t even notice it, except when it’s completely quiet. I sleep with a fan on, so it’s never completely quiet. No big deal.

I’ve slept with a fan on since I was in high school. Right now it’s the HEPA filter; during the winter it’s the humidifier. When it gets really hot it’ll be the air conditioner. Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s broad-spectrum. Sometimes when fans get old they’ll start to heterodyne, and you can hear a kind of thrumming pattern in the noise as it comes in and out of phase. That keeps me awake; time to get a new fan.

Now, it’s well documented that white noise can produce auditory hallucinations. So can sleep deprivation. Put them both together and that spells trouble. When Nate was born, of course we had a baby monitor. Those first few months, the sleep deprivation was hell on earth. He’d wake up hungry or wet every two or three hours. After a couple of weeks, I was so desperate for sleep, so afraid that he was going to wake up, that I would listen to the fan and hear him screaming all the time, even when he was sound asleep. I eventually trained myself to control the hallucinations, kind of like lucid dreaming. If I could make the scream hold the same pitch and volume for ten seconds without taking a breath, there was a good chance it wasn’t really Nate and I could go back to sleep.

Recently, I had my buddy Tom replace my bathroom ceiling and exhaust fan, which is a story in itself. He demonstrated the new fan for me. “WHISPER QUIET, MY ASS,” he yelled. “I’D HATE TO SEE THE NEXT LOUDEST MODEL.”

Last Sunday, you may recall, was Mother’s Day. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was a rough weekend. Nate’s classmates made Mother’s Day cards for all their moms, but Nate made one for me instead. I couldn’t really look at it without crying. He sensed that I was fragile, and true to form for three and a half, he moved in for the kill. I thought it was bad when he tried to throw his Apple Cinnamon oatmeal on the floor, but it only got worse from there. I was ready to fashion a size 4T straitjacket out of gaffer’s tape just to get ten seconds of peace. I would set him up with a video and go upstairs to pee; the moment I shut the bathroom door, he’d start calling me. “Daaaaaaddy… daaaaaaddy…” He just couldn’t leave me alone.

I finally got him to go down for a nap on Sunday afternoon, and I decided I would take a long, hot shower to try to work some of the knots out of my neck and shoulders. I cranked up the WHISPER QUIET exhaust fan and turned on the water, half expecting Nate to wake up and demand my attention. When he stayed asleep, I gave a little prayer of thanks to Morpheus. I stayed in the shower for half an hour and used all the hot water. It was lovely.

When I got out of the shower, I looked in the mirror, and thought, damn it, Sarah. You should be here. Never mind Mother’s Day; it is so your turn to watch him.

And clear as life, through the sound of the fan, I heard the front door open, and Sarah’s voice call, “Marco!”

I burst into tears. Polo, honey. Here I am.

She sounded so happy.

Eat It

Nate

Three and a half is such a special age.

Saturday morning, Nate requested oatmeal for breakfast. I was surprised; he’s had waffles every morning for months. But okay, we have oatmeal. I grabbed a packet at random and put it in the microwave.

While it was cooling, I poured a bowl of cereal for myself. Then I called him in from the family room and we sat down to eat.

He hemmed and hawed about how it was too hot, although he hadn’t actually touched it yet. Finally he took a bite, and announced, “I don’t like this oatmeal. I want waffles.” I realized that I had selected an unflavored packet from the variety pack. I offered to put some maple syrup in his oatmeal, but he held firm: “Maple syrup just reminds me of waffles even more.” Okay, kiddo, you got it, but you’re going to have to wait until I finish my breakfast before I make you another breakfast.

Well, he really didn’t like that, but I wasn’t going to let my cereal get soggy.

So I made him a waffle and he ate it up, and that was fine. I threw the oatmeal away.

Sunday morning. Again: “I want oatmeal. Flavored oatmeal this time, not the way you made it the day before this day.” (“Yesterday” still means “any day in the past.” We’re working on it.) I carefully selected Apple Cinnamon and cooked it up. When it was cool enough to eat, I presented it to him, and he regarded it suspiciously. “What flavor is it?”

“Apple Cinnamon.”

“I don’t like cinnamon.”

“Actually, you do. This is your favorite flavor. Just taste it.”

Wonder of wonders, he tasted it. “You’re right! I do like it.” Praise Elath, he’s eating it.

After three bites, he held a spoonful up and inspected it closely. “Daddy? What does cinnamon look like?”

This is the point where I should have said, “You can’t see it, you can just taste it.” But no! Here’s a question I can answer. I was all excited to expand his horizons. I went to the pantry and grabbed my can of cinnamon. The can has my initials on it in Sharpie, because I bought it when I moved into my college apartment, probably sixteen years ago. It’s still 90 percent full. Obviously I’m not much for baking. But anyway, I brought it in and popped the lid. “See? Doesn’t it smell good?”

“It smells wonderful. But it looks like something that came out of my butt. I don’t want this oatmeal any more. I want waffles.”

Feed me, Seymour

Can we build it?, Sarah

I actually enjoy working on our little house. I was inordinately proud of myself when I fixed the leaky faucet in the kitchen, for instance, or when I replaced the fugly chandelier in the dining room.

Sarah was always my cheering squad; she just loved that I was so handy. When she moved in with me, I noticed that her bookshelf was about to fall apart, so I laid it on its side, glued it back together and piled some weights on it to help it hold until the glue dried. It wasn’t much, but she was just thrilled by how matter-of-fact I was about it. It was busted, I fixed it, no big deal.

That said, there are a few things about home ownership that I do not enjoy. One of them is yard care. When we bought the house, it came with what is euphemistically known as “mature landscaping.” The wisteria had swallowed the back fence and was working on the maple tree. It had torn down the gutter downspout and was working its way into the bedroom window.

Wisteria, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, is insidious. It grows inches a day and can span great distances by twining around itself. I saw it reach up a good six feet into thin air to climb back into the maple tree after I cut it down. It will strangle you in your sleep if you aren’t careful. Sarah insisted that it was beautiful when it bloomed, but after three years, it never did. Last summer, she was no longer around to defend it, and I cut it to the ground. It’s still there, but I think I have the upper hand. I just can’t countenance a plant that requires twenty-four hour supervision to prevent it from killing all the other plants and lifting my house off its foundation.

We have a glorious star magnolia in the front yard that just finished its annual florgasm. We have many healthy hostas. We have an extremely enthusiastic honeysuckle that has almost completely devoured the yew bush on the corner. We have a bunch of nearly-dead rhododendrons that I am not sure what to do with. (I didn’t even know that rhododendrons were supposed to flower until I saw a picture a few weeks ago.) And we have at least a hundred other plants, bushes and flowers that I cannot identify, to the extent of being unable to tell whether they are weeds or not, or even whether they are alive or not.

One of my neighbors is a gardener, and he was kind enough to point out that I had some six-foot milkweeds growing out front: “Those are weeds, by the way.” Good to know. I ripped them out, and darn if they didn’t grow right back. Last summer, every night, as soon as we got home, we would go over to the honeysuckle corner and search for milkweed shoots.

A little research revealed that milkweed is a rhizome. I picture it as an evil snake that lurks far below, sending up shoots but never revealing its true self. I don’t know how it manages to survive with no sunlight, because I get those shoots the second they break the surface. But they keep coming.

So, I am slowly learning what I don’t like: plants that will take over my entire yard if I don’t pay close attention to them. Milkweed, bad. Wisteria, bad. Hostas I like, because they stay where you put them. I know enough to uproot maple seedlings before they get too big. But I don’t even know what else is thriving in my yard, plotting to destroy me.

Finally, we have a little garden out back. Strawberries, tulips, maybe some chives. Raised beds, a fence. It was beautiful, once. It could be again, but it needs a lot of work, and someone to care for it. I can take direction, but Sarah was the gardener of the family. She fed and watered; she nurtured and pruned; she sang little growing songs. Now termites have eaten the fence, and the weeds grow up to the sky.

Back in the USSR

Around the world

Hey! I’m back. Did you miss me?

I had to travel for business this week. A shout-out to Beth and Paul is in order; they took care of Nate for three nights. He had a blast, he says, and did not miss me at all. Same to you, brat.

The last time I took a business trip was also the first time, in 1999. Since then, my Corporate AmEx has been collecting dust in a drawer. Periodically it expires, and they send me a new one. About four years ago, I received a letter that said:

Starwood Preferred Guest® is pleased to offer you Corporate Preferred Guest® status in the world’s most distinguished hotel rewards program.

Well, la-di-da, I thought, and stuffed it in the drawer with my AmEx. Maybe I can earn dust points or something.

Our corporate headquarters is in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Our group uses a lot of acronyms, and the first time I heard someone refer to USR, I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. Do they mean US Robotics? And if so, are they talking about the modem company, or the one from I, Robot?

Amadis travels to USR all the time, so when I learned I would be going, I asked her advice as to how to get there. She said it would actually be way faster to drive than to take the train or fly, because none of the terminals are anywhere near the office. She also recommended that I stay at the Hilton Woodcliff Lake, because they welcome you with fresh-baked Tollhouse cookies. When I learned that I was expected to stay at the Sheraton to help maintain our volume discount, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I would bring my own toaster oven and a tube of Pillsbury cookie dough and just hand out cookies to everyone in the lobby of the Sheraton.

Scott and I left Boston at 7:00 p.m. on Monday in an effort to skip rush-hour traffic. He didn’t ask about the toaster oven in the trunk. We rented a Dodge Stratus, mostly because the dude at Enterprise didn’t feel like cleaning the Neon I had reserved. I am not used to driving such a zippy car. Scott noticed before I did that we were doing 90 MPH on the Pike. We shot by four state police cruisers at that speed, but they didn’t see us, because there just happened to be a big tractor-trailer in the center lane, blocking their view. Scott said, “Okay, you just used up all your luck for this trip. You need to slow down before you get arrested for felony speeding and I have to walk the rest of the way to USR.” I put on the cruise control.

We got to the Sheraton Crossroads (in lovely Mahwah) at 10:30 p.m., and damn if it didn’t look just like the Death Star: huge, black, and threatening. This hotel is ominous. The guest elevators went from the lobby directly to the 12th floor, and I am 100% certain that floors 2 through 11 are populated entirely by Imperial stormtroopers. I was pretty fried after driving exactly nine miles over the speed limit for three and a half hours; by the time I walked up to the registration desk, I could barely move or speak. I saw a shiny gold sign, Starwood Preferred Guest Registration; by golly, I guess that’s me.

I should have picked the other line. The desk clerk was way, way too nice to me. I just didn’t know how to cope with it. When she said, “Good night, sir!” in her sweet, breathy voice, I almost burst into tears. She had no way of knowing how fragile I was at the moment. You’re nice; will you tuck me in?

I did not encounter the same problem at breakfast. The hostess glared at us, sending a telepathic message: go eat at the diner. Grudgingly, she seated us. “You all want the buffet, right?” I looked it over. Eggs Benedict is not my thing. There was an omelette station, but no one running it. Um, no, I need a menu, please.

Twenty minutes later, when only one of us had given in and gone for the buffet, she came over to take our order. When my omelette finally arrived, it contained a handful of mushrooms at one end, and a quarter-pound, inch-thick wodge of cheese at the other. I didn’t have time to send it back, so I ate it, but I immediately wished I hadn’t.

Eventually, the waitress brought the check for the entire table, but we were mostly novice travelers, and we weren’t sure if that was a good idea; separate checks, please; sorry we didn’t tell you that up front. I hate you all.

Fully half an hour later, she was still wrestling with the register. The manager was there, and I think they were on hold with the cash register helpdesk. As we are all senior support technicians, this struck us as riotously funny. Scott could barely restrain himself from walking over to the register, and saying, “You know what? We’ll take it all on one check after all,” just to see her head explode.

The drive back took a lot longer, mostly due to rush hour traffic. I got home at 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and my cat was dangerously excited to see me. “MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!”

“No,” I said. “Mahwah.”