In the Throes

Well, everybody, it's time once again for our annual Gibbs/Margoshes Fruit Fly Infestation Extravaganza! This is a joyous time filled with mirth and festivities for all ages. There's the Stand 'n' Clap, in which my father stands over the fruit bowl with his hands several inches apart, waiting until a lone fruit fly propels itself upward in an act of resignation (at which point my grandma looks up from her newspaper and asks, with great interest, "Did you get it?"). Then we have the Death Saber, wherein we all take turns dragging the vacuum cleaner around the kitchen and sucking up flies with the extension hose while a second person shakes the plants and flower vases. And finally there's the Sweet Nectar of Revenge, which consists of me filling Mason jars with apple cider vinegar and fashioning death funnels out of printer paper to attach to the top. Yes it's grotesque, and yes the one on the back of the toilet looks a lot like a jar of urine, but I can't tell you how downright fascinating it is to watch these traps in action. Hovering in front of the kitchen sink while an unsuspecting fly marches down the paper tube to its death; watching sixty or so of the little effers swarming toward the side of the jar closest to the window, hoping that if they all push hard enough at the same time the glass will give way.  Even my cat, who has demonstrated intense suspicion of the vacuum in the past, can't mask the delight in her eyes when we wheel it into the kitchen. It's just so much fun.

Gotta love that Death Saber.

What is not fun, however, is having this problem to begin with. Until recently, I seemed to be the only member of the household who noticed that our yearly infestations just so happened to coincide with my brother's winery's grape crush and the eight tons of grapes fermenting in plastic bins in our basement. Last night, implicating himself at least partially in the fruit fly breeding ground that our house has become, Pasha taped newspaper over the heating vent in the bathroom because he suspected the flies were using it as their own personal portal to and from the basement. This fire hazard would undoubtedly alarm any sane person, but we freaks will stop at nothing to fuel this genocide, even if it means taking our house down, too.

If I weren't so busy falling into the clutches of sweet, sweet villainy I would be impressed by the resilience of these things. Pasha spent a good ten minutes in the bathroom last night sucking them up with the vacuum, and even though he claimed to have gotten "at least 95%" of them, this morning when I went to take a shower a great black plume burst forth when I slid open the curtain. You've got to hand it to them: fruit flies are highly efficient procreators.

I should probably be embarrassed by how easily I have yielded to these obnoxious pests, and by my willingness to share my abovementioned breakdown here with all you fives of readers, but I'm not. The way I see it, everyone reading this already knows how much of a freak I am. The damage is already done. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some vacuuming to do.

The Upside of the Shutdown

Now, I basically live for the week before Valentine's Day when NPR releases its newest batch of public radio pun-laden V-Day cards. Immediately after they're posted I print them out and, delirious with dweebishness, I dance around the house cackling to myself as I hide them in the refrigerator or inside the newspaper for my parents to find. (I really shouldn't be admitting to this kind of behavior. It's just depressing.)

This year, thanks to our friendly neighborhood GOP, I have another reason to live: NPR's government shutdown pickup lines. Oooh baby. It's like Valentine's Day four and a half months early! I should be angry with NPR for being the overwhelming cause of my singlehood, but I'm not. Nothing will turn this girl against her public radio.

And so, without further ado, here they are:

8 Great "Shutdown Pickup Lines" - NPR

Poetry Corner Whenever I Feel Like It

It's been a while, but Poetry Corner Whenever I Feel Like It is making its molasses-slow return. In time I promise I'll post a happy poem; just not today.

Infinite Room

Tess Gallagher

Having lost future with him
I'm fit now to love those
who offer no future when future
is the heart's way of throwing itself away
in time. He gave me all, even
the last marbled instant, and not as excess,
but as if a closed intention were itself
a spring by the roadside
I could put my lips to and be quenched
remembering. So love in a room now
can too easily make me lost
like a child having to hurry home
in darkness, afraid the house
will be empty. Or just afraid.

Tell me again how this is only
for as long as it lasts. I want to be
fragile and true as one who extends
the moment with its death intact,
with her too wise heart
cleansed of that debris we called hope.
Only then can I revisit that last surviving
and know with the wild exactness
of a shattered window what he meant
with all time gone
when he said, "I love you."

Now offer me again
what you thought was nothing.

American Football: The Seattle Sounders Documentary

Hell YES.

Fare Thee Well, Little Island

Today I leave.

It has been four months. Four months of sunsets over Canada, four months of falling asleep to the sound of fog horns in nights that seemed more grey than black. Four months of lion-gold valleys and dusty woods, of garlic parsley walnut bread and more books than any mentally stable person should ever attempt to read.

For me, one of the hardest parts of leaving has always been the inevitable caging of experiences behind the bars of a single adjective. "It was great," I'll say, if anyone asks. One syllable. A single syllable to stand for everything from the sound of pebbles dragged backward by the tide to the smell of strawberries warming in the late afternoon sun. And the thing is, oftentimes that one syllable seems like the only logical thing to say. No casual asker wants to hear about the time you and a friend drove home from a hike with a dog in the backseat and a bag of dog poop on your windshield because there was no garbage can at the trail head, or how a woman asked if you were valedictorian simply because you knew how to spell "congratulations." Pinning that monosyllabic "great" to the walls of the atmosphere will keep it there forever--will condense all your stories into a tidy, manageable segment. It's the truth, after all; it was great, and great is what people want to hear. But it certainly doesn't seem fair to shrink-wrap four months of your life to a bit of idle conversation before the topic turns.

Consider this post my response to the question, "How was the island?" I know I can't very well use this platform as a replacement for a verbal answer, but at least I'll feel better knowing that in my small corner of cyberspace I have posted the full truth.

People Be Ridiculous

I spend an inordinate amount of time complaining to my friends over email and Skype about the annoyances of my days in the shop. Rude customers, people who obliviously walk through the gate at five minutes to closing, even people who open the gate after I've closed it. Retail is stressful and emotionally taxing. And great material for my future book.

Woman 1 was heading toward the bathroom at the same time that Woman 2 was coming out of it. Woman 2 paused a moment in the doorway with her hand on the switch plate. "Are you coming to use the toilet?" she asked Woman 1, who nodded. Woman 2 remained in the doorway a moment longer. "I was just trying to decide if I should keep the fan on." She smiled. "I'll leave that up to you, though. Enjoy!"

One woman who came in was just the most perplexingly clueless customer I've ever encountered. She first asked if "that pie plate out there" was safe to bake with, pointing in the general vicinity of the yard. Then she wanted to know if you could put liquid in the mugs. I nodded slowly. Muttering something like, "What a great idea!" (coffee mugs that hold coffee! Genius!), she wandered off into the yard to look at berry bowls. While she was gone a man and his wife started a pile on the desk: a teapot, two cups, and a mug which, for some reason, the man placed upside-down on the table. Then they went off to look for more and the clueless woman returned. She saw the couple's pile and pointed to the cups. "What might you use those for?" she asked. I stared at her a moment, convinced that she was joking. She wasn't. "They're teacups," I answered. "Ahhh," she said, as if I'd just solved the Riddle of the Sphinx. "And what"--she pointed to the upside-down mug--"is that...the teapot?" Now, I don't claim to be the most intelligent person who ever lived, and I'm certainly not in the habit of thinking myself smarter than anyone else, but I am most assuredly smarter than that loon. Stupidity of that magnitude is just overwhelming.

I was hanging out with Janet during one of her shop days when a middle-aged man came in looking for the bathroom. "That blue door there on the left," Janet told him. He tipped his hat and exclaimed, "Uptown!"

In a round raised planter near the entrance to the shop yard Syd planted a ring of red dahlias. The other day I was engaged in my newest favorite pastime--eavesdropping on customers' conversations from my upstairs bed nook--and I heard a woman musing to her husband about the flowers. "Jimmy," she started, "look at these tiny red flowers! What do you s'pose those are, Jimmy?" (Reads plant stake.) "Oh, dahlias! They're dahlias, Jimmy! Can you believe that? Those little tiny red flowers are dahlias! Dahlias! Well, I never!" (In case you were curious, yes, apparently people actually say that.)

A group of woman asked this man to take a picture of them near the base of the treehouse. He got them all assembled and in the buildup to the taking of the photo he said, "Okay, everybody say 'whiskey!'"

Yesterday a woman came in asking to use the restroom. "It's that blue door there on the left," I told her, pointing toward a short corridor. She peered through the entryway and gave me a strange look. "This right here?" She was pointing to the white and green-striped curtain separating the shop from the kitchen and studio. Yes, I wanted to say, the one that is neither blue nor a door.

"How old are you?" one man asked as he was paying for his pottery. I grinned. "How old do I look?" "Um..." he paused a moment, clearly trying to find the most delicate way to tell me that I look prepubescent. "It's okay," I assured him, "I guarantee that whatever you're about to say, I've heard worse." He seemed to relax a bit. "Okay, then. Seventeen?" I was delighted. Sure, I might be eight years older than that, but seventeen boosts my average! At this point, I'll gladly take anything over sixteen.

Big Appetites

This guy is a genius:

Big Appetites - Christopher Boffoli on NPR