bad metaphor

In my various Internet travels, I have come across a site which showcases letters and diaries from the turn of the century. Awfully fascinating read, especially if you’re nosy like me and obsessively read the blogs of complete strangers. This is sort of like reading a way-back-blog! A lot of things were certainly different back in the day, but some things remain constant: people, then and now, like hanging out, gossip and romance. Check it out.

No matter how early I wake up, regardless of whether I sleep in, hit the snooze button, or spring out of bed as fresh as a laundry daisy (a rare occurence), I only have time for exactly one cup of tea. I would love to have more. Some of my favorite experiences in Britain last year were when I got up with the sun, which rose quite early, and sat and idly sipped my morning tea, until the rest of the world came alive.

These days it seems to be the opposite: the rest of the world is out buzzing around, doing things, while I am still groggy and asleep. A good deal of the people I know are either gone or going places. My boyfriend is across the pond and then some. I’m kind of bummed out whenever I check Facebook (the rock-bottom of Lame Valley, I know!), and I see all the things the people I knew back in high school are up to: Harvard law school, Rhodes scholar in Oxford, Peace Corps in Ghana, even countries my geography-deficient brain has never even heard of (Tajikistan? Sure that isn’t made up?). I sometimes wonder what would happen if I ever met up with some of these people, what would I say?

Hot shot scholar: “And what have you been up to, karenology?”

Me: “Uh…I made a cat bed last week? And actually got my cat to sit in it?”

It’s not that I mind the quietness of my own life. I’d much rather be knitting for my less-than-grateful feline than, say, getting my ass shot at in the West Bank. Or being entrenched in research and papers, with no time for tea or yarn. I am lucky that I have a comfortable life, a job that pays well and is easy on the duties, and people who love me despite my unremarkable dullness.

Yet, I am shallow, and care about what others think of me. I don’t want them merely to like me (though I do most definitely care, I do), I want them to envy me, a little bit, and brag to others about having known me. Ideally, I would be a rock star, though it would require me to pick up my guitar that has mostly been used as a door stopper and set prop for cat photos. Not to mention the cultivating blisters part, which would seriously interfere with the knitting, as well as the actual life of a rock star: the constant touring, the road trips, the shitty bars, the playing in front of a crowd and getting over that whole stage-fright thing, the mysterious bathrooms. Well, all right, maybe ‘rock star’ isn’t exactly the ideal career for a mousy germ freak. But, the adulation! The celebrity, the excitement! The…effort.

I’d much rather have my cup of tea in the morning, sit outside and watch the people who are making things happen. I’m more of an observer than a doer; perhaps that is why I am drawn to writing. I’m not sure if I’ll ever make it big in the writing world, at least enough to achieve the equivalent of rock star status, especially given my indolence (guess how many stories I’ve written since the end of school? Hint: you can’t divide by this number!). I don’t really mind if I am never in the running for a Pulitzer, but maybe it would lend some sort of legitimacy to the direction in which I am heading. Or lack thereof.

Spent this past weekend in Wichita, helping my other parent move. Luckily, he was only moving to the east edge of town, not the eastern edge of the country; unluckily, my dad is just about the worst person to help move ever. Note to those who want to enlist people’s help moving, and don’t have any immediate family members around to bully into assistance: 1) DO communicate with helpers, especially when moving a large sofa, and tell them things like “I’m stopping now to pick my nose, all the weight of the sofa is on you! Ha!” or “heretofore I have been lackluster in my efforts, but now I am suddenly going to push really hard while you are backwards on stairs!”, 2) DON’T blame your helpers when you make them follow your crazy plans and your plans fail (e.g., attempting to navigate the sofa on a three-foot-tall dolly on a bumpy brick path in your weedy yard).

The other component of this was braving my father’s driving skills, which, as a heretical agnostic, had me supplicating for the mercy of Our Lord Jesus H. Christ more times than ever in my life: sudden U-turns in the middle of the road, turning left while in the right lane (!), not bothering to check those pesky blind spots, etc. And these incidents occured not when he was not driving the U-haul, but his normal car, a barely-operating jittery zombie of a machine, despite my no doubt irritating commentary: “this car might actually be rejected by the junkyard!” It’s not a matter of money or lack of other vehicular options; he has a perfectly nice, relatively new Toyota Camry that sits unused in one of his parking spaces because my stepmom doesn’t like to drive. Instead, he drives the clap-trap to work every day. I toyed with the idea of leaving it unlocked so that someone could steal it, but that would seriously anger my dad, who, for all his quirks, owns the house that I was staying in. At any rate, nobody in their right minds would want to steal that thing, not even to harvest for scrap metal.

(Are other people’s parents this crazy? Are they just hiding it very well, to make chiaroscuro and I look bad*? Anyone?)

After about eight hours of this, Dad rewarded our efforts by taking us out for fancy eatin’ at World Grill Buffet. Or World Buffet Grill, or Grill Buffet World; it has those multiple-word names that, despite being totally interchangeable, don’t quite make sense together. Now, I can’t stand Chinese buffets. They almost always punish my intestinal system, and the germ freak side of myself cannot abide by the fact that all this food has been sitting exposed for hours, within the easy reach of people who pick their nose and kids who drool and…euuurgh. Also, everything is either deep-fried, untrustworthy, or most likely, both.

I’m sure that I derived my culinary senses from my mother, who is an excellent cook, and furthermore, appreciates good cuisine (although she does like the Chinese buffets for the ubiquitous crab legs). My dad likes…well, my dad likes barbecue, though he can’t have any due to heart problems. The few times he cooked for us growing up consisted of stuff like Manwich and lima bean stew. Luckily, Mom did most of the cooking.

Now that I call Lawrence my home, I’ve dragged my father out to my favorite haunts, ranging from really nice places to hole-in-the-wall types, and it’s all been the same, merely ‘okay’ to him. My stepmom is even worse; she thinks she hates everything except Vietnamese and Chinese food, and won’t try new things except at gunpoint. I’m not even sure she actually likes most Vietnamese food, as she’s said she doesn’t like garlic (say whaaat?). The last time they visited, I pressed them to tell me what they wanted to eat, ignoring the standard insistence that I be the one to choose. To my surprise, my dad said he wanted spaghetti, maybe, or some pasta. Pasta? My dad? Uh, okay. I took them to a standard, inoffensive if nothing particularly spectacular, Olive-Garden-esque eatery, that offered the requested spaghetti; he didn’t even order the spaghetti, and neither of them ended up eating anything beyond a few bites of their food.

When I eat with my dad in Wichita, it’s been the same – mediocre Vietnamese restaurants only frequented by Americans, or Souper Salad (another buffet). Lately eating (out or otherwise) has been complicated by the fact that, due to an allergic skin reaction some time back in August, my dad has sworn off basically any meat but pork.

“Why pork?” I asked, confused as to how it could be excluded from the meat ban out of safety concerns, of all reasons.

“I have to eat some meat,” explained my dad. Apparently he’d eaten everything else but pork before his rash appeared.

“Are you sure it’s even a food reaction? Shouldn’t you get some sort of allergy test?” Yes, he will, but in the meantime, he won’t risk it. Ah well. One might question the wisdom of eschewing chicken, fish and beef in favor of pork for health reason; one might also question the relative healthiness of an establishment like a Chinese buffet, compared to a meal in a more reputable restaurant. One would be arguing with the wind, so I bit the bullet (or rather, fortune cookie) and went with them to World Buffet Grill Buffet World…whatever.

The first thing you see when you walk into a place such as the (insert word-combo here), the only thing you can’t help but see, is the enormous faux-Swarovski crystal ship, about half the size of an actual functioning boat, suspended from the tall ceiling. It glitters from the far-off shores of the crowded buffet lines, above the rushing tides of hungry people with greasy fingers and appetites. Complementing the glittering vessel are beacons of bejewelled sconces, inset into the towering, pine-trimmed walls. The eye cannot help but stare: this place is Bling City, capital of Flashy Casino-Type Eatery Land.

Navigating through the buffet sea was quite rough; I almost wrecked a couple of times, and was nearly hijacked by speeding children wielding crab claws. I managed to get some salmon and rice from the hibachi line; the guy overcooked my salmon and, as it appeared, undercooked the steak for the woman behind me. The salmon resembled hardtack; giving up, I braved the oceans once more and gathered three types of shrimp: shrimp sauteed with bell peppers, shrimp coated in black pepper with the tails still on, and popcorn shrimp. The first gave off the redolent aroma of lightly used gym socks, with sharp, pungent accents of the finest vintage window cleaner; the second type, despite the pepper, was rather bland and also not deveined. I ended up eating mostly the rice and popcorn shrimp (which, now that I think of it, was probably also not deveined, but oh well. Perhaps shrimp poop is safer to eat after deep-frying). I looked over at the plate in front of my stepmom, who, as I mentioned earlier, hates almost every type of food imaginable. She had some slimy lo-mein, and some slimy shrimp and broccoli, as well as french fries. Though typically whenever I’ve seen her eat, even her own food, she eats the amount that you might feed a small infant; currently she relished those fries as though she hadn’t had anything to eat in the past week.

“You like french fries?” I asked, astonished. She nodded emphatically, too busy chewing to vocalize her affirmation. I now know what to make whenever my dad and stepmom visit: lima bean stew and oven fries (I’ll fix something up for myself on the side in addition).

At the end of the evening, we left…the Crystal Ship, feeling full. My dad full of pork, my stepmom full of fries, and me, full of popcorn shrimp and rice. My digestive system did not die afterwards, so I will go ahead and call that voyage a success.

* – Just joshin’, I love my parents. Especially for the fact that they can just about out-crazy the rest of the planet

What could have been a righteously crumbtastic week was much improved by the appearance of these at my doorstep:

Kindly ignore the hot mess that is my living room! Look at the pretty flowers!

Long distance roses! Hoorah! I don’t often get roses, so this was a very special treat to come home to after having single-handedly drowned the entire city of Lawrence.

This is not a dig at the boy, nor a snide implication that he has lately been derelict in his floral-administration duties; no, the reason why I don’t often get roses has to do with the other male in my life. He loves roses, possibly more than I do, albeit in a very different way:

El Chunko missed the memo in the last post, and shows no restraint towards edible objects.

Back when we started dating, the boy inundated me with all sorts of beautiful flowers – roses, daisies, even pansies (we had a running in-joke about them that I barely remember). I’d bring them home, arrange them dutifully in vases and admire their pulchritude; the following day, when I’d return home from school, colorful petals with little feline teeth marks were all that remained. I know cut flowers can only be enjoyed for a short while, but this was a little ridiculous. I tried putting them high up on shelves, but once they were out of the cats’ reach, they also disappeared out of my line of sight (I am short), and I would forget to water them. Then the petals would shrivel up and fall to the floor, where the cats would promptly eat them and regurgitate them later. Thanks for recycling, cats!

Still life with rose, gee-tar and feline blur.

Once, when we went to a Ren Faire in Wichita (nerd alert!), we passed a stand that sold roses dipped in wax. The boy bought me two flowers, coated in white wax with light blue shading, encased in a protective plastic box (class). I set these roses down on my dresser, trusting that surely, the cats would not be stupid enough to eat a WAX-COVERED object, even though the wax apparently enshrined their feline equivalent to crack.

You know how this turns out. I came home to discover a crime scene: busted plastic box, little chunks of white and blue wax, shriveled dried leaves. Both culprits survived. Five years later, they have remained happy, healthy and spoiled, with wax-free digestive systems.

It’s rather difficult to hold the camera while attempting to shoo a persistently avaricious critter.

I know these roses won’t last long, so I am going to enjoy taking silly pictures of them while I can. Before time and/or the cat eats them. What they stand for has lasted longer than any silly flower, be it wax-covered or gold-dipped; and for that, they are quite dear to me.