Umbrella weather

I don't think anyone ever has real luck with umbrellas. H insisted, awhile ago, on buying a nice, real umbrella (rather than one that shrinks up for easy accessorizing) in order to avoid that embarrassing scene when a flimsy umbrella, unable to handle the Philadelphia winds that whip like mad, pops out of shape like a rubber toy. (You all know what I'm talking about - when you see it happen to other people, it's like a comedy show. But when it happens to you, it's just plain embarrassing.) What he ended up with, mere weeks later, was a mess of little, delicate rods that were supposed to connect the cloth of the umbrella to the base, broken up and made completely dysfunctional by that same forceful weather that had thrashed our other umbrellas in and out of shape (but at least, I told him, they don't break entirely!). That umbrella went directly into the trash.

For some reason, I have been stubbornly avoiding buying another umbrella ever since. But we were in NYC this weekend, and were out on Saturday, hoping the drizzle wouldn't be able to stop us from making it to the new High Line Park where we planned a walk and a nice lunch. The rain, though, was just too much. We sopped it up for about 10 minutes before I caved and turned to a street vendor for whatever item he might have in his bag of tricks remotely resembling an umbrella. I bought what he handed to me for five dollars, no questions asked. It's small, but it'll definitely do. And when the wind blows on it, maybe I'll look ridiculous for a few moments, but at least I won't feel like I lost an investment. Now if I could have only gotten my shoes and socks dry for the day...

Dixie cup Church

I'm from the almost-south, a city perched between the midwest and the southern states, with some of the charm of each. It's a place that's both tenaciously liberal (on my side of the tracks) and, in some cases, staunchly conservative. Religion comes in all shapes and sizes in my home city, but I will say that they haven't avoided the mega-church phenomenon by any means. There's a church out in the suburbs (out with the strip malls and the giant parking lots and the mega-Wal-marts), a massive octagon of black glass with a giant cross on top. Upon arriving in the U.S. for the first time to visit, my husband, a quiet adventurer with a curiosity for quirky nooks and crannies that are a bit off the beaten tourist path, demanded we go. He had to see it. It was a spectacle. I shook my head slowly -- after all, neither of us is particularly religious, and I have some bad memories of mega-church-going folk. But I was slowly convinced. Wouldn't it be interesting , after all, to see a church with two balconies and an escalator?

We sat as far up as we could, and watched the show. They had the giant, see-through pool, where they must baptize at least one person a week (they did two while we were there...a grown man who smiled goofily the whole time, and a child), they had the pop band on stage, singing about Jesus. But the thing I thought was the most incredible was the Eucharist. Grape juice passed out in little, plastic cups to everyone in the audience. Now that's the way to take in the body and blood of Jesus. In disposable cups that will be of use for 5 seconds before going to litter a landfill. Thank you, Dixie cup corporation, for your contribution to Eucharists in mega-churches everywhere. Your role is positively vital. How else, in God's name, would they get all that blood to all those people??

Kickboxing like a champ

I'm a pseudo-kickboxer twice a week, meaning I go to the gym dutifully every Monday and Wednesday night where I, among other things, knee and punch a giant, stationary bag, play with imaginary nunchucks, and go wild with jump-kicks that could cause some serious damage to a threatening but unsuspecting jaw. I'm pretty sure that would translate into real-world street fighting skill absolutely not at all, but let's leave that for now.

There are always two different instructors for the two nights, each with a slightly different style. Monday is a non-stop fire-cracker of a woman who makes the time fly by because I have to furrow my brow and bite my lower lip in concentration most of the time just to keep up with her. Wednesday's instructor is slower, steady, with combinations that aren't as complex - but she kicks our butts when we go to the floor for ab work. But tonight, there was a substitute. And maybe it was out of sheer exhaustion from kicking and punching, or maybe it was delirium, because I have been known to let my arms flail a bit too much, with the consequence of hitting myself in the face every now and then, but I could swear I hardly saw her lift a finger the whole class. She yelled, she barked, she counted out the number of hits we had dealt, but she walked...slowly...around the room, like a nun in a Catholic school ready to rap your fingers for going out of form. I don't trust these teachers. I think, if you're going to show me how to do it right, you've got to sweat at least as much as I do. After all, we would like to pretend, at least for an hour once a week, that we're bad-asses who deserve to be led by an instructor who is, herself, an ultimate fighting machine.

The best way to go

Having visitors is always fun, and is an opportunity for us to drag out into the open all the possibilities this city has to offer, making it a memorable trip for friends but also a good exercise for us. It rained Saturday, always an adventure since we (walking-folk) have to get creative, but we ended up in a mammoth warehouse of a store just outside of the city, with rows and rows of antiques, rickety old chests and marble-topped tables, brass plates and long, thin Turkish rugs, funky lime-green sofas and crazy sculpture-chairs made out of bottle caps (I'm not kidding). The strangest thing was just overhead, though: as we were milling our way through unique collections of material culture, you couldn't help but, at least once or twice, let your eyes roam upwards to the vaulted ceilings. There, on platforms high above our heads, were large, cushioned containers that looked vaguely like cello cases. One done in white silky material, another made to look like a boat, a third to look like a boxy car, we finally saw the sign: they were coffins. Fantasy coffins from Ghana, to be exact. My heart jumped a little, but how cool, hey?

Later, after taking it all in, we were relaxing on one of their couches, browsing some of their paper catalogs, when an employee came around with piping hot Moroccan-style tea for everyone to enjoy. Ikea, you've been one-upped. I'll definitely be returning when I'm looking for that perfect, Mercedes-Benz-shaped coffin to match my new living room decor.

Bland but Bubbly

Upon returning from Europe this summer (the first time I had visited my husband's family in four years there, thanks to schooling and visas (my husband's...not mine) and lack of money), I found myself having a hankering for something that I never expected to even like: sparkling water. The first time I tried the bubbly stuff, over five years ago, I thought I would spit it right back out again.  I'm not sure why - I suppose just because I never had had it before, and I somehow subconsciously associated it with carbonated anything (my midwestern mind was thinking 'oh sure, like coke!') - I was expecting something sweet and...well, something with flavor.  Any flavor. Even a little bit of flavor.  Heck, even a bad flavor.  What I got was a mouthful of fizzy wetness.  Fizzy, yes, but totally bland fizziness.  I drank as much as I could and made sure to practice my pronunciation of 'flat' in my less-than-perfect accent. But this time around, I decided to give it another go.  I had a fourth of a cup at one meal.  I upgraded to a half a cup at another.  I added a zest of lemon at a party.  I suddenly liked it.  I suddenly liked it a lot.  I suddenly felt the need to pout just a bit internally when someone was turning the bubbly water bottle upside-down at lunch, getting the last drops of it, and all that was left was my boring flat.  Flat water was suddenly like slightly grainy reception after I had been watching clear, crisp, digital genius on a screen.  

And suddenly here I am, back in the States, in the midst of August heat at its best, my cup of flat, iced water sweating out of its glass next to my computer, and remembering that time a European friend asked nonchalantly for sparkling water at a restaurant here in the city and got a very confused look from the waitress who said abruptly "oh, we don't serve that."  Yet, I also distinctly remember, mid-planning for a fancy party at work, someone suggesting that we serve 'bubbly water.'  My ears perked up.  I may just have to stick a little bit more closely by the buffet table for that shin-dig.  If it's got a snobby reputation in the U.S., then call me highfalutin' and leave me to my bubbles.

A point of clarification about said adventures with city pests

Yes, as I mentioned in my last post, we have had our fair share of mice. But I feel the need to elaborate so that I won't be written off as just plain gross. It was right after we moved in, H and I were settling down to a nice episode of Netflixed something-or-other, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something scurrying? No...it couldn't be. Suddenly, my husband was saying the same thing. Is that...? No. We tried to settle back down to the story-telling bliss that is HBO drama, and then it was unmistakable. A blip in our image-flashing apartment, clear as the blood-curdling scream I let out the next moment, squeezing between a tiny little hole at the bottom of our front door. Oh, did we ever pay our city-dwelling dues then. We caught roughly 10 mice in the next week. We rigged our apartment up like a giant booby-trap, tiptoeing around metal jaws meant to break little mouse backs. When we discovered the peanut butter delicately but completely licked off one of our own safeguards, we started to buy other things: sticky traps and plastic ones that were supposed to snap shut when the mice wandered in. And here's where the oh so gruesome part of the story comes in. Those plastic traps don't work. Not well enough. In the middle of the night, just as sleep is setting in and our minds are melting into puddles of fuzziness, we here a distinct snap. Followed by a distinct squeal. Followed by a flapping noise and more squeals. We headed out to the living room to find not one but TWO little baby mice feet sticking out of the jaws, kicking and trying their hardest to get somewhere. It was, let me say, awful. To make a painful story brief, my husband dropped the trap in a bucket of water, while I sat on the couch and cried. I won't even go into what happened with the sticky traps.

So that's our mice story. And if you take away one thing let it be this: if you're catching mice, stick to the traditional traps. If they lick the peanut butter off, throw the trap away and set a new one. Words of wisdom from a reluctant but seasoned mouse torturer.

Adventures with city pests

My husband and I have known our share of pests in our teensy city apartment - not that we're filthy people, but this isn't a squeeky-clean luxury condo in Bel Air (a la Fresh Prince pool house). This is the city, and if you're going to embrace it, you have to pay your dues with a little teeth-grinding over four-legged, six-legged, eight-legged, 20-legged creepy-crawlies that invade your spaces. We've had a mouse or two (or ten...ahem), and several of those damn silver fish that seem to get bigger and grow more legs by the day. Now, we're lucky enough to live in a place with a fresh little garden right outside our door, a quiet space where neighbors could mingle - that is, if we weren't dead-set on ignoring each other to prove that we're tough-skinned city folk - that offers sprays of beautiful pinks, purples and yellows and swaths of green enough to tickle any park-starved-city-dweller's fancy. A few days ago, my husband and I discovered, in this little nook of green space right outside our door, a giant web, with a giant spider busy at its center, its legs frantic with earnest work. We examined it for awhile, commented with astonishment at the magnificence of its web (it was a good four feet across), and left it alone, off in its corner to do its nature-lovin' thing. For the past several days, we've noticed that his web disappears and reappears (Does he really rebuild it every night?, we ask each other. Wow! That's amazing!) But last night, as I made my way home in the dark, rounded the corner to our door, I felt the distinct, slight, uncomfortable brush of a single silk strand run across my face. I turned to see myself face to face with our little friend, who had apparently decided that it was time to expand his territory into ours. I shuddered at the thought of a humongous, spotted spider (does that mean it's poisonous?) running up my neck, disoriented and scared, fangs ready. I dragged my husband downstairs, toting a long, flat box as our weapon of choice, and with one smooth stroke, the large anchors of his web were broken, the silk sinking slowly into a one-dimensional line, and the spider going with it. With another swoop of his arms, my husband had catapulted the spider across the yard. I pouted a bit. It seemed like such a rough hit! Couldn't you be more gentle? What if you killed him? I understand his point - he really did have to be put properly in his place, but I hope that he's still out there, ready to get busy on the other side of the garden!

Two stories of the South (well...sort of)

Yesterday we biked into an oasis on the corner of town, an area so absolutely green and with such little traffic that you would think you were in the mountains of West Virginia. We went down the bike path, full of tiny hills and overlooking a picturesque river, until we came to a restaurant you could swear was right out of a movie about the Old South: a free-standing block with large windows, white, peeling columns and spacious porches on the first and second floor. Young men in white jackets were setting up for dinner, lazily putting knives and forks out on white clothed tables, and I had to think, if you walked inside the house, you're sure to see some woman in a flowing, light-pink cotton dress, nursing a jack daniels, pushing her hair out of her eyes, fanning herself and defending her father's honor with a proud, haughty chin and a milky drawl that would make you swoon with thoughts of dead worlds. It had a slowness, and a sweetness to it, that you don't find much while living in the city, and that was really pleasant.

I rarely meet people from the South, but I was recently in Florida - I swam in the Gulf on a pretty, warm evening, the only one out in the sea for a few minutes, before one man, beer-gutted and carrying a plastic pepsi bottle with some kind of neon yellow liquid in it, came out to my area. He was followed by a buddy, and they talked to me for awhile. They were from Mississippi, had taken up jobs as roadies to get out of their hometown. They liked Florida, and they laughed hysterically when I told them I was in town for a conference. As I was leaving the water, one called back that he would come around and find me in my part of the world when they visited.

I've traveled a lot of places in the U.S., but I've never really been to the deep south, besides Florida (which doesn't count as 'deep south', does it??). Its history is fascinating at times, grotesque at times, it seems to me. But for me, and maybe partly because I really have never been there, the real South, outside of the swarming cities, will always be heavy with the majesty and tragedy of families, fictitious or not, that once clung to haunted space. And I wonder now whether the Mississippi boys, Mountain Dew guzzling, tattooed and friendly as all get-out (to white women, at least), would agree. Who knows. Maybe they'll find me someday, out of the blue, and I can pose the question to them properly.

An Imperfect Space

The idea for a blog has been stirring in my head for a year now, and there it has gone through dozens of manifestations: a platform for commentary on gender, a place for play, a chronicle of tidbits that reflect the weirdest and wackiest from the pages of printed material (where the title of the blog came from - which stuck with me), an outlet for the complaints of a lowly nine-to-fiver - but finally, here I am carving out a tiny space for myself, on a whim, and trying to stay focused on letting it be *imperfect* and wind its way around all of my interests, my lives, and my stories, over time. I'm away from what was long home, and it never hurts to have a place for reaching out to old friends and new ones. So, welcome! Come and go. Read and comment. I hope I can offer you something worth your time and attention.