May 1 - Long Day's Journey Into Night

They had a mini-Eugene O'Neill Festival these past few weeks and we got to see two plays.  Tonight we went to see "Long Day's Journey Into Night," O'Neill's play about a family of alcoholics and their addicted mother.  No one writes plays like this anymore.  Plays that examine the human condition, not from an internal navel gazing viewpoint, but from the viewpoint of an observer telling a story about a flawed person, with some amount of judgment but more from the perspective of how that person impacts the world around him or her.  Does an addicted mother impact the lives of her sons?  Yes, in not very good ways.  They drink to avoid the thought.  She impacts her husband.  He feels guilty that she is lonely.  She hides in her morphine from a life she never expected.   Is it sad?  Sure. But we learn something about the human condition.  I enjoy these kinds of works.  Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, all examine flawed characters who suffer with an anguish that they try to hide from themselves and their families.  The question is, will they rise above it?  Sometimes they do.  Other times they do not.

When I first met Matt, I was introducing him to classic movies.  I lent him a copy of The Great Escape. To me, this is a great World War II movie.  It has great characters, a good story line, and it ends realistically.  It does not all go well.  The end of the story is not tied up in a nice package with a bow.  Life is hard and usually it does not all work out in the end.

A few days later I was talking to Matt's roommate. He was really upset at the movie because it did not have a happy ending.  He said all of the moveis I lent them were sad.  I guess that is true. To me, great stories are sad.  But somewhere along the way, we have come to expect that the stories we are told will end on an high note.  Imagine if Casablanca were done today.  Would Rick let Ilsa go?  No way.  That ending would never pass a focus group.  Everyone wants a happy ending, that leaves nothing to the imagination.

That is the way I see plays as well.  Generally, modern plays have happy endings  If they do not, the likelihood is that it is an ambivalent ending. You walk away satisfied that the characters have come to their senses.  There tends to be an examination of the human condition on a micro level and  without judgment.  The study tends to be not one of the world embodied in a character, but of one human being's failings. When I see plays like this, I come away wondering, what was the point?  I like to ponder the unresolved tragedy of the human condition.  Give me Willy Loman and Blanche Dubois any day.

April 30 - Saving Frogs

I was working out in the basement when I saw something jump in the window well.  That something was a frog and it jumped right up into the window screen and got stuck.  I was thrilled to have a frog.  I love being close to nature and this house is is a great spot for that.  I watched him for a few hours and eventually he got himself free.  Assuming he was the only one, I went to check on him the next day.  I counted four frogs.  Two adults and two much smaller ones.  We went out to visit them every day when Matt came home.

A few days later, the exterminator came by.  That is because while I love nature, I hate bugs, particularly centipedes that seem to love this house.  Yuck!  So I called in Terminix to give the house a good spray.  As we were discussing the chemicals he was going to use, he asked if I had kids or pets.  No.  Well, good because this stuff is pretty toxic.  How toxic?  Would it kill frogs?  Sure!

I lamented that he was going to spray the frogs but I was not sure what to do.  No surprise the frogs were in the same window well  that the creepy crawlys seemed to come from.  (Those frogs are not doing their job!)  I needed that area sprayed.  So I let him do it hoping the frogs would be okay.  He left and then I looked up the chemical he used.  Wow.  A nerve toxin that would slowly kill the bugs.  It would not hurt the frogs directly but if they ate the bugs, they would get the toxin in their system and die too.

So I had to move the frogs.

When Matt came home I told him all about it and said we have to move the frogs. When I announce goofy things like this to Matt he never rolls his eyes.  He jumps right in and goes along for the ride.  So I donned some gloves and studied the situation.  The window well is pretty deep, probably up to my thigh. And it is tight.  I cannot stand in it without standing on the frogs.  I have to go in pretty much head first.  But how to move them?

I have an idea.  I get a strainer from the kitchen and a grocery bag.  I figure I will catch them and bag them.  Matt thinks I am nuts but he always thinks that.

I reach in and the frogs back away.   For some reason they do not look the same.  One looks more like a toad but my frog book is in storage so I cannot make a good identification.

 But they have nowhere to go.  I encourage one to jump into the bag with a slight upsy daisy of the strainer.  One bagged. 

We take him off to the culvert out front.  It usually has a puddle or is at least moist.  We toss him in and wish him luck.  Off to get the next one.

I reach in and give a nudge.  He springs into the bag.  I feel like the Crocodile Hunter.  You're all right then.  Isn't she a beauty?  We let him loose in the culvert.  One more to go and we are done.

We start to sing:  Born free!  What a fun day saving frogs.  We have not seen them since.

April 29 - Painting! Hooray!

We finally got the paint and got started.  Goodbye drab tan!  Goodbye ugly wallpaper!  Hello color! 

April 28 - Sleep!

We slept for ten hours.  That is what sleep deprivation can so to a person.

April 27 - Dinner with Jim and Maryanne

 We grabbed some coffee at Starbucks and  stopped to see my sister before we left.  We were running on fumes after the funeral and when I don't get enough sleep, I just want to eat and eat and eat.  This is a common response of the body's energy system.  For some reason, lack of sleep turns on the eating hormones.  Mine particularly favor Italian food.  I guess that is my comfort food. So Jim kindly offered to take us out to an Italian restaurant for dinner.  We had stuffed peppers which were yummy and some really good pasta.  All fortified, we were on our way home, because guess what--we have to paint.  

April 27 - Funeral

My friend Cherie's mother died so we drove to PA for the funeral.  My mom grew up with Cherie's mom in Nemacolin.  Then I met Cherie in school in the first grade and we have been friends since.  We had a fun childhood together.  We were good.  We were bad.  We rode bikes and took hikes in the woods.  We learned to cuss from her brother Mark. We hung out in her basement.

 I would sleep over at Cherie's and you think with a sleep over, parents go to bed and we stay up giggling.  No.  Her parents were up at midnight, her dad baking pies and her mom cleaning.  Now I do the same thing and when I find myself baking or cleaning at 1 a.m. I think of her parents.

Karen did a very nice eulogy.  I wish you guys all the best.

April 26 - The Dr and the Long Needle

I have pain issues.  I develop chronic inflammation in my tendons and ligaments.  it is all rather random.  For the last year or so, I have been suffering from tennis elbow and golfers elbow.  My right arm is just a mass of pain.

I have been seeing a doctor who is trying a therapy on me where he injects a saline solution to break up scar tissue and to chase away the swelling.  Since the injection can temporarily numb my arm, and my driving may be impaired, Matt has to accompany me when I get the shot.

 The injection is quite intense.    There is a very large and long needle involved. Matt says it is the size of a horse needle.  I believe him.  But all the same.  I just close my eyes.  Why is it easier if you don't look?

April 24 - Walking in the suburbs

I decided to walk to the CVS.  I needed to get out of the house, it was a gorgeous, sunny day and so I went.  It is about a mile and a half up Old Columbia Pike.  There is a sidewalk along that two lane road.  It goes past small developments and single family homes, the community center, library and park.

The road feeds into Route 198.  At this point, in what would be "downtown" Burtonsville, there are no sidewalks.  It is all highway store fronts, small shopping strips with a few restaurants, and fast foods places.  I walked from driveway to driveway until I got to the local shopping center.  It is supposed to be  the "town center" development.  It is a few chain stores and retail spaces waiting to be leased.  This used to be the location of the local Amish market--the Dutch Country Market.  They were very well known for Amish meats, cheeses, produce and bakery.  They had another area where you could by an Amish made shed or gazebo.  The developer kicked them out to make room for a new development with chain stores.  I am pretty sure that most folks wish we could have the Amish back.

Even sadder is the post office, which is located about a mile away in a hidden industrial park building.  I am sure at some point Burtonsville had its own charming little post office but that has long since gone.

The only shining place in Burtonsville is Zimmerman's Ace Hardware Store. It is the small local hardware store where everyone is friendly and you can stand in the tool aisle for hours just looking at all the fun stuff.

We live in a subdivision/ area called "Fairland" on the County maps  but we are in the Burtonsville postal zip code so that is what they call our location.  I think I'd rather live in a place called Fairland, which is much more indicative of our little enclave next to the Paint Branch Forest Preserve.   I am becoming convinced that Burtonsville does not really know what it wants to be.  Once I got back on Old Columbia Pike, the walk was pleasant once again.  I think I'll try to stay in our little Fairland and visit Burtonsville only when necessary.

April 21 - We lost.

Penguins are out!  They did not want it bad enough.  Fleury needs a shrink.

April 21 - Dogugaeshi

Another part of the Cherry Blossom Festival, we went to Studio Theater to see Dogugaeshi by the puppeteer Basil Twist.  As explained on the Theater website:

Dogugaeshi takes its name from a 17th century Japanese stage technique, in which sliding paper screens depicting animals, interiors, or landscapes are whipped away by puppeteers to reveal new backdrops. It has been called a “wood-and-paint version of multimedia.” Twist takes the technique as a departure point for an intimate, contemporary work of puppetry influenced both by the tradition of dogugaeshi and his own encounters with the remaining rural caretakers of this once popular art form.





This was also part of a mini-Basil Twist Festival.  Who is Basil Twist?  A modern puppet artist who works in various mediums.  Not your traditional puppeteer.

How was it?  Okay but not particularly scintillating.  Watching a series of screens was sort of kind of interesting but I actually prefer puppets.  There was one lion puppet and when he came out, I was interested.  Then he left the stage and I missed him.

April 20 - Playing Hookey - The Japanese Scrolls

We took the afternoon to visit the National Gallery of Art exhibit Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and Flower Paintings by Ito Jakuchu.  We  learned about the exhibit in a piece on the PBS Newshour.

Over a ten year period, Jakuchu painted a series of 30 scrolls depicting flowers and birds.  The scrolls have never been displayed in their entire group outside of Japan.  But they were lent to the museum as part of the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Jakuchu painted the scrolls for a Buddhist Monastery and temple.  The power of the paintings is in the exquisite details of the brush strokes.  Thousands upon thousands of strokes to depict individual feathers, or detailed colorings of fish, flowers, and fowl.  The Newshour video shows some of it in pictures but only seeing it in person can give one that simple moment of awe.  This man had to have had incredible patience to paint in such minute detail.  No wonder it took ten years.  And they are lovely to look at, with intense colors and so much detail.  One of the scrolls depicted 67 insects.  We tried to count them all but it was just too much.

April 19 - Swimming and Diving

Oh, how I missed going off the diving board.  I once again live near the Martin Luther King Aquatic Center and, despite my intense reaction to the chemicals in their pool, I love to go there to jump off the board a few times.  I have no idea how to dive but I love to do it.  It makes me all chlorine saturated and it reminds me of my childhood spent at Coll's pool, going off the diving board again and again and again.  I lived in my bathing suit and walked around with bare feet the entire summer.  We opened the pool, we closed the pool.  We ate popsicles and frozen Zero bars and none of our parents were around to watch us.  They trusted us not to be stupid.  I think they also assumed that Mrs. Coll would keep an eye on us.

April 18 - We won!

April 15 - Pulling Weeds

I enjoyed the afternoon pulling weeds instead of watching the Penguins lose.  Oh, how they broke my heart.

April 13 - Hair

Have you seen actresses and maybe just women walking around looking like they need to get their roots done in a very serious way?  I have learned that is called ombre hair.  Yeah, women deliberately try to look like trailer trash.

April 12 - IKEA Shopping

We made another un to IKEA, this time for shelving, television stands and tables.  You have to love the convenience.

April 11 - Play off hockey

It's play off hockey time. Penguins v. Flyers!  The battle of Pennsylvania.  Who will win?  Well, we lost this one.

April 10 - Grass Cutting

I gave up and hired a company to tend to the grass.  Our yard is just big enough that my electric mower is too small for the job.  That meant buy a gas mower or hire someone to take care of it.  I don't like it, but I gave up and hired a company.  The reality is that right now, I do not have time for grass cutting.  I have painting to do.  So every week I watch the army of young Hispanic boys run around my yard furiously mowing and blowing and edging.  It takes about 15 minutes.

April 7 - Tavira

We spent the day doing blue collar work, moving boxes, cleaning the garage, moving furniture, is that when it is all over, it's Miller time.  Actually for us, it is red wine time.  But no matter.

One benefit of a house in chaos is that there is more of a tendency to say, hey let's just eat out.  We had not been out for a while so we spontaneously dressed up and went to Tavira, a well known Portugese restaurant in Chevy Chase.  Located in the basement of an office building, it does not have the most enchanting setting, but the food was delicious, if not over the top.  I had salt cod with potatoes and scrambled eggs (some cuisines put eggs on everything; I like it!)  Matt had lamb.  We stuffed ourselves and tottered on home.

April 6 - Exercise

I miss it.  I have been so busy that I have not had time.  But today I went for a run around the neighborhood.  Seems like a pretty normal, average middle class place.

April 5 - Ah, Wilderness

The local theaters have been having a mini-Eugene O'Neil festival.  We saw his comedy "Ah, Wilderness" at Arena Stage.  Who knew O'Neil could be funny?  But it was highly amusing.  The story of a young man and his growing up in a pretty normal family in Connecticut (kind of like O'Neil wishes his life had turned out).  The young man read scandalous poetry and thought modern thoughts of youth.  His parents were kind hearted, his uncle was a drunk who was loved by a maiden friend of the family.  He had brothers and sisters who were just young kids.  The boy gets in trouble, his girlfriend's father refuses to let him see her anymore.  But love prevails.  A feel good play for all.

April 2 - PODS!

Actually we used Door to Door, not PODS.  But today they delivered our storage containers.  Six of them.  Oh joy!  My books!  My stuff!  How I missed it.

April 1 - Let's get organized

The shock of trying to get it to all fit seems to be subsiding.  I helped Matt organize his closets.  I got more of my office organized.  I felt more relaxed.

March 31 - Japanese Tea Ceremony

It is cherry blossom time and the 100th anniversary of the gift of cherry trees from Japan.  This meant there were a lot of activities.  Unfortunately, due to moving and being overwhelmed, we had to pick and chose.  The blossoms were early this year so by the time the actual festival started, most of the trees were done blooming.

We decided to go to the Embassy of Japan for a traditional tea ceremony at their tea house called Ippaku-tei, which means the House of One Hundred Years.  It was constructed in 1960 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a treaty of amity between Japan and the US.  (I think that treaty was violated during World War II.)

When the day came, Matt had to work so I went by myself.  There were two ceremonies--one the more traditional and one more modern.  For both, the idea is that the ceremony is an art form, each movement precise and with a specific meaning, almost like a dance.  It is considered to be a form of Buddhist meditation and practitioners study it for years.  The tea is matcha, which is actually not tea leaves but powdered green tea.   This powder is whipped with water in a specific way as part of the ritual.


When I arrived, the modern ceremony was just starting.  I was seated in the back so I was not able to see each movement.  Young girls dressed in traditional kimonos served us sweets and a cup of the tea.  They were adorable of course and I wanted to have a kimono.

We were then escorted to the tea house on the grounds of the Embassy for the traditional ceremony.

 

The matcha was prepared by a young woman.  

 

Then it was served to us by young women in 

traditional dress.  

The tea house was decorated with specific objects, a water vessel, cups, a folding screen, a scroll with the Zen quote, "Spring makes hundreds of flowers bloom.  But for whom,?" and cherry blossoms and dogwood in a vase, which symbolized the two countries.

The tea ceremony was explained (although not with much depth) and we all once again were served sweets and matcha.  It was kind of fun, but a little stiff and I really wanted to learn more.

March 29 - Another day of chaos

(new kitchen table)

I really cannot stand chaos and today I just pushed and pushed to get stuff in place.  The kitchen had to be put in some order and it was becoming an obsession to make it all fit.

I had to run down to the apartment to clean it and turn in the keys

I had to go grocery shopping.

The closet rack fell off the wall.

We met our neighbors, a retired Indian couple who offered to feed us.

March 28 - Unpacking - Izzy takes a stroll

(My new desk, with Izzy sprawled out in the sunshine.)

It was a pretty tough unpacking day.  I had to get my office together and I pushed hard to get it done.  That night, I was sitting at my new desk, with the windows open enjoying the night air.  Izzy was sitting on my desk looking out the window.

The windows have a screen that covers only one of the two double hung windows.  The woman who lived here before used her windows upside down.  She opened her windows at the top which meant that she pushed the screen to the top.  Her blinds were also opened from the top.  But in that configuration, if you open the window from the bottom, there is no screen.

Suddenly Izzy disappeared.  I looked around.  I had not heard him jump from the desk.  Then I heard a sneeze and a slight meow.  He had gone out the window and onto the roof below.   I had forgotten to pull down the screen and Izzy was able to walk right out.

I gently called him and he fussed that it was just way too interesting out there on the roof of the breakfast room.  He was poking into the gutter and I was getting worried. He is not the most agile cat I have ever met and I could imagine him losing his balance.  I was hoping I did not have to crawl out there or wake up Matt to help.  I kept coaxing and he came near enough for me to grab his fat butt and pull him in.  He was not happy but I went, whew!  I was so shaken up by it I woke up Matt anyway to tell him the cat had been on the roof.  He thought it was a dream.  If only.

March 26-27th - Moving Days and a Miscalulation

This was a very odd day.  The moving company is run by a very flaky guy. When I first met him I thought a hungover homeless person had knocked on my door. The seemingly homeless owner wrote out his estimate by hand and added it up while we were sitting at the dining room table discussing the move.  He added it up in his head and wrote down the price.  He had included an extra day for clean up moving which I agreed to and which he needed.  I had no problem with that.  I did not go over the math.  I accepted his total.  The price was very close to the other estimates I had received. After talking I decided that he seemed competent and his price was right so we hired him.

When they packed us up it was marvelous.  He was involved in the work along with the other men, including packing and moving. I think they were all co-owners.

On the day of the move, they showed up early and started to move very fast.  They told us to go away and come back at around noon.  We went off for breakfast, did some errands, and when we returned they had actually left for the house.  What they planned to do when they got there I do not know since they did not have a key. So we raced after them.  I am a speed demon and we got there just after they arrived.  They did not acknowledge  that they had left without us and I decided it was not worth asking about.  So we moved on.

They were serious worker bees.  Moving two trucks of stuff into the house in record time.  They simply did not linger.  It was impressive. All we did was point to where things needed to go. They did the rest and everything got to where it needed to be.  

The next day they did their final clean up run of stuff they did not get out the first day.  Then it came time to pay the bill.  I got out my copy of the contract.   When he asked for the check I started to write out the number on my copy of the contract.  It was not the number he had in mind and we started to argue about it.   He thought I was unwilling to pay for the extra day.  No, I pointed out that my copy of the contract had a different final number than his version, which he had written out separately. He had added wrong by $1000.  He tried to write the correct number over the figure he had written on my contract and I stopped him.  That was too much.  He did not ask for an adjustment or say, geeze I made a mistake.  He blamed me for his mistake.  I am not sure what I was being blamed for but he stormed off saying he would not argue with me.

 Of course, it made a difference to my choice of mover.   I would never have hired them with that kind of price differential.  So that made him and me both pretty mad.  He got mad and took my check.  I was mad because he was blaming me for his mistake.  I did feel bad but a deal is a deal that was not a small mistake.  I think he knew it was his fault but it made him feel good to blame me.  

March 23 - 25 Count down to move--watching other people pack our stuff

( a room stuffed with our stuff)  

With Matt on crutches and my being busy and frankly neither one of us having any interest or motivation to pack a box, we hired a moving company to not only move us but to pack up all of our stuff.  It was glorious watching these four guys work.  Loading boxes, moving boxes, piling boxes, worrying about packing and loading and moving.  Joy joy joy.  Matt sat in his chair watching the tv while I ran some errands.  When I came back,  poof!  Most of the apartment was packed up. Note to self--never pack my own stuff again.  It was worth every penny.  

March 22 - Potatoes!

I posted a blog about growing a potato plant in a pot on my window sill.  Well, the vine had gotten really long and I was working on moving so it was time to see if I had a harvest.  Lo and behold, two potatoes!  Check it out.  Oh, I am so going to grow potatoes in my garden.

March 21 - Matt's Birthday

It was Matt's birthday and I am possibly the worst wife in the world.  I bought him a present but it was on backorder.  I made a nice dinner but for gosh sakes, I forgot the cake!  I stuck a candle in a donut and promised to do better next time.  It did not help that he was on crutches and just kind of miserable.  I owe him one great dinner.  When he is ready we will go to Little Serrow, report to follow.