Sculpin

I’ve just come home with the best garage sale score of my life, plus something to think about.

The score: a Pilates reformer with accessories for twenty-five bucks. And this thing is rock-solid. The same model is going for about a thousand dollars on Craigslist right now; it was about $2400 new. My jaw dropped a bit when I tried the machine out; I’d expected that I’d at least have to replace some springs.

It’s perfect for me. I’m perfect for it. We are precisely the right match for each other. I’ve got the half-decade of Pilates experience and the recovering back injury that makes mat work imperfectly tenable. And I am oddly serious about Pilates — I tend to treat it like other people treat martial arts. This is going to be fantastic for my recovery.

Here’s the thing: the fellow who was selling it wasn’t ignorant. He knew exactly what he had and I’d bet he knew what he could get for it. But he was an interesting man. It looked for all the world like he had made a deal with the universe: he would allow his reformer to go out into the world at an unbelievable price, and in return, his reformer would go to a person who would make unusually good use of it. I had the unnerving feeling that he was seeing me as completing some kind of magickal circuit, and that this was completely ordinary for him. When we were chatting, I mentioned the disc injury; I expected him to perk up a little in happy surprise — it’s nice to know that your old stuff is going to go out into the world and do good work — but instead he relaxed. He gave every impression of thinking, “Oh yes, good, this is the one I made the appointment with. I thought so.”

It makes me wonder — what would it be like to live with that faith that things will work out for the best? It seems to be working for him.

For a good while now I’ve been hearing what sounds like a call from both my conscience and my common sense to adopt a vegan diet, or at least a very much more vegan-influenced one. Some of that is for health reasons, some for treehugger reasons, and some is pure sentimentalism about animal welfare.

Now, I think there are many ways to solve that particular set of moral equations besides flat-out veganism. What I’m finding, though, is that the solutions I’ve been trying haven’t been working particularly well for me. I’d hoped that I’d rejigger my diet to be much more vegetable-centric. Mostly I haven’t. Given, this has been a particularly trying several months, and I did not completely fail. Still, I could have done more. And maybe with a firmer guideline I would have.

Unfortunately, I hear an opposite call from the summer sausage in the fridge. Oh, delicious summer sausage, you have made my blood a cholesterol dump, but you are so tasty. How tragic and outrageous it seems when Josh is eating summer sausage and I am not. How can summer sausage be here, but not be here for me?

I’m not ready to give up meat and dairy 100%, and I’m definitely not giving up eggs. (I keep three chickens who are in their egg-laying prime. Come on now.) But I’m taken with the idea of becoming fractionally vegan. One way to fractionate would be to play vegan on, say, every Tuesday and Thursday. Another way — the way I’m going to try — is to take a strict vegetarian half-day. For the next two weeks, I’m going to experiment: before noon, I’m eating like a vegan. (I might move that up to one o’clock for more vegan lunch action. We’ll see.) If I’m still craving the cheese sandwich in the afternoon, so be it.

My outs: if I have breakfast with friends and there’s really nothing at all vegan on the menu, I can swap the half-day from morning to evening. And I’m not bothering about honey, sugar made with bone char, finings, etc.

Fortunately, I like rice milk in my coffee, especially in summer. Seriously, it’s good — very light. It turns out I also really like that Red Star nutritional yeast. And agave nectar makes an ideal lemonade. Not that I’m worrying about sugar and honey, but still, there’s another example of a Weird Vegan Food that’s actually pretty great.

Today was my first day. Breakfast was easy: two cups of coffee with rice milk, and then pigging out on blueberries and apple chips. Hey, I didn’t say I was going to be eating only meals I didn’t have any regrets about…

I’m still getting better. Today I’ve been cleared to take short walks as long as I carefully attend to the tingling level. Oh hell yes. I have not, however, been cleared to do the dishes. So I feel like I’ve reached some kind of local optimum in gimpage.

Speaking of things I’m supposed to be attending to with care, I was going to write about what I learned about pain these last few months, both my own experience and in general. I’ve done a lot of really painful things in my life. Still, this adventure in ow has been something special. (You know you’re in real pain when your cognitive function is better on the opiates.) Unfortunately, a windstorm is blowing in and the lights are starting to flicker. It looks like shutting down might be the better part of valor.

So, a friend on LiveJournal is looking for a translation of an Italian hymn. I don’t know how to translate it, but I know a game of mistranslation. There are lots of verses left if you find yourself wanting to join in. No real rules to speak of except “amuse yourself”; you can even get some of it right if that’s what seems right. (I guess you could get all of it right, but why?)

Hampered by the frilly nightgown of the sea
Against the feminine derriere of Arabia
Come giggling into the valley that welcomes you
Spurting out life as if it were light;
The sun itself, that pious bitch,
Cannot quell what mortals give.

Not for you or me but for those holy gifts we live;
Not the little brothers of God and their chewed-up Christ
Or the gray spirits of the awful fedoras
Or the corpses of the gods sadly leaning:
Not in ten lives can they approach our joy, so hot
and unceasing is the flame of love.

Negli Estremi confini d’Egea
Dell’Arabia nell’arse contrade
Come Gigli in amena vallea
Vostra vita a la luce spunto;
E quai stelle la diva pietade
In quell’ora ai mortal vi dono.

Non per voi ma per l’alma viveste
Dei fratelli, da Cristo redenti:
Or gli spiriti alla fede traeste,
Or dei corpi leniste il dolor;
Non periglio vi tenne:era ardente
E perenne la fiamma d’amor.

(I’m going to hell, aren’t I? Oh yeah. Maybe it’s the beer talking, but I feel kinda like I just wrote hymnal slash.)

Previously.

I was going to move the birdhouse away from the clothesline for fear of disturbing any inhabitants. But now that bees have apparently taken up residence in the birdhouse, the intimidation is going quite the other way. For once I wish I could find my camera.

Josh: *lifts his head, listens*
Cam: *takes out the earplugs*
— BANG BANG BANG –
Cam: “Gunshots?!”
Josh: “Yep.”
Cam: “How many did you hear before?!”
Josh: “3, maybe 4.”
Cam: *checks the clock* “1:48. From the north maybe?!”
Josh: “There’s no way to tell really.” *goes back to sleep*
Cam: *big-eyed look of WHAT WHAT WHAT*
Josh: *HOOOOOONK*…*ssss*…*HOOOOOONK*…*ssss*…*HOOOOONK*…

Nobody in earshot has called an aid car, according to Realtime 911. Whatever that was, I hope… well, it’s hard to know what to hope, isn’t it? So now I’m wide awake and vigilant. But even if had been were something to hear, the vigilance has done me no good because I can’t hear a darn thing over the snoring anyway. How does he do it? And how is it that he’ll stay up until 4 am when someone is wrong on the internet, but goes right back to sleep next to an exterior wall when someone is shooting a few blocks away? (Okay, I admit it. I understand the first half of that. I mean, someone being wrong on the internet is a powerful motivating force. Also, um, “a few blocks away.”)

We also smelled something on fire this evening. Josh even walked around the neighborhood wondering which house was on fire this time. And of course we’re just around the corner from where the big flood was. I wonder what will be next. Plague seems insufficiently local, as do bears, and we did the fleeing-bankrobber thing around here a few years ago. Falling space junk? Mini-tornado?

Josh and I have been getting a crapload of hangup calls lately, at least some of which are spoofing an ID of 408-999-1234. Sometimes I’ll pick up the phone and it’ll be someone talking fast in Spanish; that gets me wondering if they’re working the same common scam that caught Josh in 2003. More often I pick up and say “Hello?” and I’ll hear background murmuring or whispering in what sounds like Spanish. After a few seconds they hang up. Day after day after day. It’s enough to make me ask Josh if we can change our name to Johansen or something, just in case we’re getting targeted as likely Spanish-speakers.

I’m pretty well fed up with getting up to get the phone, so I’m not going to do it anymore. Most folks email me, not call, but if by some chance you do call me, please leave a message. Odds are good we’re screening calls.

Any day in which I get to use the term “mangle-wurzel” in conversation is a pretty good day in my book. Even better, it made sense.

Why was I talking about mangle-wurzels? It’s unholy hot out there for early June, which means it’s about time for solar beet salad. It’s a sign of summer around here. I roast the beets for several hours in the solar oven at about 300F, then slip their skins off, chop or slice them, and chill them. Sometimes I dress them with a little vinegar the way Delores taught me, or I pair them with greens, but sometimes it’s just me, a fork, and a jar of cold beets, and that’s fine too. It’s all kind of amazing considering how many times I was threatened into eating my beets as a kid, but those were canned beets that’d generally been left in an open can for a few days. Slow-roasted beets are a whole ‘nother story.

A lot of people like baby beets, but I actually prefer that edge of bitterness that the more mature beets can have. Knowing this, Josh brought home the biggest beets he could find. They’re almost alarming in their oversizedness. If you want a five-pound beet, this is your time to hit up Whole Foods.

The chickens have turned one year old, which means that they’re officially hens rather than chicks or pullets.

One thing I’m often asked is whether we’re going to eat them when they’re done with the bulk of their laying. A year ago I would have said yes. Now, though, I know that we’re going to be running a home for geriatric chickens. I’ve gone soft. The chickens function the same way cats do in that one xkcd comic. “Who’s a chicken? Who’s a good little chicken? You are! Yes you are!”