Tag: Word of the Day Challenge

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Train of Thought

Daily writing prompt
Describe one of your favorite moments.
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Here is the prompt: Describe one of your favorite moments. Wait, what’s that noise? The dog is going crazy…it’s my wife getting home from work.

You can’t blog all the time. You’ll lose sight of other important things in life, like relationships. So what could be the harm in getting up and giving her a fond “good morning, dear!” before returning to my latest magnum opus?

The cat now insists she is ready for “second breakfast” at ten AM. OK, another brief break won’t hurt. As soon as I leave the office, Max ( AKA “the Hound”) reminds me that he needs to go out. So I grab my honey give her a squeeze and a kiss, and I’m off to feed the cat, who is yowling at me.

While I’m down here I might as well grab a cup of coffee.

I put the food down for the cat, but she is now by the door and wants to help the dog chase a chipmunk who has stupidly gotten under a small wood pile. Out, she runs as I open the door to call the dog. I chase them inside and watch in frustration as the Hound gets to the cat’s bowl before she does (“Exercise makes me hungry, Dad!). The cat now needs more food.
I trudge up the stairs and encounter my honey drying her hair and wanting to discuss dinner. I am almost knocked over by the cat and dog running up the stairs behind me.

At last, I am back in the office. I doubt that there will be any more problems. Let’s see, the day’s prompt was to describe one of my favorite moments. But I’ve lost my train of thought and must go to the bathroom.

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Spring

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite season of year? Why?
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The beginning of March through the middle of July has been my busy season for many years. March into early April is the sapping season; I’m busy making maple syrup and planning the garden. For many years, the first weekend of spring also coincided with the Maine Boatbuilders Show. My carving shop was working at full capacity in the weeks preceding and following the show. A cartoon of my activity would have shown me as a blur. There was no time for malaise in March.

In April comes the “Frog Run,” when the buds start to open, the tree frogs begin to sing, and sapping winds up for the year. It also coincides with many early plants being started in the cold frames or going out in the garden under low hoop rows of remay fabric. This is a dicey time of year, not just because your timing is critical but because the climate is unpredictable.

May is the hurry-up season. When I was doing boat shows it was because people wanted me to hurry up and complete their order. I also worked hard to get the garden in, finish all the other yard work, and handle the demands of my regular job.

June through the middle of July had a more leisurely pace. The garden was in, but weeds were not a big issue yet, work in the shop was moderately paced, and more time was spent on coastal trips with the family. Towards the end of June, the entire family would decamp wherever the Woodenboat Show was held for four intense days of work and fun. Currently, I am not doing shows, and the pace is leisurely.

July brings a slowdown. The days are warm, daylight lasts longer, and if I’ve done a good job of mulching, I neither have many weeds nor much watering to do. But I miss the intense excitement of the spring. In recent years I found that if I time things right in the garden, I can get a second spring in the fall by planting spring crops in August and bringing them to maturity under cover of remay fabric or in cold frames. If my timing is right, we have late spinach and lettuce.
The garden looks decrepit by December, except for the Brussels sprouts I try to bring through until New Year. That is not a victory that I can always gain. And I find myself looking forward again to spring.

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Gardens

Daily writing prompt
What’s the one luxury you can’t live without?
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While I was primarily raised in the wilds of New York City, there was a short period when I was about nine or ten when we lived in the suburbs of Long Island. The takeaway from that time was exposure to gardening. It happened in a roundabout way.

Walking home from school daily, a neighbor’s dog followed me along the fence and barked at me. One day it shoved a stick through the fence, and I threw it back. This started an afternoon ritual for both of us. The bored dog was looking to play, and the bored student on his way home looking to make a friend of the dog. Eventually, the owner noted that her dog had a new playmate every afternoon, and I was invited into the yard. She had a yard planted with perennial flowers and an extensive herbal garden. I became enthralled; some time that summer, she gifted me with my first plant, feverfew.
Before the fall, one plant had become a dozen, and my father had created a small garden bed for us on the patio of our apartment. That winter, we moved back to the City, and the little garden was just a fond memory for many years.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that I was living where I had the opportunity to have another garden. Since then, I’ve shaped gardens in improbable urban locations, industrial spaces, open countryside, and suburban plots. It’s more than a desire; it’s imperative for me to create a garden, even if it happens to be inside under lights.

Currently, I have floral and herbal plantings, a vegetable garden, and a woodland garden replete with a pond and a waterfall. Since we own this property, I’ve fully spread the garden throughout the lot.

My garden is a luxury that is both useful and necessary. Weeding, tending the garden beds, or just sitting and listening to the waterfall are peace-creating activities in a world where that is the true luxury.

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Pampered

This is the time of the year that all the houseplants get out for summer vacation. The area alongside the greenhouse/workshop gets lined with plants out to enjoy the balmy weather—all except this smaller group that requires a bit of protection against too much watering or sun. For them, this sizeable cold frame offers a bit of protection. 

While the other plants eagerly guzzle all the rain coming our way and bask in the sun, these are a bit more pampered.

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Curves

It’s just a roll of brown contractors’ paper. About twelve dollars a roll. It’s probably one of the most basic tools in the shop. And at that price, it’s one of the cheapest. But I couldn’t do much of certain types of carving without it. 

Not everything is computers these days; you have to draw something out sooner or later to see if it fits and looks good. You could draft this on a computer, run it off on a large-scale printer, and then play with it. But using some Copenhagen Ships Curves, French curves, brown paper, and scissors to make this template was easier and cheaper to do.

You’ll find that a good pattern gets stored against future use. When doing this sort of stuff, do the intelligent thing, save the turmoil of digging through a collection of similar items, and label things like date created, project, customer, and vertical or horizontal orientation. How do I know? Let’s say it falls within the category of do as I say rather than as I do.

The second photo shows that this banner will have a significant amount of relief and curvature. I could do that with a thick piece of wood, but that’s pretty wasteful, expensive, and not necessarily the best approach. In this case, the ends are glued up from two pieces. I’ll carve them into curved shapes as needed. There are a few ways to make this sort of banner work. The easy way is to keep the area where the lettering will go flat. But if you wish to live dangerously, make all the surfaces curved. If you go the curved route, you’ll need a paper template with printing to naturally alter the lettering to fit the curvatures. Someone better at drafting might be able to freehand this, but I like the security of the pattern. The final photo shows how this effect came out on a large banner I did years ago.

No fancy tools, no drafting programs. Just brown paper and pencils. Amazing what technology can do these days.

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Politeness is a Virtue

Not being oafs, inarticulate brutes of language, or individuals grasping after a more lavish description of what we did in life, we’d merely state that we peregrinate. Yes, it polished up that we were hitchhiking around. We were vagrants, but vagrants with a bit of a flair, some pretensions, and style. We were going somewhere. Somewhere better.

Of course, we stowed the act when stopped by the Fuzz, Police, Constabulary, or whatever. Then it was a simple, “Yes sir, we are leaving your town. No, sir, we are not going to hitch. Yes, sir, we will wait patiently for the bus. Thank you, sir, for not arresting us, sir. Please accept our apology for taking up your time, sir.

Politeness is a virtue.

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Alias

Daily writing prompt
If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?
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Names are a touchy subject for me. I had a performing name when I was a second-rate folksinger in the sixties. Through the mid-seventies, some people only knew me only by that name. I did not so much as surrender that name as I grew out of it. I ceased road-tripping, performing, and behaving like a dissipated young rake and ne’er do well. 

Frankly, it wasn’t a slump in coffeehouse bookings that did Wes in. Wes and his shenanigans faded out the day after a jealous boyfriend tried to shoot me in a Boston Back Bay basement apartment. Funny how things like that can change perspectives.

However, after many years, I hit the point where I found it flattering to be remembered by old associates who still used the name—enough time had passed that I could accept the younger me more tolerantly. He had never rated as a behemoth of the stage, but he’d done some reasonably amusing and outrageous things. My younger aliased alter-ego was interesting, non-conventional, and non-conformist.

Some older friends maintain that I didn’t so much walk away from my younger self as I reinvented him more maturely. I am still unconventional, non-conformist, and a bit nuts.

Still crazy after all these years?

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The Bar none

Daily writing prompt
Describe your dream chocolate bar.
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I haven’t been a fan of the big famous brand of chocolate bar from Pennsylvania for a long time. A friend who lived in the town where they are made described the mounds of raw product piled around like some other vaguely brown product. His descriptive violence to a childhood favorite put me off the brand as surely as having a warm cholate bar smeared all over my face.
Yes, you’ll say, the purist loves dark chocolate with a mandatory percentage of Cacao in it, produced in the Andes by small farmers/growers. No Lindt balls in the foil package for you! You can’t reconcile the mass-produced with your elevated tastes.

For me, a little shop in a nearby coastal town produces the best orange-hazelnut chocolate bar. When I visit, I find my steps going in that direction. Made locally, I have no clue about percentages of Cacao, fat, or whatever—just the crunch of nuts, that taste of chocolate, and the hint of oranges.
Guilty pleasures, you are the one.

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The Right Way, the Wrong Way and…


I had two bosses in an operating room I worked in. Sophia had a poster on her office wall of a turtle reminding you that the turtle only made progress when it stuck its neck out. On the other hand, Betty had a little cubby hole office with a poster of two vultures sitting on a tree in the desert. One bird looks at the other and states, ” Wait for something to die? Hell, I’m going to go kill something!”

The posters neatly summed up the two supervisors’ attitudes and offered hints about managing complaints, issues, and problems within the department. Even the chief of anesthesia walked carefully around Betty, preferring to deal, if possible, with Sophia. I, of course, mostly worked with Betty.

Betty was a coastal brat from Maine and knew I could tell the difference between literal and littoral, being another coastal brat from a Merchant Marine family. She was also a former Navy nurse, and being I was former Navy, we worked OK as a pair. I put on my best petty officer routine for her, did things the “Navy Way,” and life was easy.

Now, please understand no recruiter would ever seek me out to re-up. I was not the regular Navy type. But I could play-act it during work hours to get through the day. Just as long as I wasn’t going home in uniform, eating on the mess decks, or deploying for six months. I was OK.

A few other folks in the OR got querulous of me and accused me of sucking up. I just offered to show them how to run a buffer, properly swab with a mop, wear dress blues with panache, and act serious while receiving a series of ludicrous commands from a snotty ensign. Now, mind you, it was the last that got me in trouble while enlisted. I had difficulty keeping a straight face.

My colleagues in the OR were not amused.

I guess everything could have gone on as they were, but the day came when things started changing. It was a long case, and my back ached. Now stretching to arch your back while holding retractors in a patient’s abdomen must be done carefully, but Betty gave me a soft massage to help with the tension. After the case, she came over and helped me remove my gown, and I could have sworn that her hands lingered a bit on my neck.

Walking into the lounge, I noticed snickers, grins, and laughter hidden behind hands. My friend Marilyn asked with a grin if Betty’s backrub had been up to Navy standards. A few people cracked up at this. Later over a few beers, my friends told me that there had been a betting pool to see when Betty made her move. She’d mentioned to Sophia that I was “cute and respectful.” Being cute and respectful might make it for Betty, but I was not interested in snap inspections or early lights out with a former Navy Luitenant Commander as a girlfriend. 

Over the next couple of weeks, it became clear my friends had the right of it. Betty had me in mind for the position of Mr. Betty. There was no circumspect way to get around it. When frustrated, she had a volcanic temperament, and I had set up the entire situation by giving her what she wanted the way she wanted it. Betty was talented, brilliant, beautiful, and totally willful. The first three traits were very tempting in a mate, but the last was scary. My over-active imagination could envision the sorts of Navy-style “non-judicial punishment” she might dish out if I incurred her wrath. I wasn’t that type of guy.

Ultimately, I handled it like a true sailor; I jumped ship. I found another job, gave my notice quietly to Sophia, and slipped my moorings one afternoon.

From a distance, I kept tabs on Betty. She married another former Navy guy, a retired chief petty officer who worked in hospital administration. She had kids, moved to the Tidewater area of Virginia near a Naval base, and seemed to live a happily Regular Navy-style life ever after.

To those who might think I missed out on the love of my life, I’d like to share a bit of Naval wisdom with you. Regarding life in the Navy, we used to say there was “The right way, the wrong way, and then there was the Navy Way.”

I’ve said my piece.

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Nux

One huge bit of disinformation that’s been kicking around for generations is that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Several of my colleagues living on Boston’s Beacon Hill spent a vast amount of time talking this up and getting sick on weird concoctions that made them ill, and then when they recovered, they would beat their chests and exclaim that they were invincible. The leader of this cult of stupidity was a guy named Tom Armstrong. He was a latecomer to the merry crew at the Folkie flop house we called the Palace. And he was not a good influence on the others.

At this point, I was no longer in regular residence because I was in the Navy. For the time being, I was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island, and it was convenient to shift into civvies, catch a bus to Boston, and pretend to be a civilian for a while. Serving in hospitals had given me a chance to observe the adverse effects of toxic materials on the human body, so I tried to establish a position directly opposite that of Tom, stating that harsh and poisonous substances might not kill you right away, but over the long haul they did their damage.
Talking to a wall might have done more good. Instead, every Thursday, there was the cocktail of the week. And the following day, there were satisfied groans about how bad it had been.

Finally, one morning, I pulled into the bus station near Park Square and hopped off a red-eye express to find Tom waiting for me. “Come on, John’s very sick!” I was hustled into a car, and we careened toward Beacon Hill while a panicked Tom laid out the previous night’s events.

The cocktail had included a generous dose of Nux Vomita*. Now just as it sounds, this substance is a powerful and dangerous product derived from the seeds of the tree, sometimes referred to as the strychnine tree because of the poison strychnine it contains. Nux Vomita is not something to play around with. I don’t believe it has been on the USP Materia Medica since the 1930s. It is rumored to have finished Alexander the Great and many others. I asked Tom what had persuaded him to include this in his Thursday concoction, and he replied with a smile, “It’s supposed to give you impressive Woodies.” “So you poisoned everyone for the sake of an extra hard boner? What sort of a fuckin’ idiot are you?” His reply was a snide “Well, it worked for me.”
We arrived in time to see John hauled away by an Ambulance. His girlfriend, a nurse at the nearby Mass General Hospital, had come over and found John nearly comatose in a pool of vomit and called for help. She had brief nasty words for all of us but singled out Tom for a blistering rebuke that left the rest of us in awe of her ability to peel paint off a post with only her tongue.
The Thursday night club continued for about another year until Tom was diagnosed with liver disease. This chilled the enthusiasm for poisonous cocktails and demonstrated that did not kill you immediately could kill you just a bit down the way and not make you stronger.

*Inspiration for this post was stirred by another blogger using a picture of some ancient medications, including Nux Vomita. The photo stirred up memories of an incident close to the one I’ve fictionalized here. Thanks, Doc!