Wishes

If the telephone conversation you had with your favorite Swede last night did not include a heartfelt and slightly flat rendition of "Happy Birthday", you obviously need to meet my favorite Swede, born twenty-six years ago yesterday.

Many wishes for a joyous 9,498th day of life, little Fred, and may the rest of the days of this year be splendid.

Thawing

One year ago today, there was a blizzard in New York. The snow fell in fat feathery clumps that piled lightly atop one another, blanketing sharp angular buildings in smooth curves of glistening powder. From Nicole's apartment window, we watched the sidewalks and streets disappear, transformed into a single uninterrupted plane. One year ago today, there was a blizzard in New York, and I waded through white drifts until my toes felt frozen and my heart began to warm to the City once again.

Forgetful

Every now and then, I forget where I am.  Even though I’m much more Minnesotan than Bostonian, I still think that ER broadcasts on Thursdays at ten p.m. instead of nine Central Time.  I catch myself doing simple math before calling my parents: “His meeting finishes at half past three, and it’s four here, but… oh, it’s four there too.”  And on Monday, years of ordering a delicious vanilla chai to go at Caffe Paradiso (“Three dollars, please.”) were automatically recalled when supervisor A asked what kind of tea I was drinking.  “Vani… no, just chai.”  (Yes, there is a difference.)

I had a point to all this, something about force of habit and frames of reference and the length of time it takes to make a place feel familiar, but I seem to have forgotten precisely what it was.  

A Random Thought

While driving to my afternoon workplace today, I noticed a most intriguing storefront for the first time. Tucked away on the left side of the street, the tiny shop boasts a large rectangular sign upon which "Finer Meats" is printed in red capital letters.

The specificity of the store's name makes me wonder what its motto might be: "Yeah, our jerky's okay, and the hamburger isn't mediocre, but, let's face it, we're not selling top-of-the-line merchandise here. You want that, you go to Finest Meats."

This concludes my thinking for the day.

The Trials of an English Major

On Sunday, Ali and I went to the mall. We were minding our own business, walking around the first floor plaza, when a kiosk caught - nay, offended - my eye.

Its wares? T-shirts. Its transgressions? Twofold: one tee read, "Fourty", and another proclaimed, "Your Fired".

This is why I shall never again leave the house without a full complement of Velcro letters and punctuation marks.

Blushing

It's official: the young ones herald taste and culture.

I have now received two compliments on my lunch box. A teensy girl merely told me that she liked it, but a second-grade boy proclaimed it "Bee-yew-ti-ful" at mealtime a couple of days ago.

I mean, I *know* it's an attractive food tote, but stop it already, people: you'll make me blush.

Spittle and Other Happy Subjects

Ice crystals are currently falling from the sky - not snowflakes, not raindrops, but miniscule chunks of frozen water. I dashed from the house to leave the recycling on the curb[/kerb] for tomorrow morning's pickup wearing Ali's boots and an unbuttoned jacket only to have the heavens spit dozens of tiny icicles at my head.

In other news, we may be haunted. Early last month, the light on our front stoop burned out. At some point a couple of weeks later, it miraculously worked again. I figured either Ali or J had simply replaced the bulb; goodness knows it weren't I what clambered up on a chair out-of-doors to provide the lamp with a fresh filament. After returning from holiday vacation, though, the light was not functioning once again - "Blast this power-sucking light fixture!" thought I. As Ali closed the front door behind us this evening as we headed to the grocery store, the lamp suddenly flicked on. She looked at me. I looked at her. We were both vaguely spooked. And on my way out to the curb[/kerb] moments ago, I desperately willed our housemate ghoul to leave the light on for me, for I would not have enjoyed navigating a sidewalk spiky with icy spittle in something approaching the darkest dark imaginable.

Emily’s Continued Adventures in Breaking and Entering

[Wherein I provide a slightly amusing story and a couple of thoroughly horrible puns, one entirely unintentional.]

I must admit, I’m quite proud of my lock-picking track record. The first real success I had in the field came during the early winter of my senior year of college, when I used a dining hall swipe card (equivalent in size and shape to a credit card, but much more worthless) to unlock a bathroom in which a tipsy gentleman had trapped himself. In my second triumph, recorded elsewhere, a pair of travel tweezers saved a forgetful girl from a night of sleeping/weeping on the cold, hard bathroom floor. These two experiences, in my opinion, indicate a real knack for breaking and entering (or, as the case may be, exiting). Recently, this skill was tested once again. At stake this time? Access to Bessie’s indoor sleeping quarters.

My garage is truly a lovely location; small and sparse, it sits at the back of the yard, a narrow, squat rectangle separating green grass from alley gravel. Two cars barely fit inside, but fit they do, and I gladly endure a few minutes of jockeying for proper garage position in order to lessen the amount of time I spend scraping layers of ice from my windshield. The garage door lifts automatically, its mechanism controlled by one button on the wall of the garage itself and one on each of two garage door openers Ali and I were given on move-in day. Since Bessie has a special compartment for such a device, I got the main opener, a fat, three-button remote complete with Velcro backing; Ali took the single-button, clip-to-the-visor opener. Unfortunately for me, all the buttons in the world are useless if the opener simply doesn’t work.

On what turned out to be a particularly sad late fall day, I drove up to the garage; snow was predicted, so it seemed time to tuck Bessie inside for the night. Nearing our backyard, I hit the largest button on my garage door opener and peered at the door in anticipation. To my utter horror, I saw not a single hint of movement. I tried pushing the button harder, to no avail. I tried hitting the buttons in combination. No luck. Finally, in desperation, I actually tried changing the unit’s battery. Still nothing.

Not to be foiled by the whims of technology, I devised a wonderful solution: every time I neared the house, I called Ali. Perfect – my own human garage door opener. Of course, this only lasted about a day. “I’ll open it on one condition: you go get your remote fixed tomorrow,” said Ali, taking my call from the warmth of the house.

“Like I have time to do that!” I huffed. Pulling into the alley a few minutes later, I vowed to find an alternate way of getting into the garage. I already had a plan, you see. Our yard is surrounded by a tall wooden fence – not white picket, but close. The pale pine slats abut one another, their flat tops stretching perhaps six and a half feet into the air. A wide hinged panel is set in the middle of the fence, opening onto the alley. This gate is latched and padlocked, and I’ve only tried to open it once (at which point it promptly fell off its hinges and hung askew until I forced it back into place). My most excellent plan hinged (HAHAHA) on the faultiness of said hinges.

I parked Bessie in the middle of the alley, being sure to leave her lights on so that no unsuspecting neighbor would think that the car had been deserted. Looking around to determine that no one was observing my thoroughly sketchy behavior, I approached the gate and tugged on the hinged side… and noted a distinct lack of reciprocal movement. Despite being unhinged, the gate remained tightly closed.

My well-thought-out plan had failed, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. “I suppose I could go around to the front of the house, get into the garage through the yard, and open it from inside,” I thought, staring forlornly at the uncooperative gate. But, my friends, do you think that is what I did? Of course not! Instead, I began tramping around outside the fence, peering along property lines in search of any hint of a loose board or semi-wide gap. I must admit, I was about to give up when my salvation came in the form of half a dozen pointed stakes.

There is perhaps a meter of space between the leftmost wall of the garage and the fence separating our property from that of the family next door. The former owners must not have felt that six and a half foot security was necessary here; instead, set back from the alley and tucked well behind a low wooden storage shed, a pseudo-fence exists. Its pointed stakes, covered over by leafless vines, only reach waist height thanks to the surrounding lofty snowdrifts. Waist height, in case you were wondering, is the perfect height for scaling.

Thankful for the boots on my feet, I traipsed through the half-frozen drifts and clambered up on top of the stakes, balancing my feet on two wooden points while steadying myself against the edge of the taller fence. I carefully made sure that neither foot was entangled in vineage, then proceeded to launch myself toward the drifts within the confines of the yard. Once safely on the ground, I frolicked into the garage, pushed the button, and watched elatedly as the door slowly opened to reveal the long-suffering, patiently-waiting Bessie. And there was much rejoicing in the head of Emily.

This process has now become integrated into my everyday routine. I’ve done it in rain, in front of my neighbor, in pointy-toed boots, in the dark, and in high-heeled shoes without socks (that last one was a weensy tad cold). I’m a little worried about what will happen when the snow melts, but I guess we’ll, uh, scale that stake*-ridden fence when we come to it.

*Kindly refer to the first paragraph, penultimate sentence. (HAHAHA... [trailing off into awkward silence].)