The other day I was sitting in a women’s clinic waiting for my annual pap smear and mammogram when I looked up and saw a sign on the wall that read: Tweet your Kaiser experience
Really? Around me sat women of all ages, some with male companions, some alone. None of them looked particularly happy. Let’s face it. Unless you’re at a woman’s clinic for pre-natal care, the purpose of your visit is not something you’d write home about let alone tweet to twenty thousand strangers. Does the hospital really want to get the following tweets? What do you think?
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Filling out the same old paperwork yet again. Don’t u have computers? #getaclue #kaiser
Question: Date of last period. I write: Sometime in the last century. #CheckTheDateOfBirthSilly #kaiser
“Get on the scale,” nurse orders. Me: “But I’ve worn the same pants for 15 yrs.” #PatheticButTrue #kaiser
Nurse: “Don’t you want to know what you weigh?” #AreNursesInsane? #kaiser
LNP: “You’re the fourth Jan I’ve seen today and only one of them was under 55.” #AllJansAreOld? #kaiser
My father built the three houses I lived in growing up but it’s the first one that flashes through my mind when I hear the word “tornado.” I return to the small concrete bunker smelling of sawdust. I hear the cackling radio and see my mother’s tears in the dim light as the baby cries and my brother feigns bravery.
House in Michigan
I was six when it happened; running barefoot through nearby farms, stealing pea pods and prying them open for the sweet goodies inside. When I was a child I only went inside when called. Or when hungry or scared.
It came on a sweaty afternoon in late spring, a time when black-eyed Susans, with their cheery faces and lop-eared petals, grew thick and wild everywhere in central Michigan and you could pick as many as you wanted which is what I was doing when I heard my neighbor’s rabbits squealing and ran over to to see why. They had all sorts of animals trapped in small, wire cages just outside their barn.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, freeing the rabbits. They had black and white spots and were so fat they could barely hop. The neighbor spied me from her window seat and ran outside screaming. “Your mother’s going to whip you good!”
I started to run but stopped to let her dog off his heavy chain. He was my friend and something wicked was coming. An ogre perhaps, or maybe a cyclops. A massive, one-eyed, child-eating cyclops with blood-stained teeth and a laugh that turned blood to ice. I had to free as many animals as I could so they could run away.
Our house was built into a hill, not a particularly steep hill but one with enough slope to ski down in the winter when there was snow. Beyond our yard was Thorny Woods, a swath of birches filled with blackberry vines so bewitched they towered over me.
I arrived home to find my mother standing at the back door with the baby in her arms screaming my name. Overhead grey clouds drooped like the udders of deranged milk cows. “Get down to the bunker,” she ordered. The radio was on full blast, filling the house with the frantic cackling of a thousand crazy witches.
“I can’t!” I pleaded.
“Take your brother and get down there. Now!”
To get to the bunker you had to go across the garage, through a hole in the floor and down a ladder in the dark. I couldn’t go through the garage because of the horror. She shoved me towards the stairs as she grabbed the portable radio with her one free hand. “For crying out loud! They’re only animals!”
I grabbed my brother’s chubby hand and started to cry, each step down the stairs worse than the one before until I reached the bottom. The lights flickered. I tried not to look but blood was everywhere, pooling in lakes all over the concrete from my father’s latest kills, the rabbits, the deer, the pheasants, now hanging on meathooks, their sad eyes watching me.
Mother ran through the blood to open the trap door, disappearing into the hole as my brother broke free of my grasp and ran after her. He slipped and fell into the stain, then rose and with a sob followed her into the hole.
Mother re-emerged seconds later, picked me up savagely and carried me across the pools of blood. I can still see her bloody footprints.
Once in the bunker she tried to read a book in the dim light from the camp stove but we couldn’t hear the words over the sound of the monster raging above. Her lips moved that was it. The baby cried, my brother cried and finally my mother cried.
Finally it was quiet. We all stopped crying for a second. Maybe it was over I thought, but I was wrong. Soon the winds began again, this time preceded by a terrible sucking sound.
The toilet exploded, water shooting up to the ceiling, followed by a rumbling in the earth as it threatened to rip apart beneath us. We were all screaming. The banshees, the baby, my brother, mother and me.
Then, again, quiet. Anyone who’s been through a disaster knows that in the aftermath a strange calm fills the air. We moved like zombies into the daylight. Slowly other zombies emerged. With the exception of broken windows, my father’s first house was spared. However, the house next door looked like a pile of pick-up sticks. I heard they rebuilt but by then father had tired of the corporate world and we were gone.
I wish I wrote about cheese. Life would be so much simpler. I don’t know about other writers, but I have a hard time describing my work without babbling on and on and there can be nothing worse in the whole wide world than an artist who babbles on and on and on about their work.
For example, yesterday I attended a baby shower held in (believe it or not) a trophy room. Picture a cavernous, two-story room crammed with the bodies of lions, antelopes, sheep, goats, tigers and bears, all mounted as they would appear in the wild by the best taxidermists money can buy; on the walls the heads of other beasts, as well as sport fish on plagues and exotic birds perched as though about to take flight. The challenge of how to cheer up the room for a baby shower was solved by placing teddy bears – hundreds of teddy bears – all around the room and even on the backs of some of the beasts. In addition, the big game hunter responsible for all the trophies put a bonnet on the head of the howling baboon and a pink cowboy hat on the charging lioness. The mounted beasts were not spared.
The water buffalo got a pirate hat, the moose, a beret. And so on. The elephant head was the only trophy spared the indignity.
During the shower I chatted with a fellow guest, someone I rarely see, who I will call Wendy because that’s her name. Here’s how it went:
Wendy: What have you been up?
Me: I wrote a book.
Wendy: What’s it about?
Me: Well, it’s about blah blah blah blah blah and then more blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah…blah blah blah blah blah and then more blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah…
Wendy’s eyes begin to gloss over. Not so subtly, she glances around the room, hoping to spot someone who had not written a book.
Me: It looks like I’ve done an outstanding job of boring you to death.
Wendy: (who is too intelligence to lie): I have a client who writes about cheese.
Me: Cheese? I love cheese.
You can guess the moral of this tale. Don’t blab on about your book or you’ll end up as popular as a howling baboon in an Easter bonnet.
No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog, just badly drawn.
Yesterday I made a 21st Century Tuna Noodle Casserole (Cooks Illustrated’s Pasta Revolution) for no other reason than I felt like doing something besides write. I also fertilized the camellias, went to a neighborhood open house, and watched a dumb movie on TV. Exciting life, hey?
Growing up, dinner had to be fast, simple, and cheap. My mother’s tuna noodle casserole had only five ingredients and thus was a stable in our house.
Tuna Noodle Casserole circa 1960
1. Two cans of tuna packed in oil
2. Two cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup
3. One package of Lipton’s onion soup
4. One package egg noodles, usually cooked to mush
5. Canned fried onions over the top
As you can see – no fresh ingredients. In fact, the only ingredients not out of a can were the egg noodles which unfortunately had to be boiled. I’m sure if cooked egg noodles came in a can, she would have used them as well. To jazz this casserole up for a potluck, she’d crinkle stale Lay’s potato chips over the top. Yum.
When I moved out, I vowed tuna noodle casserole would never dull my taste buds again. Nor would canned Spaghetti Os, frozen chicken pot pies, pot roast filled with grizzle and, liver smothered with onions. All the stables of my childhood. Thus, it took the hubby a long, long time to convince me to try what was one of his favorite dishes.
Tuna Noodle Casserole circa 1990
12 ounces egg noodles
2 cans Albacore Tuna packed in water
1 pound mushrooms
7 ounce bottle Spanish Olives with Pimentos
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp dill weed
1 pint sour cream
2 cans Campbell’s mushroom soup
2 cups milk
2 bundles green onions chopped fine.
As you can see, there are twice the number of ingredients in his recipe. It also costs three times Mother’s and takes three times longer to prepare. Should you care to add extra calories, top with garlic, butter breadcrumbs. The result is tasty, albeit a bit salty (especially when he goes overboard with the parmesan cheese).
Recently he came across this recipe. It incorporates cherry tomatoes, garlic, feta cheese and kalamata olives in the mix – genuinely healthy foods and not just artery cloggers.
21st Century Tuna Noodle Casserole
Fifteen ingredients!! And the cost has now skyrocketed which makes me wonder, in another ten years will tuna noodle casserole be considered haute cuisine?
I guess as our lives get more complicated, so do the recipes.
In the spring I confess,
I don’t want to write,
or blog,
or tweet
or even pin.
I want to create a little village in the garden, carving out roads, driveways, homesteads. A happy place where no one gets sick, no one’s heart is ever broken, and no one has to wonder where the next meal or smile will come from.
I was raised in Reno, Nevada, which I always thought I could put behind me, but you know how these things go. Nevada just keeps popping up in my writing, as a setting, a dreaded past, or even as a character.
First edition of FLIPKA, set primarily in rural Nevada
When you mention Nevada, most people think of Las Vegas. And is it true, hundreds of contemporary novels have been set in Sin City and Sin CityNorth (Reno). Apparently there are more than enough greedy millionaires, soulless gangsters, cunning thieves, pretty heiresses, hard-nosed detectives, and clueless tourists in those towns to satisfy a multitude of writers.
Somewhere between Fallon and Eureka. It took almost an hour to get to the mountains on the horizon.
However, there is another Nevada. Long straight lonely roads, dotted with the occasional town. Side roads leading to … well, just about anything.
And this Nevada has inspired the writers of science fiction and horror. Travelers trapped in isolated desert towns where they are toyed with by evil forces (Skin and Desolation), UFO encounters that lead to strange maladies and mental afflictions (Strangers), and doomsday thrillers generally involving the military or CIA.
I am no different. When I think of rural Nevada, all of the above themes seem remarkably plausible to me.
Coming soon: More about Nevada. Whorehouses, giant red-haired cannibals, the many uses of bat guano, and aliens, of course, aliens. You can’t talk about Nevada without mentioning aliens.
Really? Around me sat women of all ages, some with male companions, some alone. None of them looked particularly happy. Let’s face it. Unless you’re at a woman’s clinic for pre-natal care, the purpose of your visit is not something you’d write home about let alone tweet to twenty thousand strangers. Does the hospital really want to get the following tweets? What do you think?
Saying nothing in particular 