Playing with Fire

I hate it when I'm cooking eggs, how it sometimes smells like burnt hair.

I once caught my hair on fire, in my college dorm room. I had lit several candles in an effort to
create a romantic atmosphere. As I leaned over a candle to pick something up, my long braid fell over my shoulder and into the candle flame. Remarkably I didn't notice this. Milliseconds later I smelled burnt hair. Hmm, I thought, I wonder why it smells like burning hair? Oh! Panic as I slap my hair between the palms of my hands. Charred hair remnants littered my bedspread. So romantic.

Once I tried another romantic effect - tossing a scarf over a lamp to give the room a soft rosy glow. Again with the stench. Scorched scarf is not a romantic fragrance.

And speaking of scorched, I once put eggs in a pot of water to boil, then yawned and lay down for a nap. Did I mention I am not a good cook? When I woke up, there was this really odd smell in the house - burning metal, and something else, uh, scorched? Burnt saucepan and blackened popped eggs. You won't find that in your Betty Crocker Cookbook. Now, whenever I boil eggs, my husband leans over the pot and says, "Pop Eggs?"

One Christmas Eve I was frying tortillas to make taco shells and the oil in the pan caught on fire. I raced outside and threw the pan in the snow. I didn't fry tortillas for about ten years after that. But I finally got tired of preformed tasteless taco shells and began frying my own again. My husband calls them "Tacos Flambe."

My church decided to have a bonfire in a pasture. Beautiful harvest moon night, clear cold air, glittering stars, picture-perfect pasture with tall grass, a creek, a few gnarled oak trees. And a humongous pile of firewood, enough to torch about 20 heretics. And that was on my mind, as we made a brave attempt to roast hot dogs. The fire was so hot, so intense, we had to wear jackets, gloves, hats, and lay face down on the cool grass, completely stretched out, arms extended with the longest roasting sticks we could find. Even then we could barely stand the heat long enough to get one end of a wienie roasted. My heart went out to Joan of Arc. Later we asked one of our group to lead us in a sing-along. She started singing All God's Creatures, but slipped in a Freudian way and sang, "All God's creatures got a place in the fire..." and stopped suddenly with her hand over her mouth. I couldn't resist, and continued, "some scream low and some scream higher!" And then immediately sobered, thinking of all those poor people burned at the stake.

I don't really have any good ending to this post. This was just a few random thoughts on a random day, and I have no idea what made me think of these things. Oh yeah, I was cooking eggs.

Fire and Ice

This poem was written in December of 2007, at the end of a year in which I had slipped several times on ice and injured myself, my house caught on fire and my mother had a massive stroke.
I recently re-discovered this poem on my computer.


Fire and Ice

To live is to be vulnerable.
I'm afraid of the ice.
I'm afraid of getting hurt.
I'm afraid.
My mother, once so strong and fearless, a lioness, a bitch,
lies wounded, helpless.
Frail, broken, she cries out
in desperation;
her sorrow shakes me
like a rag.
I huddle in bed, wrung out, hiding, slipping into deranged dreams. I wake
strung out on fear.
I am stripped of pretense, I am unclad.
The fire marked me first. I am a public property, a walking
receptacle for compassion, empathy, pity,
kind words.
I am filled to the brim
with good deeds;
I stagger under their weight.
I am unmasked.
I am humbled.
I am excruciatingly aware.
My mother's stroke felled me.
I scrabble for purchase.
The ice is so slippery,
and so hard;
and I am so vulnerable, wide-eyed,
afraid.

12/02/07

Not Fun in the Summertime

It has not been a fun summer for us. In addition to the usual whams and knocks that life flings at us, incompetence and not paying attention to details have come back to bite us in the butt.

My father has lung cancer. He is 90 years old and we know, we know, that people don't live forever, but still. He is going through treatment, because he is in otherwise excellent health (and looks and behaves like a man 20 years younger). But treatment for cancer can thoroughly destroy what health a person has left, and treatment for cancer has all but killed my mother, so we are cynical and bitter about this development.

We received a notice from the IRS stating that we made a mistake (I made a mistake) on our 2007 tax return and we have to pay back $1,090. I used the refund from my 2007 taxes to pay my 2007 property taxes. It's been a long time since I had more than $300 in the bank for more than 24 hours.
My paycheck comes in, my paycheck goes out. We will have to beg relatives for help.

Our fire damaged house is still not ready for us. I was so hoping that we would be able to move back into it and put our current dwelling up for sale, so we could get that time, energy and financial burden off our backs. But repair work moves slowly, so we have to scrape up (actually borrow from a relative) enough money to pay the property taxes on both houses.

We made the awful decision to put our beloved but psychologically damaged dog to sleep. Our heartbreak is complete, we miss him everyday and I live with almost constant regret.

Today we received a notice from the City of Grinnell that we are in violation of city code, that our property at our fire damaged house needs to be cleaned up. The yard is full of overgrown bushes and weeds and junk and a construction debris pile. Well, the house is under construction, and there have been piles of construction debris there off and on for about 9 months. They get piled up, they get removed, they get piled up, they get removed. And the yard, well we mow it every week and try to keep the brush chopped down, but Iowa in the summer is a jungle, and taking care of more than one yard and working full time, and taking care of family needs...well we let some things go.

The second notice stated that the car in our driveway hasn't moved in 30 days. I was surprised by this notice - I didn't know it was against city ordinances to have your own car parked in your own driveway, so that letter was quite a surprise. The car does need a new clutch, and my husband has been putting it off because this particular make and model requires a major amount of disassembly to install a new clutch. But still - citizens are required to drive their own cars at least once every 30 days or they're in violation of code?? Come on!

Okay, so those aren't insurmountable problems - we can deal with those. What bugs me is that those notices didn't come out of thin air - there are brushy weedy yards and cars sitting in driveways all over town and the city doesn't take action unless someone calls them to complain. This would be one of my fine, friendly Iowa neighbors and I am pretty sure I know who he is. Like last year and the year before, when my current neighbor called the police to complain about my dogs barking at him (this is the neighbor whose small and very cute daschund yaps continuously at my dogs), I don't understand why this other neighbor didn't approach us before he called the authorities. With the dog issue, that neighbor didn't know us, so maybe he feared a confrontation, though I doubt it. But the yard issue -- we lived in that neighborhood for 15 years and know all our neighbors there, they know us, they know we are friendly and polite and reasonable. They also know that our circumstances since the fire in our house have been less than great, and some of them have gone out of their way to help us. They also know that a church group has been working on the house and that construction debris will be there temporarily until the construction is finished.
So I don't get it. If my neighbor had come to me and said, "Look, your yard is really overgrown, it's bad for the neighborhood, could you please tidy it up?" I would have been mortified. I would have said, "what would you like me to get rid of first?" and then proceeded to take care of the problems immediately. I am sloppy and lazy, but I am not belligerent.

A simple plea: If you have a problem with your neighbor, go to your neighbor first and politely explain your problem. Be civil, be willing to listen to your neighbor, maybe there's a good reason for the situation that you find objectionable. Be willing to help your neighbor out, be willing to compromise. Most of the time you will be able to come to an agreement with your neighbor. If you find your neighbor to be surly, unreasonable or hostile, then call the authorities.