eeny meeny chili-beany, the spirits are about to speak

9.12.98

The displays are up. I saw them today. Orange and black have made their way into the sightlines of the supermarket shelves so now folks like me can sneak a tub or two of candy corn into the basket long before it’s socially acceptable to do so. In honor of this first broaching of the subject of Halloween, I've put up a ghost that Amy made in first grade last year. He looks friendly enough, but don't be fooled. Behind his timid "boo" is a national sugar rush unrivaled in its bald-faced consumerism. The only thing that comes close is Valentine's Day, and Cupid will probably be elbowing his way onto store shelves the day after Christmas. It's great fun to be a curmudgeon about this crap, a pissy attitude plays well on the web despite the plethora of cat photos that line the walls of the internet like plaque in an artery, but I have to admit I enjoy most of the holiday foo-fah. I probably need to have my head examined.

I came close this morning -- I got my eyes examined. Things are progressing normally, which is the nice way of saying my eyes are getting old and I needed a new prescription for myopia. I opted for my first pair of bifocals, even went for the kind with the line instead of the blended transition, just my way of keeping my pinky on the pulse of that cutting-edge retro hip thang I pull off so well. Next thing you know I’ll be wearing a fedora and smelling like the overcoats at a Goodwill.

Viv got her eyes checked too, and the exam showed it's time for some reading glasses for her. I've always wanted her to get glasses, not because she needed them but because I think glasses make women look sexy. Yes, I'll admit to that fetish.

* * * * * * *

It's going to be an interesting week for me. Viv will be out of town on business until Friday, so I'll be bachelor-man till then, meaning I'll be presenting my daughter with various options in the realm of domestic tidiness. For purely educational reasons, I'll be demonstrating such water-saving techniques as gardenhose dishwashing, the magic of clothes dryer garment rejuvenation, and bathing via surgical strikes versus willy-nilly water slathering. We may have time for more formal lessons like "Dining Off Cardboard", or "The Pacific: Nature's Bathtub", but that remains to be seen.

I'll be planning meals for two instead of three, and when you get as precise as one adult/one child quantities, the mathematics allow for a kind of nutritional averaging that's unavailable when there are more than 1.5 mouths to feed. This leaves open the option for introducing variants of the food groups, and when we include the time factor of only one week for the revised menu, the possibility of including a tub of candy corn on this training table looms large.

Perhaps that's not a ghost up there at all. Maybe it's Amy's self-portrait of how she feels after one of my educational dinners.

Today's Music:

"Ice Cream Man" -- Tom Waits -- CLOSING TIME

Wisdom of the Day:

"It's broccoli dear."

"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

- E.B. White, (caption for a Carl Rose cartoon, The New Yorker, Dec. 8, 1928)