Hymn to the Fallen

This morning feels very, very long ago indeed. I went to bed at 12:30 last night, waking 3 hours later to take my parents and brother to the Milwaukee airport, where they flew to Idaho to visit my oldest brother, whom I have seen once for a few hours in the past 3 years. It's been a day to romanticize about, starting with a sunrise through the van windows that I described in my journal as making me feel "touched by God's fingertips just as the clouds were with rays of light. To be such dusky blue and filled with pink and peach and glorious white is a transformation of sheer brilliance, and I marveled at it, both in myself and the sky....God somehow seems nearer in that peaceful transition, the calm before the day begins. I love His nearness."

After leaving my family at the airport, I drove to Bayshore Town Center and parked behind the Cheesecake Factory in anticipation of its opening at 11 a.m. Five hours was a long time to wait, but Milwaukee is almost an hour away and I wanted to take advantage of my being there, for "I shall not pass this way again." (If this blog were a Barnes & Noble Classic, it would have a little asterisk next to that quote and a footnote explaining that it derives from a poem I don't even remember reading, save for that one line. Only B&N would go into more detail than that. Once in Persuasion they defined the word "graceful." Uh, if the reader doesn't know the definition of graceful, he probably shouldn't be reading Jane Austen.)

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, it was about 20 steps down from the Cheesecake Factory, and opened 2 hours earlier! So only to wait from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., I read my Bible (the boys in Acts amaze me to no end), took a nap in the back of the van with my pillow and blanket (you'd think after 3 hours of sleep I would've slept longer than a half an hour, but I think the radiance from the Factory flowed through my veins), journaled, and emerged from the van at 8:30 to meander around the town center. I browsed Kohl's (it being the only thing open), telling the cashier, "I wasn't going to buy anything, but then I saw how bored you were and thought I better," then turned the corner at 9:03 to enter Barnes & Noble. I wish I could explain the joy that fills my heart upon beholding B&N. My breath caught in my throat when I realized it was two stories. The utter joy.

I sat with my knees and back resting against opposite arms of a cushy chair by a second story window, the morning light streaming onto the floor. A lady sat down next to me, a man a few chairs away, and a pre-teen boy and teenage girl across from me. I could only read a chapter before the high-pitched chatter of the girl on her cell phone drove me to distraction, and I abandoned my relaxation to purchase my items and retreat. (Didn't I sound like Jane Austen just then? What does "relaxation" mean??) I walked out with Barnes & Noble Classics of Howards End (I think E.M. Forster is vast becoming a favorite of mine), Wives and Daughters (I had no intentions of buying Elizabeth Gaskell's unfinished novel [she died before she could finish it], but it was so luscious and pink that I couldn't put it back on the shelf), and Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, to me, is like those chocolate chip cookies that you don't really like, but you keep eating them anyway, and you never find out why. What does "cookies" mean??). I love "buy 2 get the 3rd free" days at Barnes & Noble.

Trader Joe's was next on my list, where I resisted organic fruit and spinach lasagna and grabbed a bag of whole grain pretzels I first sampled at Annie's apartment in May. I decided to pass on the chocolate covered soybeans, though. Sorry, Annie.

Upon passing Bath & Body Works, from somewhere in the deep cavernous recesses of my mind I pulled the memory of Mrs. Jespersen's hand soap, which I remember loving the smell of over spring break. So I entered the store, not remembering what it was and smelling every bottle I came across until I recognized the scent of Japanese Cherry Blossom. Rubbing it on my hands brought back chocolate cake and singing by the piano and Enchanted and overflowing toilets and tired feet after hours of walking around big, cold, and windy cities. Of course, on the path of finding Cherry Blossom, I also found Plumeria, which was sweet and feminine and summery, and made me think of pink parasols and canoes, for some reason. I couldn't choose between the scent of memories made and the scent of memories to be made, so I resolved to shell out the cabbage for both bottles. Turns out they were on sale (wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles) and I saved a whopping $11. Golly gee whiz Pete cow Sam Hill.

So with my Connecticut in a Bottle and Scent of 1910 (which I affectionately nicknamed them) in tow, I finally entered the Cheesecake Factory. I took my piece of heaven and carefully tucked it into my pre-prepared cooler in the van with the care of buckling a little child into a car seat, and headed for home. I thought about my day, and remembered the tragic sight at 4:15 this morning when we'd pulled out: my dad had stuffed our old G.I. Joe case we've stored our plastic toys in since the womb into the green garbage can at the end of the driveway. I had fretted over its demise, wishing I would've known it was there earlier so I could've saved it to store journals or letters or simply save a box of memories from being tossed into a landfill. So when I remembered it on my drive home, I suddenly became anxious to return home before the garbage men had their way with it. I wondered how the police officer would take it when I explained the reason I was speeding was to dig a wooden case with a G.I. Joe decal on it out of our trash. "Ah," he'd respond, "American heroes." Of course he'd understand. Policemen themselves are American heroes.

Still a ways from my house, I saw that trash cans and bags were still piled at the end of peoples' driveways. I've never been so happy to see garbage before. I wasn't soothed until I had pulled into my driveway and plucked the dusty, worn, half-falling-apart case from its plastic green coffin. I opened it for nostalgia's sake, releasing the scent of Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Men and G.I. Joes, though it was empty now of all but a few dust balls and cobwebs. I'll clean it off and find something to put in it, and I'll remember the sound and feel of our childhood hands rustling over their plastic action figure bodies with loose joints at the knees and worn paint on their feet and hands, as we searched for the right sword or torch or mask to equip our men. I'm not a pack rat, by any means, but there are some things that should just not be gotten rid of.

However romantic my day has been, I sit here now in an empty house pitying my loneliness. My cheesecake was eaten to a Jimmy Stewart movie, and the cat won't answer my conversation starters. ("Wouldn't it stink if I fell down the stairs? No one would know I was here." "I'm going downstairs. The DVD player won't work." "I will not feed you tuna fish, so don't bother asking.") I guess listening to war movie themes (We Were Soldiers is probably the most depressing) and songs like "Alone Again, Naturally" and "Mr. Lonely" doesn't help my mood much. I don't think I was meant to be alone. And this is only day 1 of 11.

My hands smell like spring break.

Adventures in Laundering

Funny thing is, I have no adventures in laundering. Not even a funny anecdote. I go to work at 12, I work for 8 1/2 hours until my feet hurt so bad I can hardly stand, and I come home and go to bed. I pass my time at work while folding towels (whose rough exteriors are scraping the fingerprints off my thumbs) by singing songs and imagining novel characters and making up a new set of 7 dwarfs with my coworkers (because I have those now). (If you see a new Disney movie out starring Baldy, Drippy, Sniffly, Blingy, Krispy, and a few others, you know someone famous.)

I spend my time before work watching the Food Network (and shows I recorded off of Food Network the night before), watching movies (Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart seem to be common threads in the movie-themed bedspread of my life), reading books (out of the four Jane Austen books I've read, Persuasion was the only one I didn't find boring, so that's the one I'm reading again), and being off my feet as much as possible. On my days off, I bake (bran muffins and an Alton Brown-inspired cheesecake that turned out terribly wrong) and watch more movies and read more books.

But I can now fold a fitted sheet like nobody's business. King size is my favorite, because I'm king size, if you know what I'm sayin'. (I don't.)

Back to Jimmy Stewart: his birthday was a few weeks ago. He would've been 100. I remember when he died, we were in a hotel on our way to Florida for vacation. Dad had bought mango ice cream and Mom was upset because why did he always have to try unusual things? She's a vanilla kind of gal. We were watching the news and I thought how unfortunate it was that he had died. But I was only 10, so the sadness didn't linger long. I liked the mango ice cream.

I have Born to Dance recorded off of TCM from sometime last summer, and I watch this scene over and over, because it just thrills me. (My favorite part is: "The way they chase after me, babe, it's a crime, and the way I make love is an art. So let's find a corner and start. What'd'ya say?")
I watched Destry Rides Again the other day for the first time since probably 10th grade. Herr showed it to us in German class, though I'm not sure why. The only thing German about it is Marlene Dietrich, who sings absolutely atrociously. Have a listen, and cringe. The movie's fantastic, though.

I'm also in love with Frank Sinatra. But I think I've already mentioned that a few times. The library is fast becoming a place of worship with dozens of classic movies at the tip of my library card. And when I can't make it, I simply worship at home with TCM. (My, aren't I being sacrilegious this morning?)

I've been reading quite a few books that are either about or take place during WWII. In Steve Kluger's Yank, he includes actual letters from soldiers to the magazine Yank. This one is my personal favorite thus far:

I don't know who started this idea if pinups, but they say that it is supposed to help keep up the morale of the servicemen, or something like that. Here is my idea of the help it is. In the first place, I would say that 24 out of 25 of the men in the service are either married or have a girl at home whom they respect and intend to marry as soon as this war is over....How many of you GIs would like to go home and find the room of your wife or girlfriend covered with pictures of a guy stepping out of a bathtub, draped only in a skimpy little towel, or see the walls covered with the pictures of a shorts advertisement or such pictures? None of you would. Then why keep a lot of junk hanging around and kid yourself about keeping up morale?...I would much rather wake up in the morning and see a picture of a P-51 or 39 hanging above my bed or over the picture of my wife, whom I think is the best-looking girl in the world, than of some dame who has been kidded into or highly paid for posing for these pictures.
-Pfc. Joseph H. Saling
Myrtle Beach AAF, South Carolina

Pour in the blue of a June night

Dad asked last night if I wanted to make him French toast this morning. I told him I've never made French toast before, but that didn't phase him. "Better you experiment with me than your first husband," he said. That's true. My father will eat anything. Many times my brother and I have pulled things out of the refrigerator, asking Mom, "Is this still good?" Dad replies, "I'd eat it," which gives us no indication of its edibility, and we proceed to throw it away. However, I wasn't lying when I told him I'd never made French toast before. I awoke at 5:54 this morning after dreaming I'd made a delectable dish of French toast with spices and seasonings that left Dad in awe of my culinary talents. He'd told me last night that he was leaving for work at 6:45 this morning, so I left myself plenty of time to add dashes of nutmeg and cinnamon and vanilla. He didn't get up until 6:45, and when I put the bread on the skillet it formed a thick, barrier-like coat of egg around the bread. I gave it to my dad with a warning (he probably wasn't expecting to have to march around the toast 7 times and blow a trumpet before eating it), cooking up the next piece of toast. He drowned it in syrup. I could hear its warbled cries. Then, what made it worse was his thinking it would be fun to pretend he was critiquing my dish on a Food Network show.
"This side is a little burnt," he said judgmentally. "It has a bit of a burnt flavor."
I didn't laugh. He tried to figure out what I'd done wrong. "Well, let's see. You added milk..."
"Oh," I said. "Was I supposed to add milk?"
He looked at me as if trying to read any joke lines in my smile, but all that was there was an ironic, slightly embarrassed grin that promised next time I would remember the milk.
"Did you butter the pan?" He asked. No, I hadn't buttered the pan. "Well, it's better you make me eat this than your first husband," he said again.
"First?" Will my French toast be so bad that no husband will remain married to me long? Next time I'm going to add honey and not tell him. Dubious.

Yesterday I mowed the lawn - or the pathetic attempt grass has made at growing amidst straw and stones - in the syrupy warmth of the late afternoon sun. The palms of my hands are internally bruised from pushing the mower through the stubborn stalks of wiry weeds with leaves like elephant ears. Wisconsin is a foreign country, I'm telling you. when I went to bed last night, the air was completely still. My curtains hung limp in front of my open window, and I turned on my ceiling fan to circulate the stale air. This morning the thin, cold wind won't stop blowing, and my curtains remained at a 90-degree angle from the wall until I closed my window with chills. Now it howls through the cracks of the house.

I fell asleep last night to the occasional "moo" of cows at the farm across the street, a pleasant, summery sound that added bass to a tenor and baritone choir of crickets and frogs, respectively. This morning, however, the moos are overlapping themselves in their frequency, and I'm curious to know whether something is happening over at that farm that perhaps I don't want to know about.

This song has me dreaming....

The view from the end of my street on a June evening:


Be this sunset one for keeping
This June bug street sings low and lovely ~ Iron and Wine

humor me

Yesterday while sitting in a coffee shop with my dad reading Of Mice and Men and drinking a bitter brew of some sort of nutty coffee, two young high school guys came in. One of them held a battered Snow White folder with duct tape around the edges. (At this point I wasn't really reading, if you couldn't tell.) They stood around awkwardly until a cute girl their same age came in.
"Hey," they greeted her. Boys that age are so suave.
"Hey," the girl replied. Class.
"How are you?"
"Good."
Then another guy came in. The girl greeted him enthusiastically with a hug. One of the boys who had already been there complained, "Why didn't I get a hug?"
The girl stammered, "You...have facial hair."
Oh, truthful adolescence.

We passed this sign in Sheboygan the other day, and for some reason I find it funny:

Smile
May is mental
health month
call 211 for help

Dad came up with this at dinner one night, and it's just ridiculous enough to be funny, in a pitiful sort of way:

What fruit does a monkey sleep on?
An ape-ricot!

Dad informed me this morning at breakfast that he knows a man who recently planted a church in a town called Northpoint. They rented a board on which to advertise their church, but because each letter cost money, they wanted to abbreviate their title. It read, "Join us at No. Point Church."

This is why I love the 1940s: Glenn Miller. Fred Astaire has nothing on those Nicholas Brothers!

And speaking of the 1940s, today is the 64th anniversary of D-Day. I should watch The Longest Day to commemorate, but that, in fact, is the longest movie. So I simply remember what I never experienced, in my small way of honoring unimaginable sacrifices.

"No, you get out and knock those Germans out, and then you can have a cup of tea." ~ An English D-Day veteran on the History Channel