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

paying with trees

The goods:

The 1940s are eating me alive, and I like it. I've been listening to the early years of Frank Sinatra (A Voice in Time [1939-1952]), and I am in love with him. You can listen to him here. I thought Jo Stafford sang the most romantic version of "Embraceable You," but I cannot resist young Sinatra. He reminds me of the mocha cheesecake I baked Wednesday night: rich, creamy, delicious, and mm-mm good. No one can sing "it's not that you're attractive" and make homeliness sound appealing like Frankie.

I am 280 pages into The Count of Monte Cristo. I could be so much farther, and I am ashamed of my lack of motivation to read.

My room is finished! Except that Paul Newman keeps falling off my wall, the painting (and re-painting a lovely Summer Afternoon - smother, Chickery Chick!) is finished, my Gone with the Wind wall is in order (more like my GWTW room is in order - how did I acquire so much Windy paraphernalia? I blame Sarah), and I have only a few odds and ends that still need to be nailed and taped. Paul, stop falling off the wall in the middle of the night. You are loud and getting bent.

The bads:

I have officially applied for six jobs, and I think it's rotten. Starbucks was probably my favorite application. They asked me, "What do you like about coffee?" I like that it smells like roasted winter mornings, that it reminds me of my father, that it complements 8 o'clock lectures so well, that it's the color of warmth and security....Would any of these things make me more eligible for a job brewing and serving and smelling like beans? Then they asked me, "Have you ever been to a Starbucks before?" ...Are you kidding me? Um, no! What are star bucks? How much are they worth in American currency?

Yesterday Mom tricked me by telling me I should apply at Kohler, then dragged me (and I mean dragged me; I have never said "No" so firmly to my mother in all my life) into their showroom where they displayed three floors of toilets, sinks, faucets, and bathtubs. Couples and threesomes of old ladies walked around admiring the lovely painted and marble productions. I couldn't swallow an 8,000-dollar bathtub, even if it did look divinely inspired.

I'm tired of trying to sell myself to places at which I don't even really want to work. If it weren't for workers, they wouldn't have a business at all, so why aren't they the ones trying so hard to get us, instead of the other way around? I'm bitter. If anyone needs a nanny, I'm good with kids, I like apples, and I know a great little place with three floors of bathroom fixtures where we can spend hours....

I'm-a gonna raise a fuss, I'm-a gonna raise a holler
about workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar....
Sometimes I wonder what I'm-a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the summertime blues....