Calamari

I don’t like cala­mari. It’s not a big deal, but it’s emphat­ic. I real­ly don’t like the stuff. It’s rub­bery and unpleas­ant in the mouth and it tastes like dead fish. So I don’t like calamari. 

I’m sur­round­ed by peo­ple who loooove cala­mari so I can’t fig­ure out why I don’t. And every five or 10 years I lose some of my sense and fig­ure: What the heck — it can’t be that bad. Everyone else loves it, and I love all these oth­er things that they love. Even dif­fi­cult things. Like roast­ed brus­sels sprouts. So I’ll try it. Um, no. It’s always a total, damned-near-to-gagging-at-the-table (my grand­moth­er would be appalled by my man­ners) fail­ure. Some things are just not meant to be liked by me. 

It’s not that I spend a lot of time think­ing about my hatred of cala­mari. In fact I would say that I spend more time think­ing about tooth­paste or shoelaces than cala­mari. It only comes into my con­scious­ness at all when I pass it by on the appe­tiz­ers sec­tion of the menu at the Italian place in town. You know going through the appe­tiz­ers… Antipasto plate — no, too much; bruschet­ta — maybe; cala­mari — ugh, No; bread sticks and fruity olive oil — yeah, that’s what I’m in the mood for.

On the oth­er hand I can dis­like olives with­out the dra­ma. No, I don’t like olives. But my dis­like of olives is just a basic “I’d rather not but it won’t kill me if there are some in the sal­ad.” I’ll pick out the ones I can see and leave them on the side of the plate but if I acci­den­tal­ly get one on my fork and into my mouth then it’s not great trau­ma, I just won’t like that bite of sal­ad as much as the one before or the one after — unless of course I’m being par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­less and both of those also con­tain an olive. Okay, there’a cer­tain lev­el of sus­pense in the olive thing, but not real drama. 

Calamari involves dra­ma. An unsus­pect­ed bite of cala­mari is absolute­ly revolt­ing. That tex­ture first and then the taste of bilge water. (Yeah, I do know what bilge water tastes like, and yeah, I do think that cala­mari car­ries with it not only the taste of stag­nant sea water but a hint of kerosene.) There’s an actu­al catch in my stom­ach and a lit­tle hint of a flip — a threat, if you will, that any fur­ther attempts to inflict cala­mari on the sys­tem will result in open revolt. 

There’s some­thing shame­ful in not lik­ing cala­mari, it’s like not lik­ing oys­ters. Calamari, like oys­ters, are grown up food. Marks of hav­ing made it out of child­hood food pref­er­ences and taboos. Being will­ing to eat those salty, sea-tasting and rankly slimy del­i­ca­cies. I’m not an oys­ter fan either, but some­how I don’t find myself try­ing oys­ters every five or 10 years and being revolt­ed back into my senses. 

Some peo­ple are like olives — the ones I’d just as soon avoid but if they end up in the same con­ver­sa­tion­al group at a par­ty it’s not big deal. I won’t walk away or sulk and I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly won­der how it is that any­one else could like that per­son. They’re just not my taste. Live and let live. 

No mat­ter how much my friends and fam­i­ly are always going on on about them — “Joe is so fun­ny.” “Lucy is so sweet and a great cook!” Joe and Lucy just aren’t going to be on my list of peo­ple I want to spend time with. Joe is an ego­tis­ti­cal blow hard and Lucy is just so damned twee it makes my teeth ache. On the oth­er hand Joe is someone’s favorite uncle and Lucy has nev­er let any­one suf­fer a bereave­ment with­out a good sup­ply of casseroles in their freez­er. But they’re like olives. It’s not going to ruin my evening if they hap­pen to cross my path or end up monop­o­liz­ing a bit of con­ver­sa­tion. They’re just olives. 

And then there are the cala­mari peo­ple. The ones whom I can’t under­stand how any­one tol­er­ates, and whose pres­ence I will actu­al­ly be rude to avoid. There’s Tony who is con­sis­tent­ly cru­el in the way that only guys who weren’t one of the cool kids then but are now can be. And Joyce whose all-encompassing jeal­ousy poi­sons even the most casu­al friendship.

The stu­pid thing is that for at least one of them I have to go back and remind myself every so many years why I don’t like them. It takes for­ev­er to get the taste of kerosene out of my mouth. 

Toddler Head

Am I the only one here who’s sick unto death of man­ag­ing myself like some balky damn toddler? 

When you have a tod­dler in the house every sin­gle moment of your life is con­sumed with man­ag­ing the tod­dler. They are inge­nious, … and they can walk. In fact, when on one of their laser guid­ed mis­sions toward trou­ble they can walk a hell of a lot faster than the aver­age sleep deprived par­ent of a tod­dler. There’s noth­ing trick­i­er than keep­ing a tod­dler out of trou­ble. Except maybe get­ting one to do some­thing that they’ve decid­ed they don’t want to do. 

Having a pup­py is kind of like hav­ing a tod­dler. I recent­ly had a pup­py in my life. My nor­mal­ly pret­ty calm, grown ups only house was a maze of gates, bar­ri­ers, crates, and playpens; and a mine field of chew toys, boun­cy balls, and squeaky things. Not to men­tion the 42 pounds of 4 month old Bouvier. And one, very damn grumpy, old Miniature Schnauzer. 

The pup­py I man­aged pret­ty well. Like the clown in the bull ring said: Not my first rodeo. I know where to put the gates, when to take Monkey-Socks with Extra Teeth out for pot­ty breaks and not to leave any shoes below waist lev­el. No, my prob­lem is the oth­er tod­dler. The balky, sullen, over­grown tod­dler that is me. Yeah, there’s more than one black dog in the house. There’s the pup that’s sits under my chair while I’m typ­ing and there’s Mr. Churchill’s dog, who’s once again tak­en up res­i­dence in my brain. The damned thing turns me into the worst kind of tod­dler. Not the tiara wear­ing pageant brat that some­how seems to have made it onto TV. Nope, this is the snot nosed, snuf­fling, arms slack at her sides lump of clay that Won’t.

I can­not get the lit­tle shit mov­ing. There is no promise, no whee­dle, no cajole, no threat, no mind game that can budge her. She’s too damned smart. Just sits there and looks back at me with a know­ing glower. 

There are tricks, a thou­sand tricks. And we’ve all heard them. From well-meaning friends, from the self-help books, from our ther­a­pists. Yeah, I’ve got a ther­a­pist. She and I go way back.

Have you been through this? The ther­a­py where they teach you to “man­age” your­self? Make lists, sched­ule things, set pri­or­i­ties. Build up a rou­tine, get up and do some­thing, any thing, it doesn’t mat­ter. Exercise is key. Set a timer and do just five min­utes of some­thing. Make a list. Don’t allow your­self to engage in repet­i­tive activ­i­ty. Don’t turn on the com­put­er (yeah, right, I’m a writer. WTF — I’m sup­posed to copy this shit out in cray­on and send it out to you all by bal­loon?) Take a walk, Think hap­py thoughts, Call a friend. Breathe. Go to yoga class. 

Ah, go to hell. If I could get the kid to do any of those things with any sort of ease I wouldn’t be in this mess. 

I try talk­ing sense.

Take a walk — you’ll feel better.
Go to the gym — you’ll feel better.
Call a friend — you’ll feel better.
Take a show­er — you’ll feel better.
Write some­thing — you’ll feel better.

I try bargaining.

Set a timer for 5 min­utes and clean the counter. I’ll give you this cook­ie. She swipes the damned cook­ie right out of my hand. Hey, she’s big­ger than me.
Sort your inbox, just to be sure that there’s noth­ing in there that can hurt you. You can play Bejeweled afterwards.
Just emp­ty the dish­wash­er. You don’t have to load it.
Write the draft of a blog post. Maybe it’ll be fun­ny. You can have a nap when you’re done.
Make the three phone calls. You can ignore the email mes­sages today.

I make threats:

Sort the mail — or some­thing won’t get paid.
Clean the fridge — or some­thing will rot.
Take out the trash — or some­thing will smell.
Read those emails — or some­one will be angry.
Get off your ass — or some­thing bad will happen. 

I try blackmail.

Well, okay, black­mail doesn’t work because black­mail depends on some­one car­ing and the bat­tle cry of the tod­dler is Don’t Care!

The prob­lem is that the tod­dler is savvy. The tod­dler has been around the block a few times. The tod­dler is on to me.

Best sto­ry ever…

Microsoft, like most big, mod­ern com­pa­nies offers their employ­ees a host of train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Things like Project Management Theory and Software Coding Security Standards and the ever pop­u­lar Building Effective Teams which includes assess­ing team roles and per­son­al­i­ties, set­ting and meet­ing team goals, help­ing your employ­ees to man­age con­flict, and all that crap. 

One guy took it all a lit­tle too far. He took his skill set home with him and when faced with a domes­tic cri­sis for­got that he was sit­ting at the din­ner table not a con­fer­ence table and that the per­son over there was his wife not a team member. 

When she deter­mined that her con­cerns were being met with con­flict de-escalation and team goal align­ment strate­gies rather than prop­er spousal atten­tive­ness she blurt­ed: “Don’t you dare man­age me.”

That’s my tod­dler, all over. “Don’t you dare.”

Believe me, I’d rather not have to. 

Thoughts on Arrivals

We’re final­ly in Mexico after an overnight delay caused by not hav­ing a flight attendant. 

So I have to ask — is this real­ly vis­it­ing a for­eign coun­try? When the first thing that you do after the inevitable post-flight-hangover nap is walk down the block to the gro­cery store to buy pro­vi­sions? When you can find every­thing you want at the gro­cery store? And none of the prod­ucts is so amaz­ing­ly strange that you’re going to think of them for days after­ward won­der­ing just what they might be? 

On the oth­er hand I’m com­plete­ly cut off lin­guis­ti­cal­ly. My Spanish goes not fur­ther than order­ing beer and get­ting a cab to take me to a lim­it­ed num­ber of des­ti­na­tions. (No impro­vi­sa­tion­al side trips, please.) 

The first day is always a lit­tle odd. Soul lag I think some­one explained it as. Actually that was an expla­na­tion for jet lag. That the soul can’t fly as fast as the body in a jet and so it gets left behind and you feel all fun­ny and out of sorts while you’re wait­ing for it to catch up with you. The first day in Mexico feels a lit­tle like that. You have a list of things you have to take care of. Like the gro­cery store and the going to the bank to get mon­ey, but you’re too tired and the alti­tude is too much (we’re above Denver here) to make run­ning right out and _doing_ things a good idea. So you sit around with a lit­tle beer and a bag of peanuts and your lap­top and talk to your part­ner about who the oth­er guests are and secret­ly won­der if you’ll like any of them and debate where to go for din­ner. Should we go to one of the places you’ve been look­ing for­ward to revis­it­ing, or is it waste to do that the first night because, well it’s the first night and my soul is still stuck in a pat­tern some­where over Houston try­ing to fig­ure out how to make it the rest of the way south to join me in the sunshine. 

Today the temp is get­ting to be close to 90. 

We have beer. Bohemia oscuro. Which is vague­ly bet­ter than no beer. But not by much. Good beer is some­thing that you have to go to town to get. Or dif­fer­ent gro­cery store. 

And then a bird took a crap on my com­put­er. Right on the caps lock key. I’m sure that sig­ni­fies something. 

#FridayReads 25.oct.2013

Tony Hillerman writes a pre­dictably sol­id mys­tery. With a world that lives and breathes and is very dif­fer­ent from the green, moist Pacific Northwest that I con­sid­er home. A month or so ago I start­ed at the begin­ning of the Navajo series with The Blessing Way and am now up to Coyote Waits a lit­tle more than half way through. These are my choco­late chip cook­ies of the moment. I read an hour or so in the evening. (Sadly these are not avail­able as audiobooks.) 

Speaking of audio­books. Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age is accom­pa­ny­ing me and the dog on our morn­ing walks. Not my favorite Stephenson. It moves too slow­ly. Which is an odd thing to say about a Stephenson, con­sid­er­ing that he is the mas­ter of the extend­ed expos­i­to­ry aside. But here we’re not talk­ing about asides we’re talk­ing about pieces of the nar­ra­tive that bog along with­out much hap­pen­ing. I don’t feel much for the lit­tle girl Nell which isn’t help­ing the sto­ry hold my atten­tion. I find Miranda and the oth­er adults much more inter­est­ing. Nonetheless a fine bit of a sto­ry to accom­pa­ny me on the dai­ly ram­ble as the weath­er grows increas­ing­ly crisp (or late­ly foggy.)

Speaking of dogs. I’ve just fin­ished Cat Warren’s What the Dog Knows. All of the scent train­ing and nose­work peo­ple I know are read­ing this right now.
This is a clear-eyed look into the world of work­ing dogs. Not sugar-coated or fil­tered through a need to make the dog, Solo, a hero. Warren is hon­est about the some­times dif­fi­cult nature of the high­ly dri­ven work­ing dogs and about the pos­si­bil­i­ties, lim­i­ta­tions and unknowns of the use of scent detec­tion dogs. Her account of their ear­ly train­ing ses­sions will make any­one who is hon­est enough to remem­ber their first cou­ple of ses­sions with any sort of scent­ing dog wince in empa­thy. (I still strug­gle to keep my damned hands from fidgeting.)
There are sto­ries of both their suc­cess­es and fail­ures. Solidly aca­d­e­m­ic — which may make you a lit­tle crazy as she fact checks some of the most cher­ished myths about dogs’ noses and their abil­i­ty to dis­crim­i­nate scents. But you’ll also learn about dogs’ roles in the death rites of ancient civ­i­liza­tions, an attempt to train vul­tures to search for cadav­ers, and some odd moments from the his­to­ry of mil­i­tary dogs. There are exten­sive notes at the end of the book if you want to dig into the back ground infor­ma­tion for yourself. 

Ordinary Genius Kim Addonizio who is best known per­haps for her poem What do Women Want. This book is a guide to mak­ing poet­ry. So what? There are dozens of books about mak­ing poet­ry, why should you read this book rather than one of the oth­er poet­ry books out there?
Because there are lots of sharp edges in this par­tic­u­lar knife draw­er. And not many lace doilies. Lots of exer­cis­es that explore words, phras­es, and mean­ings that are reveal­ing not just for poets but for any­one who works with words. The exer­cis­es that prompt you to dis­sect and repur­pose clichés are worth the price of entry. 

Books I Read A While Ago

Three from much ear­li­er this year. 

In non-fiction, Charles Wheelan’s Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from Data. Professor does stats for dum­mies. Lots of base­ball. I kind of like base­ball and there are some amaz­ing things being done with num­bers in base­ball. But most­ly it’s the old stand­bys, drug research and the large scale health sur­veys with a lit­tle ter­ror­ist track­ing, some SATs and grades, and a soup­con of beer. Yeah, the beer and brew­ing stuff is inter­est­ing. All in all, dull. So I’m still look­ing for some­thing that’s inter­est­ing enough to make the basics stick in my head for more than 20 minutes.

I had much bet­ter luck with The Best Science Writing Online 2012. edit­ed by Jennifer Ouellette. A curat­ed col­lec­tion of the best of a year’s worth of blogs, columns, and essays pub­lished on-line. We’re incred­i­bly lucky to have so much good writ­ing on sci­ence avail­able to us. There isn’t a field of pur­suit in which there aren’t at least two or three well writ­ten sources for the enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur to fol­low along. Open sources sci­ence is at it’s best in the new sci­ence journalism.

No mat­ter what your favorite field there’s bound to be some­thing in here for you. Maryn McKenna talks about pub­lic health, Rob Dunn about insects, and Ann Finkbeiner about sci­ence itself. Better yet you’re prob­a­bly going to find some­thing here that you’ve nev­er seen before — like the church forests of Ethiopia described by T. Delene Beeland. Tens of thou­sands of islands of Afromontane forests pro­tect­ing and pro­tect­ed by church­es. Some may be as many as 16 cen­turies old. They are a thing I’d nev­er heard of, and that I’m grate­ful to know about now. 

In fic­tion, Six-Gun Snow White. Catheryn Valente revis­its an old tale in a novel­la set in the wild west (and mid-west) Rewriting fairy tales is dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry. It goes wrong more often than not. I can’t say that this goes wrong. It just does­n’t quite go right. Nearly, almost, so very close that you can for­give the off notes and leaps and jud­ders but… not quite right. Not because she does­n’t have a very firm grasp on the tale in ques­tion. There’s not a fairy tale that Ms. V can’t dis­sect and rebuild, This time it’s a mat­ter of car­ing too much that the mes­sage be right. And then there’s the mat­ter of not hav­ing a grasp on the set­ting. She does­n’t want to live there, not like she has in all her oth­er retold tales. She did her research, there are sil­ver mines and enslaved min­ers; misog­y­nis­tic, slight­ly stu­pid cow­boys; des­o­late, para­noid (right­ful­ly) Indians; and a per­fect­ly, moral­ly ambigu­ous rob­ber baron with a (cliche alert) down trod­den wife/step-mother to the child Snow White. Whose real name is nei­ther Snow nor White. But it fails… it falls on its white is not bet­ter, step-mothers may be vic­tims them­selves, let’s turn all the tropes on their heads sword. Sadly, because it has the best fairy tale mir­ror ever. One with no mag­ic, only reflec­tions. Note that this is a novel­la — but the kin­dle cov­er price was $5. The hard­cov­er, if you can find it, is fetch­ing $40. I should have such a fan base.