A Shameless Confession

Thirteen brand-new notebooks and 20 pens!

Demetrius (bless his heart) would say I'm queer for office supplies. I enjoy viewing and holding fresh clean notebooks, pens, file cards, legal pads, typing paper, highlighters, folders -- if you can write in it or on it, or keep paper in it, it is for me a fetish object and I can't get enough, and Back to School sales at stores with these things stacked high move me to tears -- so much blank paper, so much potential -- and in 2018 with one-subject college-ruled notebooks being sold for a quarter apiece I spent half an hour winnowing out at Walmart all the college-ruled notebooks with a yellow cover -- ten of them. Shamelessly I bought them on Missouri's No-Tax-on-School-Supplies weekend, ecstatic because I could also write them off as business expenses -- yes, I use these!

So allow me to carol and rapture over this year's dreamlike garage-sale find: a whole bin full of 13 blank notebooks, an unused set of 35 glitter/neon pens, 2 packages of 10 pens each; 4 packages of ring-binder paper totaling 450 pages; 2 magnetic whiteboards; 1 package notecards; 1 pencil case, 1 pencil, 2 plastic document wallets, 2 stretchy book covers, 4 picture frames, 2 upright file holders, plus I asked them to throw in the plastic bin itself, and its lid -- and although each item was individually priced I snagged the whole kit and caboodle for $10! Oh my! Isn't this pen set just the living end?!?

I have been this way since I was very small and adored and coveted Ticonderoga pencils, Pink Pearl erasers, the Crayola 72-crayon set (although I would have settled for 32); our elementary school had a school-supply closet with a Dutch door where once a week we could get stuff for pennies -- it was like crack cocaine -- I loved rulers, protractors, colored pencils, diaries with little locks, pencil sharpeners and the scent of pencil shavings; I stole my mom's stapler -- of all the items in the garage-sale bin, only the larger of the two whiteboards was unsalvageable. Man, this stuff is better than money!

This weekend is Missouri's No-Tax weekend; take advantage!

Speaking to Spiders

Spiders were once sea creatures, climbing onto land about 100 million years ago and teaching themselves how to hunt very efficiently by spinning webs and then sitting and waiting, and they've since mastered the art. These elegant creatures have three separate spinneret nozzles in their abdomens: one for spinning non-sticky "framing" thread for their webs; one for sticky thread that catches their prey; and one that's a safety or parachuting line.

These threads -- for their size, strong as steel -- are made of protein and water. A spider needs both protein and water to keep spinning, and when necessary will eat its own web to build up energy for a new one. The orange-red artist in my photo lives on the corner of my garage where my car's headlights every evening give a minute of light while I get out of the car and raise the garage door. The first night I saw the illuminated web, the spider fled to a dark corner. I said "Don't worry. I won't hurt you." It took me at my word and now we are partners. I provide light by night that attracts moths and things into the spider's web.

The daddy long legs spider -- always close to the house because it likes water -- a year ago fell in love with a scrub brush that I left outside, and they had something in common, but this year it has the hots for half a geode, unfortunately destined to be unrequited love, but I said nothing, figuring it should be allowed to enjoy its fantasy world. I wished it much happiness, and went indoors back into my web and my fantasy world.

Bone China

Mom collected shelves of fancy china teacups I don't want. They're nice enough, but I lead more of a "student" lifestyle and don't want useless things nor do I give a fig for decor. (When I say that I even roll my OWN eyes.) I couldn't understand why Mom filled her house with china and fragile figurines, realizing as I sat alone, after her death, in her junque-filled living room, that through these items she was showing us her soul: full of delicate, finely wrought and pretty things, much at odds with a personality (while we were growing up) comparable to a professional wrestler's, although she mellowed, as did I, after all we kids left home.

I eyed the one shelf holding smaller, demitasse cups. Those I do use. Correctly or not I drink espresso from them. I own four. "This is pretty," I said to my sister, holding up the most baroque, ridiculously designed, four-footed gilded cup, with a saucer to match; the items are stamped "JKW Bavaria." The designs in and on the cup and saucer are not hand-painted but screened, including the vignettes of an 18th-century male-female romance, when girls wore more clothes than guys. In one scene he plays a guitar while she holds out to him a rose. Far out.

My sister, the estate executor, said "You'd better take it then."

"Can I?"

My sister lifted the pieces from the shelf and firmly handed them to me, then rearranged the other cups so no telltale gap remained between them.

The  cup's thin china walls and feet mean that hot liquids in them cannot possibly stay warm for long. I decided to look it up. This is a "chocolate cup" from JKW Bavaria's "Love Story" series, available in yellow, white, red and pink as well as green. In tiny letters the pieces are stamped "Western Germany" which indicates manufacture after 1949.

Imagine the mind of the person who designed this, then imagine the minds that desired this item without ever wanting to use it, and there is something mindful of war and survival in that.

Luck of the Coffee Drinker

Used to be, Mom bought our clothes at Robert Hall and food at the A & P supermarket, home of lost or now rare enchantments such as the Spanish Bar Cake and red tins of Eight o' Clock Coffee, alongside the foreign and fascinating adults-only object (pictured) resembling a nautical speed control but engraved with weird, haunting, perhaps mystical words; Mom never used it. Today I stock only 2 brands of ground coffee: Eight o' Clock, and Chock Full o' Nuts. These passions are old, deeply set, and based solely on the names and packaging. At eight a.m., all things are possible; I still believe that. Out east, the franchise "Chock Full o' Nuts," so named because it started as a chain of roasted-nut shops in Manhattan, has sold coffee and pastries since 1932. In New England I became addicted to Chock Full coffee, rare and expensive in Missouri, consistently available at only one classy St. Louis grocery at $6-$8 for a small can. I remedied this by ordering a case of the regular coffee direct from Chock Full; the green-lidded decaf was harder to find.

I drink more of the decaf now, when I can get it. The last tin I bought is tagged $6.49. So last week in a supermarket in House Springs I'm stunned to see the "marked down" shelf holding 5 cans of Chock Full decaf at $2.99 each. Ecstatically I bought them all. It was the best luck I had all day.

Selling it here isn't easy because the Chock Full franchise, still active, never extended west of Chicago and the name causes folks to believe the coffee contains nuts. It does not.

It might be the "o"s in the middle of Eight o' Clock and Chock Full o' Nuts  that have so entangled my coffee-drinkin' heart.

How Do You Mend?

Match dating situations 1, 2, 3, and 4 with the correct responses (A, B, C, or D).

#1: After two dates and making a third date, for trout fishing, text arrives from #1 cancelling, saying he thought he could handle two relationships at once but he felt so guilty and needed time to straighten things out with his long-distance girlfriend of three years, whom he sees only on weekends, but I was so interesting and attractive that if he did break up with her, could he call me?

#2: Charming, cosmopolitan date so mutually thrilling that two days later we meet again at a cafe, where he delivers, out of the blue, a most cynical two-hour harangue on politics city, state, national, and global, with a preview of the coming apocalypse. After several courteous and failed attempts to change the subject or get a word in, I openly showed boredom, but it was as if I were not there. Realizing that I would honestly prefer to be having coffee with Todd Aiken, I say a polite goodbye. Text arrives that evening asking do I like him, and apologizing that he sometimes talks too much, and he is such a progressive that some people are not used to it.

#3: Scientific type agrees to meet. The day before, I email him to confirm. He replies he can't make it, is too busy with work, and will call "in a couple of weeks."

#4: World-class tightwad, age 68, who brings me an empty wine bottle because it's pretty, is plainly told that we can be friends but no more than that. This sets him on fire, not to go out on actual dates, but to take long hikes together and send me late-night drunken texts. As a friend, I accompany him to his colonoscopy, and when he awakens he warns me that he is naked beneath his gown and I am not to peek.

A. F--- you.
B. F--- off.
C. ROTFLOL
D. All of the above.

Is It Really Valentine's Day Already?

Here's my favorite passive-aggressive I-don't-love-you-but-I-won't-say-so-because I'm-cowardly-and-want-to-keep-you-on-my-string-as-a-potential-booty-call trick: Don't contact the person at all in the week before Valentine's Day. This squelches raised expectations and prevents being talked or guilted into any Valentine plans. Then, contact late on Valentine's Day when all cards and roses are sold out and reservations anywhere are impossible, saying you're busy with something deeply domestic, and suggest meeting at their place during the week ahead. If the person happens to contact you in the week before Valentine's, do not respond. This also works for other holidays you do not want polluted by the presence of a person known to be lonely and potentially exploitable: Initiate contact only on January 2, or after midday Monday on a long weekend.

For added vicious cruelty, send a wordless crypto-e-Valentine on February 15: for example, a photo of a cute animal.

Congratulations on succeeding at fooling yourself that another human being is not a human being and that you have slyly crawled beneath their radar without their noticing -- without having uttered one single actual lie!

Everything and the 10-inch Kitchen Sink

October 1 is my 13th anniversary on the Divine Property, and it's 14 years 2 months if counting subletting from June 1998 to August 1999. (The only place I've moved into twice.) I will never leave this place where the extraordinary happens every day and the rent, plus 99 acres of land and an ideal neighbor, is $502 a month ("as is").

Inconveniences and Oddities:
-Single-pane windows, plus a concrete slab foundation, ensure that the cabin is a freezer in pitiless winters despite every strategy known to humanity.
-If it's humid, the living room carpet -- even though cleaned -- stinks of pee from a cat who died of bladder cancer in 1999.
-!$%&*!$!!! mice, termites, snakes, skinks, spiders, bats, crickets, etc. for roommates.
-Kitchen sink measuring  13" x 10," x 7 inches deep: smaller than a shoebox.
-No bathtub.
-No library serves this location.
-$30 a month trash service.
-A fallen tree on the gravel road means you stay home until the chainsaw guy gets there.
-Bizarre, intermittent wireless service.
-Six miles to the nearest doughnut.

True Loves:
-Shade trees.
-Peace and quiet
-Native stone screened porch with wooden screen door, furnished with picnic table.
-House aligned east and west so equinoctial sunlight shoots through perfectly.
-Bringing and inviting people here.
-Wildlife, flora, and most weather.
-Birds of the day and birds of the night.
-Most amazing neighbors.
-Landlord to call when something's wrong.
-Two-car garage.
-Red flag on the mailbox.
-Wild foods.
-Propane tank. I love the stupid thing and the blue flames it makes.
-Unable to see neighbors but sometimes hear their roosters or fireworks.
-99 acres of meadows and woods
-Conservation areas nearby.
-Well water.
-Gorgeous, vivid moonlight and night sky.

The White Carnation Story

I've been shy about it for four years, but now I'll tell you I'm a cancer survivor who was cured but must visit the cancer center quarterly to get checked up on. It's a lovely building but the waiting room is soccer-field size and always jam-packed with cancer patients, all kinds, all stages (except kids) and their families. Our number always appalls me. In the elevator there I have been surprised to meet friends who were coming or going. In the waiting area a nurse rings a brass bell when somebody goes into remission, and we all applaud and cheer.

But the hundreds of people, just the number, depresses and grieves me, and it's not a happy place, and I'm always alone when most people aren't, and the water cooler is always empty, and although I like the staff (they saved my life) I dread going there. Did you know there's a national magazine just for cancer patients? They've got lots of copies in case you want to take one home (I don't).

My appointment was March 14. There was no room for me to sit. I was standing with my back to a wall when a group of very young women came in, all giggling and whatnot. They were college girls. "We're such-and-such sorority," one of them said, and they shouldered through the crowd handing everyone a white carnation. I got one too.

Very surprised, I said, "Thanks.  Do you want a donation, a dollar for your club or something?"

"Oh no," said the girl. "We're just handing out flowers."

"Why?" I asked, because this had never happened before.

"To cheer you up," she said.

I had to turn away because I about burst into tears right there.

Carefully I brought the carnation home and although its edges are brown now I keep it because it reminds me: No kindness is ever wasted. As Scouts we had to go sing Christmas carols in nursing homes, and in school collect for clothing drives, and in college serve at soup kitchens, and do things for other people not so fortunate as we. I used to think it was useless and embarrassing, and that sending cards or visiting was tedious, and couldn't see the point of calling to say hi, and very often I have thought my kindness and good intentions wasted, that I had cheated myself, that nothing had been achieved. I bet those sorority girls thought "Now this is such a stupid idea. I'm soooo embarrassed. This can't help anybody." Now that I'm on the other side, I see: Oh no; none of that is true at all.

Heartwood

Somebody sawed down a red cedar. Inside is a heart red and blooming just like ours. A botany teacher once told us that plant cells and animal cells are alike, except plant cells have walls, and animal cells don't. What does that mean, we asked. "It indicates a common origin," he said.

Yes, Your Honor

This local vegetable stand is unattended. Choose and weigh and bag and pay for your choices (mostly tomatoes, but sometimes potatoes, squash, or jars of salsa) and nobody (or at least nobody I ever see) watches you open the cash box to make your own change. It's an honor vegetable stand, open every summer for years now, an amazing sight in the year 2012. I like its assumption that most people are honorable and decent and don't cheat and deceive, and I like proving that its assumption is still correct. Fear the karma if you are ever tempted to steal. It's fast and and tailor-made for the transgression. In my salad days I once got $10 too much in change and told myself, "What the heck, it's not like I robbed somebody; I will keep it." Shortly after that someone stole my $10 in quarters, all I had with me, stranding me at the laundromat I'd walked through a snowstorm to get to, and I had to drag heaps of dirty clothes and linens home again. That learned me.

On Having Things Nice

Live alone and you've got to have some items or rituals that quietly and secretly give you reliable pleasure. I like tea first thing in the morning, and I like coffee cups/teacups of thick old restaurant china to be the first things I handle and see. They are comforting and fortifying. (To me, "mugs" even sound barbaric.) While living in Syracuse, NY, I visited the factory store of Syracuse China Company and bought for .50 each eight random restaurant coffee cups from a "seconds" bin, and 20 years later, while the factory is no more, I still cherish the surviving five and the three replacements from eBay, such as the one above, known to be a pattern from 1967. It's in a random saucer because while a restaurant coffee cup is comfort, a cup with a saucer is life.

It's not about "having nice things." Things don't have to be fragile or expensive to be nice. Don't deny yourself just because you aren't wealthy or because no one sees or cares but you. If you've always wanted a jackknife with a fishing scene carved on its handle, or a thermos with the Scotch-plaid pattern on it, a rosemary bush, a gingham tablecloth, if it will gladden you every time you see it, get it. Love it. Any love is good love.

Venus Retrograde

A little bit of grief this spring over a relationship that was long-term and long-distance. After two years and ten months of being together, I totally faithful and trusting the man completely up until the last few months when I got mildly suspicious, he admitted he was seeing a married woman, and another woman, and maybe yet even another one (he knows how to seduce the lonely ones), and offered me a deal: We could keep seeing each other just as we had been, maybe a little less often, like every five to seven weeks. Translation: I could stay on his string. "I've never thought that love was finite," he said, not realizing that what he'd just offered me was very finite indeed.

The torch in my heart flamed out instantly. I was calm and composed. I said, "I'm so disappointed in you." I asked him what if I'd been messing with other men. He declared he'd be happy for me.

No normal man thinks that way. And anyone involved in adultery isn't very smart. If that was his chosen relationship I had no choice but to leave him.

He'd given me his mother's brooch, an amethyst surrounded by beads of millefiori glass. It was an unusual costume piece and went with everything. Unfortunately I never photographed it. I wore it near my heart as an emblem of love. I was wearing it and removed it and handed it to him, saying, "Give this to someone you love."

"I did!" he said. But his definition of love wasn't mine. I like honesty.

I wished I did not have to, but I packed up and walked out into the night and got into my car for the two-and-a-half-hour drive home. He was upset. He wanted me to stay. We could have dinner or something. I said, "Only a foolish woman would stay."And I stand by that. I drew the line. It feels much better to be the dumper than the dumpee.

In the future I will trust less, and will love less deeply. And that's what I've got to say about the planet Venus going retrograde on Tuesday.

Tommy Toes

 "Tommy Toes" is a real Ozark heirloom tomato, a bush that pumps 'em out til the last week of October unbothered by heat, droughts, frosts, and the soil around here. Demetrius grew and fed us heirloom tomatoes named Boxcar Willie, Mister Stripey, and Mortgage Lifter, but only Tommy Toes grow like mad. I got it from the catalog Totally Tomatoes, which sells only seed packets, not plants. Demetrius grew all his vegetables from seeds but this is my first time, and I did what I had watched him do, and felt the same holy love.

One tiny ivory seed per pocket

Grape-sized tomatoes means squirrels and hornworms don't wreck them before we get some, and we can pop 'em into our mouths anytime we're nearby. So the Tommy Toe is the right tomato in the right place.

How to germinate: Poke holes in all 12 pockets of an egg carton, fill each with organic potting soil, set in each one tiny ivory seed, cover 'em up with soil, water, and set in warm sunshine 70 to 80 degrees. Cartons are easier than flats to carry and manage. Our frost-free date is May 15 so seedlings won't be planted til then. I'll have extra for the neighbor's garden. Happy Earth Day.

With A Love Like That. . .

...you know you should be glad.

Snacking on Snowballs

The other day having coffee with a friend I denied myself a pastry from the shop's lovely pastry case and later wondered what kind of person would deny her desire for a pastry when she really wanted one. I decided that was unhealthy. And it awoke in me a desire to live that moment over and choose differently, which gave me the bug for something gooey and sweet. . . So I drove seven miles into town and in the gas-mart's most forbidden aisles where I never go, I in my purple parka shopped among packaged creations spun up from high-fructose corn syrup, white flour, partially hydrogenated oils and artificial flavors -- treats that no Pharaoh or Chinese warlord, no matter how wealthy, ever saw or tasted or imagined. Because I am sensible I allowed only one item. It came down to brown-sugar pop-tarts or Hostess Snowballs, their coconut tops dyed pink for, I think, Valentine's Day. How very festive. I contained myself until I brought them home, and at 4:30 p.m., very civilized, I set them on a plate and had on the side a cup of rice milk in my Kansas State University mug. I think that on one of my birthdays, back in my salad days ("when I was green in judgement") I bought Snowballs and stuck a birthday candle in one. Or maybe I dreamt that. Or it was someone else's birthday. Anyway, please be seated and share this rare and beautiful moment with me.

Taking My Self to Lunch

I only wanted to get the heck out of the clinic for bone scans and blood draws and after fleeing what I call the "Casino" (where you bet your life) I wanted to live it up, so I stopped at a Cracker Barrel on the way home and bought myself a double order of trout plus fixin's and coffee. I sat across from myself and said, "You've really accomplished a lot this past year. You took some chances and I am proud of you. You helped people out. You saw your family and friends often. You passionately loved. You've taken blows and punches to the gut quite gracefully, or if it was proper to fight, you fought. The mistakes were okay. It's all good. How lucky you are to be healthy and not dead yet like some folks. The best is yet to come. Shucks, I even like you a lot, and other people do too. You know, if I was you I'd be pretty happy."

I recommend that you take your Self to lunch soon. Or to a candlelight dinner. Tell yourself how good-looking you are and how much you love your Self. (Don't hesitate: It's the only Self you've got.) There's only one catch: Your Self has to pay the check.

I'll Show You Happiness

It struck me as I set up to make a tomato sandwich: "I am happy. This is happiness."

What's not to love? It's Saturday. There's a fresh loaf of white bread and two perfectly ripe huge tomatoes, and two Vidalia onions. I've got kitchen tools, spatulas, whisks, strainers, measuring cups,and I love each one in a different way and totally, and nobody will ever know how much. By the tomatoes is a can of Ann Page nutmeg, souvenir from the days of A&P grocery stores; I've got 1950s copper-toned canisters for sugar and rice. My mom had the same set in silver tone. It's sunny outside. It's morning. I've got a propane stove that works, and a knife. God knows there have been times when I needed a knife and didn't have one. There's mayo in the fridge, basil the best herb in the world is growing in a pot outside and going into the sandwich. Nobody's yelling at me or nagging me. I ain't dead yet. I have health insurance and a CCW. Yeah, there's quite a few miles on me, no spring chicken, but nothing is hurting me. I have inspirations. I have friends and one of 'em was game enough to accompany me to a night of cage fights and another of 'em is planning a canoe trip for us, and I'm going to an antique tractor pull and have my own car to get there. I just paid my monthly bills. I found Chock Full o' Nuts Organic Coffee online and ordered a case. Tomorrow I'm on the road to see my special person; later in the month I'll fly to visit my mom for her birthday. It's not always so, but right now I know how lucky I am and I'm grateful.

I'm My Mother's Valentine

"For You, Daughter," says my mother's Valentine, which I received today. On the front it's got ten hearts, each pierced by/giving birth to a sturdy rainbow; the words "For You, Daughter," are in script type and silver foil. She'd phoned me to say it was coming, and added, "Just because I sent you a Valentine doesn't mean you have to send ME one."

Printed inside: "Valentine's Day/begins in the heart.../so every thought of you/ Makes it seem/ like Valentine's Day/ each day the whole year through. Happy Valentine's Day with Love Always"

Now I know I'm gettin' old because this chokes me up. There was a time when the word "family" made me sick to my stomach and I couldn't get away fast enough. It's more than thirty years ago now that I left home, went to school, got married, lived in the city, got single, moved here to the cabin. The only person still sending me Valentines is my mother.

Dear Mom, of COURSE I will get and send you a Valentine. Mom is now 76. Hard to believe, my mother, whose cool and smooth powdered cheeks and lilac perfume I remember from when I was very small and she was in her 20s -- now nearing 80. But she gives as good as she gets; when I fly down to visit she treats me like I am 9. Guess that's love.

I Wanted a Rabbit

Wanted a pet. Something all mine, beautiful and friendly and warm, to lavish affection on, and receive affection in kind. A true and loyal friend who would enjoy my company, who would appreciate little gifts I would buy for it, and treats, and cuddling, and be glad to see me. It would give me something to live for besides myself, and be a reason to get up in the morning when days were rough, and share my happiest and saddest times. We’d appreciate each other as God's special creations and be each other’s best friends. We would have a bond.

Wanted a pet to love and to love me back. Wanted a rabbit in particular. I thought long and hard about it and then realized what I really wanted was to love a human being.

Sammy Strikes Again

Remember Sammy, unsuccessful suitor of Shelley? Well, he snuck down our road in his blue pickup this morning, and I knew he was fixin' up yet another holiday display for the woman of his dreams. Garlands, ribbons, wreaths, tinsel, Santas, etc. This photo ain't the half of it. True love. I hope Santa brings poor Sammy a new girlfriend. This year Santa brung me David, and I don't want nothin else.