An Apple Pie

I like pie.

Lemon meringue, blueberry, cherry, chocolate cream, strawberry, apple, raspberry, rhubarb... Cheesecake. It's all wonderful. Pie makes me happy.

Until today, though, I've never really had a favorite pie – I love them all equally. Or I did. Today my favorite pie is apple pie. And once I've finished eating the apple pie that's in my fridge, I might have to give up eating pie for good, just because this pie is the best pie I've ever had, the best pie I ever expect to have. It is homemade, though I didn't make it, and I expect that anyone else in the world would taste it and say, “ok, it's decent pie, but it's definitely NOT the best pie ever.”

Which is fine. Everyone knows what opinions are like, and why.

Also, this particular apple pie tastes a bit like freezer – not surprising, seeing as how after it was prepared it was placed, un-baked, into a freezer 240 miles north of here an unknown number of years ago. Then it was partially thawed, transported, and re-frozen. And then forgotten until Friday, July 29th, the day our freezer died. I baked it yesterday (Wednesday, August 3rd!) after it sat thawing in the fridge.

You might think eww, that particular pie sounds like it's had almost no chance of being edible. Forget “the best pie ever”. That's what I thought.

But then I cut a slice for myself a little while ago and immediately had a pie-nostalgia-gasm.

This wasn't just any apple pie. The freezer from which it was transported had belonged to my Grammy in life, the apple pie the last one she'd ever make. I almost threw it out because of cooler-space considerations when we were deciding what was to go where after she passed, but my dad said to me, “you should take that. The last “Grandma's apple pie” on earth!”. Caving to the sentimental impulse, I did.

I encountered it every so often as I took this thing or that from the freezer, avoiding it because.... I don't know why, really. I'd become a little bit phobic about one single un-baked pie in an aluminum pie plate for no reason I could give. Or can give. Or will be able to give.

On that Friday – a week ago tomorrow – the pie was almost thrown away once again, but once again “the last “Grandma's apple pie” on earth” saved it. And I'm glad. The slice of pie came out of the pan in sixteen different pieces, a thing that always made Grammy nuts when it happened to her, and it made me smile to think of it. I sprayed it with aerosol whipped cream, the smell making me think of all the times I'd “helped” her to make pies like this one, she a patient angel with a tiny, distractable assistant. I took a bite and suddenly I was nine years old again, sitting at the kitchen counter with both of them, my Grammy and Grandpa. Her pie has cool whip. His has a slice of cheddar cheese. Mine has a scoop of vanilla ice cream. They're drinking coffee, I'm having milk, and the kitchen smells of warm apple pie, of the cardamom bread in the oven. Each bite of pie - freezer-flavored, undercooked pie - makes me remember something else, gives me the warm fuzzies.

I can't help but to think that my pie isn't going to last long enough.

The Weekend That Ended Up Being So-So

Owing to my somewhat-cockeyed work schedule, weekend means "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday."  I've tried explaining my schedule a number of different times to people I know who work "regular" hours in the following (and apparently incomprehensible) ways:

• The days I work one week are the days I'm off the next.  For example, if you know that I'm working on a given Monday and Tuesday, you will also know that I'm not working the following Monday and Tuesday.

• I work three twelve-hour shifts one week and four twelve-hour shifts the next.
  

• A "pay period" for my employer is a two-week period starting on a Sunday.  The way I'm scheduled during a pay period is like this:  I work Sunday, I'm off Monday and Tuesday, I work Wednesday and Thursday, I'm off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I work Monday and Tuesday, I'm off Wednesday and Thursday, and I work Friday and Saturday, which is the end of the pay period.
  

Admittedly, the last explanation is a bit more wordy than it could be, and most people I know have a tendency to tune out not long after I've started explaining. So I don't use it that often any more.

But that's that. This is something else, or at least it was intended to be. I don't really like thinking of work when I'm not there.

Anyway, my weekend: I didn't do much of anything on Friday, except to return to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things that I'd forgotten on Thursday when I went after work. Saturday, though, I'd made plans to help out some folks I help at the MRF, getting their booth ready for the upcoming run.

Any other year, I'd be at this booth on most - if not all - of the sixteen dates of the festival.  This year, though, I can't.  I used up most of my available time off in the end of March and the beginning of April, before my short-term disability benefits started, allowing me to be off work for 73 days and have a mobility-restoring surgery.

But that's a story for another time.

Saturday wound up being called off because of the threat of rain and was rescheduled for Sunday, which is OK. I'm flexible.  Sometimes.  Kind of.  At least, I didn't have anything planned for Sunday.  So it worked out.

I made myself some coffee and started up the Interwebs Fetcher, poking around some dusty corners for a bit, enjoying some breakfast, and so on.  Until I got to thinking about how I've really been itching to get another tattoo, which made me get restless, and it eventually made me leave the house.


I went to this place and talked to one of the artists for a while, and wound up getting this

on the inside of my left forearm, just down from my elbow.  Apparently this was a minor miracle on its own, it being Saturday and the shop's busy day, and me without an appointment.  A few people came in during my two hours (and a tiny bit of change) in the chair, but the artist and the new guy/intern/apprentice were both surprised by how quiet it was while I was there.  Clearly, the universe approves of my new tattoo!

Or something.

This image was one of several I've been considering for quite a while, and I decided to get it done partly to declare my love and admiration for the body of work of the band They Might Be Giants generally, and for this album specifically.  I don't like it any more well than any of their other work, but I received the CD as a gift a number of years ago - it's a sentimental attachment. I also wanted to celebrate the occasion of my post-surgical-feeling-much-better-and-continuing-to-improve, something I could've done by composing haiku or burning... I dunno... A "Back-Malfunction Goblin" in effigy.  The tattoo seemed more permanent, somehow. 

the top of a torn sock

Anyway, he finished, took some pictures, bandaged me up, took my money, and sent me on my way, a happy little man with some new colorful ink.  Before I left, I was given after-care instructions, one of which was the advice cover that with something before you go to sleep or you'll ruin your sheets.  I'm glad I did.

Here you see the top of a sock I used to cover the work before bed.  You can plainly see that my arm became something like an offset-printing press.  Cool and gross at the same time. 

Which I discovered Sunday morning.  That was the day I was supposed to help with final prep on the MacGregor Games booth at the MRF site, so I was up shortly after seven, enjoying a breakfast and coffee before getting ready to go.  I brushed my teeth, washed myself, and collected the various items I'd need to be gone for a good part of the morning, then got in to my car and left home.

photo not taken sunday

It was a foggy morning, and still.  I set out from home listening to this album and made it about four miles before this car of mine began hitching and gasping, losing power, and eventually stalling on the side of Highway 169, a bit southwest of Alloy Hardfacing & Engineering.

"Well, shit." I said to myself, imagining the great good fun of the long walk home from here in the fog, the cost of a tow from here to... Someplace not here.  Preferably a place with auto mechanics.

The car started again and idled wonderfully, so I drove off on the shoulder of the highway, hazard lights flashing, Nissan Maxima choking and lurching along and unwilling to go faster than 25 m.p.h.  We made it to the parking lot of the OK Corral, Suzette's, and a used-car lot that seems to change hands at least once a month.  I shut off my poor car and sat for a minute, my mind racing agitatedly...  My savings has been wiped out by my recent eleven-week leave from work, combined with my return consisting of half-shifts, six-hour days - a slight pay cut from the 60% I was being paid by my employer's short-term disability provider.  When I combined that with the thought that I'd just taken a loan from my 401k to pay my out-of-pocket medical expenses and that multiple loans aren't allowed....

I started the car again, and again it ran just fine until I asked it to go.  It reluctantly sputtered its way through the rest of the parking lot to nearby County Road 59, a "back way" to return home.  I thought that there wasn't anything to lose in trying to get back home, dodging the expense of a tow, so up the hill on CR 59 we went.  Before the hill began, I managed to get the Maxima in to 4th gear with much sputtering and protest. By the time I got to the top of the hill, I was down to 1st gear, rocking forward and back in my seat in the hope that my added momentum would be enough to get her to CR 66 and the right turn (and the other side of the hill!) that would take me home, saying I think I can, I think I can, I think I can to myself over and over.

We made it, barely, and the rest of the drive was fairly uneventful.  By the time we got home, the car was whistling and because I wanted- no, I needed to pull something positive out of this whole mess, I discovered that I could control the pitch of the whistle with the accelerator and considered playing with it for a while, make some Sunday morning music for my neighbors to enjoy.

photo also not taken sunday

"Probably the car's not a toy, though." I said to myself before I went inside to make a couple of phone calls.

I left the ailing Max in the street instead of my driveway in case she was planning to vomit any or all of her fluids in her malaise, enjoying the still of the morning and basking in the sunshine for a moment.

Inside, I set about emptying and rinsing my travel mug, fixing a fresh batch of coffee, visiting the restroom, making phone calls, and in general restlessly knocking around the house.  It wasn't long before I discovered that Megatron had struck again in the short time I'd been away.

a cat who wasn't named for a long, long time

Because I mean "six pounds of female tortie kitten" when I say Megatron, and not "sixty thousand pounds of evil Transformer", I found a houseplant uprooted and on the floor with potting soil everywhere.   You know, instead of a heap of smoldering rubble where my house used to be.  So, preferable.

Even so, a plant that was older than the kitten lying on the floor amid chaotic sprays of soil over the computer desk, my books...  It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I sent her to the shower stall in the bathroom for a time out to think about what she'd done while I vacuumed up the mess and put the plant in a vase with water in the hopes that it will grow new roots.

Maybe the universe doesn't approve of the new tattoo.