The Innocent Man and Other Books

Day 316: The Innocent Man and Other Books

I had a longer, more involved post planned for today, but I've walked 8.3 miles and I'm tired. I know that I've walked 8.3 miles because my phone came with an app that counts your footsteps and distance walked daily. The data is probably stored in a database somewhere and if anyone cared, they could pay money to find out how many miles were walked in Ann arbor today, and where. Brave New World. Yeah.

I covered these miles grocery shopping, working an hour or two on Botanical Gardens stuff, folding laundry, setting Sam up for his first Arb work day (he's getting high school credits for learning how to lead a work day), helping Kaeli take algae samples in the Conservatory for her science project (much more complicated than I had imagined, involving trips to the staff kitchen), walking the dog, and buying upholstery fabric at Joann's to try to breathe a little life into our tired old sofa cushions. I also promised to make chicken legs for dinner, but I gotta say, pizza is starting to sound pretty good.

And this is the simplified life, with less to do, now that Emma's away at College and Sam is driving himself. 

Milk Crates

Day 315: Milk Crates

More casualties of Sam's trip to the Salvation Army: two milk crates. If this keeps us, we will have nothing to store our stuff in.

Stuff? What stuff?

KitchenAid Timer

Day 314: KitchenAid Timer

A friend of a friend sent me a message saying he'd been looking for a little blue timer just like the one I was getting rid of. Could he buy the one I'd blogged about? I was delighted to offer it to him for free; it was just sitting in the box, destined for the Salvation Army. Could I drop it off for him on Thursday?

I got great pleasure from the thought that the little blue timer - which I bought decades ago with money from Grandma Lu - was going to be useful to someone. It made the effort of getting rid of something and writing about it seem worthwhile, at least for that one day. It made it easier to let go.

A co-worker told me a few days ago that thinking of other people getting value out of his old stuff has made it easier for him to let go of things, too. He told a story about putting an old chain saw out on the street on Spring Clean Up day in Plymouth, when anyone can put their old stuff out on the curb. A guy came along and picked up the chainsaw before Jeff even had time to set it down. A guy who seemed capable of fixing it. Who was excited to have it. So Jeff has gotten much more pleasure out of giving away the old chainsaw than he ever got from having it stored in the basement, an unfinished task hanging around like a rain cloud.

With most of my stuff, it's hard for me to visualize the Salvation Army customer who might buy it and get the joy of using it and the joy of a bargain all wrapped in a single package. Most of my stuff, I think, people won't want. But maybe I'm wrong. I wouldn't have thought anyone would want that little blue wind-up timer. Doesn't everyone have a timer on their stove and their cell phone and their digital clock and their microwave and their iPad already?

Unfortunately, this story has an unhappy ending. Like yesterday's laundry basket, the little blue timer went to the Salvation Army with Sam and never came home. I forgot to take it out before I sent Sam on his errand.

John CP, would you like a KitchenAid timer instead?

Laundry Basket

Day 313: Laundry Basket

A sixteen-year-old boy with a driver's license can drive himself to late night basketball practices, and far off soccer games, and friend's houses, and the Y, and the library. For a nominal fee, he can also run a few errands for his mother, such as frequent trips to the Salvation Army to donate all the stuff she's giving away.

The downside: a sixteen-year-old boy sometimes might miss a tiny instruction among many when making those Salvation Army trips. He might, for example, not quite track on the fact that the stuffed animals get donated, but the laundry basket does not.

It will be interesting to see how we manage the laundry with only one basket.

Dog Treats & Medicine

Day 313: Dog Treats & Medicine

Chide me, castigate me, scold me. I'm a bad pet owner. Harpo's Heartgard has gone the way of my daily vitamin regime, which is to say, the medication has passed its expiration date but is still taking up room in the cupboard. So has the other canine medicine, the one that starts with "I" and prevents an illness I can't remember. I've stopped training him (thus the accumulation of training treats), and he's a month overdue for his rabies vaccine. (I need to take care of that before the next grooming.)

I don't take him for as many walks in the winter - it's just too cold and dark when I get home from work - and so he spends a lot more time chasing rodents in the backyard. To make matters worse, a section of fence blew down during the last major wind storm, and, bored as he is, he's gotten onto it and is constantly attempting to escape through the breech. We can't get it fixed because the ground is frozen. The day before yesterday, I caught him in Peg and Steve's back yard, barking at the collie on their other side, which means we've become a nuisance for multiple neighbors.

I love the little guy, but I could definitely do better. Tonight, I'm stringing up chicken wire over the hole in the fence. Tomorrow, I'm taking him for a walk. Next week, the rabies shot.

Potholders

Day 312: Potholders

Why keep replacing the cotton
when silicone lasts forever?

What is silicone anyway? I believed it to be a form of plastic, but no. It's a unique substance, two molecules of silicon, one of oxygen, combined with hydrogen or carbon, invented in 1901. Semi-organic. It's strange to think that my lobster claw potholder could also be used as a breast implant, a lubricant, a raincoat, shampoo, fire retardant, silly putty or eco-friendly dry-cleaning chemicals.

My sister made me feel better about my trashed, burned and stained kitchen linens. I often feel just a little frustrated with myself because I can't seem to keep stuff nice. All my resolutions - not to wear work shoes to weed the garden, not to walk eight miles in a cashmere sweater, not to scrub the sink with the pretty flower-handled dish brush, not to put loose pieces of chewing gum in the bottom of my purse - are easily forgotten in the moment. But Elizabeth says that kitchen linens must be replaced from time to time. Not even Martha Stewart can keep them nice. And she gave me a set of hand-knitted cotton dishrags.

Ah, but silicone! Silicone potholders never get stained or burned. They're odd and rubbery. It's a bit hard to get the hang of using them. But once you do, you can take even the hottest chicken pot pie out of the oven without burning your fingers. I bought one from IKEA because it looks like a lobster claw. I had hoped that it might trigger a Rich-riff worthy of John Stewart. Indeed, it did. But now the riff is past, and the lobster-claw turns out to be the sturdiest and most useful of our potholders. Only one caveat: mice eat silicone potholders when the weather gets cold enough.

Timer

Day 312: Timer

There's something viscerally pleasing about simple mechanical devices. Things that you can look at and understand, things that never break down, things that don't require any external sources of power. One-speed bicycles. Hourglasses. Balance scales. Candles. Whisks. Wooden pencils. Wind-up timers.

Back in the day, I rented a flat with a little gas stove and no microwave. No digital thermometers. No self-cleaning. No popcorn setting. No timers. Now I've got a fancy gas stove with an electric convection oven and a microwave, both of which have timers, and countless other clocks and timing devices.

It's a little hard to let go of this wind-up timer. When I moved into my first apartment, Grandma Lu (my dad's step-mother) gave me a check for $25 to set myself up with some kitchen supplies. This was one of them, along with a hand-mixer, cookie sheets, a set of measuring cups and spoons, and potholders. Grandma Lu didn't believe that all these things could be had for $25, but indeed, in 1985, it was possible.

If the little blue timer was a little cuter - shaped like a tomato, perhaps, or a pig - I might keep it. But it's not cute, and it's not necessary, and it's cluttering up the bookshelf. I've got a couple things left from Grandma Lu's $25 gift. I haven't used the hand-mixer, for example, since Mom and Dad gave me the CuisinArt stand mixer a couple years ago for my birthday. Maybe the hand-mixer will be the next to go.