Highway to Hell

Highway to Hell

“I’m on the highway to hell/ 

No stop signs, speed limit/

Nobody’s gonna slow me down…”

I recently moved from Tucson, AZ to Felton, CA, and now live with two friends, a cat and two snakes in the middle of a redwood forest near the ocean. I found a job as a nanny nearly right away, but the family that I fell in love with requires quite the commute. I drive from Felton (which is near Santa Cruz) to Menlo Park (which is 45 minutes inland from San Francisco). For those of you, who haven’t driven that, it is an hour of driving, without rush hour traffic, which is exactly when I make this hellish pilgrimage, dreaming of the lack of idiots when I reach my Holy Land, the Place of Toilets and Coffeemakers. 

   

When driving in Tucson, I rarely viewed the level of idiocy in my fellow drivers as I do here in the sunny California. Sure, there were the jerks who cut people off, the thoughtless people who drove too fast, and the old people who drove 15 miles below the speed limit and should have had their licenses taken away twenty years ago. You would see the hippies who don’t seem to know the laws of the road, and the teenagers driving recklessly to the mall, high on newfound privileges. Before leaving Tucson, I was the driver who was a little distracted; admittedly, I have received a photo radar ticket with a picture of myself, speeding whilst talking on the phone. (I do not talk or text while driving now: BIIIIIIIG ticket for that in CA.) Honestly, I’m still a little bit of a distractible driver, moving and driving more frequently hasn’t really changed that, though I do make an effort.

In California there are these varying driver types, but…times a billion. Somehow, putting these people in Lamborghinis and giving them a freeway with a 65 mph speed limit makes them catch a bad case of road rage with a symptomatic lead foot. And with a speed limit of 65, that means you can go 90 mph, right? At first I was appalled, and then vowed to be the superior driver, safely staying in the left lane with the semi-trucks and smart people who follow the speed limit and are terrified of missing their exit.

Slowly but surely though, through various circumstances, mostly sleeping in and running late to work, I began to speed. I only went five over at first, rationalizing that no police officer would pull me over for five miles over if there were Camaros going 90.  Now I max out at 15 over on stretches of road I know there won’t be any cops, and that’s only because I’m not sure my old beater can go any faster. Then came the first mild cases of road rage. I would only mutter enraged comments and glare, quelling full out shouting and the urge to flip them off, trying to stay the better person; desperately clinging to my superiority and dignity. This suppression of my true feelings rapidly diminished and then altogether disappeared, culminating with me speeding down my single lane neighborhood street at 10 p.m., narrowly avoiding an elderly couple walking their dog. I was blasting music with the windows down, and as I braked, I hit my maximum road rage potential. Forgetting my windows were down, I shouted, “Why are you f***ing walking your dog at 10 o’clock at night?” I immediately realized what I had done, and was completely and utterly ashamed of my actions: it was official, despite my embarrassment, I had risen to maximum Lamborghini-level road rage, and I could only hope for redemption for my vehicular sins. Despite my horror, I have only become guiltier. I have now topped my previous road rage shenanigans: I have officially raced an old lady on the freeway.

What’s interesting is, despite driving with thousands of people down highway 17, and thousands more on freeways 85 and 280, I occasionally see the same cars whose commute seems to match mine. I see the Prius with the R2D2 keychain hanging off the bumper; the blue car with the TARDIS license plate, and the same semi truck that always almost plows me into smithereens when I merge onto 280. There is one more car, however, that I see consistently on the 280, right before I exit into Menlo Park: the gold Jaguar. (I like to say Jaguar like Benedict Cumberbatch says it in the British commercial: “Jag-u-ar;” it seems so…British, I guess. So sue me, I’m an anglophile. Here’s the link if you want to listen to pure liquid sex. Best. Voice. Ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdWMTMjzaik )

The gold Jag-u-ar is driven by possibly the most fancy, stiff, cream-of-society elderly woman, whose up-do is coiffed perfectly in a swirl atop her head so delicately it looks like pure white cotton candy. Her lips are precisely coated with bright red lipstick that manages to look elegant instead of trashy. She wears a giant necklace of pearls everyday and it looks classy and 1950s instead of goofy like it would look on us if we tried for that look. I can only imagine what the rest of her outfit looks like. Probably wonderfully 1950s retro, all powder blue jackets and matching skirts that look professional and feminine at the same time. There is always a tasteful broach on her lapel. She does not know what a wrinkle is. (Yes, I have swerved while staring at this perfect woman. She defies reality.) I have seen this woman 5 times on the 280. And there is one imperfection that drives me into a frothing rage: she is a HORRENDOUS driver. She is, unfortunately one of many amongst the elderly population who should have to take the driver’s test again down at the DMV. I don’t know if she’s just used to having a professional driver and she only drives to work when her driver has the day off, but she is AWFUL. I often get stuck behind her in the lane right before our mutual exit, and she starts out going the speed limit and slowly works her way to 70, the 75, aaaaaannnd suddenly we’re at 85. Then, it’s like she notices how fast she’s going and places her leaden foot on the brake, slowing down to 55 mph. That’s ten miles below the posted speed limit. On a freeway. IN CALIFORNIA.

Dear Reader, if you don’t hate me already, then surely you see my point of view? Surely there are those amongst you who run late to work regularly and despise getting stuck behind slow drivers, even if they are intimidating and highly fashionable matriarchs of society? It’s about then, when I am stuck going ten to fifteen mph below the speed limit that I decide to change lanes and speed up to the posted limit to get around her. But then, and I swear on all that is holy, it’s like she sees my banged up little Subaru sneaking around her and she can’t have my little POS car get in front of her gold Jag-u-ar AND SO SHE SPEEDS UP TO 90 MPH.  90 mph!!! She went from 55 to 90 mph so as to not have my car cut in front of her pretentious golden Jag-u-ar. So, in a valiant attempt to remain a solid law-abiding member of society, I swallow my rage and get back in line behind her, patiently speeding up and slowly down as her highness pleases.

Nope. This is false. I did not do this. Honestly, after living in California for a mere seven months, this course of action does not even occur to me. I am livid with rage and there is a red haze of fury obscuring my vision (and ethics). I speed up to 95 mph, nearly merge into a semi, and zip around through two lanes of traffic, finally sneaking in at the very last second to merge riiiiight in front of dear Mrs. Jag-u-ar. I am absolutely giddy with success. Landing a job almost right away when I move to California doesn’t hold a candle to cutting in front of this woman right as we get off on the same single lane exit into Menlo Park.

Is this enough? Have I won at this point? Has it gone far enough? Does my sense of right and wrong, and safety that my mother instilled in me from a very young age kick in? Do I listen to the rational internal voice lecturing me on social morals (that sounds suspiciously like Julie Andrews), telling me to stop being a complete bitch?

The answer is no. My victory is not complete without giving her a taste of her own medicine. My one concession is that I do not break the law while doing so. I make sure that, for the whole fifteen minutes we are on this single lane road, she is stuck behind my busted up, muddy, scratched, bent bumper that has black duct tape holding the rear headlight in. Not only is her beautiful Jag-u-ar stuck behind my ass, but I am very carefully going precisely 10 under the speed limit. (I am able to do this without too much question because we are in a school zone, even though no children are present.) My success is made even more sweet when the one lane road, that usually turns into a two lane road, has road work and remains a one lane road for considerably longer than I had anticipated. Glancing at the clock and seeing my 10:00 a.m. deadline for arrival rapidly approaching, I took pity on the cars stuck behind my prey and I very carefully adjusted my speed to a mere five miles below the speed limit. When the roadway finally allows her to go her own way, and I turn down a neighborhood street to my job, she speeds up and roars towards her destination, no doubt filled with a similar seething ire I had been feeling at the beginning of this regrettable escapade.

As I arrive at work, and finish my coffee, I feel a tinge of remorse. I did cause a great many people to go agonizingly slow just so I could terrorize an elderly woman. But this twinge is overwhelmed and drowned by my satisfaction. I won! And, because of this, perhaps you will dislike me, or condemn me, or even feel the need to tell me the error of my ways, hoping to enlighten me, or…geez. I don’t know. I feel a little bad, honestly, I do. Maybe I am a horrible person, and maybe California is a cesspool of aggressive, mean, brutal drivers with no regards for kindness or safety. I won’t defend myself. I am guilty.

I’ve seen this woman a few other times, and I make sure to stay out of her way, just glancing to confirm that the gold Jag-u-ar is spotless and she is as perfectly coiffed as the day I saw her first. I hope she gets to her destination safely, and that maybe someone criticizes her driving habits in a constructive way. Or maybe she should just hire a driver that never takes the day off.

Do you know what I mean, or the return of the gesticulation

 

I attended an art opening recently, meeting people I hadn’t seen in decades. The sponsor, who had been my high school drama teacher, greeted me with a warm smile. As we chatted, she asserted that I hadn’t changed at all. Not a bit. At all. At first I was dismayed, thinking that my tailored knit ensemble and understated jewelry had failed to redefine an awkward teenager as a sophisticated gallery-goer unlikely to topple the statuary. I mumbled something I couldn’t hear over an inner voice clamoring, “Oh my God, tell me you’re kidding!” and launched into an anecdote illustrated with a thorough and varied assortment of gestures, hoping that I was communicating just how much her tutelage had meant to me.  In the late hours back at home, I realized that my over-enthusiastic display had surely fueled her assertion that I remained as I had been decades before.

I have always relied more on gesture than on speaking, as if communicating a request for the salt across the table depended on the frantic illustration of a lunatic mime. Even as recently as last night, I dipped my hand in a bowl of red salsa as I was describing a poster I’d seen to my  dinner  companion. This habit of out-sized gesturing is of such long standing that a Humanities professor once clasped my hands between his, saying, “Now talk” and when I was struck dumb, laughed, released them and added, “Hmm. I  just wanted to see if you could. Guess not.”  I felt a certain vindication in later years when an emphasis on gesture was promoted as a key strategy for teaching English as a second language.  My gesticulations, bobbing and dancing around through years of teaching seemed to keep my elementary students’ attention, although they may have been placing bets on how soon and with which piece of classroom furniture I was most likely to collide.

One would think that such a dependence on kinesics would have made me a better student-actress in high school than I was. Our early training was in mime, and I began to shape objects in the air even in casual conversation. I prefer to characterize my over-the top moments onstage as a soul-deep desire to get my point across rather than a bone-deep klutziness. I was the Blue Fairy who leapt for the papier mache tree trunk near the footlights as part of a musical number in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream and toppled it and myself into the front row of the audience. In another play I was a burglar hoping to avoid capture by jumping head-first into a large barrel that I did not see had been placed too far upstage. When I vaulted in it, the barrel tipped over and wedged itself between the back wall and the stage risers with me thrashing around inside it. A third time, I was prancing off stage as the Mother Bear of the Goldilocks trio and bounced off a pillar in the wings. Our teacher-director was impressed that I stayed in character as I plopped down on my backside to the cement floor, still Mama Bear wringing her hands under her chin.

A few years later my love of the communicative arts re-emerged in my teaching. Students love stories, and over the years I’ve taken a few workshops to refine my skills. One of these gave me just a taste of pure glory. It was held at a mid-town hotel. There, in a banquet room adjacent to the bustling dining area, a staff member from the Arizona Theatre Company was using Alvin Schwartz's  “Tales to Tell in the Dark” to play theatre games with the Tucson Tellers of Tales group. In one of the sessions, a small group was to mime the events of a story told by a single narrator. My character was the vengeful victim of a bully who’d died the week before. Not satisfied with just seeing him buried, I went to the graveyard on a pitch black night with the wind rising and the trees flailing (other gamers surrounding me, moaning and waving their arms about). I kneeled on his grave, working up the nerve to stab through the mounded dirt to ensure that my tormentor was truly dead and I was finally free. I looked up to see my fellow work-shoppers encircling me, drawing closer, moaning louder, reaching in and pulling away. I was so lost in the story that after plunging my butter knife deep into the pillow on the carpet (I was supposed to mime catching my coattail under the knife and so believe that the dead bully was pulling me down to join him), I dropped to the floor wailing in terror. The wailing tree spirits went silent. The lunch-time traffic in the restaurant across the hall stopped dead.  The restaurant manager came in to have a word with the director. The clatter and bustle next door slowly resumed, and the workshop participants drifted back to their seats.

I got up feeling sheepish and in a secret way, just a little satisfied. Ah, the power of the perfect marriage of motion and emotion. Surely you see what I mean.

Clueless in the kitchen, or adventures in food service

At home, a clean, well-lighted place

I have been maneuvering through daily life one-handed for the past three weeks after washing a wine glass in too big a hurry. This brings to mind similar accommodations after my mishaps long ago in restaurant kitchens. There were cuts and punctures (by which I discovered your living bones are actually pale green), burns or scalds (as on the eve of my wedding) and electrical fires (just two, but one was truly spectacular, with orange flames rising behind a chest-high bank of drawer-like ovens and bursts of sparks reflecting off steel-paneled walls).

Commercial kitchens are all straight-lined, right-angled steel and tile and the managers of those in schools and hospitals take the health inspections seriously. Early in my days as a part time galley slave I discovered that some retail restaurants can be vastly more casual about them. The two cafeterias I worked at while still in school were hygienic opposites. My mother was the kitchen manager of the one, and held herself, me and the entire staff to an “eat off the floor” standard of cleanliness. I doubt that eating from any surface at the other location was a truly prudent choice.

I was unsettled by the state of that kitchen from the moment I walked through it to reach the closet-like office in the back. There was standing water in the pock-marked concrete floor. Water bugs scurried ahead of me to dark corners where, I found out later, they hung out with the rats--all of whom had been given names. Every counter I saw was sticky, every cook’s apron was stained and smeared. The interview with the heavy-set, balding manager was brief (“You’re tuberculosis tested? You’ve had a tetanus booster recently?”) and paperwork for a transfer completed.  Whatever misgivings I had, economic expediency meant that come August when my sophomore semester at the U of A began and we were newly installed in married student housing, I needed to transfer to this more conveniently located branch. Doing so meant I could maintain my latest promotion (from line-server to 3rd cook!) together with its nickel raise past minimum wage, I could get there on a Suntran bus, and perhaps I would not be the only new employee. From the look of the place, no doubt a whole new crew was being hired.

Although I’d taken the bus home from the dorm every Friday afternoon during my freshman year, I was anxious about riding the bus four miles one way after a one mile walk from married student housing to the bus stop three nights a week. As it happened, the commutes to what I later named the E. Coli Kitchen were uneventful. The adventures were all onsite.

Patrons were fewer, generally older, and obviously poorer than the clientele I’d known. The older staff greeted their regulars with a fierce, defensive recognition of their common struggle to make do and get by. In a mix of compassion and carelessness, they combined questionable leftovers into menu items unsanctioned by the out-of-state corporate officials and offered these at lower prices. I could not reconcile this rough friendliness in the front of the house with their unconcern for anyone’s immune system in the back. I hoped that no one lingered over their meals. The safest course was to eat while the food was still well above the 140 degrees that inhibits pathogens.

The cooks’ intent was patently kind and I cannot say these plats du jour were inherently unwholesome, but their preparation was alarming. The cooks stopped short of actually smoking while handling the food, but any soup seasoned with fire-purified ash would have been safer than the one made with vegetables taken from the tub stored in the walk-in refrigerator under seeping boxes of raw chicken. As third cook it was my duty to keep that cold box clean, and that first night I wondered how long just ago my predecessor had been fired—or had quit.

My matter-of-fact re-organizing and scrubbing of the walk-in seemed to please the head cook. Trouble was, I was only there from Friday to Sunday. When I walked in for my second weekend shift, she jerked her chin over her shoulder toward the walk-in from where she sat on a milk crate in the back doorway, saying, “Hey, Miss College, grab a rag and get to. It’s been waiting for you all week.” Now I wondered how and with what the health inspector was being paid off. It couldn’t have been free meals.

Every Friday night for six weeks, I closed my eyes to the pervasive dirt, grease, and  spills in the kitchen. The soured, always matted floor drains were harder to ignore. The walk-in, as foul as it was, became both my duty and refuge. Hiding out in there meant I could avoid inadvertent comparisons to my mother’s kitchen that might land me in even more unpleasant cleanup. It helped, too, that the particular dank odors of the cold box were subdued in the still, cold air, that 40 degrees is not all that cold, and that the freakish metabolism of a nineteen-year-old allowed me to stay there for a long time.

On my last night, I spent most of my shift in the walk-in as usual. I threw out the latest round of unidentifiable fermenting objects. I sorted the remaining pans and used a big black Sharpie to label them with their contents and the date after first sealing them in fresh, tight plastic wrap. I wiped down each rack after first peeling away the thin but perversely elastic layers of congealed sauce that stretched from rod to rod of the open shelving. I scrubbed the crusted floor so that it could actually be seen to be tiled, although the grout remained black. At length, I scooted the scrub-bucket of bleach and detergent through the doorway toward the pot station and pushed my hip against the heavy door to close it. The door latched to with a satisfying click as I leaned back on it. While resting there I saw a giggling, shrieking line-girl run past me, followed three steps behind by a maniacal pot-boy swinging a drowned rat (Fred?) by the tail.

I walked slowly to the office, where I set down my apron on the manager’s desk. He raised an eyebrow, saying, “Couldn’t take it anymore, hunh?” I mumbled something pleasantly innocuous, but I recognized a strange new emotion as I made my way through the parking lot to the bus stop. I could not remember feeling contempt for another living person before.

Loving Greta

    Spring and all of her lovely rituals are upon us. At our little adobe abode that means planting seedlings, adopting desert tortoises, weeding, renovating the chicken coop and thinking about new baby chickens. It is impossible for me to look at little pullets and not remember how all this chicken keeping began… 

Loving Greta 

    The first time I walked into Sunny’s yard to meet my charges, I thought of you, “You’re bigger than I had expected.” Chickens had apparently shrunk in my memories of farms in Iowa. I didn’t realize when I thought that, how much bigger you were than expected. We took you home, we made you comfortable, we started watching you like children at a circus, and then I fell in love with you. With chickens. With all three of you, but mostly with you, Greta.

    The day I gave you dried apricots because they were one of my favorite treats and I wanted to be generous, you responded to my generosity by promptly burying the apricots. Enough said. Your message seemed clear; we were much different than I had naively assumed. You were a chicken and you did not care for the things I cared for. The next day I watched you dig them back up and gobble down your now ant covered treat. Enjoying them far more than I ever could. That was the day I fell in love with you. The day I realized that you had so much more to teach me than a television or a newspaper and that I should spend my morning cup watching you. 

    I learned your voices and your personalities and your spirits. When we brought new smaller chickens home; I watched Betty intimidate them and keep them corralled, I watched Rita pick on them to maintain the all important pecking order, and I watched them run to you for shelter. I could hear your cluck become more gentle and easily imagined the words, “Ooooh, it’s okay, they’re only teasing, they’re not so bad and one day you’ll be bigger than those old bitties.” Which wasn’t entirely true for all the younger ones, but you were right about Hortence and Dottie. You were right about Myrtle. I think secretly you were happy that Esther stayed small and still needed your protection. 

    The day I saw her protecting you, my heart broke. It is hard enough to be the lunatics who take their chicken to the vet. It is much harder when the vet tells you there is nothing left he can do.  I took you out to see one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen, with tiny fragmented clouds each glowing a different color: orange, purple, cerulean, poppy red, bleeding yellow, dying violet, blooming bougainvillea. At some point I learned that chickens see more spectrums of color than humans and I can wonder for the rest of my life what that sunset looked like to you on your last day here. 

    I wonder a lot of things now that you are gone. I wonder if you like the chicken statues I painted and placed under St. Francis over your grave. I wonder if the other chickens are jealous that I still sometimes spend my morning cup with you. I wonder mostly about how ridiculous this world is. How we learn some of our biggest lessons from some of the smallest creatures. How truly tiny you felt the last time I held you, and still so much bigger than I ever expected.   

Two Poems About My Son

As a mother and a poet, my son's life is often a favorite subject for my poetry. Here are two poems featuring him and written about a year apart. Looking back on changes even at his still very young age can wash me with melancholy, so I try to focus on the joys, the blessings and the beauty we have every day.

Feather Sail

Perhaps tomorrow

we will still build a sailing ship together

on the couch with your Chenilly blanket

perhaps the wooden frog will be our passenger

with Edie and Peep, the stuffy chicken and chick.

You may use the Lakenvelder hen’s feather

you found in the chicken coop

as a sail again,

the protoceratops as an astrolabe,

the bugle as a telescope,

all to guide us on our journey

across stormy seas

to exotic lands;

Mr. McGregor’s garden with Peter,

or the bowling alley with bumper lanes,

or to your friend Calder’s house in Santa Fe.

You may pull in the feather sail

and cuddle close to me

as we rock and sway

bravely through a hurricane.

You may raise the feather sail

and bring our ship safely back to shore.

Perhaps tomorrow we may do it all again,

but perhaps it was only for today.

 ~ Cassandra Wensel-Kanne 2010   

Diana Fritillary

Your hand

you are four years and eleven months old

and your hand

reaches toward mine,

gently stops me

from turning the page.

Tears are seeping

out to the banks of your thick lashes.

“Momma, look at that butterfly.”

The tears fall and you hold back a sob.

You point shakily at a

Diana Fritillary

Orange fenestration, fire,

chocolate and fragile edging

spots deviating down in size

painted delicately in the

upper corner of the page,

"Momma, it is so beautiful

that it is opening my heart

and making me cry."

So, I kiss your forehead

and you say,

“Momma, can you see it?

Can you?

Can you see it with your heart?”

Can I see anything with my heart?

Could I ever see anything with my heart?

I look at the butterfly

painted on the page,

the striking repeat of the pattern

the bold contrast of color.

Then I look at you

wipe the tears from your cheek,

I see the monsoon rains on the desert

and the moon just beginning to wane

on the night of your birth

I kiss you again,

look into your vulnerability, your hope,

your perfection

I see every star in the night sky

reflected on the surface of your tears

“I can, my love, I can see with my heart.”

 ~ Cassandra Wensel-Kanne 2011 

 

“It was about yay long”… an incidence of overly graphic gesticulation

Most of the stories I tell on myself are vintage, maybe because time heals all winces. Yesterday at Marc’s physical therapy appointment, though, I was reminded that I can still embarrass myself any time, anywhere.

 Marc and I both are infatuated with the marvelous medical benefits of physical therapy, and with our vision and grace impairments, have had frequent need for it. The PT facility Marc is going to now is in a store front on Grant Road. It is a large box of a room, with a network of paths to the weight stacks, massage tables and the traction station (or as every single patient there calls it, the rack). There are a few curtained alcoves for consultations and the more intimate procedures, but most frequently one exercises or is treated out in the open.

The waiting area is small and usually crowded. I sit and read or knit and chat. Yesterday there was only one place to sit, beside an older man wearing a paper mask. I plopped down to the right of him, settling in for the morning (Marc’s therapy takes a long time) with my tote and purse and books and Tupperware cup of yogurt’n’twigs. I usually wait until the crowd thins out before breakfasting, and since a lot of people have coffee, I don’t think it’s too rude. I acknowledged my seatmates with a smile and began to read. The masked man on my left said quietly, “Don’t worry, I won’t make you sick, I’m waiting for a marrow transplant and have almost no resistance because of the chemo.” I wanted him to be comfortable, so I said, “Oh, no worries, and I won’t make you sick—I’ve been away from my school for about six months, so I don’t have any kid-germs that will hurt you…”

He went on to describe his condition in some detail. It sounded increasingly grim until he said the disease had been arrested and the weekly therapy helped his breathing. I was so relieved to hear that he was not actually moribund that I rushed to praise the benefits of PT, how it had evolved over the past twenty years, and oh, the tools available nowadays! How useful they are and how downright elegant they can be. Why, I had been given the simplest of devices for my wrist. “It was a simple plastic rod, about yay long (holding my forefingers about eight inches apart) and about an inch and half in diameter (circling my right forefinger and thumb) and you grasped it by the base (sliding those fingers in mid air across an imaginary cylinder) and just shook it back and forth (vigorous twisting of my right wrist). It was just so effective, it was really worth the few minutes it took every day”. I’d kept my eyes on my hands to be sure my gestures were truly illustrative. I must have communicated something unintentional--I heard a snicker to my right and when I looked back to my left, that poor man, who could hardly breathe in the first place, had turned bright red and his eyes were watering. He said simply, “I imagine so.”

The story really should end here, but… I was able to escape right at that moment because Alex, Marc’s therapist called me over to explain how I was to assist Marc with his last set of home exercises. I bounded up, grabbing my purse for us to pay and leave, but as I crossed the room, I tripped over a small, short-legged trampoline leaning up on the wall next to them. Alex and Marc each caught an arm to pull me up before a full face-plant and I tried fiercely to listen to Alex, ignoring the laughter behind me.

Ok, instructions received, and final exit papers signed, I rush to just, please Lord, get out of there when Marc says, “Oh, I need my jacket!” He walks over to the reception alcove, but I know he is not going to be able to navigate the still-crowded seating area, so I push past him to pull his jacket off the wall hook. It’s the kind of hook that is wedged between horizontal slats and it comes off with the jacket. It bounces into the wastebasket in the corner. Alex calls, “Just leave it, I’ll get it later.” As I bend to retrieve it, I push Marc into the lap of the man who’d been sitting to my right. At least it wasn’t the masked man. Marc stands up and I straighten up at the same time and we bounce off each other. Alex comes over and leads Marc out of the chair maze, saying “You two do realize that this was your last authorized visit, don’t you?

Later, when I was pretty sure the waiting area would have new clients, I went back  to retrieve my tote.

Funky Shui’d

      Three people living in a tiny house can accumulate clutter almost faster than the human eye can detect. I will literally get a surface clear of any schmoo piles (technical term for piles consisting of mostly mail, paperwork and project materials), get items in said piles distributed to their proper places, and not even have time to turn my little bright eyes around before the surface is re-cluttered with someone else’s project or work. This constant battle with clutter and the seemingly unrelated challenge of trying to live for the first time in our 23 year relationship on only one income, led me to start delving into Feng Shui. So to be clear, three people living in a tiny 860 square foot house is NOT the cause of my feeling cramped and three people living on one income so I can enjoy the blessing of staying home with my son is NOT the cause of me being frugal. Nay, nay I say to that far too pedantic assessment…being un-Fung Shui’d is the problem!! My stuff being in the wrong places is the source of all our woes!! So, I needed to start reading up on all of my zones, and Chi, and my Ba’Gua (map of your energetic stations), and which elements are most beneficial where…and then let the Fung begin!!

      I entered into this endeavor with the adamant commitment that this is not about buying new stuff or discarding treasures, but about moving my existing stuff to the most energetically beneficial place. Sure, sure, I’ll throw out some clutter, donate some unused things, but NO PURCHASES!! Well, okay except the books on Fung Shui. I have to buy a couple books on Feng Shui, right? A-Ha, I’ll go to Bookman’s and use trade book credit!! Genius!! Step one, hit our book shelves and seek out some triviality or excess to trim. Three bags of books and magazines, awesome!! Step one completed and behold…more space already…aaaahhh! This is going to be great!! More Fung to be had.

     Flipping through the books to choose one, I see all kinds of easy ideas and tantalizing pictures of uncluttered spaces. This is going to rock hard!! Like spring cleaning with a spiritual purpose. Free up our creative energy, our money flow and our cohabitation energy all at once. Here I insert the image of an abundant garden surrounding a gleamingly clean and beautiful as well as functionally arranged home where my husband plays music with a big smile on his face, my son is joyfully busy at a big art project and I sip my tea while I sketch them both. This is reasonable, right? Plus, it is going to be easy as heck!! Move a couple throw pillows, dust the family photos…that sort of thing. Or…

     Wait, what do you mean my toilet is my Wealth and Prosperity Gua? Well, that sounds bad…of course I can’t move my toilet. Can I? No stop, stop, that’s ridiculous. How do we fix this? And what’s this, my bed is facing the wrong direction? Well, okay, but it’s not like it can fit any other direction in my tiny bedroom. Entryways are supposed to be clear? Really? Who doesn’t just dump their stuff there? Everyone does that. The worst thing for your Children and Creativity Gua is red and fire…so the giant red wall around my fireplace in the center of that Gua is…? Alright, I guess there is Fung Shui meaning that you got to build your house from the ground up with these properties in mind and then there’s…I don’t know…Funky Shui, which is what all the rest of us can do. Okay. I can compromise. Some good energy is better than none. Plus, who could possibly be so effed up that they would need to reconfigure all nine areas of your Ba’ Gua? I mean come on…if your health, finances, career, knowledge, relationships, family, friends, and emotional well-being ALL suck you might need more than Feng Shui. You might. I’m still pretty sure I can fix up all my minor stuff with the right portions…selections…morsels…of Fun Shooway!!

     So, okay what’s the most important thing? Family right? Absolutely!!! Turns out, I don’t even need to worry about the Wealth and Prosperity Gua because that’s all about having more than you need. Needs being met, enough money to pay the bills and not stress out, that’s right here in the Family Gua!! Perfect. My Family Gua is in my kitchen, well that certainly seems ideal! Let’s do this. Wait, what? Hmmm, metal it seems is bad energy in the Family Gua. How do you not have metal in a kitchen? Sink faucets, oven, knives, GIANT METAL UNDERCABINET VENTHOOD!! How do we fix this? Oh wait, sink is okay because even though it’s made out of metal it inherently possesses the energy of water which is fine for the Family Gua, whew! The oven? Actually fire, which is GREAT for the Family Gua! That GIANT METAL UNDERCABINET VENTHOOD that vents nowhere because it’s under a cabinet…that sticks out an entire foot past the stove in our teeny tiny kitchen…that has always been a friggin’ nightmare to clean? It has noxious Chi. Maybe I can mask it. Stick some red (representing fire) glass (representing water) tiles on it. Might have to buy those. What would that look like? Well, I am not the only one who lives here so, I ask my husband what he thinks.

“Why don’t you take the hood out? It’s ugly, vents into your face if you ever turn it on, s'a bitch to clean. Pull it out. All you need there is a light.”

                                                     ( Hood of Noxious Chi )

      What a great idea! I guess I was thinking I would pull it out and the cabinet underneath would be beautiful and magically there would be a light there. Turns out, no. It does instantly look more spacious and inviting in my tiny kitchen, but clearly this upgrade is going to take a little time and probably a little money. A little track light, some nice fiery toned glass tiles to add that good fire energy AND be easy to clean. Yeah, I like that idea. Track light, new wiring for the track light, tiles, ooh...I could get those at Fractured Earth, some grout that matches the cabinets, maybe some plexiglass to make a custom cover for the light…. I have to go the hardware store and maybe drop a couple of books off at Bookman’s before they cost me any more money!!

                                                             ( Ta-Dahh! )