My friend Bonnie wants to know what is wrong with our town. Well, I have an opinion about that. Here it is.

The Pieces

First, there are a bunch of us liberals that live in one area of town, up North here. We are mostly white, Judeo-Christians, or has-beens like me who jumped ship and became a Unitarian. We have a certain amount of money and we live in the neighborhood we live in because, whether we admit it or not, we prefer our houses to NOT be rundown or NOT be nextdoor to the former Mr. Ps shooting gallery and bar.

Second, there are a bunch of conservatives who live in the SAME area of town. In fact, there are MORE of them than there are of us. They live here because they like the school systems, they like their privacy, they like white people like themselves and they will ADMIT that they NEVER wanted to go inside Mr. Ps shooting gallery and bar, not even out of curiosity.

Third, (but not because it’s LESS mind you!) there are the social liberals who ALSO voted for Obama who live at the other (south) end of town. They may or may not work at the former Mr Ps shooting gallery and bar, and they live in whatever type of abode a service wage can afford them (after all, this is Connecticut and us whiteys like to be served).

Which isn’t much. And it IS rundown, because they have NO time to fix it up because they work 70 hours a week and have three kids to take care of. They are exhausted and even if they rent, they can’t be bothered to call the landlord, unless it’s dire. They TOO would like to have time to plan their youngest birthday party, and also have to fill out all those friggin’ kindergarten registration forms that require a PhD that NOBODY has.

The REALLY South End

Fourth, there’s Lordship, which is basically Texas. Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE, including them) secretly wants them to secede and take the airport with them. Only problem is they are attached to our beach rights, which is the only reason any of us live in Stratford.

The REALLY North End

Fifth, Oronoque. OK, everyone has SOMEONE they know and love who lives a-way up there on Assisted Living Island, so it’s hard to say anything bad, right? Respect thine elders, right?

The best solution would be to distract them all with a really great reality television program featured there, because as we know, every vote in town is skewed by the Black Hole District–where voters have all the time to vote and complain, but no time to actually be involved in the town and do anything of use.

Sixth, the big Fat Middle.  These include all of the following:

1. There’s the guys on the couch. The armchair conservative quarterbacks who slam beers and bitch about everything but only vote when one or two issues chap their hides. Like gun control and pencil skirts.

2. High-horse liberals who are busy homeschooling their kids and feel the lousy government doesn’t include them. So they “drop out.”

3. And we all know the people who say “Politicians are all corrupt. I just don’t vote.”

You want to know what’s wrong with our town? We are the perfect image of America. We are plagued with apathy. We reject and disconnect from anyone of another race, culture, or socioeconomic class– even if their values and ideas are the same as ours. We are frozen, because we believe we are right.

We are Narcissus, staring at our lovely selves in the pool that is about to drown us.

We are living on our 1/4 to 3/4 acre islands of anger, frustration and oblivion, texting and messaging only the people who agree with us. And when we disagree, we say:

“People should never talk about politics or religion.”

We talk and we don’t act.  When we act, we are filling out forms for soccer, pouring asphalt in potholes, and driving our cars in traffic.

That’s what’s wrong.

And I know… this is a lot of talking and not acting. I know. But Bonnie asked.

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After a visit to Colin’s work, we were all famished for lunch today.

Nothing says special holiday like a big bucket of KFC. We got the family 12 piece meal and just about devoured all of it together.

Dining on fast food on Christmas eve always reminds me of my own childhood. Ever so often — after we couldn’t bear to think about eating another of my mom’s hamburger and macaroni casserole– we’d plead with Dad for a meal out. We’d ask “Dad where are we going for dinner tonight??” and he say “Howard’s kitchen!” and then chortle delightedly the few times he fooled us.

We ate at a Shakey’s Pizza about once a year, and later, when we were teenagers and had our own paper route money, we rode our bikes to McDonald’s now and then in the summer. Fast food was a honest to goodness treat, almost like a holiday itself. We were freed from the horrors of Mom’s debilitatingly bland cooking and Mom was freed from having to prepare it. And we all escaped dishes, for one night.

A curious thing about fast food around here– our little ones know just what is in the boxes and bags even before we open them. If they gave them out, they would already have a PhD in McNugget dipping.

Lucky for them, we don’t eat take out that often–so they can learn all over again the joy of fast-food holidays, and not just on Christmas.

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My sudden craving for Worcestershire sauce-and-butter- encrusted cereal is a hint about my heritage. Maybe in techno-America, the idea of “heritage” is almost obsolete, except that it isn’t. My iPhone 3G will be nostalgia in a year or two, so hearkening back to the “old days” of baking Chex Mix with my sisters for the holidays really does show the history of my family– especially my geographical identity.

Food follows and makes me who I am. In Iowa, I was unseasoned dinners– charred meat and potatoes, canned and frozen veggies. I was simple and fast–a recipe made from the combination of a harried mother of six blended with her despise and ineptitude in the kitchen. The result: heat and serve Salisbury steaks, canned spinach, powdered mashed potatoes.

She didn’t mind the baking however, so at holidays we had old pretzel and chip tins full of Chex Mix, cookies and homemade caramel corn. She served her own sweet tooth.

My years in Kansas City make me long for a proper donut when I am sugar-starved ( Thanks Lamars) and pork dumplings and pu-ehr when I am lonely for friends.

My years in London make me long for just the right balance of warm beer, vinegar and salted crisps, and toasted mates.

I am curious to see what  longing my years in Connecticut will create. My suspicion is that it will eventually take me full circle: that the hardened shell here of natural unneighborliness — and the stark mediocrity of the food, no better and no worse than my Midwestern roots — will eventually lead me home.

Home, where my Chex Mix’s baking…

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I did the dishes. But I left the Presto Power Crisp full of bacon fat on the counter.

It’s not that I’m not interested in cleaning it– I scrubbed WAY more disgusting pans at The Passage in the London, where burning oatmeal in the bottom of a pot the size of the Queen’s bathtub seemed to be as much tradition as high tea.

No. It’s not that. It’s just that finishing things has never been my strong suit.

I don’t know why… I wonder myself what makes me want to leave that last bit of bagel on the plate or carry around the hundreds of novel pages in my laptop from here to there.

“Good thing I read your blog,” Colin said as he looked over my shoulder as I typed, “otherwise I wouldn’t have known.”

About the bacon fat that is… Colin is painfully aware, I am sure, of my penchant for unfinished business. (Meanwhile he goes to clean the fat pan).

One of the things I liked about Colin was his follow through. Man that guy would get focused and never let go. But since we have at least 4 unfinished projects around the house, I am afraid I might be wearing off on him.

Meanwhile, we beat back the tide of junk that continues to spillover onto every empty-flat space, despite my regular purging of unnecessaries into the trash.Maybe we are just too busy holding back the tsunami of mundanity to be expected to complete the task of amazing simplicity.

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As the result of a good friend transferring overseas indefinitely, we are now the proud–if temporary– parents of a beautiful and wonderful dog named Kiyomi.

If you are wondering what “Kiyomi” means, well, I am sure I asked her owner once, but had long-forgotten, so I had to Google it to find out. A Japanese citrus fruit, similar to the tangerine. Hence, I reckon, the name must be a nod to this lovely dog’s red coat, which in all the wrong light, merely looks brownish.

If you are wondering HOW? we are daring a dog at this point, thus adding another life in the house (my Shasta daisy is looking raggedy), well, there are few dogs we would dare with and Kiyomi, who is part Australian shepherd, part red heeler, and mostly Xanax, is one. She is extremely well-suited for the sort of house where a 15-month-old screams “AHHHHHHHHHAAHHHHA!” with delight and grabs fistfuls of tail whenever possible. (The same kid who’s learning the “gentle” pats pay off, but so does feeding the dog from her highchair tray).

Note from the photo the happy co-existence of Queen Betty and new gap pal. Betty is never more thrilled (which she is demonstrating in this photo) than with four-legged company. The mini, two-legged kind haven’t been her cup of tea so far. Besides, I think she might be glad to have the spotlight off her for a while.

As for me, I am glad again to have an excuse to go walking.

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Since the recent addition to our life, every single flat surface has been overtaken with objects foreign, plastic and otherwise unnecessary to the progression of life as we’d known it.

Or so I thought. However, small packages come with many bizarre and seemingly useless accessories, not the least of which are naked, anatomically-incorrect bald babies with an unidentified brown sludge on its upper chest. That doesn’t stop them from being appealing to the youngest set, or from somehow ending up on the desk in the office, between the latest (unread and totally irrelevant to our lives now) issue of Golf Digest and a copy of the pre-school behavior guidelines.

Ah irony.

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By the end of the day, I don’t recognize myself. I feel infected, some viral version of myself that is spreading now slowly in the crawling last seconds of daylight. I don’t recognize myself and I find myself giving in, the way the sun must feel when night is pulling down on it like gravity.

The best hours of the day are lost — twilight has been sacrificed to grinding dinner hour which we hurry through now that he comes home so late.

The end of the day is like a party guest who leaves without saying goodbye– the one guest you really wanted to talk to and never got a moment while refilling the cheeseball platter.

Tonight I think I’ll charge my headphones and go somewhere quiet and sing the songs I love that whisper sweet nothings to twilight.

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We volunteered to make snacks for our friend’s free concert and I enlisted the very enthusiastic help of three eager assistants.

I love to bake– pretty much in inverse proportion to how much I do not like cooking. I think it has something to do with the outcome. I see food on the table as necessary but not at all interesting– unless it is served to me in a restaurant with a nice cool glass of water by a fancy waiter in a crisp apron. Baked goods, however, are chewy-crisp sweet childhood, the anticipation of dessert we held while we gnawed our way through a dust-dry meatloaf.

Today it was Snickerdoodles… a simple sugar cookie that, like pumpkin pie, is deceptively wonderful. You look at its beige exterior and you think “So?” but the spicy cinnamon coating, and the soft, chewy center make it the perfect treat. And if you overcook them a bit, they are just as good slightly brown and crunchy as they are pale and soft.

We misplaced the family recipe somewhere in the kitchen, so I used this one from All Recipes and I liked it alot, most especially because it called for both butter and shortening, a combination I generally approve of in baked goods.

Meanwhile, if you have any helpers about the house, this is a great recipe to try because they can help roll the doughballs in the cinammon-sugar mixture– and further enjoy the sweet antincipation of waiting waiting waiting for the lovely cookies to cool!

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… has nothing to do with $$$, and never has, although travel always requires work, which requires money in exchange for goods and services.

… spent 3 years in London, and very much likes the Idea of British.

… is sometimes melancholy, and loves thick lyrics that make me want to sing along.

… eats frozen pizzas alone in front of guilty-pleasure television– occasionally and with abandon.

…writes often and in bursts, with music in my ears.

… involves a bicycle, compost, blue jeans, Frances, used vehicles, and iced tea.

… means never having to say “I told you so” or pay for parking.

… has a quiet place to hide and be alone, but always has access to loving friends.

… is bigger than me, but not so large that I can’t imagine it.

… sounds like birdsong and smells like sheets from the clothesline.

… time-travels through all the love imaginable and would be happy to share.

… doesn’t mind being tired, if only it gets Spoon when its sleeps.

… thinks an East-facing bedroom is best.

… loves twilight and popcorn and cold hefeweizen.

… would love if you could come over.

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Or, The Case of My Dad and Neosporin
I’d like to say, for the record, that I always thought it was weird that Neosporin had the word “spore” in the middle of it. That might have been, partly, why I always liked it.

I also know that I liked it because my Dad was totally obsessed with it when I was a kid. Back in the old days, before “store brands” were reinvented, my Dad basically followed us around with a tube of Neosporin, a box of Band-Aids, pliers and a bottle of Seagram’s 7.

The pliers and whiskey were really only handy for loose teeth and such, but for just about every other malady, Dad took a page from My Big Fat Greek Wedding and used a cure-all approach– Neosporin for everything from broken skin to broken curfews.

The Details

Now, Momcentral.com sent me a few of the latest versions of Dad’s favorites: Neosporin + Pain Relief (regular and Maximum Strength, which has the additional Bacitracin in it, making it a “triple antibiotic”) and the Neo-To-Go Spray, which is a liquid spray pump for easy stowage in your satchell, fanny pack or man-bag.

Neo To Go! I thought was quite handy, and my sister, Mary agreed– even said she had bought one already.

I checked the Walgreens website, however, and noticed that the .26 fl oz. size costs $6.50 (you can get it on Amazon for $3.50). That’s an awful lot for convenience. Also Mary said some piece of the packaging broke off whilst living in her purse, although it was still useable. Dad would have had a field day with that piece of news– no namby-pamby Neosporin he ever used would have had time to break before he used up a tube on the six of us.

Neosporin + Pain Relief is basically the same old Neosporin you have always used, even in the same old tube packaging (which I personally think is superior in its simplicity to the plastic casing).

It has Praxomine in it, some form of external analgesic. I just happened to have a very painful hangnail (don’t laugh! It really hurt!) and I tried it.

It did take the pain away at first but it was back in a few minutes. I think Dad’s pain removal technique of just telling us to “Stop crying or I’ll get out the iodine!” might work better, but I am not sure that is legal anymore.

WWDD?

So all in all, I was glad to see these “new” Neosporins were still the old Neosporins really, just with minor updates.  My Dad always had great, simple solutions to life’s little problems … like WD-4o for mobilizing anything NON-human, and a Labeler for quick and easy organization techniques! I can’t imagine the marketers at Johnson & Johnson could ever outdo Dad for the best answer to scraped knees.

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