toomanyzucchini

To Both Of You:

Through application of money and patience, I am overcoming a debilitating computer problem. The Zuke will return shortly with a kaleidoscopic burst of photos and data. You'll wonder how you ever got along without me.

Scratch, Stretch, Yawn...

Glad to be out of this dirty hole. Time to forage!

Sick and Soiled

A weekend that began with such promise has dribbled, literally, into a Monday spent alternately crouched over the scuttle hole and cleaning child vomit off clothing, rugs and bedding.

The Sickness is upon us again - the second bout in as many months and third in four months. As usual, it was the little one who tipped us off to its arrival. The race against time began at 12:38 p.m. on Saturday, when we finally found a place to park in the Old Port. We were meeting Ron, Pam and Syd for lunch. But what was this? The puke was just pouring out of Emma when I leaned in to unstrap her from the car. I yelped in horror and held her at arm's length as she continued to make like the Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop.

"Sneak attack!" I hollered, thunderstruck at the treachery of the Sickness. During the lengthy streetside cleaning and re-dressing, I consoled myself with the thought that it was the cheap donut snack in the car that did it to her. She seemed much happier after unloading and I wanted to believe it, but deep down, in that place I've spent most of the day purging, I knew the race was on. Could we squeeze in one day of fun, survive the overnight and get back home before the Sickness struck us all?

We got off to a good start. Lunch was excellent, the Old Port charming as usual. The ocean settled its usual funk over the place and I was content to just breathe deep and let the kids run around a little park. Emma seemed fine. Bea browsed her way through the cool prints at her favorite Emerson Booksellers but somehow emerged empty-handed. Maybe it was just the donuts, I thought, subtracting $200 from my mental tally of the weekend.

The loud splat of child vomit on Ron's hardwood floors brought me back to reality. A good eight hours after the first volley, Emma had let loose again, this time while wandering by herself in the darkened livingroom. It was 8 p.m., the grown-ups were about to eat dinner. Mmmmmmmm. There were few options at the time. We weren't driving two hours back that night. The gloves were coming off. The Sickness was becoming more aggressive.

By the time we got home Sunday, Gage had begun to green around the gills. He woke us at 1:30 this morning with bellows of distress. I jumped out of bed and snapped on his light. Big mistake. The carnage made the Passion of the Christ look like a tickle fight. Returning to my bedroom to recruit help, I found Bea shouting Europe at the sink. The Fear spread through me. When would I be cast into the crucible?

Desperate handwashing has left me with two cracked husks hanging from my arms. Still, it may have fended off the direct blow. In a rare family reversal, I am the only one left standing, though most of the day was spent sitting.

It is early evening and the Sickness has waned, leaving us to ponder questions of tolerance and lifestyle. With what frequency am I willing to tolerate these outbreaks? Or, more rightly said, how long am I willing to have a child in day care? And before you say it, there's your answer. We've had this discussion before. With both of us working full-time, there is no other way. Shit.

Muse Upon Learning Martha Stewart May Be Violated in Prison

Updated: 08:44 p.m. EST (0144 GMT) March 5, 2004
Martha Stewart found guilty on all counts

A jury found Martha Stewart guilty Friday of obstructing justice and lying to investigators. Her ex-broker Peter Bacanovic was found guilty on four of the five charges he faced. Both Stewart and Bacanovic left the courthouse without speaking to reporters. Eyewitnesses said Stewart's daughter Alexis was crying. Sentencing is set for June 17.

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Working as a reporter and editor some years ago at a local daily, I came to regard the "news" as a river. Whether you dabbled on the banks or jumped in up to your neck, the river tumbled on, heedless of anyone there to describe it. The news cycle was a cold swim every day - across and back, then dry off and get on with what life there was on dry land. On vacation it was hard to sleep because I couldn't hear the river.

Most days the river wends predictably, but now and then it crests in a happy convergence of headlines. See above.

Everybody Naked

February is the perfect month for serious merrymaking. These are the days of endless winter, when green grass and scented air are furthest from memory. In the orbit of the seasons we are at apogee. It's fitting that Carnival and Mardi Gras are both held in this wretched month of February. It's logic borrowed by countless pioneers of the party-as-art form - the best time for the toga party is when Dean Wermer is about to throw you out of school.

But what of us, the northern dullards most sorely tested by winter? There will be no shaking of the maracas while the throbbing samba urges: "Everybody naked, pure beauty, everybody naked, more than crazy." There may be, however, a three-day weekend to coincide with the kids' school vacation. Perhaps a hotel with a heated pool and free HBO.

Viva la Nord!

High Winter

It hasn't been above freezing in 30 days so 12 degrees and sunny seemed about right for a frozen lake excursion. Out on the bay they were holding time trials for testosterone fueled snowmobilers on a 660-foot track. These fuckers were crazy - 150 mph crossing the finish line. Further down, a serene pod of ice sailboats cruised in synch with the wind while the occasional pick-up poked along to who-knows-where on the frozen tundra. It was busy in town today. It was busy on the lake. It seems I wasn't the only person to wake up today vowing I wouldn't be shut in by the cold again.

The kids at the store

You should see this little store up the road from me. The name on the sign says The Center Store. The script wraps lovingly around a floppy piece of pizza studded with pepperoni slices. People in the Center (and beyond) call it Larry's, because Larry owns the place. Larry came from the city nearby. He was a butcher of some reknown at another little store called Wally's. Anyway, Larry wanted to run his own meat situation so he bought the little place up the road from me. In the fall you can see deer carcasses hanging from hooks in the cooler while you're selecting your rack of beer. There's a sleigh embedded in the mulch of a half-dead rock garden outside the place. It was a gift to Larry from a neighbor in the Center area. In jolly red and green, the sleigh proclaims "The Center Store," then misspells the name of the town on both sides.

Time was when Larry did nothing but work. The enterprise would have floundered without his constant attention. He had a passle of children, no one's certain how many, but they clearly wanted for more attention in those lean years when Larry held back bankruptcy like the January wind at the door. I say this now, because the children have taken over.

I couldn't help but stare as I handed the lad my Center Store Milk Club card the other day. It was incongruous. Sullen? Check. Overweight? Check. Self-mutilation? Check out the spools of thread in that kid's earlobes! Wow, these kids are going full-blown Ubange - multiple piercings, lip plates, etc. I keep reading the local paper to see if there's some mention of it. In the meantime, we're all cool with the kids because the kids are so beyond cool. And by that I mean, what the fuck? They're beyond contempt or praise.

Sometimes I go in there late and they're all gathered. The coven. They laugh a lot, but not like kids. They don't seem high, just happy to have this little place up the road from me to hang out, munch on Dove bars and give wings to their boredom.

The last chunk of blubber

I saw Armand this morning at the dump. His truck was idling when I pulled in next to him. He was sitting on the tailgate in a wool shirt and ball cap with flaps. It was six below zero at 10:54 a.m.

"Got a new helpah!" he crowed, high-pitched and breathless. Emma was carrying an empty pizza box to the garbage chute. It was the first time I'd let her help me at the dump and she was psyched.

I looked around. It was me and Armand at the dump. Until I pulled up, he was apparently hanging out, just chilling in the useless sun at the dump.

"Yeah," I said, dropping my barrel. "I figure I gotta keep making them if I want help at the dump. The older one has abandoned me already."

"They'll do that!" he hollered, his face splitting behind tinted safety glasses.

"How's your wood holding out?"

"Well, I got some," he said, turning dour. "Jesus but this cold sucks it right up the chimney, like it don't even burn first."

Armand lives down the hill from me. He told me at our yard sale a while back that he was 73 and his wife had died three years ago.
"I was 70," he said, attaching a significance to it that I understood to be tragedy.

He loved our yard sale. The prospect of a semi-public event at the end of our driveway was irresistable to him. He cruised past three or four times in his Caprice Classic before rolling down his passenger side window and bellowing, "I'm your neigbah!"

Two hours later, Armand threw it into Drive and I was square with my neighbor to the west.

"It has been awful cold," I said this morning. "We've gotten a season's worth already."

"What's that?"

"It's been cold!"

"Je-sus." He looked disgusted.

The wind picked up.

"If you ever need anything, Armand, we're right up the hill."

I'm not sure what I meant but it was a good way to move on to Cumberland Farm for chocolate milk.

Grievances

Death by pressing must be awful. You're a heretic (we all knew it) and you're going to be ritually executed by lying still while rocks that can barely be hefted are layered gradually upon a sheet of plywood balanced on your torso.

My fate is different, but only in minor modulations.

Awake worrying. Always awake.

- Gage takes a new bus to school. I used to drive him a quarter mile down the road to catch the 19 White bus at 7:50 a.m. I was late for work every day, but I struck a deal to work late on the other end. I didn't mind. It was fun hanging out with the boy and betting on how many cars would come round the bend before the bus did. Now he takes the yellow 25 Green bus, which stops at the bottom of our driveway at 7:35, the same time I leave for work. Naturally, I've dreamt twice already of running him over while fiddling with my travel mug

- the balance between paper and plastic bags has been thrown out of whack in this house

- I keep forgetting to pay Jim for plowing last month

- it's been a week and a half since Emma went to bed on the first try

- forgot the potatoes

- a squat, olive green biped didn't scuttle through the dust to mug for the camera that NASA strapped to a golf cart and fired at Mars

- what if it did?

- people ask me at work, "are you going to take classes?" everyone takes classes, the company pays for it. i don't want to take classes. except for the creative writing class - that's my ticket out of the ghetto.

- it's so cold my boogies are freezing

- this house is so small it smells better when I take a shower

- it sure costs a lot of money to build an addition

In the final analysis, approximately 93.7 percent of the world's population would kill me and my gentile family to trade nighttime worries. Too bad for them, eh?

It's not a resolution, it's a revolution

Pursuant to my New Year's resolution, I was slogging away on the treadmill today at the local university when I noticed an amazingly fat custodian pacing back and forth outside the fitness room. He was pushing a floor buffer, which he propelled with an adroit belly-bucking motion that made him look like an overstuffed porpoise coming up for air. Despite the numerous glistening co-eds working out, the guy never once looked inside the fitness room. He probably couldn't confront the notion that another year had come and gone without a glimpse of his dick.