NFTNIF - Episode 13 - Halloween Edition

We attended a Halloween bash at The Knotty Pine, in Victor Idaho – our first trip out of Idaho Falls since our arrival. Dustin contrived an ambitious costume – “Papi Smurf “– blue skin and proud Smurf hat, finishing with a comfortable and slightly comic pair of pants from Thailand. I am using the occasion as an excuse to wear my magnificent velvet cloak – midnight black and post-sunset purple – totally reversible, with handsome frogs to catch it at the throat and a full hood even a Jedi would envy. My ensemble also comprises leather pants, leather vest and a truly splendid shirt from India. The cloak is courtesy of the laudable skills of Mrs. Karen Youel, and the shirt was a gift from Christopher Singh. The shirt actually excited the most profound admiration of the others at the party, and since I was garbed as a vampire everyone insisted that the shirt came from Transylvania although I insisted that it was from India no one paid any attention to that.

Michelle and Casey, our hostesses with the mostestess went as an 80's slut and pirate respectively. Their many other friends sported a dazzling variety of costumes – but my favorite was the fellow who dressed as a brown trout – a horizontal costume measuring a good six feet from snout to talk fin that was a hazard to mobility all night long. Honorable mention went to the fisherman's hat festooned with hanging bats – a “bat mobile”.

The drive from IF to Victor was a study in silver and white -snow snow snow, fog and a landscape wide rime of silvery frost that gilded everything in sight. It was true culture shock for me – nothing like the wimpy dusting os snow we had earlier – this was snow in earnest, snow with a purpose, radical, aggressive snow that covered the road and the hills and the trees and everything in sight. I finally became acclimatized to snow on this journey – and not a moment too soon I believe.

We made a couple stops for refreshments, dined on enchiladas prepared by Michele, and then swept off along the frozen street the two blocks to the Knotty Pine, a charmingly bucolic lodge peopled by creatures out of fable and nightmare. Lyrics Born was supposed to come on at 10, but it was past midnight when they burst onto the stage and with a roar that didn't end pumped us all full of magical music and rap lyrics. They soon had everyone gyrating or at least shouting to be heard. Many people were amazed that I had left the “big city” of Idaho Falls to come to tiny Victor for Halloween – they all kept telling me how much more there was to do here in Idaho Falls!

Back at Michele's house, a disc jockey erected his set-up, and the party continued as folks returned in ones and twos to take up where Lyrics Born had left off. Somehow I found the strength to continue, and it was I who finally turned off the lights once everyone else had left or fallen asleep sometime after 5 a.m. In any case – a wonderful time was had by all and thanks to Michele and Casey for kindly hosting us and giving us a ride both ways.

Dustin and I are sleeping on a queen size (no sniggering) inflatable bed, courtesy of John C. And Adrienne in San Diego. The bed grumpily requires us to inflate it every day or endure a science experiment in the curvature of space time. I think inflatable beds should be a part of physics class – no one could miss the lesson of the attractive power of mass if they had to sleep on a partially deflated bed – primal forces impel any bodies toward one another as gravity forces objects to attract one another in the remainder of the universe outside our bedroom

Can ANYONE tell me why nurses schedules are so all over the place? Most employers (Proflowers temp workers to one side) create a schedule which allows their workers to know when they will work week after week, and build the rest of their schedules around a fixed worktime. Not so in the nursing profession – the scheduled times seem almost as random as if they were selected by a group of drunks throwing darts at a dartboard with 7 days and 24 hours on it. Does anyone know why this is so? I will be deeply grateful for an explanation if any of you have one.

My beard came within a whisker (haha) of being shaved off – the comforting warmth I expected it to impart is a laughable fraction of what I had hoped – it is shot through with silver that deeply wounds my reputation for not aging, and it conspires with my nose hairs to knit together and poke and tickle me everywhere it can reach. True, it affords me some protective coloration here in mountain country, but it partakes unnecessarily of my meals, and though I can ignore for for minutes at a time, it gathers moisture from my breathing in the cold, and is generally a pain in the face. However, D loves it and so I will let it grow until I resemble an old testament prophet, which, combined with my penetrating gaze, should fend off unwanted attention.

Ever since I was a kid, occupying the only bedroom on the first floor of our house, with the rest of my family upstairs behind a locked door at the top of the steps, I have learned to make my way through my living space in the dark. Our house here is no exception – at night I move like a shadow through the dark, my eyes straining vision from blackness. Once I have been in a place long enough I move by counting steps, which usually serves me well. I have only had one awful episode – when I lived in the house on Nixon Rd outside of Ann Arbor. A late night phone call failed to wake Mike Benz, and as I confidently moved through the dark house to his bedroom door I did not see the chair Mike had put in the middle of the room. I walked into it with full force and the pain in my shin was only equaled by that in my foot as, galvanized by sudden fury, I kicked the offending chair across the room – shouting (perhaps unnecessarily at that point) for Mike to wake up and take his phone call. Since that day, my childlike faith that I know where everything is has never returned, but I have not given up the habit of moving in the dark – I am simply more cautious about it. Does anyone else do this or does everyone else turn on lights? Let me know if you have a chance, gentle readers.

What would an episode of NFTNIF be these days without a recipe? So here is the recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese Gilday – developed especially for Family Dinners in a group of 5-6 people with 4 separate and disparate diets:

1 lb of your favorite macaroni (I prefer rotini for this recipe)
1 lb of cheddar
1 lb of Monterrey Jack
1 cup of sour cream
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
6-8 oz of plain yogurt
1 lb of mushrooms – minced
1 medium head of broccoli – peeled minced fine
1 medium to large onion, minced
6-8 garlic buds, minced
soy sauce, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese.

Saute minced onion until just carmelized, reserve oil and set onions aside to cool. Fry the broccoli in the onion oil until tender, add to onion to cool. Refresh the oil, add garlic, then fry the mushrooms, adding pepper, soy sauce, garlic and chili powder. Drain and add mushrooms to the other veggies.

Cook the macaroni, removing from the water with 2-3 minutes remaining until it would be fully cooked. Mix macaroni with the veggies, add the sour cream, cream of mushroom soup, yogurt and mix thoroughly. Grate the cheese and add the Monty jack and half the cheddar, stir thoroughly. Put the mixture in a baking pan of your choice (the shallower it is the more crunchy cheese you get along the bottom and sides), sprinkle the remaining cheddar on top and finish with the Parmesan. Cook at 400 for 30-40 minutes, remove, allow to cool and serve. NOTE: - you may get people becoming possessive over the crunchy sides and bottom – so be sure to serve equitably or risk violence. Enjoy!

Every Saturday, all over Idaho Falls and Ammon, my fellow citizens troop out and mow, rake and blow leaves until there is nothing left except pristine green lawns. Our house is the exception, although our neighbors periodically apply gentle and irresistible pressure on us, offering the loan of tools or actually performing the work themselves. I got into a discussion of this on FaceBook with some dear friends, and discovered the following:

On the origin of lawns – (From the Wikipedia) - “A lawn is an area of land planted with grasses or (rarely) other durable plants, which are maintained at a short height and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes. Common characteristics of a lawn are that it is composed only of grass species, it is subject to weed and pest control, it is subject to practices aimed at maintaining its green color, and it is regularly mowed to ensure an acceptable length,[1] although these characteristics are not binding as a definition. In recreational contexts, the specialised names turf, pitch, field or green may be used, depending on the sport and the continent.

The term lawn, referring to a managed grass space, dates to no earlier than the 16th century. Tied to suburban expansion and the creation of the household aesthetic, the lawn is an important aspect of the interaction between the natural environment and the constructed urban and suburban space.”

If you say so – I see lawns as a complete waste of time, energy, labor, nutrients, machinery and space that could be growing food. But at least now I know that the lawn is an archaism, demonstrating once more the power of social inertia, tradition, and unquestioning faith in the past to shape our lives today.

As for leaf blowers – (the following is abstracted from the FaceBook account of my beloved friend H.M.) - “Bill Nye the Science Guy just said leaf blowers pollute the environment more in just 30 minutes than your car manages in two months. Now I hate them more than I did before. He also said they go at 150 mph per hour (hurricane category 5 strength) and spray pollen, pet waste, pesticides, fungus, and soil all over the neighborhood. Now I hate them more than I did before. He suggested letting the leaves nourish the yard as compost (good suggestion Heather E Stockwell) or uh, using a rake. “

My question is – who thought it was a good idea to blow things off of your own property to somewhere else instead of raking like we used to in the good old days? Is this some vast conspiracy on the part of lazy groundskeepers, outdoor appliance manufacturers and the energy companies?

I plan to use Bill Nye as my authority when I refuse to let any more of our leaves be removed – they are good compost for the lawn (which I wish would die so I could plant something useful and edible). After viewing a video about the disappearance of the bees, we have determined to plant flowers and welcome bees to our yard as a haven without dogs where they may rest and feed in comfort.

A lot of people have been asking me how we are adjusting to Idaho Falls (actually Ammon). I have given the matter a lot of thought and here is my answer.

After a life of almost continuous company, from childhood until the day we left to drive up here, now that the novelty has worn off, I am a tiny bit lonely. My efforts to make friends before we got here have not panned out as rewardingly as it seemed at first, my telephone died an un-mourned death in the toilet and has not yet been replaced, distance and increasingly unfriendly weather combined with no car have left me more isolated than at any other time in my life. My bicycle has stubbornly refused to be repaired – I have had the rear tire fixed 3 times now and it goes flat with more enthusiasm than it ever stayed inflated. I have given up on it until Spring.

Our neighbors combine austere friendliness with studied neglect – never have lived in a less sociable environment. Of course since we are gay and unshriven sinners I can hardly blame them – we moved here they did not move next to us. The sense of isolation is compounded by the fact that we literally live on the edge of nothingness – a couple blocks from us begins the wind-swept plain leading to the snow crested hills which generate most of our weather. When we walk down he streets everyone waves, as they zoom by in their trucks and SUVs, but the wave may as well be a dismissal as a greeting for all the substance it carries. I spend more time on FaceBook.

Add to this the fact that I do not have a job (I seem to be unemployable here – my resume is too liberal – last job at an organic Cooperative??!!) my resources for adding friends are limited to websites until we have some transportation. Other than that, I still love our house, and solitude is conducive to writing – hence these NFTNIF. We are expecting a visitor over Thanksgiving and looking forward to that. Well, that's it for this 13th episode, tune in for the next installment!