December 2012 – Kathy Waller

2012: The Year Unreviewed

Posted on December 31, 2012 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Every week, I meet a friend for coffee at a shop near my house. Every week, she says, “What have you been doing?”

Every week, I pause and say, “I can’t remember.”

Then I ask her the same question and she can’t remember what she did either.

We’ve agreed not to worry about our mutual amnesia. It doesn’t prevent us from conversing for the next two or three hours. And, all things considered, it isn’t surprising that nothing outstanding springs to mind. We have rich internal lives, but otherwise, our days do tend to swamp together once they’re past.

Oops. I just stopped and re-read the previous paragraph and realized it could herald the start of a downhill slide straight into a maudlin mire. Sort of like an inverse fiscal cliff.

But no. Here’s what I’m getting at: I intended to look back on 2012, capture its high points, before moving on. But suddenly my mind is a blank.

I didn’t keep a journal. The closest thing I have to a record of the year is this blog, and the problem there is–well, you know how I exaggerate. And you might have noticed I was absent for long stretches; that leaves some big holes in the narrative. I could elaborate, but I’ll say simply that I was not lying on the beach at Cannes, no was I in a mountain cabin finishing the Great American Novel. More’s the pity.

I’ll also say a sincere Thank you to those who kept on visiting here when I was neither reading nor writing, and also when I was writing but not answering mail. As Polly Pepper would say, you are all bricks.

(Fifty years after meeting Polly Pepper [my mother read Phronsie Pepper to me when I had the chickenpox and the measles in rapid succession], I (tonight) looked up you’re a brick and discovered it started, possibly, with King Lycurgus of Sparta describing his soldiers. It’s amazing what one can find to distract one from one’s purpose.)

This post is beginning to sound like one of those afternoons at the coffee shop, so I will end it. The waiters tolerate meandering because the shop is nearly empty, and because upon leaving we tip well. I don’t expect readers, who receive no gratuity at all, to mosey along for what’s likely to be a dead end.

So. I wish you a happy, healthy 2013.

Talk to you next year.

***

P.S. Regarding the photo above. That is exactly what I look like when I’m trying to remember what I did last week. Right down to the big black eyes, long black lashes, and dimpled elbow.

Going Over the Fiscal Cliff: Denim or Silk?

Posted on December 31, 2012April 19, 2016 by M.K. Waller in Current Events, Humor, Politics, Uncategorized

Since early November, when the media shifted focus from the presidential election to the next crisis, David’s favorite television show has been the evening news. To him, it’s comedy. Every time Diane Sawyer says “fiscal cliff,” he roars with laughter.

I haven’t laughed. The prospect of going over a cliff is scary. At first, the mere mention of John Boehner’s name gave me the fantods. But after being bombarded–fiscal cliff, fiscal cliff, fiscal cliff— over and over, on local news, network news, PBS News Hour, day after day for nearly two months, I became jaded. While David sat in the living room and guffawed, I muttered, Que sera, sera, and kept on chopping onions.

But two days ago, while rummaging through purpleborough’s blog, I stumbled upon this sentence: Nevertheless, I must decide what I am going to wear going over the fiscal cliff.

And I realized my error. The fiscal cliff isn’t something to dismiss with a chuckle. There’s a lot to be done before midnight. I haven’t decided what I’ll wear either.

At the top of the list is whether I can go with just the clothes on my back, or whether I’ll need a suitcase. What about toiletries? Cosmetics? I will take a lipstick–I always take a lipstick, because I think other people feel better when I wear it–but what about eye shadow? Will I be able to find my manicurist after we’ve gone over? Because he’s all booked up today.

I’ll have to take shampoo, conditioner, brush, dryer, curling iron. Millions of people will be going over that cliff. I’ll take several bars of deodorant soap. I hope everybody does.

Packing would be easier if I knew what’s at the bottom of the fiscal cliff. If a river’s down there, I would wear my bathing suit, but for anything else, denim is more serviceable. My jeans have gotten a little scruffy, so if there’s mud, they’ll do fine. It would be a shame for my good black slacks to get dirty. I want to wear them to dinner later with my with my new red cowl-necked sweater. I hope there’s mud. For that matter, I hope there’s dinner.

What will Diane Sawyer wear going over the fiscal cliff?

The probability of a hard landing means I’ll have to take the travel first-aid kit I picked up at Target last year. Gauze and antibacterial ointment can come in awfully handy. Plus mosquito repellent. Anti-itch cream. Aspirin, ibuprofen. Cough drops. A couple of Ace bandages for wrapping sprained ankles. Ichthyol for mesquite thorns. Moleskin for blisters (I assume we will not be met by a string of limos). Sunscreen, hat.

Books. I don’t go anywhere without books.

Laptop, notebook, pens, index cards. I assume there will be WiFi somewhere in the vicinity of the landing site. Mouse. Camera and USB cable. Flash drive. Printer and paper? I might be able to print at a library. Are there libraries over the fiscal cliff?

Cats. I can’t go without the cats. I won’t go without the cats. Neither will David. But he’ll have to deal with them. They’re so heavy that every time I pick up one of the carriers, I throw my back out.

Insurance cards, passport, driver’s license, birth certificate. Purpleborough thinks we won’t need any form of ID, but I’m going to take what I have. If we get down there and they change their minds, we’ll probably need ID to get back up.

It’s obvious I’m going at this haphazardly. There’s so much to do and so little time in which to do it. If you see anything I’ve missed, please leave a comment. If you’ll do the same thing for Purpleborough, I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.

I have to go now and do a load of laundry. I was going to make peanut butter sandwiches to carry along, but I’ve decided against it. The one thing I’m sure of is this: even at the bottom of the fiscal cliff, we’re bound to find a McDonald’s.

Before I go, let me be clear: I’m not complaining about going over the fiscal cliff–I want to do my part, just like everyone else–but if we go over and then they tell us to turn around and come back, I expect transportation to be provided. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Mules will do. I just don’t think I should have to scale the fiscal cliff under my own steam. There’s too much stuff to carry.

Starbucks to use cups for ‘fiscal cliff’ message to US lawmakers – Moneycontrol.com (moneycontrol.com)
7 Cliffs We Like Better Than the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ (dailyfinance.com)
Video: Obama on Meet the Press: Full interview (msnbc.msn.com)
Graham changes mind: ‘I think we’re going over the cliff’ (washingtonpost.com)
JIM O’NEILL: The Markets Will Be Okay Without An Immediate Fiscal Cliff Deal (businessinsider.com)

Christmas, 2012: Progression

Posted on December 29, 2012December 29, 2012 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Christmas Eve

Christmas Day

Greek yogurt with scruffy sections of clementine

The rest of the story: David and I watched the clock for twenty minutes and then headed for the nearest movie theater to see Hitchcock. Of the seven viewers, six lasted to the end of the movie. One bailed out early. He looked too young to know who Alfred Hitchcock was. If he’d stayed, he’d have seen a pretty good show.

Tuesday marked my first visit a movie theater on Christmas Day. For my first four or five decades, my mother’s family clumped together every Christmas, singing carols, tearing into packages, eating too much, laughing, watching my grandmother try out a toy in the living room accompanied by protests that we kids had to play with them out by the garage.

But time passes and things change, and now David and I are the family. Our holiday was quiet. Since we’ve been married, I’ve cooked Christmas turkey, duck, Cornish hens, and goose, the last in homage to the Cratchit family. The experience of parboiling a goose prompted me to give up the pretense of enjoying domesticity. After the movie, we went to a Chinese restaurant, where the scales fell from my eyes. Everybody in Austin was at the Asian Lion, most of them queued up in front of David and me. But the chicken and green beans made the wait worthwhile. I came away feeling no guilt for breaking with tradition.

That wasn’t the first time I stepped out of my comfort zone around the holiday. Our first Christmas together, David and I spent Christmas Eve night in Cuidad Acuna, across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas. It was cold. David managed to turn off the hotel room heater the wrong way, and it refused to come back on when needed.

He had originally wanted to spend Christmas in San Miguel de Allende, but I knew we would be beset by banditos or federales and wouldn’t get home for New Year’s, so he settled for Acuna. I should have kept my mouth shut. I didn’t realize at the time that David knows what he’s doing, and he has no intention of walking into danger. But the moment has passed, and now I’ll probably never get to see the church that I’m told looks like a birthday cake.

Come to think of it, there was an atmosphere of anxiety during the trip. That was the Christmas Osama bin Laden had threatened to attack the U. S. At that time, I was oblivious to the possibilities (as were most of us before 2001), and focused on eating tacos Tapatios, tacos pastor, and tacos barbacoa, and on using as much of my thirty-year-old Spanish as I remembered, which consisted mostly of saying to David things like, “Como se llama soap?”

Anxiety arose on the way out of the country. A lot of traffic goes across the International Bridge every day, and pre-9/11 it seemed a mere formality. But, showing my drivers license to the guard, I remembered that this weekend, authorities were on alert. The guard asked where we were from. David, with his lawyerly background, answered the question he was asked:”Austin.” The guard looked a me, and my mind shattered: I was from Austin, well, I’d driven from Austin, but I lived in Fentress, but I was born in Luling…” I forgot to mention three years in the dormitory in San Marcos.

The guard gave me a l-o-n-g, speculative stare. I looked him straight in the eye. Finally, he nodded us through. I resumed breathing. I’m sure he’d concluded that if I had a secret, it would have tumbled out by then.

Well. I started out to say we had a good Christmas, and I wind up nearly eight hundred words later trying to get back across the Mexican border. But it’s a pleasant memory, right down to my bare feet on that cold, cold tile, so I’m glad I allowed myself to meander.