Category Archives: rural

It Takes Courage

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COURAGE

March means National Peanut Month, National Craft Month, National Frozen Food Month, and National Nutrition Month–which conflicts with both the frozen foods and St. Patrick’s Day but OK on the peanuts. For other special days, you’ve got Earth Day, National Clam on the Half Shell Day (shared with Bunsen Burner Day) and of course the Ides of March.

February was Oscar month, when highly paid actrons laud each other at a microphone for their “courage” and “bravery” onstage, and the incredible “choices” made in their “important work.” One of my friends won’t watch the Oscars, saying that “Courage is living with Stage IV cancer…important work is building houses in Haiti.”

I agree, but I also think courage is recycling your Bowel Prep Kit at the dump.

Mama You Ain’t Lived

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I EAT IT WITH A FORK AND KNIFE

…till you done ate a Fried Twinkie.  All molten goo on the inside/re-heated donut on the outside, with a dusting of powdered sugar on top…the South has risen. At least until the chapter-elevening Hostess quits [baking?] them at the [laboratory?]  Get your order in now at the Square Biscuit in Northfield, VT.

Those Three Precious Words

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YOU CAN MAKE “LERV” FROM RECYCLED MATERIALS…          IF YOU’RE PATHETIC.

I’m a miser. I used to think this a terrible word, until I met a friend who described her father as such, with love. Some of my most generous friends are misers. My miserliness stems in part from a poverty mentality, and in part from recycling sickness—a deranged preoccupation with minimal waste. Waste of effort, time, heating oil, coin, anything.

In childhood, I’d save odd bits and refashion them into, say, a spool-and-coaster coffee table for my dollhouse. A cricket cage from diner toothpicks and modeling clay. Seemed normal. I’ve always composted, used soap down to slivers, and stockpiled boxes and packaging materials. It didn’t become a sickness until later, when on vacation I’ll find myself crazily unable to throw out plastic or glass.  I’ll force myself to put a jar in the waste basket. Retrieve it. Wash it. Pack it, and haul it home.  Some consider this normal behavior. But precious few.

Paper I don’t sweat as much because it biodegrades. A colleague once said, “I don’t drink for a month to kid myself that I’m not an alcoholic.”  Throwing out paper makes me feel a rung above the real recychos. But no way I can chuck a magazine, even recycle it. Recycling is a dirty business. Magazines go to my local hospital for maximum usage. Judging by the high-end glossies in the waiting room, I’m not alone. It’s like a library in there.

Now I don’t transport them by horse and buggy, I burn fossil fuels and rubber driving the magazines (“Driving Ms. Magazine”).  I maniacally calculate the best use for other unwanted items and distribute them, at a ridiculous expenditure of thought, time, and gasoline, to the precisely appropriate recipient. The repository can be a person, a consignment shop, a non-profit thrift store, or the free section at the dump.  In that order. A fine pair of pants, for example, cannot go to consignment to be sold at a low price; they must go to a person I know who will value them.  Last place: that global bin thing where, at least if no one buys them, they are shredded into mattress stuffing or something. Zero waste isn’t my goal, but pretty bloody close.

Miserliness. On old sitcoms, there were housewives obsessed with bargains. That is I. If it’s on sale for a dollar off, I’m interested. If there’s also a dollar-off-now coupon on it, I’m in. Doesn’t matter what it is. But because I’m alone, I don’t consume much. So I have to redistribute all the bargains. Trot out the horse and buggy.

Food’s another area of lunacy.  From my waitressing years, watching buckets of meals go into dumpsters, I can’t bear wasting food. One of my favorite buys is the ham salad that delis make from unsliceably thin ham ends that would otherwise be tossed. Once informed that expiration dates on foods err far to the side of caution, I learned to dig markdowns. I’ll buy anything with a $2 OFF sticker, freeze it, and eventually get around to cooking it, knowing it was on its last legs. In the Vermont vernacular, so aren’t I.

My TV is from the dump. You cannot adjust the volume with the remote.  It eats videotapes, which I buy at yard sales. Why do I keep this? It’s madness. Speaking of which.

I was telling a friend about my hand-me-down lawnmower that often wouldn’t start. I’d pull the cord until my arm turned black, cuss, and borrow the neighbor’s. Friend offered me a push mower. “I have five,” he explained with a shrug, “I had a yard sale problem.”  Compulsive bargain-hunting, that. Two maple syrup dispensers (I never make pancakes), a luggage rack (I never have guests), and three round table cloths (I own no round tables) later, I too kicked the habit.

And so the three magical words I honor this Valentine’s Day, a disappointing “holiday” detested by many, are of course not i love you. They are:  reduced to clear. There’s no way I’m ignoring an item marked with those three beauties, unless it’s something so bizarre I don’t know anyone who’d use it.  Which doesn’t leave a whole hell of a lot.  Gummy Geritol®? Gefilte fish off season? Very specific ointments? If I don’t need it, at 75% off I’m perty sure I know someone who does. Catch you in the candy aisle on February 16. Good recycling, good stockpiling, good redistribution, good “holiday”… and good day.

Sooper Cake for a Sooper Bowl

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IT’S SOOPER

“What is it?” I asked a no-nonsense farm woman at the grocery store.  She glanced briefly. “A helmet.”

Two friends thought it was Louisiana. Which is nowhere near Indiana, New York, or New England. Maybe the mold was left over from Sooper Bowl XLIV–or the prior year’s Mardi Gras.

Or perhaps this baked good was outsourced to Indonesia where they don’t play football. I thought the (edible?) XLVI circle thing should be orient-ated 45 degrees counter-clockwise, but my sources tell me it’s good.  So if you lose your helmet, technically, you could wear this.

Entirely Possible Predictions for 2012

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BALLS

It’s one time of year everyone keenly anticipates—no, not Ice Dancers Interpret the Music of STYX, the Sooper Bowl, ski season, or even Oscar® season—rather, the various news outlets’ Predictions for the New Year. The below makes me think we should go deeper into the future next time…get your wheels turning for 2013 submissions.

Predictions about 2011 from a 1911 Ladies Home Journal (at http://imgur.com/bwUWM) included:  horses, rats, and mice will become extinct; coal will not be used for cooking; Nicaragua will ask to be part of the Union, Americans will be taller by 4”, autos will be cheaper than horses…plus prophetic visions of the escalator, “air ships”, medical imaging, and global wireless telephone “and telegraph” circuits, pneumatic tubes delivering goods directly the homes of the wealthy (= the Internet + UPS?), and “peas as large as beets.” We’re behind on that one.

For 2012…here you go. All submitted by friends.

From California

None this year. Bunch of laggards. You’re out of work; I know you have time.

From Florida

Lady Gaga garners the VP nomination for the Republican Party.

From Kansas

Radio stations start playing silence because it is better than current popular music.

From Massachusetts

Rick Perry comes out. (This submitted before he, er, pulled out.)

From Missouri

After a warm winter resulting in lower heating bills, American citizens begin burning more coal (by cooking???) to speed up global warming.

Greece breaks off from the Euro in order to devalue the drachma and restart its economy via tourism. Doesn’t work – no one wants to vacation in a country of starving people. Or do they?

From New Hampshire

Angelina and Brad become surrogates for Jennifer Aniston’s baby. Angelina will carry the egg(s) to term and deliver the baby(ies) on a remote Pacific island, then hand [them] over to Jennifer at LAX.

Tom Brady will get a tattoo of three green gummy bears.

“I will break up Colin Firth’s marriage.”

From New York

Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination and do a victory lap with a dog attached to the top of his car “in an airtight kennel.”

Apple will introduce the iPhone 666® which calls whomever you’re thinking about. Which can be problematic.

Medical science will determine that post-menopausal women are predisposed to weight gain so that when old ladies fall down we have something to land on so we don’t break our keisters; insurance rates drop for plus-size women over 50.

Occupy Wall Street morphs into Occupy Arby’s nationwide.

A new Weight Watchers app delivers repeated high-voltage zaps if you approach stressors, including people, that make you overeat.

Government officials will be picked as in jury draws—via computer from a local population.  History proves that no matter whom we elect, the economy and public education stink, unemployment is high, no one can afford a mortgage, our great-grandchildren will be paying down the national debt, and gasoline prices will rise. Might as well “elect” a neighbor whose house you can TP instead of someone you can’t even talk to.

From North Carolina

In a collective pot shot at the Tea Party, at the 2012 Republican Convention the Republican Party is re-named the Beer & Cheese Party for its roots in Racine, Wisconsin.

From Pennsylvania

The Republican Party is shaken when Mitt and Newt profess their love for each other, then head to the Andes to raise alpacas.

From Texas

As more young women start dressing like Lady Gaga, prom dresses will be made of meat.

From Corporate America

Many will utilize value-added deliverables, organically, as they leverage synergistic solutions.

From Vermont

Due to extreme variations in temperatures, Vermonters will open their pools this winter, converting them back and forth from swimming pools to skating rinks as temps dictate.

Rap music will disappear while rock band reunion tours become increasingly ridiculous with older bands in tighter leather leggings and plunginger necklines with bigger, more-dyed hair and arthritically large—though delicately manicured—hands. And that’s just the men.

The ozone layer will recover so that Italy no longer goes tropical five months of the year.

And my personal favorites:

  1.  I predict Mitt Romney will get the Republican nomination.  I predict Ron Paul will run as an Independent. I predict Barack Obama will serve another term. His term will end when the world ends on December 21 of this year.
  2. Our computer passwords will never expire. That is, until the world ends on December 21 of this year.
  3. Eaton’s Sugar House will begin serving fondue.

Good day, and good year.

Sent from my Dixie Cup on a string

It’s a Wonderful Tree

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The Mitten Tree

Many hands made light work…of the Mitten Tree at my bank. Mentioned prior in Mitzvah Patrol.

God love the knitters. And the Solid Gold Dancers that make us woodchucks miss big city life with good reason in any season.

God Bless the Crazy Nutters, Every One

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Vermont Nutters in 'CreteTricked-out trucks are a Burlington area tradition.

This baby from S.D. Ireland Concrete, with shamrocks and 25,000 lights, cruised VT to raise eyebrows, spirits, and dollars for cancer research during this, the Holiday Season.