Tuesday
Woke up very nervous at 430. Sat in the dark for a half hour trying to figure out the source of my unease: Finances? Guilty conscience? Health problems? Donald Trump? Artistic constipation?
Finally decided it was due to my growing addiction to bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. Without that meal first thing in the morning, I don’t want to face the rest of the day in child-like wonder -- I just want it to go away and leave me alone. I decided yesterday that there would be no more b & cc until my Social Security comes in next week. But I can’t bear the thought of eggs and raisin toast this morning.
So I’m headed over to FM to purchase the b and cc on my one and only credit card. I’ll also pick up some cukes and a Walla Walla onion to slice and marinate in Italian dressing. And I must have a hamburger with sweet potatoes for lunch today. The Final Solution to get rid of my lingering nervousness this morning is to make a clean sweep of the fridge and toss out every bit of leftover food.
Whoops . . . there goes the budget . . .
To justify this folly (in my own mind) I have to think up a photo essay about my trip to the store. Should I photograph apples lined up in a row under the cold fluorescent lights? Tired workers restocking shelves? Or strange meats, like pigs ears and turkey tails? First thing I better do before heading out the door, though, is check my accounts at American First Credit Union.
Okay. There’s just enough to feed this monkey on my back.
Putting on my jacket I discover pine cones in the left hand pocket. When did I put them there, and why? Oh well, toss ‘em out onto the patio.
*****************************
Hurray! Adam has just sent me a rewrite. That means money in the bank tomorrow. Bless his little heart. I have to rewrite a blog about ways to create a Millennial workforce.
I had a productive trip to FM; got plenty of shots for a photo essay. On my way home I passed eight pennies scattered on the sidewalk in front of the store. I didn’t even think about bending over to pick them up. I wouldn’t bend over nowadays for anything less than a dollar bill.
Which reminds me of Stanley and Lester Janus -- midget brothers from Hungary, during my first year with Ringling. They were clowns, although they put on very little grease paint; just enough to redden their nose and cheeks. I may have told this story before, but here it is again.
They were cheap. They could squeeze a nickel until it screamed. They went to butcher shops, asking for beef bones. Back then butchers gave away their bones for free. Stanley and Lester would grill the bones until they cracked open, and then scoop out the marrow to spread on bread, sprinkling it with hot paprika powder. (Which reminds me that back then grocers displayed produce on beds of fresh parsley -- if you bought potatoes or squash or celery, the grocer always threw in a large bouquet of parsley for nothing extra.)
When the show played Madison Square Garden in New York City I decided to play a joke on Stanley and Lester. They were always on the lookout for dropped coins, squealing with delight whenever they discovered a stray penny or nickel. One evening after the last show, when they had left for the day, I took a quarter and glued it to the cement floor near their trunk in clown alley -- with the strongest epoxy I could buy at the hardware store. I told a bunch of my fellow clowns back at the Iron Lung, the train car we lived in, about it, and we all got to clown alley early the next day to watch the fun. But we were too late. Where my quarter had been securely glued to the floor there was now a gaping crater where Stanley and Lester had used a cold chisel and sledge hammer to liberate the recalcitrant coin. They nearly caught hell from Charlie Baumann, the Performance Director, later that day when he almost broke his ankle stumbling into the hole they’d made.
“Who did this?” he demanded of them furiously, brushing cement dust off his black patent leather shoes. “Did you two have something to do with it?”
“Not us” Stanley and Lester chorused. “Must be the rats digging a nest.”
Giving them a baleful glare, Baumann stalked silently out of clown alley -- further convinced that he had only lunatics to deal with among the funny men.
*************************
I think my Fresh Market photo essay turned out okay. Anybody who wants to look at it can go to my blog at https://bit.ly/2utn3Jd
I bought a can of powdered Tang at FM; I’m getting tired of lemonade. I almost got rootbeer and vanilla ice cream so I can start making floats but it’s really not the ‘season’ yet. But I can’t think of a better way to watch General Conference in two weeks than while sucking on a big root beer float . . .
Well, I think I’ll close up shop for the day and get back to my regimen of Netflix programs. Now that Netflix has raised their fees once again, up to 12 bucks per month, I’m seriously considering dropping them and finally giving in to cable TV. I already pay 25 dollars each month for cable access, willy-nilly, so all I need to do is buy a tv screen and hook it up. I wonder how much a decent tv screen would cost and how hard it is to hook up? Then I could watch the local news and baseball games on ESPN this summer. The more I think about it, the more appealing it becomes . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment