The punchline to moving to a place alongside of the park: they’re ripping out every single tree.
Granted, they were a bit scraggly, and gave the park a downcast, shabby, doomed mood. It’s all part of a big master plan to improve the park, but I’m wondering how it just happened that the inconvenient trees were also ugly and half-dead. I suspect they were poisoned, and someone knew a way to make it look copacetic without raising the razzers’ suspicions. Oh, they’re dead? That’s good for us, we’ll look like heroes when we take them out! But it was such a wholesale slaughter that Fred Management had to put out an email directing everyone to the city’s master plan for the park, the timetable, and so on. Did I talk about this on Friday? Maybe so. What day is this? Where am I? Where’s my wife? Why am I in this gown?
Social note: the Fred Social Directors put on a Kentucky Derby party, and some of the women dressed up in nice Southern finery. Good deli food, wine, and bourbon. This is how things have changed, apartment wise: in the old days I don’t remember the management offering bourbon. They offered nothing. The idea that an apartment building should have fun social events was not common to my cohort. Maybe in the early 80s some of the newer hipper units had such things, but we did not expect a club room or a library or a gym. When you look at the apartment buildings in this neighborhood that went up in the late 60s and early 70s, they’re as basic as they come.
If there's any innovation in the older stock, it's murder. Yes, another murder! This time it was in the old and basic apartments to the north of Southdale. That’s two in three weeks. In Edina. By Southdale.
A month in, and I'm stil unpacking. And repacking. You have to keep doing things. If you don’t keep doing things, the boxes attain a sort of permanent legacy status. You’re used to seeing that box there in that closet. It was there yesterday, untouched, its contents inscrutable. It is there today in the same condition. It might well be there tomorrow. And thus closets become stacked with boxes that are just there because that is where they are.
So the boxes have to be sorted. Eighty percent of it doesn’t seem to matter at the moment, but it must be dealt with, because there are more boxes in the storage locker, and unless you keep doing things, the disorder at the margins becomes the default.
I can’t get the winter coats into the storage locker until I’ve gotten stuff out and brought here for sorting, but that means I need space, and that means dealing with the office closet first. That means consolidating boxes, labeling the contents in a database. This is an important task, but I’d rather deal with cord disorder. The old office had plenty of space for cords and USB hubs and drives, out of sight. No such situation here. SO: you get a unit that clips on the back of the desk that holds the cords and drives. It’s white. You want everything to be nice and white. You buy white cords. Everything is ready to be arranged but the component elements sit there for two days without installation. You had something else to do. Don’t you always?
Then a box arrives. What is it? Ah: the second attempt at a keyboard tray. It’s Saturday afternoon; you don’t feel like putting it together. Then another box arrives: the small filing cabinet. It’s wrapped in big hunks of styrofoam. In the process of liberating the cabinet, your watch thinks you’ve taken a hard fall and offers to call 911. You have to tell it to mind its own business. The cardboard requires one trip down to the recycling bins. The styrofoam takes another. The dog barks when you leave and you hear him barking still when you get on the elevator. At the end of ht day you haven’t put together the tray, set up the home automation, solved the TV issue or consolidated the cords. You’re behind. You can’t slacken. Keep working. Sorting. Boxing. Reboxing. Winnowing.
Somehow in all this I forgot to mail the divorce papers.
Well, as they say when a marriage ends, there's always tomorrow! Actually they never say that.
But here's the good news.
I'm okay. I really am. I have my moments with the dog, because he barks if I go, so I don't go, or take him with, which limits my mobility; I can run into the store for five minutes, at that. I don't know if the barking disturbs others, that's the thing. It's a solid building. The doors less so, but I'm at the end of the hall in a cul-de-sac, so I'd only be disturbing the Weed Bros, if that. Yes, I've been training him with little disappearances, avoiding triggers like picking up my keys, and I have him on anti-anxiety meds. The dog is on anti-anxiety medications, and I'm not. But I'm not really anxious. Or depressed. The worst thing that happened today: I was disappointed by a hot dog.
Really. I'd decided to fill the week's lunch menu with indulgences and favorites and things I hadn't had in years, so I bought hot dogs. CUfB had a sale, and they also sell hot dog buns in packs of four, so you're not stuck with extra. Things you have to think about when newly single and freezer space is suddenly limited. Well. The hot dogs were mealy and the bun fell apart. The cole slaw I'd bought at Target was awful. I've learned my lesson. Hebrew Nats next time, and proper buns from Kowalski's. It'll cut into the budget, but life is for living. I may be on Social Security now but that doesn't mean I can't have a firm hot dog.
Speaking of budget: look at this! It cost one dollar at Target. It's my new wine glass. Really. Table wine, dinner. Tonight I made pasta with a chicken breast, a small can of tomato sauce into which I poured fresh basil and garlic, and a cut-up San Marino tomato. It was the best meal I've had here so far. I had a small ration of red in the new glass, and finished it with a Moka pot espresso and a small dark chocolate.
The first all-around successful supper. It's the little things. I sent a picture to Daughter. She made fun of my salad. Which made me smile.
As noted, I’ve been working my way through Tales of Tomorrow in the evening, as I do other things. I’ve not yet started the 11 PM Mandatory TV Concentration routine. It’s too tempting just to keep working and half-watching something else, as is the modern plague. Most of the Tales do not reward close, concerted examination, but I’ve found some gems.
This is what the nerds had in the early 50s. It must still have been thrilling. The ruined city, the strange buildings, the swirling mist . . .
The set-up must have baffled a lot of people. A standard, rote, sci-fi cliche. The world is about to end! Except something happens. You hear the director in the booth react.
No one knows why we’re looking in on a trio of drunks in a tenement.
The action cuts back to the studio, where everyone’s baffled, reaching for a technical solution, trying to get something back on the air. The feed cuts back to the tenement with no warning, and we learn that one of the men - Rod Steiger, believe either or not - is going to kill the other. They have to stop it!
But the sponsor paid for a spot and by Jove he’s going to get one. It’s a long spot, but at the end you can tell: Kreisler was completely on board with this novel piece of storytelling.
We get to see the interior of a 1952 TV studio -
How I wish this wasn’t just a blurry kine. But you can still discern some things. The fellow on the right?
Just the build and the glasses are enough. It’s Steve Allen.
One more thing: here's a cultural reference you wouldn't hear anyone make today.
IIt’s 1973.
As if you couldn’t tell.
Oh, things happen, all right. The wind comes up and fills up your pant leg and almost lifts you off your feet.
This is a rock magazine, by the way. There was some crossover with the Soul mags, which either presumed that one population was interested in both funk and T. Rex, and the other was interested in David Bowie but wanted to dress, you know, “urban.”
How could you resist? What could possibly be the downside?
You should’ve known something was up when you had trouble picking eight. Okay, well, I guess I’ll see what Jaye P. Morgan is up to.
