The Season of Parties

Saturdays are a crap shoot when it comes to trolling for conversation at the cafe’ here at the continuum care complex where I live. We old people seem to be creatures of habit honed to perfection back in our working days when Saturdays were for shopping and catching up on laundry and housework. It was never my day off day per se. Being in the wedding business for twenty years, my Mondays were other people’s Saturdays but here Saturdays are slow. No classes take place, no card games. It’s not unusual for me to be the only one keeping the waitress and cook off the unemployment line. Today, however, they were hosting a viewing party for residents who are into college football so they could watch a game together. Me, I don’t like contact sports---baseball isn’t one, is it?---so when I came down for lunch I sat in the farthest corner I could get away from the TV.

My brother played football in high school so I understand the objective and rules of the game and I spent a year during my chameleon dating era pretending an interest in more than the chips and cheese at tailgate parties while my jock of a boyfriend went full-out fan supporter. His life, thus my life by the rules of The Chameleon Girlfriend Club, revolved around college and professional football schedules. I really thought he was THE ONE and I can’t help thinking about him when ever I hear the song, Unanswered Prayers.

Speaking of parties here, birthday parties are fast becoming my favorite thing to do around. The guy they hired for our latest monthly party is well known at the local bars and summer outdoor parks where he makes his living singing Jimmy Buffet and the playlist of my life from the ‘50s to the ‘70s. He even throws in a little Willy Nelson who was my husband’s favorite country western singer/song writer. I don’t know what they pay the people the activities director hires but it’s got to be their standard rates because we don’t get amateur hour entertainers here, even though the number of people who show up for these parties is often an embarrassingly low number under two dozen.

Another activity was added new to our holiday calendar this year. A gingerbread house building contest. They furnished the kits with all the trimmings but I made a run to the Dollar Store to buy alternative candy so mine will hopefully look different. Stupid me, at the Thanksgiving dinner table we were talking about the contest when someone said, “That won’t be any fun. The houses will all look the same.” I had to open my mouth to mention my trip to the Dollar Store. "Is that against the rules?" someone asked. "Not that I read," I replied, "but all gingerbread house contests require everything on the house to be eatable so I'm assuming that rule applies to us." I'm having fun making mine and I'll take photos when they are due for the judging. I really hope the 'only edible' rule applies to us because someone has already waved it off and is adding plastic figures. A friend from my writing group is making spun glass/sugar windows and I want him to win. He showed me photos, his house is spectacular!

We also had a holiday decorating and tree trimming party. They had one last year and I didn’t go. Even the promise of hot chocolate and gingerbread cookies couldn’t make me cancel my standing haircut appointment, but that was only half the story. I was also avoiding getting involved with the other x-floral designer here on campus who was trying to volunteer my services (along with his) to decorate all the public spaces. It was a good call. I have zero interest in reliving my past glory the way he does. Now, every holiday large or small he has taken to provided our lobby with decorations. Although at one point I felt sorry for him as he sat alone at table making dozens of bows for a Christmas tree. I stopped to talk to him but I didn't cave when asked to stay awhile and help. This year I fully intended to help decorate the lobby but as I walked through the staging area there were 12-14 people standing around discussing their own ideas. When it comes to creative decisions, I don't like making them by committee so I kept on walking. They printed one of my poems in the newsletter, so no one can say I don't contribute to the community.

The holiday season is bringing lots of musical events to the residents here but I have very little interest in going downtown to hear Christmas concerts or to churches in the area to hear their choirs sing so I can’t write about what I don’t see and hear. I’m just not into that kind of music but if I was we do have new transportation that will make it safer and more dependable than what we’ve been using. We actually have our own bus now! I’ve been in the tin can they rented last summer but I wouldn’t ride in it during the slip and slide, crash, boom season. I have an unnatural fear of dying in a car accident. Had it ever since the '80s when we had a neighbor who worked as an EMT driver and she’d come home from a shift all excited to share her experiences like holding a person’s eye ball or an amputated leg in her hand. She loved the gore at bad accidents, but she described the gory details to the wrong person once and got fired. After that she worked in a hospital drawing blood. The  'vampire' nickname people have for blood draw techs fit her to a tee.

We have a wandering choir coming to campus to sing Christmas carols up and down the road. I'm sure that will remind me of a Hallmark Christmas movie. And, yes, I'm one of those who binges on Hallmark Christmas movies starting in November. At least they aren't fattening and they point out a little known secret to all the single women of the world. The secret is that all the hot guys who are ready to settle down are back in the small towns of America. So if you're out there looking for Mr. Right, go home and visit your parents or grandparents this holiday season. ©

Andy Weir Books, Fall and Football

I should be hold up in my den writing as if I was monk on a mountain top because the eighth of September is coming up soon. That’s the day I have my carpal tunnel and trigger thumb operations on my dominate hand and it could be as long a two weeks when I won’t be able to type, or so I’ve been lead to believe from reading about the surgeries online. Two weeks translates to four posts I should have ready in my scheduler but I’ve only got two. My doctor says it will be sooner than two weeks so who are you going to believe? Mayo Clinic or my local bone guy? 

I just finished multi-task writing while listening to Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. The Martian was his first book, a best seller that was made into a movie and I loved the movie as much as the book. His second book---Artemisis---doesn't have the science driven plot that his first one had and I haven’t read it. But this third book had me tuning in whenever I could. One night I fell asleep listening to it and it was still going in the morning and I had to back it up to a place where I remembered what was going on. It’s a wonder my brain didn’t bust open, filling it full of seven hours worth of back-to-back science. That’s when I learned how to use the sleep timer on my Kindle. Only had the thing for a decade.

I love Andy's way of creating protagonists with self-deprecating humor and this book delivered on that, especially when he teams up with an alien life form that looks like a German shepherd sized spider. The science goes so far over my head and if I had tired to read it rather than listen to the book I’d quit before the plot setup was finished, but it’s so well explained that I can pretend I almost get it. 

The synopsis for Project Hail Mary on Amazon reads: “Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it….a ‘propulsive’ thriller full of suspense, humor, and fantasizing science.” The alien is also on a mission to save his planet from the same enemy that is causing the sun to die.

I sometimes get a little too big for my britches and I think I’m making good use of my brain then I read a book like one of Andy’s and I realize that I have the brain power of a flea especially compared to the astrophysicists and math nerds that work for the space programs around the world. (Heck, I couldn't even keep up with the science at the local sewage treatment plant that turns our toilet wastes into safe drinking water when I toured the place. Or maybe it was the fact that I decided some things we're better off not knowing about.)

I know it’s fiction but the way Grace and Rocky (the alien) developed a language using math as a starting point really does sound doable. And if someone had told me I could fall in deep like for a spider-like creature I wouldn’t have believed it in a hundred years but here I am a fan of a creature who speaks in musical sound waves that a newly written-by-Grace computer program can translate it into English and vise versa. For such a smart “spider” he has a sweet innocents to him that made him adorable. I absolutely want to give you a spoiler on how this book ends but if I did there’d be a few wiser people out there in blogger land who’d admonish me for spreading the joy I felt at the surprising conclusion of the book.

Change of topic: I don’t want to say this too loudly but it feels like fall. The nights are getting cooler, the hydrangeas outside my window are changing color and the stores are full of back to school supplies and Christmas stuff next to the Halloween decor. In my old neighborhood by now I’d be hearing the marching band from the near-by high school practicing. In the house I lived in before that one I not only heard the marching band but I saw it in the street in front of my house. This will be the first year in my entire life when I won’t have a marching band to help usher in the changing of the season. 

People here are talking about football. I’ve never followed or liked the sport but I suppose it will be my new marker for the beginning of fall. They even fly college flags to support the University of Michigan or Michigan State. I won’t be able to ignore the game like I’ve done in the past---too many alumni here who follow it as if college football is the Pied Piper to happiness. And I suppose it is for those few hours when they can watch a game and relive their time on the field or at the parties around the bonfires afterward. I suspect our resident cheerleader who married (and later divorced) the college quarterback made her first baby at one of those bonfires. She’s my age and can still wear her old cheeerleader's uniform. She acquired two or three more husbands after her first and she could get another if now if she wanted to; she's one of those perky little things that men love and women envy. But she's a genuinely nice, compassionate person so her character breaks the shallow-headed cheerleader stereotype. 

I couldn't wear anything from my college days---not even my shoes. If I could wish my life away I’d wish to be thin and not the hard way by catching cancer. It’s my only real shame in life...that I’m not the weight I should be and haven't been for 50% of my life. No need to body shame me, I'm good at that DIY project all on my own.

We have one of those gas fireplaces out on our piazza. It’s about twelve feet long and covered in blue stones with glass walls all around it. All summer long it’s where we gathered after dinner a couple of nights a week. We still do but lately we’ve been turning the fireplace timer on…another sign of fall coming our way. I’m not ready. Are you? ©

* Meme is of Rocky's speech pattern when he asks questions.