Avocado Lunch

On Friday afternoon I made myself a lunch snack kind of thing. When the parents and I went to Huntsville we made a stop at Costco and while there I recalled the lovely goodness of lobster dip from my time in Greensboro. I put it into our shopping cart. Then, on Friday, I stuffed a small amount of the dip (which, I must admit, isn't quite as good as my memory suggested) into half and avocado then cut the other half into slices and then squeezed lime juice over the whole thing. It was pretty good in its simplicity. I ate it outside while reading a book...which reminds me to remind you, humble blog reader, that I have been reading books and what not. A good number of them, actually. I just haven't been doing any round-ups. I should. Maybe I will. Not this second though, no.

Pizza Buffet c/o Crust

On Thursday my parents and I went to lunch at Crust. They offer a $6.95 lunch deal, all the pizza you might like to eat and a salad to boot. The place wasn't too full, the lack of demand did make the pizza selection a bit slow on changing. But not too slow. Because their crusts are so thin, the pizzas don't take too long to make. There were the pizzas pictured (and eaten) below, a red and green pepper, sweet corn and cheese variety and then a pepperoni pizza. They had this habit of making pizzas with nine million toppings, all of which were meat. Not my thing, really.
The salads were huge. Crust does a pretty good job at this whole thing. The pizza isn't crap.
Yeah, if you're in this area you'll get better bang for your buck coming to Crust (or Shenanigans) than High Point. It's the sad truth. I'm sorry.

For The Pleasure of C's Distraction

A few nights back my parents and I went to High Point Restaurant in Monteagle. High Point is one of the 'classier' eating options around but my overall impression of our meal, I'm sad to say, was not entirely positive. We started with the Black Thai Duck appetizer, with sesame/peppercorn crusted duck and 'oriental sauce'. I have remarked, in the past, on my difficulty in completely understanding how I can like duck so much, when farm raised but really dislike it when wild. During my time with the ebf's family I had many opportunities to try the wild duck. The meat was always dark and bloody and the taste, well, I can't remember the taste. I just remember a complete inability to eat it (which as my mother points out is a very rare occurrence). How the same animal can have such different flesh. Tender compared to touch. Tasty compared to not-so-much. Dark compared to light. You get the picture. In any case the duck itself was very good. The 'oriental sauce' was, to my discerning palate, nothing more than soy sauce. I would have preferred to do without it entirely.
We all had the lobster bisque. It was not all that great. Too salty for me and more potatoey than lobstery.
Then we shared a Caesar salad, the dressing of which was nice.
I had the filet mignon with a forest mushroom Burgundy sauce and choice of vegetable. I chose the asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. The steak itself was not so bad, I ordered it medium rare. It wasn't up no David Burke piece of meat but it was tender. The real problem (or problems) with this meal were the sauces. The Hollandaise was entirely unpleasant, could not be saved, after one taste I was pretty sure it was awful and the second taste confirmed it. The Forest mushroom Burgundy sauce was salty and had a strange aftertaste I didn't care for. The mushrooms, because of this, were also left untouched. Thankfully the sauce was more around the meat than on top of it...otherwise each bite would have been a challenge.
My father had the Steak Diane and my mother had New York strip steak. The sauce that accompanied my father's meat was, in my estimation, equally oversalted. My mother's steak came with a blue cheese butter sauce and it, of the three, was the best.

High Point's prices are definitely on the high end of things, entrees range from 25 to 40 dollars. For that price I believe one should expect a quality meal, perhaps not orgasmic or ground breaking, that never makes you tilt your head to one side or pucker your lips in distaste. Usually I have faith that a restaurant will only charge such steep prices if they're entirely confident in their product. I don't know whether High Point's management really think they're serving the best possible food or if they know that, in terms of fancy food, they only have one competitor (Pearl's). Whatever their logic may be, I find myself wishing they'd change it.

Lovely Lunch

Earlier this week my mother and I went to one of her friend's houses for lunch. When we pulled up we saw this beauty of a dog. The dog did not belong to the friend but, rather, to a guy checking on the friend's bee houses (hives?). The dog's name was Clyde and he was happy to say hello before rambling on. He was wet, and I just knew he had gotten into some pond or stream and was happy for it.
The weather was very nice. Super sunny and definitely in the 70s. We sat outside to enjoy it. In the end my mother and I both ended up getting on sunburned arm apiece, but it was well worth it.
Our hostess served us a wonderful salad of her own grown and picked lettuce greens, sundried tomatoes, hearts of palm and walnuts. The lettuce, in particular, was exceptional.
For our main lunch fare there was ravioli with tomato sauce with freshly grated parmesan. Very good. We drank white wine and Pelligrino sparkling water.
Dessert was an assortment of fruit and chocolate.
This chocolate was very good. It reminded me of Abuelita or Cibarra Mexican hot chocolate in its texture, little granules of sugar crunchy in the rich dark chocolate. After a short amount of time the chocolate was melted by the strength of the sun and I spread some of it onto apple slices.
The friend and her husband recently got chickens. These are still in their adolescent stage. I like chickens. I like picking eggs and I think I could even eat a chicken I got to know...I mean, I'd actually know how it was treated and, well, I would treat my chickens better than, say, Purdue does theirs.
I am taking a break from a pretty big deal. Today I am trying out for a job in Philadelphia. The try-out is editing three different writing pieces. I have a twenty four hour period of time to do this but each one, with track changes on, shouldn't take longer than an hour (and hopefully less). I was pretty much done with the first one when my Word program froze up, forcing me to force quit. Then, when I reopened the file none of my changes had been saved. So I had to do it all over again...and then I found a recovered version I had already done...I was, and am, as you can imagine, a little put out by that whole snafu. Though, at the same time, it gave me an opportunity to streamline my comments.

My parents are out of town for the weekend which is nice for them and not bad for me. Except for the fact that they drove off with my wallet. My attempt earlier this year to quit smoking collapsed on me and this assignment hasn't helped the cause...and because my parents have the wallet, I have no identification. Tennessee is a bit of a stickler state about carding people, which usually I'm perfectly okay with...I mean I am way over 18. But now I'm looking at my rapidly dwindling pack of cigarettes and wondering what to do. I am tempted to call one of my parents' friends and plead my case...but none of them are smokers and many of them would say this is the perfect opportunity to quit...which it is...but. Um. I don't want to? I do want to, just not today? Shit.

I have also pretty much committed to buying a car on Tuesday. This impending financial burden is weighing rather heavily on my soul. I feel that having a car is a good thing for me and buying one with an intact warranty, good fuel economy etc is better than spending less money for a clunker that will eat money later on...and with the way air travel is going it seems more sensible to drive than fly...but...if I do a bad job today then I don't have any other obviously good options for employment but I will still have this additional expense. Some times I do wish I could just crawl into a hole and shiver. I'm pretty sure that I would be really, really good at it.

Last week my mother and I watched a news magazine show about this guy and one of his maxims was: you're either a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I'm a Tigger-like Eeyore. Would it be better to be an Eeyore-like Tigger? It would probably be better to just be a Tigger...but all that bouncing? I don't know. I think I might fall somewhere in between. I usually live my life by my own maxim: Everything will be fine. While a Tigger's would be: Everything's great! and Eeyore's would be: Everything's terrible. Okay. Enough.

Oh, The Pretty of it All

I Remember

I google searched Carter Waghorne. I put his name in quotes and then I took his name out of quotes. I added the name of the high school he and I both attended. We were both members of the class of 1999. We went to a small Quaker boarding school outside of Philadelphia. Its name was George School. We were both boarding students, he was from Texas and I was from Maryland. One of my freshmen roommates came from Maine, the other from Trevose, Pennsylania . Other girls in my dorm were from Ohio, the Bronx, Princeton and Mexico. There were twenty-eight boarding girls and, I would assume, a rough approximate of that number of boarding boys. The total number of students at the school, including day students, was approximately 525.

There aren't that many direct hits in all the combinations I searched. A few were on George School's website and those that did pop up were quick references, a mention of Carter or his parents in the online copy of The Georgian, our alumni magazine. When I google image searched his name nothing of any relevance came up at all. If I searched for Carter on Friendster or MySpace or Facebook I would not find him. I might find twenty, or so, other Carter Waghornes in England or Canada or Texas or Missouri but the Carter Waghorne I am searching for, his face and location, would not come up. No matter how many pages I scrolled through.

It will be ten years today. Ten years since the day Carter died. Or the day after Carter died. To be honest I'm not sure which one is more important for me: the date he died or the first full day after learning about it. Ten years and I have started to imagine or wonder what kind of results would have surfaced on the internet, if Carter hadn't died. He would have been twenty seven. I still have a hard time thinking of guys my age as men, but, well, that's what he would have been: a man.

Carter was a blonde boy from Texas. That's what I thought about him when I was a freshmen. As the time went on I could add more descriptive words to him but, at the base of it, that is what Carter will always be in my eyes. We were in hydrology together our freshmen year and, even then, he had this husky voice with just a little drawl to it. This god awfully short hair cut. Very preppy.

Carter died of meningococcal meningitis. The day after his death those of us who had close contact with him in the last days of his life were required to take pills to make sure that we didn't contract the disease ourselves. One friend was hesitant to take the pills. I recall her saying that she wouldn't want to destroy something that was a part of Carter. No, she didn't say it exactly like that but I was sixteen and that's the best I can remember. A side effect of the drug was a noticeable darkening of urine, ranging from a deep orange to rust red. The school had procedures for boarding students sleeping off campus. They needed our parents' permission (either in written or verbal form) and the assurance that an adult would be at the house where we would be sleeping. I believe that the deans slightly suspended those rules for us. Filling one, maybe two, vans with a collection of Carter's closest friends and driving us to Princeton, where B's parents lived. There was a stop at a grocery store where they loaded us up with snacks and non-alcoholic beverages and dropped us off. Technically there was an adult in B's four story mansion of a house (her parents were out of town and the man was either house-sitting or watching after B's little sister), but we never saw him. It was at that house that we stayed up late, attempting to process the fact that this boy we had known was gone forever. We all pissed into the same toilet bowl without flushing (whose idea this was I don't know, I believe we thought of it as an experiment), thus my knowledge of the range of colors the medication could make. That night I did not sleep. We all stayed up late but eventually most everyone went to sleep. I did not. I smoked contraband cigarettes and took a walk on Princeton's new morning streets. It was a furtive walk and I did not walk far, for fear of getting lost or caught.

Would he be married by now, I wonder? Most of us are not, but a few of us are. Would he have gone to an East Coast college? Or would he have returned home to Texas? In high school he had two girl friends, both beautiful slender brunettes. Would he have married another in that mold? Would they have children? Would he come to our five year or ten year reunion? He had a wonderful laugh, Carter did. I can imagine a room full of the class of 1999 and hearing it through the crowd and walking in that direction. He would hug me and ask after me and I would ask after him. We'd make a few jokes. He would tell me about his college years and new job and (if this was our five year reunion) I would ask him how much money he made per year before telling him how much I made (less than $15,000--this was not about bragging). He would introduce me to his wife, or he would be alone and I would wonder a moment why I never had a crush on him.

I am sifting through my memories, trying to find enough I haven't already written or spoken of countless times before. I find new ones, but so small, more like fragments of fuller moments of time. Meeting him in the post office, junior year, and talking about magazines. He once said I had curves in a way that didn't make me feel chubby. I still have the dress I was wearing when he said that, casually, in the midst of a circling conversation with others on a bench outside. Carter in Debbie Dimicco's French 3 class. I can never remember his exact nature in that class, just Debbie's exasperation with him. He loved the language but….but what? But he came late to class? But he talked when he should have been listening? Yes, probably those things and more. But Debbie loved him as much as she was frustrated by him. A specific Hawaiian shirt he wore, a lot, that last year is more vivid to me than any of the tee shirts or button downs he may have worn during our freshmen year.

At our school we had study hall for two hours each evening, after which we were allowed half an hour to go outside and socialize before checking into our dorms for the night. The last time I saw Carter was during this half hour period of time. I was having a hard time of things that night. Carter came up to me and hugged me, something he made a point of doing because I always seemed so uncomfortable about it. Let me specify that he didn't hug me to make me uncomfortable but, rather, because he thought (rightfully so) that I shouldn't feel that way. So he hugged me and, in that deep voice, said he felt sick. I was impatient, having my own small emotional crisis, and told him to go to the nurse's if he felt bad. I went towards the post office and I have no idea where he went next. I know he didn't go to the infirmary. By the same time, the next night, Carter was in the hospital. He may have already died. I think that's true. I remember sitting on a bench with E. and J. and seeing Jim Grumbach, a dean, walking towards the auditorium-where a good number of Carter's close friends were rehearsing for a play. Shakespeare, I think it was. And this is not me revising a memory, this is true: I knew when I saw that man walking to the play rehearsals, that he was going to go break the news. I am too rational a person to blame myself, or anyone else, for what happened but, at the same time, I can't help but wish that I was some kind of psychic-that I could have known that he was more than just sick and that I would insist on walking him to the infirmary and that the nurses would also have some kind of second sight and know that his aching body was more than a flu symptom.

There is a monument at George School to Carter. A horseshoe shaped bench of sorts made of brick and concrete, with two shelves for optimum sitting capacity. In the center there is a plaque. On it are the imprints of bare feet and a haiku. A haiku a number of us wrote collaboratively, using an ancient ancestor of google chat. Last month an email circulated amongst some of us who attended that strange session: 15 or so teenagers typing to each other, occasionally laughing or sniffling, but not talking directly to one another: given the task of finding words to represent how we were feeling and who Carter was. It was an email about time changing, how this date (or yesterday's date) was always remembered but as our lives change…as we grow up…it's harder to commemorate it properly. One email was from A. He now teaches at George School and he shared the fact that the monument, meant to sit on, now is referred to as 'The CW'. There was another smaller memorial on our campus for another boy who died too soon while attending the school. I always passed it and wondered what that was like for his friends and parents. Then I found out. But the boy himself and the exact impact of his death was abstracted and hidden from me and, of course, it's no different for Carter. Kids drape themselves on one another and that bench, involved in their own small dramas, understanding the concept of Carter's death but not that he was a real boy. That the bare foot print is a direct reference to Carter's tendency, especially Junior year, to go around without shoes on his feet (in another email I've received the reason for the barefeet has been qualified: that Carter said he thought better when he wasn't wearing shoes).

We were not the best of friends. I feel a fraud, often enough, when I write or speak of him, as if I don't have as much of a right. I had to call one of Carter's closer friends, W, who had gone to George School through our sophomore year but left after that. I still remember how excited and surprised she was to hear from me, it was the middle of the afternoon and she wondered how I could have possibly known she was at home. She started to say why it was she was home and I cut her off. I cut off her excitement and pleasure at hearing my voice and told her that a boy she had known was dead. I also remember calling my parents and my mother making an innocent comment about the boy who died. Perhaps this is the root of why I feel a fraud, that my mother didn't understand that he was my friend.

Technology has surpassed Carter's existence. I understand why there are only references to Carter's death on the internet, he didn't live long enough to have his name pop up in any other context. But I do like to imagine his MySpace page:

Photographs of him with his Texan friends, on vacation somewhere snowy. Or a shot of him with his arms enveloping a girl and kissing the top of her head. Or a smiling Carter, in a cap and gown, with his parents and brothers around him. A few shots of him, blurry eyed and holding a big glass of beer, smiling dangerously. Perhaps there would be a cheesy poem of his own making, or a very good poem. A song or two from our friend A's new album, playing in the background. I would not hesitate to add him to my friends, to keep track of him as I do so many others from that time. Glad to know that he was doing well, alive and happy.
---

This is a piece I will be filling in for a while to come, I think.

Please go here and listen to It's Fine To Lie.
You could also go here and read a more put together piece I wrote ten years ago.

--
I've been thinking about what is missing from this. Mainly the grief. Our actions that night, when each hall of girls and boys was gathered together by their hall teacher and told the news. My own inability to sleep. The dreams we all eventually had, vivid dreams with a very living Carter wondering what all the fuss was about. The fact that at that time French exchange students were on campus. Sitting on Main Dorm's front porch with L and A, A singing a little song her voice trembling. The meetings for worship. The occasional laughter. The more frequent tears. The homework we didn't care about. The classes we still attended. I remember going to collection (our 15 minute equivalent of homeroom) and waiting for E to appear. E, who had been so close to Carter. I remember not knowing what I could possibly say to her, so hugging her instead of saying any thing. That night, I think, J. and I went home with E. A strange threesome, having never really socialized that much together outside classrooms. Where were E.'s closer girl friends? Why didn't J. stay in the boys' dorm? My writing the linked above little piece about the loss that same night we learned the news. What else could I do? Then, not even putting my name on it, walking to the dean's office the next morning and handing it to someone. I have been told, accurately or not, that it was read at Carter's funeral. This may not be true. I didn't go. This is one thing I regret. I could have asked my parents or somehow gotten there but, even then, I felt removed from the others. Of course, in some ways, we all felt removed from one another. While, paradoxically, we came together. I don't think about the school community as a whole. I think of the large number of us who had all loved Carter. We were made so aware, at a younger age than many, what the loss of a friend feels like. I listened to Terri Gross interview Phillip Roth a few years back. He was talking about aging and how we try to prepare ourselves for the loss of our parents but that we don't really think, even at 70 or whatever, about losing our friends. The loss of Carter made all the friendships more precious. And then there are more memories of him than the five or six I've mentioned. He and L dressed up for the Junior prom, he in a slightly 1970s suit and she with her 1920s flapper hair. More, more, more.

Gold Finch Teeth

Today I went to the dentist. I listened to an episode of This American Life while my teeth were scraped and cleaned as much as they can be cleaned. Through the window by my feet I got to see the occasional Gold Finch. Pretty birds. Nice and yellow.

These are my teeth.

Subway

Yesterday my father suggested we go out to lunch. My mother tearfully declared she wanted to go to Crust, knowing full well that it was closed on Monday. My father and I patiently gave my mother a number of other options: Mexican, good ol' southern, Papa Ron's pizza, Chinese buffet etc etc. And after each suggestion my mother whimpered. Utterly inconsolable, she raged against our meek attempts at giving her solace. Piqued, she declared 'Let's just go to Subway, what does it even matter?' before throwing herself on our chaise longue and weeping.
I got a foot long BMT (I don't know what BMT stands for however since the B definitely doesn't stand for bacon), half with mayo and mustard and half with chipotle dressing. It was belly filling. At the tail end of my sandwich eating I stopped eating it as a sandwich and picked at its insides, remembering why I didn't, in the past, get Subway meat (lack of actual taste primarily).

Beef Stew Resurrection

At some point during my absence my mother made beef stew. A few days back she resurrected the leftovers from the freezer. The beef was still very tender and the whole thing nice and flavorful, served over egg noodles, a dollop of corn and a wallop of sour cream.

Pot Luck

Over the weekend my parents' friends had a pot luck. We attended. I was, as I often am, the only person under thirty. Good crowd though. Margaritas were served and food was plentiful. This grapefruit and avocado dish was refreshing.
This potato casserole type thing was very nice and creamy.
There was an inordinate number of rice dishes. I didn't try all of them but they all looked very nice and, I'm sure, tasted great.




My mother made quite a nice potato salad. The secret is not overwhelming the whole thing with mayonnaise, a little red wine vinegar and onions. I liked it very much and was glad that we got to take home a little of it for a later lunch snack.

There was also spaghetti and sauce. It was the kind of spaghetti I prefer: thick. Angel hair and thin spaghetti, well, they're not exactly as satisfying to me.
Then there was lady. Lady can perk her ears up in just such a way as to resemble, strongly, a worried ewok.

Lamb Rack & Fixins

A few days back my mother made a rack of lamb or maybe they were short ribs? I don't know and I just asked my mother...but then realized that she's in the shower and can't hear me...which made me feel a bit foolish, talking to nobody. We all commented that they were fattier than many a lamb rib (or whatever) we had had, but the meat itself was very good. As were the freshly cooked tomatoes, spinach and baked potatoes. And the wine was nice too.
My mother sears the lamb then puts it into the oven. I will try this in the future.

I'm Gonna Get You!

The other day I was singing a little song, hopping along (as I often do when it's warm and I'm in Tennessee) to the mail box when I saw six deer all hanging out. I withdrew, got my camera and then came back out and chased them away. Do not judge me. I made sure that no more cars were coming and they like to eat my father's garden and a good number of pretty flowers and whatnot. Plus they taste good. Just kidding. Except that I'm not.

Turtle Tornado! (Warning)

The day of the tornado excitement I slept in. Well compared to my mother I always sleep in. She saw this turtle and took a photograph of it. I told her she should have woken me up. I love seeing turtles. Not snapping turtles though, those things scare the shit out of me. Then we had a few hours of tornado warnings. It rained and thundered and lightning was present but no hail stone, brimstone or scary funnels of wind, air, dirt, horse trailers and the like.

Photographs of the Drive Back From Huntsville

In case there was any confusion...this is a Jesus church.






The country changes too. For the worst. Poverty is bad. Living in falling down houses is not an acceptable thing...but, well, neither is building a god ugly house in the middle of a perfectly good field that never did any thing to any body. Just a minute a way there are houses like this...(and to be clear I am not suggesting that all people who live in trailers are necessarily living in poverty).
And immediately across the street was this.
And then there was this. The definition of god awful unnecessary building. I'm sorry to whoever lives in this house, I'm sure you're very proud...but you could have found some other house already built and fixed it up or....I am judgmental. It is just true.