Author: whoisfenton

Working from home during the pandemic requires that certain patterns are maintained: work for 55 minutes, walk around for 5. Lunch at 12, finish up at 5 (or 6 or 7 depending). Go out for a walk in the evening, rinse and repeat until the week blends into a delightful mosaic of day into night into day. Ok, not that delightful as mosaics go.

Last week I was planning my lunch and, mindful of my Error With The Curry I stick to the basics: quesadilla, salad, cereal, pasta. Once in a while miso soup and rice or a bowl of bibimbap (see earlier writing).

As you can see my pandemic recipes are limited and variations are welcome. Dessert is a usually a bunch of green grapes … unless … what is this? A new treat in a bowl on the kitchen table, a pile of jelly beans calling out to me. The family has clearly been holding out on me.

I sample one and my body simply *rejects* the horrendous thing. I realize that I was attempting eat an aromatic wax pellet, this one apparently lavender. My overwhelmed and embarrassed olfactory system sent an emergency signal to my weary brain that fergodsakes, Fenton is at it again – he has begun to eat wax. If my brain could do a facepalm it surely would.

When I do things like this I am tempted to keep it secret, however in my defense don’t those things look tasty?

I had an odd dream the other night. It seems I was a mite peckish (in the dream) and decided to make some soup from scratch. I find soup oddly reassuring in that I can eat it entirely with a spoon and avoid those other odd and infuriating utensils. And chopsticks? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Anyway, I am thinking that lentil soup would be perfect; a rich hearty broth which screams “healthy” with every bite. Plus, the word lentil comes from the latin word “lens” because the little legume is shaped like a lens.

Anyway back to the dream. It takes a while to make lentil soup, what with all the slicing and dicing, but finally it is ready so let the health begin! I ladle out a big bowl and bring it to the kitchen table but, dagnabit! I proceed to drop the bowl on the floor, where it explodes into a shower of ceramic and soup; basically a gigantic mess.

I race to get a towel to start cleaning, but the only thing I can find at hand is my brand new flannel shirt. I hesitate but then decide: the shirt must be sacrificed for the greater good. While I clean I realize two things. This shirt will never smell the same, and flannel is really good a sopping up lentil soup.

This dream suffers from many obvious plot holes, namely, are you sure there was NOTHING else in the entire (dream) house to clean the mess? Apparently not, as my dreams exist to torture me with what-ifs. Next time here is my plan:

This phrase is used as a way of determining one’s basic outlook on life. If you sees a glass as half-full you may be thought of as being an optimist, ignoring the possibility that the glass may be half-full of ants, or bees or even worse, CLAMS.

The glass-half-empty kind of person supposedly always sees the dark side of any situation, the chance that things might go horribly wrong at any moment. But I always thought that all that empty space in the glass allows it to be filled with nice things like pearls or bacon fat. Oh wait not bacon fat, I meant to say money. Yes, money.

The amateur math guy in me wonders why the obsession with 1/2? There are other perfectly good fractions, actually LOTS and LOTS of them, yet we use 1/2 so as to keep the universe in balance, I guess.

And finally I remember what my physics professor told the class one day: “The glass is totally full … of *something*”

Hopefully not clams.

Walking is my time to think, to observe and to remember. I am fortunate to have a network of connected nearby neighborhoods intermixed with forest trails and meandering streams. Thank you Chapel Hill. Last week my daughter and I explored a new path connecting the highschool and middle school, both of which my daughter attended back in the day. She explained to me that THIS was the spot where THAT happened, spooling through memories like they were yesterday which, in the larger sense, they are.

I avoid walking the forest paths at night because, duh. I have found myself in the deep woods after sunset quite by accident, where the fiercest enemy is your imagination and every sound becomes the thudding enormity of a black bear or the skittering rush of a pack of hungry wolves. Don’t be surprised if I am found some morning curled into a fetal position under an ancient oak, muttering wordless incantations in a language we once knew but have forgotten.

Night walks are therefore restricted to our neighborhood along sidewalks safely bathed in the artificial glare of wolf-proof street lights. The streets now are nearly devoid of cars and I often come across other walkers ambling down the middle of the road, reclaiming the pavement like the invasive species we are. One night I walked passed a house where an outdoor birthday celebration was underway — the candles of a large cake flickering like fireflies. I guess they could have BEEN fireflies, which would have made it a birthday to remember indeed. The birthday boy emerged, eyes glittering, serenaded by The Song.

The Happy Birthday Song marks a moment in time when the bears rest and the fireflies sing and we sense a life emerging, a life better than the one we left behind.

Over the years I have known many folks who can repair / replace things which have ceased to function. Cars, a backyard patio, kitchen cabinets, a misbehaving washer or dryer, a leaky toilet. These are the folks we call “handy”, as in, good with one’s hands. I admire such people, as I admire the great writer, engineer, musician, or athlete.

I admire them from afar because I seem to be missing the specific genetic marker to fix things. My attempts are legion and may be found in the bestseller, “Don’t Do It Yourself: A Manual For The Unruly”. I often leave things in far worse condition than when I started, prompting a call to the professionals who will glance briefly at the detritus and shake their head in disbelief. I am EntropyMan, Master of Chaos.

Consider my recent attempt to repair a leaky kitchen faucet. This is a standard do-it-yourself thing and one that everyone can relate to. Because it is so common, there are helpful YouTube videos to walk you through the process. Duck soup, piece of cake, ipso facto, e pluribus unum, you mutter to yourself as you channel the Roman Empire, an empire I remind you that was able to engineer the aqueducts, but collapsed when faced with o-rings, flanges and aerators.

It begins. Everything goes well, just as YouTubeMan says it would until I get to the part where he says, “now remove the handle from the stem. Do so by loosening the hexagonal nut using an allen wrench, like so.” However on MY faucet, the silly little hex nut is frozen, locked in place and refuses to budge regardless of how much pressure I apply. I mean the hex nut might as well have been welded to the handle. I use grease, WD-40, a fusion reactor, but nothing. I look to the sky and sense Larry, the God of Faucets, chortling. Undeterred, I try and try until THERE, it moved! Oh wait, I have stripped the nut so that plan is now in ruins. I search for a YouTube video entitled, “So, You Have Stripped a Hex Nut, You Fool”. Mr Allen Wrench will NOT be pleased.

Months have passed and the faucet remains inert. I glare at it sometimes as I walk by, reminding it that this is far from over and that I have not forgotten. Oh no, I have not.

Tonight’s dinner will be duck soup or perhaps cake, just to remind myself that such things do, in fact, exist.

There was a time when had this idea that I would buy a farm and live on it. This would be out in the sticks where the wild things are and I would grow my own food and live off the land. We “almost” bought 225 acres one county over but in the end decided against it because it was really too far away from “civilization”. I mean you couldn’t just pop down to the store to shop, you would have to go into town for “provisions” once every other week. In retrospect this would have been a great financial move, given the way this area has exploded over the last 15 years or so. Another opportunity frittered away on the wings of practicality.

Anyway, you don’t need 225 acres to grow truffles, which was another idea I had. Truffles, as you may know, are a form of mushroom which are famously difficult to grow but if successful, very profitable. The fungus grows on the roots of certain kinds of trees in soil just so. The weather and soil of North Carolina is pretty conducive to truffle farming, as are the pigs ruffle farmers used to use to hunt and dig out the hidden truffles. Apparently pigs become quite defensive of their prize and defend their meal vigorously, so these days specially trained dogs get the job done but with less biting. I note here in passing that Truffle Hounds would be a good name for a rock band.

I doubt I will ever get around to living this dream as I expect that time has passed. Truffle farming, with all its complex rules and uncertain outcomes provides a nostalgic look back at an earlier, simpler time. I have often wondered what a truffle tastes like? Perhaps I’ll try a truffle dish one day to see what I have missed.

Those of you who have followed these musings will know that from time to time I perform small but intense acts of behavioral malfeasance. Over the years these sad events have created tiny yet visible marks upon the social contract; a contract, I am quick to say, that I never formally agreed to. I refer to these episodes as Doing A Fenton.

I am a fan of certain curry dishes and will, now and then, prepare a simple curry dish of rice and chicken or salmon. I cheat and use pre-made packets of curry sauce, acquired down at the local Korean market.

We are in Covid-19 self-isolation and the little curry sauce packets have dwindled. Yet never fear for I discovered, way in the back of the freezer, a small sealed container of curry sauce circa some date in prehistory. But hey, it’s been frozen like a mammoth and it’s curry so how bad can it be?

I thaw it out, mix in some with rice, add the chicken and nuke the whole thing in the microwave for three minutes. I take it out and it sure smells like curry so I proceed to wolf it down, only stopping to glance around for potential competitors to be dispatched with the swipe of one mighty paw.

Man this curry is REAL strong and hotter than anything I have ever eaten by a factor of like a thousand. It is so hot in fact that I decide, rather late in the game, to read the list of ingredients on the side of the curry container. Rather than ingredients I see the word, “Instructions”. Uh-oh. Apparently this was a container of concentrated curry paste, designed to be added (in small portions) to other ingredients to make a curry sauce. I was eating the concentrate directly on rice and was surprised when my head burst into flames.

It’s like buying frozen concentrated orange juice, thawing it out and drinking the resultant slurry directly without adding water. I bet that would make a wicked citrus bomb, with the flavor of one billion oranges.

Depending on where you live and whether you have a yard, you may be involved with a time-honored rite of Spring called mulching. Mulch comes in various flavors but I have grown accustomed to a type called “triple-shredded hardwood mulch”. This material is a rich loam that I place around trees and shrubs and other wild areas of the yard.

I envy folks who can order their mulch in neatly wrapped plastic bags because I have to buy mine in bulk, 12 cubic yards dumped in an imposing pile on our driveway, leaving just enough room for a car to squeeze by. There it sits, daring the wheelbarrows and rakes to come and spread it far and wide.

The smell of this mulch is robust and natural; an attempt to make the yard appear to be a cultivated forest floor, like DisneyLand rising from the savanna, absent beasts and mushrooms.

One year the mulch pile apparently contained the eggs of millipedes, which then hatched and began walking around. These little critters are just pests in the sense that they can’t hurt you, but having them all over was disconcerting. I hope this year does not repeat this problem, but we’ll see.

There are some admirable folks who make their own mulch or compost. This amounts to a large plastic drum with a top that closes, into which you can put various waste products. Over time biological processes break down the material into compost or soil. We tried that some years ago but lacked the discipline to follow through. Hence our mulching bin sits forlornly near the back fence, its potential lost in hope and promises. No millipedes though, so there is that.

That time when the
Damp sheets billowed
Like sails trapped
In winsome air,
Giving up the sea
For sun and wind.

Hard to hear the music
Harder still to remember
Those times when
The world stopped
At the horizon,
And that was far enough.

Every now and then
A song is played,
And the years
Slide away like
Rain on leaves;
That very moment
Says hello again.

Our stories come
Wrapped in music
A personal symphony
Only we can remember;
The circle broken or whole
Has always been there,
One and many
And back again.