New Thing #8: Speechless

For yesterday’s New Thing, I decided to go 24 hours without talking. Midnight to midnight. No words.

Yeah.

Anyone who has met me knows that ain’t gonna happen.

I talk more than any 10 people I know. When no people are around, I talk to my pets. When they’re not around, I talk to myself.

There was no way to approach this New Thing with any hope of perfection. A couple of words were going to slip out.

I realized that at 12:36 a.m., when my first word slipped out.

Rather than throw the idea away, I promised myself a penalty. For every word I uttered Friday, I would have to donate a dollar to the Society of Professional Journalists’ legal fund. What better way to punish speech than to protect the First Amendment?

I was up to $35 by noon.

Things actually started out well. Said Guy really picked up the reigns for our breakfast conversation. I should let that happen more often. Then he left for work, calling up an “I love you.” I chased him down the stairs, frantically waving “I love you” in sign language.

“Are you giving me the Sign of the Beast?”

An hour later, everything fell apart. I couldn’t get my car out of the snow in time to make a chiropractor’s appointment, so I had to call and push it back. That cost me $29 in words. More than my copay.

But I did get through the appointment in silence. I also successfully ran voiceless errands to the dry cleaner and to my office. I carried around a little notebook with an explanation on the front page. At night, Said Guy took me to a play that was basically about how boring  people become when they are professional writers. It was probably good that I couldn’t talk after that play.

Apart from the one phone conversation, here were my mistakes:

• “Goodnight, Rosie.” (Rosie is the dog)
• “Dammit, Atticus.” (Atticus is the cat)
• “Rosie!”
• “Hello, big boy.” (To Atticus)
• “Dammit, Atticus.”
• “Are you going–”
• “Dammit, Atticus.”
• “Dammit, Atticus.”
• “Atticus!”
• “I’m not sleeping on this bullshit pillow anymore.”**

In all, $57 for freedom of expression.

*Technically there were 6 months or so when I could not speak. So this will be the first time I’ve tried to go a day without speaking when I could choose to speak.

**This I blurted out at 11:50 p.m. after I’d gone to sleep. I woke up and thought it was after midnight.

New Thing #7: Old Fashioned, please.

Now that I have to measure every TV show against The Wire, it’s hard to start watching new ones.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like The Sopranos, Weeds, Big Love, Deadwood, The Office. Hell, I’m not above watching a Friends rerun.

But when a TV show is as hyped as Mad Men, all I can think is, “It’s not The Wire.”

Not until last night did I see my first episode.

I made an Old Fashioned to celebrate. That’s how hyped Mad Men is: I know the main character’s drink before I know what he looks like.

Sorry, no fruit.

Well, now that I’ve seen him, I gotta say: I’ll be watching more Mad Men.

You probably already know it’s about sleazeball advertising in the 60s. As such, I’m guessing it will join the teduim of obligatorily “risque” not-TV television, in which most of the edge comes from some shadowy culture and characters who don’t really develop from episode to episode but just stay amoral or whatever to the point that it’s mostly schtick.

At least the dialogue is good.

I’ve only seen one episode, so I really can’t tell yet whether the show is ever going to stretch my first impressions.

But I’ll keep watching, for sure. The cocktails are just so pretty.

New Thing #6: Bonsai!

Early Wednesday morning … I sprouted my first bonsai tree! Let not my dorkish plant obsession dilute the piss and vinegar in your day unless you have succeeded in germinating anything from seed. It’s a big deal.

For Valentine’s Day, Said Guy gave me a Miniature Morning Dawn Redwood Forest he bought at Trifecta, an awesome gift and flower shop in SLC. No kidding, coworkers actually hung around my desk to admire the flower arrangements he’s sent to me from Trifecta, and the response, rather than “Awww!” was “WOW.” I’m sooo not picky about flowers (in an attempt to be cool, I bought a bunch of carnations at a junior high dance and ate them), and even I could tell that their flowers were awesome. If you want to seem like a discerning dude, buy your flowers and presents here (and tell Lindsay and Pam that Erin said hi).

Anyway, the bonzai kit came from their gift shop, and it’s made by Potting Shed Creations, of Troy, Idaho. According to the description, the Morning Dawn Redwood was only known as a fossil until a Chinese botanist rediscovered it in the 1940s.

I’m so excited for it to grow up! I’ve got more than 40 plants (I know, I know), but no bonsais and nothing that was previously thought to be extinct.

Yay for green sprouts and Chinese botanists!

New Thing #5: Exorcising Gargamel

I have never learned a single piece of music by Brahms. Not the lullaby, not the requiem, nothing.

The more Brahms I hear, the more convinced I am that he was a Smurf. I keep giving him chances to make me shake my butt, and instead he always brings this tooty-fruity gnome flower festival shit. A few weeks ago, Said Guy took me to see a violin concerto with the Utah Symphony, and the only interesting part was when the violin (a centuries-old Stradivarius “generously on loan” from some foundation, according to the program) broke during the fast part at the end. The soloist snatched the concertmaster’s violin out from under his chin so she could finish the show and we all could finally move on to some kick-ass Shostakovich.

But there is one sweet Brahms intermezzo I’ve always wanted to learn on piano. I started yesterday.

Here is the first line I’ve ever learned of any piece of music by Brahms.

Sorry so tinny. It sounds a lot less bangy and more sensitive in real life. And I’m still trying to work out the pedaling into the second full measure, and how do I accommodate the crescendo and decrescendo in measures 3 & 4 while still making the whole line sound like one unified phrase, and I nearly forgot how much I liked thinking through a new piece of music!

Will update when I’ve got the whole thing down. It might take awhile.

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The New Things

New Thing #4: And nobody called 911

To fully appreciate Monday’s New Thing, you must understand my history with 911 emergency dispatch.

I’ve called 911 three times. Always for the fire department. Most recently was when the house next door was burning down in 2007.

Before that was in 2006, when the vice mayor of Saginaw ordered her handyman to blow up her Mercedes in the backyard so she could collect the insurance. My window overlooked the scene. The ground shook when the gas tank caught fire. There was a great ball of fire, like in the movies.

My first 911 call was in high school, when I tried to make grilled cheese sandwiches. I didn’t butter the bread on my first try, so it charred to the pan. I tried again with butter, but the bread still stuck to the black patches. I wondered, was this a job for canola oil? I filled the pan about an inch deep and tossed in the sandwich.

It turned black in seconds and somehow activated the grease to a rolling boil that splashed onto the stove.

OK. I’d tried everything. Time to give up and rinse the pan.

With cold water.

POW!

Hot oil splattered onto my arms and continued blasting the sink area as I fled the kitchen and grabbed the phone.

“911 Emergency Dispatch. What is your emergency?”

It is here I must admit that the blackened cheese sandwich was not the first thing I’d ever deep-fried. There was doughnut day in 7th grade home-ec, but I ended up in the nurse’s office almost immediately for burn treatment and missed the no-cold-water discussion. Which probably never happened anyway, as this was the home-ec class where kids set fire to the centerpieces during the end-of-term Tea Party.

Anyway.

It was with apprehension that I approached the samosas I had so femininely pieced together this weekend. But I rolled up my sleeves, poured that half-gallon of oil into the wok, and voila!

For the first time, I deep-fried my own food without a single call to the fire department.

My home will forever smell like a Little League concession stand, and the wok is now encrusted with a rim of booger-looking cement. But the samosas tasted like … samosas!

This will be my last post on food for awhile. I still need to be able to wear clothes.