My Fry-Chef Facial Ornament Fends off Corona

It's ugly as sin and, in non-pandemic times, worth less than one percent of the almost-thirteen euros I shelled out for it. It was advertised as a mask for reducing splatter when cooking. The photo, however, depicted a girl in a surgical mask, accessorized with the splatter guard.

I figured:
(1) It'll fit around my head with the attached elastic band--better than the twine-and-rubber-band arrangement I made for myself.
(2) It covers my entire face--if someone coughs on the back of my head (but I'd never let them get close enough to try) I might still be okay
(3) It's better than nothing. Even though the plastic is so grainy I couldn't tell if the potato chips I was purchasing for my vegan child passed muster.

See for yourself:

Keeps off rain--so keeps out somebody's sneeze?

I see why Amazon's not selling this one anymore. Plus, it's smaller than it looked in the ad--but desperate times call for desperate measures. Having just retrieved a roll of plastic "tarpaulin" from the package shop, I plan on making a few masks of my own. Bigger, clearer plastic, maybe even better.

P.S. In all fairness, the thing is better than I realized at first--a thin layer of additional plastic made itself known--I thought I was looking at a sticky price tag residue--and when I removed that, the thin layer of plastic came off. So the mask is now clearer. Not very thick plastic, but hey--still keeps off rain. And so, presumably, viruses.

I Dream of Facepalming

--And it's not always a nightmare. Sometimes it's happy. I cringed when I saw Anthony Fauci placing his hand on his forehead in a reserved effort to cope with POTUS. I was yelling at the TV, "Take your hand off your face! We need you! We remember what you did for AIDS research and treatment!" But I dream of the day when I can scratch my nose. When I don't think twice about doing so, or even notice that I've scratched it. I learn new skills--wonder if I can unroll toilet paper with my elbows? How long do I have to stay six feet away from people in the park, and does it count if I hold my breath when I have to pass someone with only two feet between us?
Invisible enemies are the stuff of science fiction, normally. A few weeks ago all our talk was off getting a tree surgeon for the dead pine in the yard, finding a service that did basement mold, but even then our neighbor said, "oh, you could do it yourself if you could get those N95 masks--"
--"what are those?"I asked.
"Oh, but you can't get them now anyway," he said, "there's some new illness." We had all heard something about some new illness and I figured the basement could wait.
The basement is waiting, along with everything else. 
I read aloud to one of my kids today. When you're concentrating on turning pages, you're not touching your face. 
It was a good book, too.

The Lingo of Lockdown

In America,"Lockdown" conjures up rioting prisoners getting shoved back into their cells, usually in solitary. Or  Jody Foster behind that steel door in Panic Room, trying to fend off marauders. "Lockdown" conveys grim, toxic masculinity. But in England--in Europe--the term is neutral, descriptive, even reassuring. For Americans, "Sheltering in Place" sounds more romantic. Kind of like an actual choice instead of an absolute necessity. As if we were dreamily basking in our solitude instead of exulting when Amazon finally has toilet paper again for a somewhat reasonable price. "Sheltering in place" is a mermaid in an underground cave, waiting for her prince to swim in so the two of them can flipper their way through the ocean instead of staying at the back of the cave where they belong.
Meanwhile, I sit home reveling in lockdown, but fashioning a face mask from a piece of vinyl report cover. I'll wear it when I have to go to the doctor's office in a few weeks.
If they still have doctor's offices in a few weeks. Will we have consumed our last can of beans? Will I be planting vegetables in our back yard--and trying to keep the local moles and mice from eating all of them?
Or will those teenagers partying in Florida miraculously avoid infecting everyone and will things go back to some kind of normal? It's been a long time since we had a plague to which everyone can relate. Ronald Reagan pandered to the 25%-and-growing number of Evangelical Americans when he allowed AIDS to be considered God's punishment to sinners. This plague is different--anyone who sneezes can pass it on. You don't have to do anything dirty for which people can blame you to catch it. 
But herding people into their homes is easier to do in rule-abiding societies, like Germany. Or totalitarian ones, like China. I've heard tell of French citizens spitting at policemen who tell them to go home; like the oblivious partying Spring Break crowd in Florida, these Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité types are a thing of the West--the part of the world most prone to mistaking precautionary measures as infringements on personal freedoms. 
These current concerns--personal freedoms and social safety--have their precedent:
I do hope this reminds the party crowd that they are dancing with the devil, aka death. 
Or how about this--

Might as well close with Wikipedia's reminder to stay home, and contemplate the bad old days:
The deathly horrors of the 14th century such as recurring famines, the Hundred Years' War in France, and, most of all, the Black Death, were culturally assimilated throughout Europe. The omnipresent possibility of sudden and painful death increased the religious desire for penance, but it also evoked a hysterical desire for amusement while still possible; a last dance as cold comfort. The danse macabre combines both desires: in many ways similar to the mediaeval mystery plays, the dance-with-death allegory was originally a didactic dialogue poem to remind people of the inevitability of death and to advise them strongly to be prepared at all times for death (see memento mori and Ars moriendi). 

Corona Fashion: Safety, Infection-Style

Back in the day, the Bubonic-plague day, doctors dressed like this:

The gloves, leather because latex hadn't been invented. The beak on the mask to store rosemary, cloves, cinnamon, and other spices thought to dispel infection. You can still buy, today, or make for yourself, "thieves oil," a slightly greasy concoction containing these herbs (often others as well) that was originally used by persons who wished to rob the pockets of the dead. Over the centuries, the notion that this stuff prevents infection has stayed with us. It smells like a Christmas cookie and is better than nothing if you run out of hand sanitizer and soap, and when Amazon still hasn't delivered the final ingredient, hydrogen peroxide, of the hand sanitizer you're planning to make at home.
I go for the Bubonic plague doctor's coverall look. Instead of a long black robe and that wide-brimmed hat, I used my hooded raincoat. Since Amazon also isn't delivering the dental face mask I ordered for another month, I've put together my own, using a vinyl sheet from a folder designed to protect term papers, some bubble wrap, tape, twine, and rubber bands. When I go to Edeka--which I've got to do, since nobody's delivering right now--this will be my fashion statement--and I won't forget my latex gloves:

Okay, not a fashion statement--better than nothing, though.

I pull the hood of the raincoat tight, so the ends of the mask jutting out in this photo round my chin and I look like I'm wearing a tube. Yes, I can breathe, though I've added a homemade face mask--folded up and taped a Siemens vacuum cleaner bag--not pictured here. The Wirecutter says to use only under "desperate" circumstances--I now consider my upcoming trip to the local Edeka and the pharmacy a desperate circumstance. This mask, without my welder-chic thing, above, is only 4% less effective than the real thing, which is on backorder from Amazon. But I'm not photographing myself in my Siemans accessory--definitely doesn't pretty me up.


P.S. For solid medical advice--the salient point being wear a mask to remind you not to touch your face, and washing your hands, see this front-line Cornell-Weill doctor's talk:

Our Social-Distance Meals

The larder, today: bottom to top--that turquoise envelope can be added to two and a fourth cups of rice to make six servings of coconut rice--three of which can be frozen. Next shelf: you can never have too many cans of chick peas. Or chicken broth. Moving up: coconut milk and tomato-sauce collection. Olives. Honey. The rest is mostly beans and sauces--as many as we could think of. Coriander. Various pestos. Mustard. Sunflower seeds. Rice, Soy sauce. Cous-cous, bulgur. Scottish oat cakes. Eggplant, crackers, falafel. Soups. The noodles and the rest of the rice take up another cabinet. Hungry yet? We wish we could ask people over. We froze lentil stew, too.

Enough variety?

No matter how well we eat--at the moment we're eating very well--we all miss dinner parties and impromptu visits. Back on the fifteenth, we held our very last dinner party. A pleasant memory, and as of today, all of us still feel healthy. Instead of company, instead of conversation, we have Grey's Anatomy. Walks, keeping our massive distances. Naps. Books to escape the situation, books to put is in the middle of it. We are all alone together.

In Plague Times

It's a good time to read a fantastic Italian tale--The Decameron--set in fourteenth-century Florence, Italy, during an epidemic of Bubonic plague. Ten young people, so Boccaccio's story begins, decide to self-isolate in an uninhabited villa outside the city in hopes avoiding a death just as awful, and even uglier, than that caused by corona virus. Without social media or any other modern convenience, they keep their spirits up by telling stories, and that's the meaning of the title, drawn from the Greek, which translates as ten stories in ten days. The seven young women and three young men avoid all physical contact, but vent their feelings in a series of ravishingly erotic and funny yarns, with just a few tragic ones thrown in for contrast. The book inspired Chaucer's raciest stories, like the Miller's Tale, involving a gorgeous young woman, her two suitors, and her hapless husband--that's the G-rated version of the tale. 

In my latex hospital-grade gloves--worn partly for protection, partly to remind me not to touch my face--I went to the local DM, where we had to stand outside in a line--we chose to stand about three feet apart from each other--because only three or four customers were allowed in the store at once. I'm glad I ordered toilet paper from Amazon while I still could, along with the ingredients for hand sanitizer. 

When I was out on the street, a man standing a good fifteen or twenty feet away sneezed loudly without covering his nose and then, for good measure, coughed. I edged as far away as possible, darting into Edeka where there's still plenty of produce but no paper products of any kind. Occasionally passing people on the street, I held my breath. 

Germany has 11,973 cases, up 2,606 since yesterday, and the U.S. 7,687, up 1,276. But Germany has lost 28 people to corona virus, and the U.S. 117--already. 

Update, March 21: According to World-0-Meter, the USA now has 19,774 cases, 391 new since yesterday, and 275 deaths. America has almost caught up to Germany, which has 19,848 cases, 68 deaths.
We are all mortal, but Germany excels at planning, managing, organizing, cleaning, and rule-following--traits that, when they emerge in relation to any art form, are profoundly destructive.

But in an epidemic, these annoyances are just the ticket. I can't think of a location I'd rather  contract this illness in, if I were compelled to do so. I hope, of course, that I'm among the lucky, but time will tell.

Courting Coronavirus: Eleven Recently Observed Methods

(1) Use your finger to push the button opening the tram door. With that very same finger, rub your eye or scratch your nose.
(2) Forget that you have a perfectly good elbow for turning on light switches, punching elevator buttons, and even opening tram doors. Take the finger already guilty of touching unsanitized surfaces, the one with which you also rubbed your nose, and boink the elevator button--then, for good measure, use it on the copier everyone else uses.
(3) Don't use gloves or hand sanitizer.
(4) Hear someone sneeze a row ahead of you? Turn your head languidly in their direction; absorb the sneeze as you would spring rain.
(5) Grab the pole in the tram/subway/bus. Then let go and, with the same hand that just grasped that pole, absent-mindedly rub your nose/cheek/mouth/eyes. While you're at it, and in tandem with the cough you've just heard in the next row, yawn. Bask in droplets from that cough.
(6) Don't wash your hands.
(7) When your kid calls to tell his music/sports/ballet/afternoon activity of your choice/teacher to say he's got a bad cold and has to cancel, say: "In case you have Corona virus, please don't list me as one of your contacts, because I want to go on vacation next week."
(8) Shake hands with everybody, as usual. Laugh when they squirt on hand sanitizer. Shrug amiably and rub your chin, right below your lip, with the same hand.
(9) Someone three feet away on the train platform sniffles, sneezes, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. Fail to notice him because you're texting someone. Walk toward the sound of the sneeze. 
(10) Enthusiastically hug each and every one of your friends.  
(11) If you get the chance, shake hands with POTUS, the way all those Republicans were doing, the ones among the group known to be exposed to someone who was sick. Share the love.

P.S. I can scratch my nose with my shoulder. Yay, me.

Keep Calm and Combat Corona Virus

Today's New York Times reports 307 American cases of corona virus and 17 deaths. My New York friends confess to buying N95 masks online.
Here I sit in North Rhine Westphalia, the smallish (by American standards) German state (teeny bit bigger than Maryland) boasting the same number of cases, and I have yet to see one of those masks on the street. A few wear Grey's-Anatomy-style surgical masks, the ones that won't prevent you from catching anything although they might prevent you from passing on what you've caught. If I hear someone cough two rows ahead in the train, I turn my head the other way and maybe pull my coat up around my nose. Rub on a little hand sanitizer and a little 10% urea hand creme.
Yes, toilet paper has a way of disappearing from grocery and drug store shelves--also pasta, flour, and packaged foods. But Amazon delivers toilet paper for reasonable prices, scalpers prices only for hand sanitizer and those Grey's-Anatomy masks.
Although Germany is around three times bigger than New York state,* the whole country fits into the state of Texas, with room to spare. But the folks in NRW are still riding the trams and the regional railroad, and most of us are still going to work and to school. 
The contrast--307 cases as an American national emergency, as opposed to 300 as a cause for measured concern in the much smaller state of a much smaller country, double that in the whole country--strikes me. Germans are practical. Their tendency to plan, to tabulate, to organize everything into the ground, their lack of spontaneity, can be pretty debilitating when they're trying to write essays. But these national traits are great for combating hysteria. Most Germans don't do hysteria. You only sense they're freaked out because they're planning and organizing even more than usual. They'll load up on nonperishable necessities, but they'll forget they're not supposed to offer a handshake, and laugh when you whip out your hand sanitizer. 
Americans see themselves as special. Exceptions to the rule. People who don't lose wars, succumb to diseases, or elect tyrants. When I think of Afghanistan and Vietnam (for starters), AIDS, especially during Ronald Reagan's blighted years in office, a time when that virus could have been controlled and wasn't, and when I think of the not-my-president who is anything but a teddy bear but who now has a bear marketed in his name--I curse American exceptionalism. It might be okay in a context or two--so great at junk food! So great at making money! So great at inventing things! But not: "How could this happen? And to us?" I blame that sentiment for what seems to me an extraordinary level of fear among Americans.







*Thank you, MyLifeElsewhere, for statistics. 

News Item: Trump Uses Five-Syllable Word!

"Inappropriate," the first word of more than three syllables that POTUS has ever enunciated in public, is the one that ought to be branded across his forehead. Why's he using it to  undermine the smartest women on the supreme court? He's counting on his base knowing that word, liking that word, feeling empowered by that word. It goes a long way, that desert island word.  If I could choose only one word to describe the gangster in the oval office, "inappropriate" would do. His imperial ambitions. The latest plague has an uncannily appropriate name for the crown he wants on his head. Oedipus. We're living a myth: when the king is sick, the land is sick. The Fisher King. Shakespeare's Richard II. All far better men than he who shall not be named. Watch this--and wouldn't it be great if we could wave our wands, shout "Riddikulus" whenever the POTUS below emerged from his lair and turn him into a stuffed animal?

At the German Post Office: the Lone Trump-Worshipper

When I ducked into the post office at Hauptbahnhof (the main train station) I was relieved to be getting out of the chilly, windy weather, the gray clouds, into this warm, yellow-walled, tidily German center of efficiency.
But the postal clerk raised his eyebrows at a letter addressed to my American bank, observing, "Oh! Trump! America!" He was smiling. Not frowning.
I said I hadn't voted for Trump. He shook his head, apparently wondering why. "Aber er hat so viel gemacht!" (But he's done so much!")
My eyes widened. Surely the clerk didn't mean this. But then he added, with obvious admiration, "Er hat alles aufgeräumt!" ("He's cleaned up everything.")
I said I didn't like Trump. 
"Und er ist so lustig!" ("And he's so funny!") babbled the clerk. 
In English, I blurted, "He's a gangster." But the only obvious effect (judging by the way the clerk giggled in glee), was that he found me even more amusing than Trump.
"I hate his guts," I added, also in English. The clerk clapped his hands in delight, almost choking with laughter.
It's back to telling folks I'm Canadian.

The Cowboy or The Gangster?

Americans have elected a number of cowboy presidents: Andrew Jackson, who fought duels defending his wife's honor and retained bullets in his chest, Teddy Roosevelt, who charged up San Juan Hill with his rough riders and had "a bully fight,"  Dwight D. Eisenhower, with his ten gallon hat, his Zane Grey mysteries, and his five-star general status, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Texan Supreme, whom Jacqueline Kennedy allegedly referred to as "Colonel Corn Pone," and the George Bushes.
We've never had a gangster president before, and I'm hoping Trump is an aberration, not the beginning of a trend. If Roger Stone gets off scot free, then nothing's new. The kind of person who would do business with Roger Stone is the kind of person I'd prefer never to meet in a dark alley. Gangsters never disclose their income tax returns and never pay taxes. Gangsters get away with saying they can shoot someone on Fifth avenue and no one will care. Gangsters grab women wherever they want, and say things like, "if she weren't my daughter I'd date her," the way Trump does. Gangsters bully foreign leaders into doing their dirty work. Gangsters rig elections. If the cowboy was a trend, is the gangster the new one? Will it spread like the corona virus? Or end like this?

A Maurice Sendak Impeachment

"Because he can," is the reality of Donald Trump, David Leonhardt remarks in an OP-ED piece for The New York Times. The losing side cares a great deal, and I'm still hoping that the motif of the American underdog who, against all odds, wins the day--I'm hoping that motif will weave itself into a story that ends with the would-be emperor being deposed. Even Mike Pence would be better than this thing we call a POTUS. When I listen to the Republicans and to the president's lawyers, I can't help but remember Maurice Sendak's grumpy child, Pierre, who answers his mother's every question with "I don't care": 

The Republican Party these days, is Pierre, but we'll all get swallowed by the lion. Since we're not living in a children's story, the lion's not going to burp us up and give us a chance to say "I care," before politely bringing us home and staying on as a weekend guest. We can care about politics, we can care about issues instead of identities, we can create yet another lone heroic underdog, a Mr. or Ms. Smith who comes to Washington to care, a person who will persuade the wavering Republicans to waver no more, but to care more about the country's survival than they do about their political careers.

This Doesn't Even Happen on Gray's Anatomy: "Me, Too" or Just a Moron?

I've just been re-watching the scene in which Izzie cuts Denny's LVAD wire so she can document a precipitous decline and snag him that new heart. Operatic tears coursing down her cheeks, Izzie begs Denny to let her "save" him this way, because she'll be all alone without him. Hot sex scenes in on-call rooms (my doctor friends tell me the real rooms have mice and disgusting sheets--you'd as soon sleep in them as slit your throat) get more air time than medical treatments, but the show's got some great drama and a host of medical moments that saved lives; there was the woman who diagnosed her own breast cancer after a Gray's Anatomy episode (her doctor had said "that's just a clogged milk duct," and he was wrong, sisters, he was wrong.)
What went wrong in my medical world today almost rivals what went wrong in Izzie's decision-making. At nine this morning, I went in for my monthly Faslodex injections and felt lucky to get the nurse who gives unfailingly painless ones. I was lying on the table with a large needle inserted in my rear end when a knock came at the door. A physician, male, didn't wait for the nurse to speak, just opened the door--wide--so that I could see feet walking past in the hall, and the heads at the other end of those feet could see parts of me that nobody sees without a medical or seriously romantic reason. He left the door open, appeared either to be staring through me as if I were not there, or having a good stare. He said something about wanting to use the computer. He entered. He used the computer. He complained about his day. Why didn't I scream at the jerk? The sense that I'd better not  disturb the nurse's steady hand--the expression on her face registered the shock we both felt--that needle still buried in my butt, and the necessity of waiting for it to be withdrawn,  the wound bandaged, and the other needle inserted, the irritating reality that I had to remain absolutely still or injure myself, hindered me from leaping to my feet and clocking the guy. 
Incredibly, he remained for the entire process of me getting my shots. I asked the nurse for his name; I asked whether he had a right to enter the room under the circumstances he did, and she assured me that he did not. 
As an American living in Germany for over twenty years, I'm often stymied by German notions of privacy. Sometimes Germans seem to feel that any mention of private life is off limits. In medical settings, however, I've been handed lab results in hallways filled with other doctors and patients who get to hear all about how low my neutrophil count is or whether I need hemoglobin. My name is called in waiting rooms when I go for my blood tests. Today's incident seems in a class all by itself. A university hospital, known for its oncology department, a doctor whose internet ratings seem impeccable--what the hell was the man thinking? "Never assume they're thinking," said an old friend, and yeah, I guess I shouldn't.

Remembering My Husband, Again

When my husband and I had been married for a few weeks, he had to go to a funeral. This was a duty call—an old lady whom he did not know well. When he left our house, he was eager to come back soon and have another champagne-swilling newlywed dinner with me. Instead, he returned quietly, somber, almost in tears.

            “What’s the matter?” I asked.

            “I don’t want to think of the day when one of us will be without the other,” he said. A chill went through me but we were so happy to see each other again that we quickly pushed the incident out of our heads. I knew about the weak lungs but he seemed hale and hearty—was hale and hearty for years. He was far more worried about how I would feel without him than about how he would feel when his lungs failed him, as we feared they might. To the last, the moments in his hospital room when he wanted to tell me what office to go to in Limbecker Platz to discuss my pension and I, watching his oxygen levels plummet from a low but stable seventy to a worrisome fifty-nine, wanted him to rest, his first concern was always me and our children, never himself.

 In Philip Pullman’s amazing steampunk novel, The Amber Spyglass, an angel flies day and night to reach the adamantine castle of the Miltonic commander of a mission to unite worlds a corrupt church is trying to keep apart. The angel struggles to deliver a military secret while an impatient young Lucifer throws herbs on a fire to help this celestial being hold himself together long enough to impart the information. Just as the angel is struggling to get out one more sentence, an orderly knocks at the door. The brief gust of air caused by the orderly’s entrance is fatal: the angel disperses into atoms, vanishing, his last breath offered up to the cause for which he’s sacrificed everything. This angel and his single-minded devotion to his cause remind me strongly of Josef.

            In my husband’s last hours, when he urgently discussed the odd repairs needed for our elderly home, our taxes, we took breaks, during which I urged him to rest; we held hands and told the jokes we always told about our lives, our children, our work. Finally, I promised I’d be back early in the morning. We’d finish discussing these things then. I was afraid for him, and knew that when he lay down and rested his oxygen levels rose. I felt he wouldn’t rest unless I left. “Maybe I can do more a little later,” he said. “I’ll try to get on my side now.” Those were his last words to me before, like Philip Pullman’s character, he dissolved.

            I think of one of Josef’s favorite poets, Walt Whitman, who said this about dying:

I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the runaway sun;
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love;
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean;
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.

           

A Very Merry Megxit and a Happy Haxit: Bon Voyage

They really are too good for the Royals, especially that creepy Uncle Andrew--and how could Elizabeth have loved this dilettantish pedophile more than thoughtful Charles?
Naturally Meghan and Harry announced their new role without asking Grandma first. Grannie's a queen, and queens tend to like to do things their own way. The queen's probably not evil, but if there's a grain of truth in The Crown, and I suspect there's at least a grain, then family feeling--all feeling--tends to be hardened into duty. Her idea of duty. During the Aberfan coal mine disaster of 1966, in which over a hundred children and many adults died, the queen delayed her visit to the village for eight days, and then, at least according to version of events depicted on The Crown,  felt unable to feel any emotion-- or to do more than squeeze out a single fake tear. Her emotional life appears limited; she's apparently shut it down in order to do her duty. Meghan Markle, letting go of the Royals, remarked, "I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip. I tried, I really tried. But I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging.” Exactly. Elizabeth seems to have been willing to pay that price because she believed she had no alternative. What would have happened if Harry and Meghan had followed protocol and allowed her to make all arrangements? Letting her take the lead might have been like letting Tony Soprano sing. All her mechanisms for taking control, and I'm imagining the worst, like making it impossible to fly baby Archie to Canada, could have come into play. All in the service of the gigantically expensive institution that divides Britons the way Trump divides Americans. Harry and Meghan have imagination and talent. My money's on them as global ambassadors. Madame Tussaud's just dumped their wax figures. Petty, yeah--but underscores the point that these two are neither wax figures nor stuffed shirts--they're doers. I bet they'll do something wonderful.

The German Dryer and How We Fixed it

The German dryer (a Miele, long-suffering, going on at least its eighteenth year) stopped drying things. My daughter and I gazed into its slightly malodorous innards, removed the still-wet towels, and tried to diagnose. Could she have forgotten to put in that weird triangular water-holder peculiar to the German dryer? 
Like German forms, German taxes, German, dare I say, personalities, the German dryer is complicated. Could it, I asked softly, be suffering from the pillow that disgorged its feathers? My fault for washing the thing. And trying to dry it instead of hanging it out in the only occasionally sunny back yard.
But I'd vacuumed the dryer's innards. Or so I thought.
Between the instruction booklet, which we perused, and the faintly-remembered directions of a German friend who'd once fixed the thing, we figured out that you have to take a ruler or a screwdriver or some piece of plastic and pop open a rectangular door at the base of the dryer--a door, I hasten to add, that doesn't look like one, has no handle, and cannot be opened by pressing on one corner. We used a screwdriver. Behind that door was--guess what?--another door, modeled like the kind of wall you'd expect to see from the Soviet side of Berlin back in the day. Once we'd unlatched this second inner portcullis, we found a contraption the size of a toaster--in fact, it looked as though it wanted to be a toaster--filled with damp dust bunnies and feathers. 
The manual said one was supposed to empty and clean this thingamajig around every six months. Today was the second time in its very long career, one filled with sand and chewing gum, that it had been cleaned. 
We were calculating dryer prices before I cleaned the thing. I didn't expect our poor mistreated dryer to work, ever again, clean or not. I also thought I'd probably broken the vacuum cleaner by forcing it to inhale damp stuff. But German machines are tough enough to endure American incompetence and forge ahead. And this one has. 
Yay! I wonder how many more years our poor dryer will put up with us? My German friends have calculated a total life span of approximately twenty-five years. That is one tough machine. A Miele, folks. The kind that beats Maytag any day.

Dinner for One: a New Twist

Unlike most Americans, I watched Dinner for One (and its parodies, especially Döner for One) every year with my German husband. This year he wasn't there, and I reinterpreted Miss Sophie, the nonagenarian with the imaginary friends, whose butler manfully assumes both their four different accents and personalities as well as the considerable quantities of alcohol each gentleman supposedly consumes. Heroically, he's prepared to undergo horizontal gymnastics with the energetic Miss Sophie, winking at the audience as he leads her up the staircase and utters the famous question: "Same procedure as last year?" In her dignified way, she remonstrates, "Same procedure as every year, James," and she's clearly looking forward to a good time, even as the audience hopes James won't be incapacitated by the vast quantifies of booze he's drunk. 
This year I thought about Miss Sophie outliving all her boyfriends. But she does just what any bereaved woman naturally does--I've been doing a great deal of this myself--she talks to the dear departed (even gets her butler to talk to them!) I talk to photos of my husband, I talk to him when I feel the urge as I'm cooking or when I wake up or when I'm taking a walk. I still feel mildly surprised that he doesn't answer, but my one-sided conversation reminds me of how nice it felt when he was listening, smiling, answering, asking questions of his own. To have outlived four serious boyfriends and still get a bang, so to speak, out of the butler bespeaks a certain fortitude, a heroism, a feminist triumph even. Miss Sophie was never crushed by grief--one feels that in her quiet comments on the soup and her decisiveness about the wine. She's a woman who has learned to live with sadness and make the most of what she has. My Southern father used to say, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," but what else has Miss Sophie done with James?
And finally Netflix has its own version of this gem. I with I'd bought myself one of those "Dinner for One" coffee mugs I saw on the way home today . . . I can just see pouring myself a little red wine in one of those while watching this:

When Advertising and Billing Don't Connect

We're rolling through a lovely landscape on our way to see lovely relatives, but the latest Christmas mail was the last thing I expected. The company that rented my recently-deceased husband his oxygen tanks, which we informed of his death in November, and which sent three servicemen, all of whom offered condolences, to pick up leftover tanks and a breathing apparatus,  just sent a ten-percent-off special with the last bill we have to pay. You would think some office worker or administrator might have registered the fact that we no longer need oxygen products--especially not those featuring a cheerful elderly gent holding red Christmas tree ornaments, apparently thrilled to be offered a whole ten percent off his next set of tanks. His grin radiates the kind of excitement I associate with men and football games. Speaking of which, my husband loved football. I hated it, but loved to watch him watching it. Tossing the ten-percent special into the trash, I think how he'd have found the incident amusing, and I smile instead of crying. He would have raised a glass of red wine with me and laughed. I hope that wherever he is, he can still laugh.

Impeachment Notes

Impeachment was once tried on Trumpster
He burped and transferred to a dumpster
The U.S. of A
Which I'm happy to say
I left when I still was a youngster.

I'm going to bed now, hoping that some miracle will occur, that Republicans will side with Democrats and dump President Unmentionable.
Sweet dreams to all.

The Mouse in My House

 A tail glimpsed in the living room. 
"Are you sure that's what you saw?" 
Yes, my teenager was sure. I remember my husband setting traps ten years ago when we'd seen a little brown mouse charge in from the garden. We'd left our glass door open. And the traps snapped on the necks of the little gullibles who'd gone for the sliver of cheese. My husband swung the furry things at me and got a kick out of my scream.
But this time is different. I can't set traps. Doing laundry down in the cellar, I turned to see a sudden brown beady eye. I gasped, grabbed a plastic bucket, and escorted the very tiny critter out to the garden, where I sincerely hoped some predator would consume it in one gulp. 
Today the exterminator came with his orange labels, his plastic boxes, his bait that looks tasty and "contains anti-coagulants."
"They'll dry out," he explains, "but they won't stink." The only thing, he adds cautiously, is that you might, say, find one in a corner. Or pull out a book from the shelf only to discover a desiccated  critter. 
"But, ewwww," I say.
He smiles. Mr. Experience. I remembered a song of my youth: