Frog Blog

the phone rang. in my dream, the first ring didn’t make sense; the first half of the second ring was like a bad omen; the second half of the second ring was a dose of reality; and the third ring delivered fear that something terrible had happened. who had died? was someone in an accident? was there a fire somewhere?

it turned out to be honeywell security, calling to tell B that the alarm was going off at the shop where he works. B is the second name on the policy; when honeywell called B’s boss (the owner of the shop) they only got his answering machine; their policy is to keep calling whoever is on their list until someone answers.

the conversation went like this:

B: hullo? yes, this is B. (me: ok, it’s not someone related to me.) B: yes, i’m an employee there. (me: huh, it’s about the shop.) B: yes, ok, if that’s what’s normal. (honeywell asked if they should call in dispatch to the alarm going off.)

i’m glad it was nothing, but i still couldn’t fall back asleep. here’s what kept me up: everyone i know and love is one day going to die, and i sure hope i don’t find out in the middle of the night. i’d be so vulnerable: no glasses, no sense of time, total darkness, grogginess, disbelief. and what does one do at 2:45 in the morning? if something happened close by, i could go to the hospital. but what if the catastrophe is far away? would i call the airlines and book a flight immediately? would i log on to expedia? would you go back to sleep? i’d probably get up, make some tea, think, and do. i’m definitely a doer when it’s important.

i eat ramen on three occasions: when my mouth is numb after visiting the dentist (a recurring theme as of late in this blog), when i’m sick and when i’m feeling a combination of sad nostalgia coupled with there not being anything else to eat in the house.

i ate ramen this past friday night due to reason no. 2— i’m sick, with a cold, in mid-june! i blame my coworker who’s been hacking and coughing all over the office. the weather has been marginal, too: lots of windy, damp days followed by more windy, damp days. nevertheless, i’m a bit surprised to be sick at this time of year. so ramen it was. it’s my comfort food, like engish muffins with butter and jam, like cheerios, like fish & chips, like a lovely cup of tea with milk and sugar.

growing up i ate a lot more ramen than now. it was in college when i realized it’s not the healthiest thing to eat— i read the ingredients list on the little packet of seasoning freshman year and learned what msg was all about. in high school, however, ramen was a staple for me, especially on friday nights.

my mother never enjoyed cooking much; she did it out of neccessity and did it fairly well— we had plenty of fruits and vegetables growing up— but her lack of enthusiasm for the culinary arts rubbed off on me. i hate cooking, and i hate cooking for one. my mom cooked all week but on friday nights, my brother and i were on our own for dinner.

my mother and step-father have spent nearly every friday night since 1987 at my step-father’s parents’ house. from 6 pm to whenever everyone goes home, my stepfather’s mom, J, has hosted friends, family and whoever else wants to come over to a friday night social. the numbers have fluctuated throughout the years, but each friday night you can count on someone showing up with a booze bag full of canadian mist or popov vodka and mixers, cheese loaves and ritz crackers, swedish meatballs and other finger foods for a celebration of the end of the week. J has a great big deck where everyone sits in the summer, and a great big round dining room table where everyone sits in the winter.

when we were young, my brother and i used to go and watch “TGIF” friday sitcoms on abc— “full house” and that show with erkel. J had plenty of brach’s candy mix for us to eat, too. (cavities?) the older my brother and i became, though, the less we’d go down to friday nights. we’d spend the night at friend’s houses or they spend the night with us. sometimes mom got us a pizza (or two, from little caeser’s), but on the nights when i didn’t have any plans, i’d fix myself a bowl of ramen.

you can’t cook it for too long or the noodles get all limp and smooshy. cook it for 2 minutes like the package says will get you noodles that taste like cardboard crackers. you have to cook it for at least 4 minutes, until half the noodles look glassy. oriental flavor is the best, but for a long time i only ate the chicken flavor. shrimp is the worst. vegetable is non-descript.

growing up we had three different dogs: sandy, a purebred golden retriever (very strawberry blond in color), brandy, one of sandy’s pups, and shadow, a black lab. brandy was hit by a car and died when i was in eighth grade, so we got shadow, a 6-month old happy girl who the dog catcher had been chasing for a couple of weeks. when she caught her, we got her, and she was my favorite of the bunch.

shadow was a funny one: at one point she permanently bent her tail out of whack because she wagged it so much and whacked it into the radiator too many times; she’d be so happy to see us when we came home that she’d walk in a u-shape because her tail would go one way and her body would go the other. i loved that dog. i called her litle hambone, penny and shadow-shad.

whenever i made ramen, she’ be with me in the kitchen, whining, dancing, wacking the radiator with her tail, sooo excited to possibly taste what i was making, begging for a bite or a lick. i’d rile her up: “ooh, shadow-shad,” i’d coo, “ooh! who’s getting ramen!” i’d pour out the noodles into my bowl and add the right amount of soup (too much soup in the ramen makes, well, soup, and i’m more of a plain noodles gal). i’d dump the rest of the hot, (recently boiling!) soup into her bowl and tell her to wait, wait! because it’s hot. i’d hold her collar and wedge in between the fridge and the radiator to where her bowl was, pour in the soup, and try to hold her back. but i never could. she’d lunge for it, start to drink then stop because it was so hot, then would be so excited and forget and start eating again, burning her tongue but ecstatic to have such a treat. shadow-shad, my love, my little hambone.

“katie & peter” and “sunset tan” on E!

i’m fascinated by katie price. i can’t tell if she’s on something or really dumb or just doesn’t feel the need to speak all the time. i actually think the latter. because when she does speak it’s … interesting. she’s simultaneously sharp and dull. and peter andre- what a nice guy. i know, i know, i’m buying in. and i know that in the UK “jordan” is a total joke and she’s not taken seriously in the least. but it’s saturday, and i’m finally feeling better, and need to just sit here and eat chocolate and thumb through “vogue” and blog and watch E! and everyone sounds just so lovely with an english accent. and i take pride that i don’t need to read the helpful subtitles the show provides— i understand my english accents, thank you.

if you’ve never seen “sunset tan,” i completely recommend it. it is what it is. the people on that show are totally committed to being themselves completely: completely self-centered, completely obnoxious, completely irreverent. no shades of grey here. you gotta love that. there’s all kinds of shouting and stupidity and asinine behavior and i love every moment.

i love them, the more clever, the better. even when they’re cheesy, i think they’re fun and make you pay attention. i saw two today:

“AARRRRR” next to a diving sticker. pirates!

“H83MET” which made me go, wha? cuz “3MET” = “tri-met,” my city’s excellent transportation system, and why would anyone hate it? although i suppose if you’re a die-hard driver, totally in love with your car (it was a lexus), you might. cheeky bastard.

in the summer when i was 7 and my brother was 2, my mother worked as the lady in the grocery store who gives out samples. i don’t remember the grocery store, but i do remember that her free samples changed day to day.

the two that stick out in my mind are butterscotch chips (they had just come out and she brought bags home) and this polaroid film where you can peel the back off the instant photo so that it had even borders. by that i mean, you know how on a polaroid, the bottom border is a little bigger than the other three? maybe it’s bigger so you can write a little caption, or so you can hang onto it (and shake it) as it develops. with the new film you could peel the photo off its back and the whole thing would be an even-shaped square.

i have a photo of my mother on this type of polaroid paper. someone must have taken it in the store as a demonstration. in it, my mother looks pale and thin. it’s safely tucked away in one of my albums where i don’t have to look at it too much as it’s rather sad. it’s a reminder of tougher times.

anyway, during this odd job time, mom had to hire a babysitter for me and my brother, as we were too young to stay home alone. a few times we went across the street to the ciula’s. joyce always had her hair in rollers and smoked cigarettes while playing solitaire at her kitchen table. i don’t recall her ever wearing anything other than a pink robe. she drank ginger ale, and her husband robert smelled like a pipe and watched game shows. he had an olive complexion and pomade hair. my mother was a hairdresser by trade, and she’d give joyce perms and smoke with her, all the while talking about the divorce or kids or car payments. they both called me honey, and my brother locked us all out of the house one night, robert rigged a coat hanger to jimmy the screen door to get us back inside.

when joyce couldn’t watch us, my mother called scott or doug, teenaged brother who lived up the street. i’d had a crush on scott for as long as i could remember. he had mousy brown hair, a ton of freckles and small snake eyes. he was a complete punk jackass but i thought he was the coolest. once he took me on his back on a sled ride down the steepest driveway on our dead-end block and i was thrilled. the first time scott babysat us, i was convinced i would charm scott into noticing me and falling in love.

he came over and immediately turned on mtv and got on the phone. bewildered, my brother and i kept to ourselves. after a few hours i said, hey, when’s lunch? he said, lunch? i’m making you lunch? you can’t make it yourself? i said, no, my mom said you’d make us lunch. he said, what do you want? i said, a ham sandwich. so he made us one and cut it into eight triangles. i was so in love.

the more he came over, the more friends he brought along with him (after my mother left, of course). soon the entire neighborhood of kids, and their friends, was over at my house, turning on mtv really loud, eating everything in sight, running wild, no adult supervision. my mother soon got wind of this and shut down the whole establishment. no more scott and 8-piece sandwiches.

a month later, in a fit of desperation, my mother had scott’s brother, doug, sit for us. she laid down the law before she left: no other kids, no mtv, hands off the food, my daughter has been instructed to tell me everything if you don’t follow the rules. she needn’t have worried: doug was amazingly dull, a real mouth-breather. not at all sharp like scott. yawn.