Snapshots from Eldredge

The life and writings of TJ Alexian


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The Great Piano Roll

So, Corbie has a new obsession. Old upright pianos.

Oh no, he doesn’t want to learn to play them. He wants to refurbish them. He wants to take one and turn it into something along the lines of this:

Cool idea, right? Try putting it into practice. This week-end, we embarked upon our task: the acquisition of our first upright piano. Finding one was pretty easy, because it turns out, there are a lot of folks with upright pianos out there just dying to give them away for free, if you’ll go and takem them off their hands. Seriously! Check it out on Craigslist if you don’t believe me. These things take up room and are really, really heavy.

Corb, naturally, chose the piano farthest from where we lived, out in West Cranberrybutt, Cape Cod. The guy who had it admitted it was out of tune and didn’t work, which Corb liked because among his other choices were pianos that had recently been tuned and worked perfectly. He doesn’t have the heart to destroy a perfectly working piano. Also, he thought it had the best design overall, with some of those old Roman columns for legs and at the top.

The guy we were getting it from also admitted that the piano had been in his wife’s family since she was a child and she was heartbroken to see it leave. “Not that she knows how to play it,” he said. “She’s gone this afternoon. When she comes back and sees it missing, she’s going to break down and cry.”

We got our first taste of what a bear this was going to be getting it out of his house. Even with the truck pulled all the way up to the front steps, it still took four guys (me, Corb, the owner, and what appeared to be the owner’s gay lover) a bit of effort to get the piano into the hitch Corb had rented. I must admit, this made me a little nervous, because I knew that at Green Victoria, there was no way we were pulling the truck up to our front porch. No, we had a long driveway and then a lovely stone path to contend with, which was picturesque, but going to make life a living hell.

But that was a challenge for another hour. At that time, we simply bolted up the piano and drove back to Eldredge.

“So, any ideas how to do this?” I asked Corb, once we arrived home.

Corb clutched at his blond hair. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”

The first part was the easiest. Get it off the hitch and onto the small dolly Corb had purchased to help it roll better. That got us to the edge of the driveway and right next to the picturesque crushed stone walkway. How to move it forward? The dolly was going to get in a whole mess of trouble if we moved it any further.

Believe it or not, I was the one who had the bright idea. Me! I remembered reading about how the ancient Egyptians were able to move heavy stones to create the pyramids, and thought the principal might work in this case. “Why not grab the plankwood we have in the backyard and place them over the stones? That will give the dolly something to roll over.”

Corb was a little skeptical. But it turns out, I was actually right!

I will admit, we had one really rough patch. Rolling uphill and at a curve was a real challenge, and the planks started to break at one point, forcing us to buy a few more. Plus, one of the dolly wheels started to bend back, after the first hour. But by the end of the day, right before the drag show was about to begin, we had the piano right by the front porch. And now we had a new challenge:THREE LITTLE STEPS.

This turned out to be a challenge that was insurmountable for two whole days. Turns out, the two of us are incapable of lifting the heavy piano up the stairs to the front porch. We tried everything: trying to tip it on its side, purchasing ropes and pulleys. We even bought this strap-on thing that looked more like a sexual device than a means of moving the piano. It didn’t work at all. We called some movers, but they wanted at least $200 for what was sure to be a five minute job. That seems ridiculous. FInally, we managed to get our bud Hot Coco to come over with her man friend and help us lift it over those three little steps. The price was only cost the purchase of her Chinese take-out that night.

And there it sits. I am not sure when Corb will get to it next. I am sure it will used as a prop for our annual Halloween party. Maybe we can even put speakers next to it and have it play spooky music. But in any event, the next great refurbishing adventure has begun at Green Victoria. Hopefully, we will survive it!


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Soaked.

old lady

“You aren’t REALLY going to put that bowl in the sink with all that milk left, are you?”

I stopped my forward movement to the kitchen and glanced down at my ceral bowl. Then over at Corb, sitting on his favorite green cushiony chair in the living room.

Hmmm. Did I plan to place my cereal bowl into the sink? Yes, in fact, I was. All the cereally goodness had been removed and what was left were a few random soggy flakes, along with milk that had gone through the cereal cycle. Hell no, I had no intention of finishing off the rest of THAT.

“Would it be a problem if I did?”

Corb made his most stern, serious face. “Yes. I know how much milk you have left in that bowl. That’s a total waste. You get right back here and drink down that milk.”

Well, that’s nothing short of amazing. “How do you know how much milk is left in this bowl?”

“I saw how much milk you wasted yesterday.”

What? How could…? And then, in a second, it dawned on me. A memory from childhood. I turned to Corb, a look of horror on my face.

“You’re turning into my Nana Hall!”

It’s true. She was on old cranky Yankee, her descendants came over on the Mayflower. Her great-grandfather was a Fairbanks. A Fairbanks, dammit! She detested waste, in any shape and form. And one of the things I vividly remember her freaking out about: cereal bowls and milk.

I’ll never forget that day. I was six years old. It was a total Mommie Dearest moment. She was looking after me at my parent’s Brady-style raised ranch. As I left the kitchen table in my mini midnight blue velour leisure suit (that’s what all kids wore in the early seventies, you see), I could hear a voice behind me say,

“You’re not done with those Cheerios yet, Teddy.”

What? I turned around. She stood there with a very very stern look on her face, arms crossed.

I glanced down at the bowl. “But the Cheerios are all soggy, Nana.”

“WE DO NOT WASTE FOOD LIKE THAT!” she snapped. “YOU WILL SIT THERE AND FINISH YOUR CEREAL OR I WILL SAVE IT AND YOU WILL EAT IT FOR LUNCH!”

(At least, in my mind she said it that way. All in caps, that is.)

Well, we struggled for hours over that. At lunchtime, sure enough, that offensive bowl of Cheerio crud was sitting there at my lunch plate. I couldn’t wait for my parents to get home that night.

And now, after all these years, she’s back again. Corb has become my Nana Hall. A ghost of Christmas past, exhorting me to drink my cereal milk. A specter from all those years ago.

And that’s when I snapped, your honor. He brought back memories of a childhood trauma and I had no choice but to kill him, don’t you see? Oh, I know some people will tell me I may have gone a little overboard. That the punishment didn’t fit the crime/ But it was either that or be forced to drink that god-damn sloggy bowl of cereal! And after all these years, I couldn’t let my Nana Hall win. IT WAS EITHER HIM OR ME!

Transcript ends at this point. We hope Ted is quite content in the asylum for the criminal insane he has been taken to. Details on the funeral arrangements for Corb, his beloved but cereal-soaked partner, will be announced forthwith.


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Not-so-fast food

Pluto

“Did you see what I posted on your wall today? Did you? Did you, huh?”

I grinned and dug into my plate of unhealthy-as-hell but most delicious nachos that had been placed before me. We were at our favorite local dining establishment, our version of Luke’s place. And I knew immediately that the Corbster was referring to the “fake science” photo he had posted to my wall, which combined my obsession this past week around the Pluto New Horizons mission and Corb’s perpetual obsession with everything Arby’s.

As soon as I was done munching: “Yes, I saw your thing about Pluto and Arby’s.” After a long slurp of diet Coke: “That seems like a really inconvenient drive.”

Corb beamed, his enthusiasm for Arby’s rekindled. “I’d totally do it. It would be so worth it! Arby’s!”

“A nine year trip in a tin can for an Arby’s burger?” I wrinkled my nose and shuddered. “That sounds like absolute hell. I’d be so claustrophobic, watching my life spin away, stuck in a tiny little space. If I left Earth at 21, I’d be 39 by the time I arrived home. No burger is worth that.”

“Sign me up!” Ah, Corb is so lovely when he gets on these tangents. “That would be awesome!” And with that, he swooped in to steal one of my nachos.

“Seriously?” I frowned. “I think maybe I could last a year in space. But after twenty years, it would feel like I’d been buried alive.”

Corb clicked his heels with glee. “They’d give you way more room than a coffin! You’d be in a big Space station. I would totally do it. I wish I could do it right now!”

“Well, okay, but don’t think I’m going to leave the front light on for you if you go. Twenty years is a really long time to wait.”

“I’d bring back fries!”

Hmmm. They might be a little cold by the time he returned.

“Maybe if you brought back a beef and cheddar roast beef sandwich,” I replied.


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Burglar proofed.

So, I’m hanging on the porch of Green Victoria this week-end. I’m sitting on the couch, being lazy, reading “Turn of the Screw” (lovely Memorial Day week-end reading), relaxing. Suddenly I hear a scampering and look up to see THIS…

cat climb

…which turns into THIS…

cat climbed

Hmm. Guess we we don’t need a house alarm any more. All we need is Ping, waiting to pounce…

 


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Distractify

Last night I finished Amy Poehler’s book “Yes Please,” and I was especially amused by the final chapter in the book, entitled “The Robots will kill us all,” where she basically concludes that “this internet thing has been a disaster.”

I know exactly what she’s talking about.

Her point was that she used to be the sort of person who swore she would never have a cell phone, but now it’s by her side constantly and a perpetual distraction. She discussed how she couldn’t get through even writing the first paragraph of the chapter without being distracted by 5,000 different things.

I think everyone can relate, and I’m not sure it’s made the world a better place. Just writing those three paragraphs I had the exact same experience. I have one guy on a social app that keeps pinging me every five seconds. My Facebook is popping up with this or that. I have 11 unread emails in my personal account (most of that probably crap) and while it used to be that I would keep my in-box properly maintained, I have stuff I haven’t read that I probably should have that stretches back months. There’s just too much content. Too much. I don’t care any more.

And in addition to being distracting, I’m here to tell you, the user interface experience is just awful. I literally hate my iPhone. I wish I could have anything…anything! besides it. A few weeks ago I made the purchase of my song in 1776 so I could sing it in the shower. Although iTunes says it was downloaded, it’s nowhere to be found in my Music folder. If I try playing the song on YouTube, it usually stops playing one minute into the song and I have to turn the shower off and try to get it going again. Which it will do, for twenty more seconds. I only wanted to play one song in my shower. A CD would have been way more dependable.

Last night, Corb and Theo and I wanted to watch an episode of Once Upon a Time. We have Chromecast. Corb purchased the show through Amazon. We tried to play it (we’ve done it successfully in the past). One hour later, owing to a variety of glitches, we were still unable to view it. Connection problems. Must upgrade to Amazon Prime. Must download new app. Looks like Chromecast isn’t interfacing with Amazon well. Or maybe it’s Comcast? A DVD would have been far easier.

And God forbid you need service! Having to deal with places like AT&T or Apple is absolute torture. Either you stay on the phone for hours at a time, go online for iffy service, or travel out of your way to a store, where they are by design understaffed and constantly trying to upsell you stuff. So you wait for hours. All they care about is selling. The service is incidental.

For the past few weeks my son has been having trouble with his iPhone. He’s having trouble getting it to charge. I kind of put off dealing with it, because I knew it was going to be torture having it taken care of, but finally I took him to AT&T at the local mall to take a look at it. It’s apparently the regional headquarters. There were two guys in the store equipped to handle everyone who came in. Just two! Fortunately, we only had to wait for about fifteen minutes to be looked. The guy was nice enough, and looked at the phone, and said, “Yep, there’s a problem with the way this is charging. You definitely need to get this fixed. You’ve had it for less than a year so Apple should replace it. All you need to do is go to your Apple store and they should replace it.”

Only go? The closest Apple store (no I won’t buy your stinking AppleWatch) is in Providence. Never mind that I pay AT&T $400 a month and they are pushing me off to someone else without a warm transfer or anything. And fortunately, I had the sense to call to see if I could get in that night. When I called, rather than they trying to talk to me, they tried to push me to a web site for an appointment. Okay, fine. I let them push a link to my phone. But of course, what I was calling about was not an option, because rather than simply give me the option to make an appointment, they tried to figure out why I wanted an appointment in the first place. The closest I could get to identifying the problem was “hardware problem.” But when I selected that option, they tried to run a diagnostic rather than letting me schedule a simple appointment.

Frustrated, I called back. Just kept hitting zero this time. Totally bypassed the frustrating computer voice. Finally, I got a human. The minute she found out what I wanted (after trying to upsell me an Apple watch) she had no real interest in helping out. It didn’t involve a sale, you see. “Well, you can come tonight, but we probably won’t be able to help you out between store hours.” It was six o’clock.

“When can I schedule an appointment?” I asked.

“Friday night?” It was a Tuesday. “Or, you could just come in during the day, and wait. Not at night, though.” Oh, so I have to take time out of work for this. How helpful.

Theo couldn’t do Friday night. I scheduled an appointment for Monday. I am sure it will be absolute torture. There is no way in hell I will be buying an Apple Watch, no matter how much they try to push it on me. I am so dreading this.

My point being, I’m just not sure we’re in a better place than we were even ten years ago. Social technology has not made life better, it’s made life more distracted, less convenient, more isolated, and keeps people from really focusing on living life.

Corb and I keep saying we are going to just set aside our phones for a set period of time. Try to live distraction free. Try not to respond to the beeps and the whirrs and the alerts. Will it help restore our sanity? We’ve only tried it for a few hours on a week-end now and then, but I think we are ready to take the big plunge: go phone free for a whole day. Maybe a whole week-end!

It’s time for a change. I am tired of perpetual distraction and having an app for everything. It’s not helping any more. I’m not sure it ever really did. Amy Poehler is right: the Robots will kill us all.


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Planting seeds

Corb and I spent the afternoon working on the yard. So much to do after the long winter…beds to rake through, trees to prune, transformations to undergo. We…or should I say Corb?…have a lot of plans to transform the backyard from “drab to fab”!

On a similar note, the other big thing I did this week-end was to continue edits on Late Night Show. I’m at chapter 21 and have about 120 pages left to go. In a similar way, I think editing this book has been like transforming the yard. Visualizing the world around me, attacking those verb tenses, digging up stale images and planting in their place new, interesting ways to bring the story to life.

Hopefully the book, like the back yard, will go from “drab to fab” by summer. Only in this case, I can’t rely on Corb’s creative brilliance to win the day…this landscape is something that’s entirely of my own creation. And doing it I am! Kami’s sick little world is coming to life before my eyes.


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Aspire.

This morning, as I was getting into my car at Stop & Shop, this rather disheveled looking guy called out to me. As I stopped, car door open, he rode up to my car on his bike. “Would you have any interest in a soft top Eddie Bauer cooler?” he asked, unhooking the item from his bike and trying to hand it over to me.

I have to confess, I hate being approached about things like this. My immediate reaction is to run away. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it seems to be uniquely reserved for people asking for donations or trying to sell me stuff. Especially the latter. I have an especial hatred right now for the sales people they allow to infest Best Buy, trying to get you to change your internet provider to that shitty DirectTV. Sales people should be there to assist you, not try to upsell you anything. Every time I get approached I start to go off, so much that Corb has to literally push me away before I say anything too obnoxious. I know, they are only doing their job. I am not angry at them, I am angry at Best Buy for allowing them to do it. Which is why, incidentally, I am currently boycotting Best Buy.

Anyway, I digress. The minute he asked this, I did what I always do. I moved away. “No, thank you,” I said, quietly and politely, but still, in a way that was firm, with my head lowered. I immediately started to close my car door.

“You sure?” he asked, moving his soft top Eddie Bauer cooler back to behind his bike.

“No thank you” I repeated in the same tone and closed the door.

He left. I drove off. But still, this image lingered in my head. Him, on his bike. I think it was the way he said “soft top Eddie Bauer cooler” that bothered me. It had been so precise, so rehearsed.

Why was he approaching me about this? Was it perfectly innocent? Was he indeed just looking to give me, out of the kindness of his heart, a soft top Eddie Bauer cooler? Why would he be doing something like that? Was it some kind of homeless thing, like the people who stand outside of malls with increasing frequency these days, looking for a donation? (I am positive that is staged, by the way, and that’s not without precedent. Back in the 1800s, the poor and indigent were put to work shoveling horse crap off the streets, until they protested the demeaning work. Look it up, it’s true.) What was his story?

And what is it about me that shut down the way I did? Slam. Walls come down. Why am I like that? Would it kill me to keep a five or something in my wallet, for situations like that, instead of my George Castanza-like wallet spilling to the brim with receipts and plastic and nothing else? Isn’t there something I can do to be better than I am?

Anyway, I just made a donation of $20 to my favorite homeless shelter, Crossroads of Rhode Island. It surely will not make me a better person or help me on the path to the countless hours of therapy that I so clearly need. But, maybe it will help someone in some small way. And maybe, it’s a reminder to stop and think..and aspire higher.