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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
I have a dilemma. I need socks. Athletic socks, to be precise.
For most people, this wouldn’t be an issue. Your average able-bodied sock-requiring person would simply, well, buy socks. For me, it’s a dilemma. A conundrum. My socks are putting me in a pickle.
(And remember, kids — your socks can put you in a pickle, but you can’t put your pickle in a sock.
Or sock your friends’ pickles. Or pick your friends’ noses with your pickle. Or something infinitely less disturbing to think about. I was never so good with the details.)
“I wouldn’t say I’m embroiled in a full-on toe hole epidemic yet, but I’m definitely on orange alert over here.”
Anyway, here’s the situation: I’m rapidly running out of socks. Every day, another sock succumbs to some fatal affliction. Toe holes are a problem, certainly. I wouldn’t say I’m embroiled in a full-on toe hole epidemic yet, but I’m definitely on orange alert over here. Meanwhile, overstretched elastic has claimed its share of victims. When you’re wearing supposedly calf-length socks and find them sagging around your ankles like a couple of used condoms, it’s time for the trash bin.
And then, of course, there are the socks that just disappear. It’s a magic trick performed in households around the world on a weekly basis. An ordinary, everyday pair of socks is placed into the washing machine. Notice the solid construction — no trap doors in the back, and no detergent up my sleeve. Now we wash, we dry, and presto klepto — one of the socks has vanished into thin air! It’s magic, thank you! And now my lovely assistant will regale you with her mesmerizing dryer sheet dance. Magic!
At any rate, I’m running dangerously low on foot sleeves these days. Half the surviving socks don’t have a match, a few are getting pretty ragged, and there’s a suspicious patch of ‘toe wear’ showing on most of the rest. The situation’s getting desperate; if I lose many more, I may have to resort to wearing my wife’s panty hose.
(And I do not have the anatomical profile needed to get into those. There are only so many bits of me that I can ‘tuck’, after all.)
So it’s clearly sock-buying time, and that poses a dilemma. The way I see it, I have three options:
1. Go out and buy socks
Oh sure, it sounds easy.
But where would I go to buy socks? I’ll tell you where — the shopping mall. And I hate — absolutely stinking loathe — shopping at the mall. Especially this close to Christmastime, with the crowding and the shoving and the reindeer poop in the parking lots. And especially for something as boring and mundane as socks.
Honestly. The Victoria’s Secret at the local mall could hold a bra-‘n’-panties sale where you pull the merchandise off of live catalog models, and I’d still probably decide it’s more trouble than it’s worth. How the hell are tube socks supposed to lure me there, in the very height of the yuletide frenzy?
The answer? They can’t. Which brings us to:
2. Buy socks online
This, I could do. I buy all sorts of things online — music, books, Russian mail order brides (as gifts! As gifts!), even internet domain names. Like ‘wherethehellwasi.com‘. Or ‘victoriasstrippingsale.net‘.
(I said I probably wouldn’t go, if it existed. I never said the event shouldn’t be captured live on a series of high-resolution webcams.
It’s called ‘being prepared’, people. Catch up on your own time.)
So I’m sure I could find a reputable mens’ legwear vendor on the interweb. I could pick out a style, gauge my size and would have no problem placing an order for all the socks my tootsies could ever need.
Except for this problem, that is: Do I really want to be the sort of person who buys athletic socks online?
That seems an awful lot like one of those lines you can’t uncross later. Like the first ominous step on a slippery slope leading to an unemployed existence selling homemade T-shirts on eBay from my parents’ basement.
(“Dude, whatever happened to Charlie? He always seemed somewhat stable, and not completely incompetent.”
“He started buying his tube socks off the internet.”
“Oh dear god. He’s one of ‘them‘ now.“)
I just don’t see coming back from that. Ergo, I can’t go there. I just can’t. Which leaves me with:
3. Strip down and go sockless.
Normally, I’d be all over this option. It requires zero effort, I don’t have to buy anything, and I am completely without a shred of fashion sense, so I could do it with no remorse or embarrassment whatsoever. If being barefoot in my shoes turns out to be the most egregious clothing faux pas I commit from here on out, my wife will be positively giddy with relief. She’s just waiting for me to wear my underpants on the outside of my jeans, or to argue for swimming gear as formal wear.
(I know I’d be happier after a long wedding knowing I could hop right into the hotel pool. I’m just saying, is all.
Either tell our Catholic friends to hurry up those ceremonies, or let me have the swim trunks and water wings in the church. I’m willing to meet you halfway here.)
Clearly, fashion is not an issue for me. But there’s still something keeping me from ‘letting my piggies go’.
I’m in New England. In November. It’s freaking cold. If I stepped one sockless foot outside my house in this frigid nightmare, I wouldn’t feel my toes again until Easter. I’m fine with upsetting Mr. Blackwell and his ilk with my hairy bare hobbit feet, but six months of frostbite is a little further than I’m willing to go right now.
So really, I’m left with no options at all. Except the one I’ve been trying to avoid all along.
When my last stash of wearable socks gives out in a week or two, looks like it’s the missus’ panty hose for me. If ‘toe holes’ are the worst problem I encounter, I’ll be a happy — and sock-footed, and warm-toed — dude.
But there’s going to be a hell of a lot of tucking. And from an awful lot of angles, I’m afraid. I hope we have some duct tape handy. Lord knows I’m not running to the mall for that.
Permalink | 1 CommentA few weeks ago, the missus and I decided to take a vacation. We were kicking a few ideas around when she said, ‘Hey, how about a trip to wine country?‘
‘Oh, I don’t wanna go there. It’s too hooooot, and it’s so faaaaar. The plane trip would be sooooo loooooong…‘
‘I said wine country. Not whine country.‘
‘Oh. Yeah, that sounds great. Let’s go.‘
‘Ass.‘
“Flushed with excitement (and a celebratory glass of Kroger’s red we had in the pantry), I gave Trevor’s Totally Terrific Tours a call.”
Next, we got down to some serious planning. We’re not exactly wine connoisseurs — not so long ago, my idea of a ‘fine wine’ was a cooking sherry that wasn’t store-brand — so we decided to enlist the help of a professional to help us. A tour guide. Specifically, Trevor the Tour Guide from Terrific Tours. Flushed with excitement (and a celebratory glass of Kroger’s red we had in the pantry), I gave Trevor’s Totally Terrific Tours a call.
TTTT: Hi, this is Trevor at Terrific Tours. How can we help you?
Me: We’d like to see wine country. And we’ve heard that your vans are willing to pick people up a little further out than most tours.
TTTT: Yep, that’s true. You don’t have to be right in Sonoma or Napa Valley for us to get you. Where are you staying?
Me: Uh, Boston.
TTTT: …
Me: Too far?
TTTT: Little bit. Call back when you’re somewhere in the same time zone.
So we loaded up the truck suitcases and we moved flew to Beverly San Fran.
(Cisco, that is. Big bridge. Streetcars. Rice-A-Roni. Y’all make me stop now, y’hear?)
We rented a car and drove up to Santa Rosa, which is a charming little town nestled more or less equidistant to every grape-squeezing outfit in the area. It’s not actually close to any of them, mind you — but it’s about the same short-ish drive from there to Napa, Sonoma, Calistoga, and lots of other little Cali burgs ending with ‘-a’ where you can booze it up on ‘Zins’ and ‘Cabs’ two ounces at a time.
We rang back to Tagalong Trevor’s Totally Terrific Tiptop Tours and, true to his word, he offered to pick us up for a jaunt early in the week. When?
Tuesday. Of course.
I’ll probably have more to say about the actual wine tastings in another post, but I’ll pause here to recommend Teetotalling Tagalong Trevor and his Totally Tremendous Technicolor Tourbus. The wineries he showed us (and four other touristy types on the bus that day) were equal to or better than just about any place we wandered to on our own, or had recommended by more experienced oenophiles back home. Beautiful grounds, very good wines, a nice easy pace, and not a single store-brand bottle of vino among them.
Seriously. And I checked a lot of bottles. From the inside, every chance I got.
(Also, one quick point of order: Trevor isn’t the only person running the vineyard-touring business. There’s also a woman that he partners with, and who conducts tours, as well.
But we didn’t meet her, and her name doesn’t start with a ‘T’, so I can’t really tell you anything more about her. Maybe if she changed her name to ‘Trixie’ and turned tricks in a tugboat up near Tacoma.)
In the meantime, I’d like to talk about olive oil.
Until our tour that day, I thought olives were pretty much like people. Sure, they come in different colors and shapes and sizes, but if you grab one and give it a good squeeeeeze, you’ll get pretty much the same stuff coming out of that one as from any of the others.
Not so, I learned.
Evidently, there’s more than one way to squeeze an olive. And Trevor took us to the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards, where they’ve been draining olives and shaking them twice for quite some time.
(I was thrilled to find out in the lobby that the winery was, in fact, owned by the same family who invented the ‘therapeutic spa’ jacuzzi years ago. And fully deflated to learn that they don’t actually provide jacuzzis for visitors to sit in while sipping their wines.
Seriously? Jeez, talk about two great tastes that would taste great together. One of you Jacuzzis get on that, already.)
It was here that I had my first and only ‘olive oil tasting’, and an accompanying lesson on how to properly sip a fine oil, from our intrepid tour guide Trevor. He told us that you want to warm the olive oil slightly by rubbing the tasting cup in your hand for a few seconds. This ‘wakes up’ some of the aromatic compounds in the oil, which you can then enjoy on the nose. To taste the oil, he explained, you should bring the cup to your lips and suck the oil in over your palette, bringing in air with it to distribute the molecules. Then he demonstrated:
‘*sssscccccchhhhhllllllllluuuuuuupppppp!!*‘
His technique flawless (so far as we knew, anyway), he was able to tell us of the subtleties in this particular oil — not too grassy, a bit of pepper, slightly nutty. Then it was our turn to try.
Now, Trevor did a good job of explaining the procedure, and we could clearly watch and see how it was done. He’s been around wines and olive oils in the Sonoma region for close to thirty years, and sucking liquid through your teeth and over your tongue isn’t exactly rocket science. We’ve all used sippy cups before. Some of us more recently than others.
However. I’ve been a doofus now for nearly forty years, so there’s clearly no way that I could possibly execute a simple maneuver like this one without mishap.
So, I took my cup, warmed it in my hand, wafted the aroma toward my nose, tipped the cup up, and sucked.
‘*sssscccccchhhhhuuuNNNNNNGGGGHHHHHH!!!*‘
I don’t know whether you’ve had the opportunity to suck a really high-quality, peppery, nutty, hand-pressed olive oil across your tongue, into your throat, and backwards all the way up into your nose. But while it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience — good god, I hope it is — I can’t say I’d recommend it.
I spent the next little while trying to clear the offending foodstuff from my schnozz, with little success. Oil and water may not mix, but once entangled, oil and noses seem to be perfectly happy spooning together for the long term. Meanwhile, I felt like I’d just had a very, very dirty martini. Snorted, not stirred.
My nasal woes finally cleared up at lunchtime, when I sneezed on the piece of bread I was eating. On the bright side, it was delicious. Peppery, nutty, a bit grassy — really high-quality product. I could finally see what Tourguide Trevor was talking about. We went back and bought two bottles of the stuff.
Just don’t ask me to taste olive oil again. Or for that matter, to dress your bruschetta at a dinner party. Neither of us wants that. Trust me.
Permalink | 1 CommentI watch an awful lot of Food Network. I’m not sure how the obsession developed, exactly.
(Though I suspect the FDA should classify Alton Brown as a ‘gateway chef’. A couple of hours a day watching him, and you’ll spiral down into the hard stuff.
You think I’m kidding. Just wait until you’re sitting on your couch at 2:30 in the morning, watching crap involving some spiky-haired surf punk driving around the country looking for chili dogs to shove down his goateed gob. Then you’ll know you’re ‘on point‘. Not so much.)
In spite of my curious epicurean affliction, I’m no good in the kitchen. Couldn’t cook my way out of a paper cupcake liner. My notion of ‘blanching’ food involves taking it to see ‘A Streetcar Named Desire‘. If the recipe doesn’t begin with ‘Microwave for…‘ and end less than four words later, I’ve got no business reading it. And frankly, I’m okay with that.
(In fact, the very pinnacle of my questionable culinary career to date was managing to make scones a few months back which were neither immediately poisonous nor required a jackhammer to pry open.
Not that I made them from scratch, mind you. From a bag. Even that was touch and go. And met with considerable skepticism, as you might imagine.)
My wife, bless her little whisk, can’t reconcile this apparent paradox. How can I enjoy watching shows about food, and the preparation thereof, but display absolutely zero ability, interest or initiative in throwing my own spatula into the ring to learn?
It’s simple, I tell her. Cooking shows — the good ones, anyway — aren’t actually about cooking, per se. They’re entertainment. I can watch 24 without wanting to become a ruthless, reckless, occasionally-dead counter-terrorism agent. I can sit through Family Guy and successfully quash the urge to have three kids, gain sixty pounds and move to Rhode Island. I can catch a rerun of Three’s Company and still have no desire to live near the beach in sunny California with two young single women and… well, okay, fine. Bad example.
(Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t tan well, California’s too damned hot, and I don’t have the looks to fit in or the wardrobe to convince Mr. Roper I might be gay.
Also, within a week they’d find Suzanne Somers gagged and tied up in the storage locker. That grating blonde shtick of hers made Pamela Anderson look like Niels frickin’ Bohr.)
“Is there some contractual obligation that says I can’t TiVo Iron Chef, unless I run immediately to the kitchen afterward to try my hand at their sardine smoothie? Lord, I hope not.”
So why can’t ‘food TV’ be pure entertainment, too? Can’t I just watch Everyday Italian already, and forget about learning to make the Fettucine alla Whatsamattayou? Isn’t it enough to simply enjoy Good Eats, without storming off to find a snarky Asian lady to sell me a waffle maker? Is there some contractual obligation that says I can’t TiVo Iron Chef, unless I run immediately to the kitchen afterward to try my hand at their sardine smoothie? Lord, I hope not.
My wife sees it differently, of course. She makes the point that these shows are meant to get viewers interested in cooking, to make us more self-sufficient, and to unfold for us the wonders of exotic flavors and aromas made possible with a few culinary skills.
Right. If I want ‘exotic flavors and aromas’, I’ll suck a big strawful of that unholy fishshake up there. No, thanks. I’m just trying to kill an hour or so in front of the tube. And Baywatch isn’t on right now.
(Hey, I said Pam Anderson was dumb. I never said I couldn’t watch her with the sound turned down. Fair’s fair.)
So I decided to prove to my wife that sometimes cooking shows are meant to be emulated, and sometimes they’re just pretty pictures and ‘Bam!‘ noises you use to pass the time. To really get the point across, I’ve tried to think of other examples of cooking-as-just-entertainment. It hasn’t gone well.
First, I appealed to her visual sensibilities. I choreographed a little number, worked up a costume and showed her my impression of making pasta. As an interpretive dance. Sadly, just when I got to the crescendo where the water boils, I slipped on the placemats I was using to represent lasagna and went down in a heap. I think I sprained a fusilli.
(My wife did report that she found the show ‘highly entertaining’. But probably not in the way she was supposed to.)
Next, I tried to convince her using a more traditional art form. I gathered a few of the vegetables we had in the pantry, set up a camera, and took pictures of myself slicing, peeling and chopping them. Black and white shots, very artistic and classy. Or so I thought. Until I got a call from the local cops, after the guy at the Photo Hut called them about some ‘disturbing’ images he’d developed.
Finally, I was able to sort everything out.
(“No, officer, that’s just a carrot. Yes, I’m certain. No, I had no idea a zucchini would look that way in grayscale. Sorry for the trouble. And I hope you catch that ‘Mad Grater’ sex offender some day, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
If I had it to do over again, I’d probably use less suggestive veggies. And color film. And I’d opt against the ‘tasteful nudes’.)
That’s when I stopped appealing to my wife’s visual sensibilities. This carrot knows when he’s julienned.
As a last resort, I turned to cooking as poetry. Surely, a flowery description of food preparation could be seen as pure art, without any need to get the kitchen involved. Just what I needed to prove my point once and for all.
Sadly, the only material I had for inspiration were my past experiences in attempting to cook. Which were rarely successful, often dangerous, and universally regrettable. Also, about the only poetic form I know is the limerick. So the results of my ‘artistic’ stabs at food prep poetry turned out something like this:
“The secret to pudding, they say,
Is getting lumps out of the way.
So I pressed mine out thin
With my best rolling pin,
But most of it slithered away.”
Or worse:
“I once made a tomato soup,
With a cup of salt ‘stead of a scoop.
Dry like the Sahara,
Chunky as marinara,
It pretty much tasted like poop.”
Don’t even ask about the rhyme involving ‘crispy duck’. Just don’t.
I give up. I just couldn’t back up my claim that cooking shows have nothing to do with cooking. So the next time I sit down to watch a nice Unwrapped or Molto Mario, I’m just going to sigh and silently hand my wife this last attempt at artistry, my concession haiku:
Convinced by your words,
I shall now provide food; hope
You like Papa John’s.
A large loaded pizza, with garlic sauce for the crusts? Made by someone else and delivered to our door? Now that’s art I can watch all night long.
Permalink | 6 CommentsI made a visit to the optometrist last week. It’s never a particularly comfortable experience, but this time they managed to make it even more squirmy than usual. I think maybe they’ve been practicing.
As usual, the first thing they asked me to do was remove my contact lenses. It’s a reasonable request, I guess — except that I showed up twenty minutes early for my appointment (for once). So instead of effectively blinding myself and being led in to see the doctor immediately, I was dumped — myopic and defenseless — back in the lobby where normal, mostly-sighted people were shopping for eyeglasses. I’m sure they were all staring and pointing at the doofus meandering along the wall like a drunken spelunker to find a chair — but how the hell would I know? It’s not like I could see them or anything.
(For the record, I don’t object to being stripped of my corrective lenses while I’m in the joint; if they need my eyeballs to be unfettered for their crazy optometrical eye-xperiments, well, that’s what I’m there for.
I’m just suggesting that maybe we could disrobe my peepers in the exam room, privately — and during the actual doctor’s visit. That way, I’m not stuck all squinty and pitiful in the waiting area where people might get the wrong idea. One time, I went in wearing sunglasses and drinking a soda. People kept dropping change into my cup on the way by.
I swallowed two nickels and a parking meter slug before I realized what was happening. Freakin’ cheapskates.)
Eventually, they retrieved me and led me in to see the doctor. She ran through a few tests, squirted unnamed liquids of various colors into my eyes — Kool-Aid? Antifreeze? ‘Hey doc, how come this one smells like asparagus?’ — and let me put my lenses back in. As crisp precious clarity swept away the graymorphous blobs of the past hour’s existence, I looked at the optometrist, smiling at me from her chair.
And searched frantically for an excuse to tear the lenses back out.
It’s not that my doc is ugly, mind you. Far from it — she’s an attractive lady, in her mid-forties, probably, with dark hair and the sort of skin tone that suggests at least one of her parents grew up sipping olive oil somewhere along the Mediterranean.
(Or she’s Native American. Or Pakistani. Or maybe she’s a compulsive tanner, or dips herself in a vat of shellac every morning. Who knows?
Clearly, my ethnicity-based-on-skin-tone deductive powers are lacking when I can’t tell the difference between Northern Italian heritage and three coats of Thompson Water Seal. Fortunately, that’s not the point. This time.)
No, the only problem with my doc is the look. She’s somehow developed — carefully crafted, even, over years of patient interactions, no doubt — this… this look that she fixes you with while you’re in the chair. It features a slight smile — just an upturn of one corner of the mouth, really — with wide-open eyes and just the hint of a playful twinkle. It’s clear she’s worked long and hard on this expression; I suspect it’s her own personal ‘Blue Steel’. It’s meant to convey to her patients that she’s here to help us — she’s friendly, and open, and not overly serious when she doesn’t have to be. As a doctor, she can be trustworthy, a confidant, a partner in eye care. That’s what she seems to be going for.
“I’ve always had trouble reading Pakistani-Italio-Cherokee women. Especially the varnished ones.”
What I get from it is that she’s mulling over stabbing me with a saline dropper and stuffing the body in the dumpster out back. Which is really not the sort of vibe you want to be getting from someone who just pumped your eyeballs full of chemicals and has you trapped in a dark room. Alone. With medical supplies.
Of course, it’s possible I’m misinterpreting her look. My continued survival after several trips to see the woman — or to squint toward the sound of her voice, mostly — would suggest that her intentions are less than homocidal. And frankly, I’ve always had trouble reading Pakistani-Italio-Cherokee women. Especially the varnished ones.
Still. That look is one I’ve only seen on the likes of Law & Order baddies, and the sorts of calmly psychopathic killers they show in horror movie trailers before you’ve had time to avert your eyes. I’m not sure what that means for me — but I do have a follow-up appointment next week, for a “fitting”.
Only, I didn’t order new contacts. And they told me to park in the alley behind the office this time. And to ‘come alone‘.
You know, if it weren’t for the $10 co-pay on my insurance for going to this place, I would seriously think about finding a new optometrist.
Permalink | 2 CommentsI wouldn’t want to seem lazy so soon after my return to writing — I figure the honeymoon period on that is at least a week… maybe five days… three? Can I take tomorrow off? We’ll see.
In the meantime, with Thanksgiving looming a mere seven days away, I thought new and returning readers alike might find something of value in a cautionary tale I penned last November:
The Turkey Timeline: A Thanksgiving Day Misadventure
Consider it my public service announcement to you this holiday season. A ‘how NOT to’ guide to gaffing, gutting and grilling a gobbler. A comedic opera penned by Giblets and Silly-man. You get the idea.
And it’s already written, which is a bonus. That leaves me more time to plan for the gustatory festivities in store for this Thanksgiving.
“She still won’t let me near her wishbone, or her ‘dark meat’.”
Which will probably involve ordering Chinese food or something. I don’t think the missus is ready for another turkey terror; she still wakes up in a sweat sometimes, mumbling, ‘gobble… gobble gobble… gobble…‘. She still won’t let me near her wishbone, or her ‘dark meat’. Hell, these days I’d give thanks for a little snood action, maybe some carbuncle petting. Anything.
So maybe we’ll just skip Thanksgiving altogether this year. Which means I’ll have to go a whole week without making a ‘stuffing’ joke.
That’s a tough one. But I’ll give it the old turkey try.
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