How I Got into a Fight Without Even Meaning To

First, some attention to the matter of whether anyone ever means to get into a fight. Maybe “meaning to” is going too far, but certainly one could say that in certain moods, one, at the very least, is not actively opposed to getting into a fight.

But I was one hundred innocent of evil intent or even willingness to spar when I was at Rainbow two weeks ago, where they have a policy of giving you five cents off for any container you bring from home for reuse, plus ten cents for a reused paper grocery bag.

I had brought along five containers with lids, two plastic bags (and my own twistems), and a paper grocery bag. The checkout guy rang up my five containers with lids, but didn’t enter the credits, so I started to say, “Besides those five containers, I have two plastic bags and a paper bag,” but right after I said, “Besides those five containers—” he interrupted, saying, “I can’t give you a bag credit for ten cents’ worth of salt!” Or however many cents it was; not many.

In all the years I have been shopping there, I have never had anyone object to giving any bag credit. After all, sometimes it’s ten cents’ worth of salt, but other times it’s twelve dollars' worth of organic green tea—which occupies about the same space as ten cents’ worth of salt, as it happens.

So I said in my most reasonable tone, “Don’t you think it kind of evens out over time? Like, sometimes the purchase is small, but other times it’s larger?”

He said their policy forbids giving the credit for such a small purchase. (Does that mean they will give me multiple credits for a single container if it’s a huge purchase? Doubtful.)

I said, “I’ve never seen it written like that.”

He said, “Well, it’s not written anywhere.”

Then he added, “All right! If you have to have your bag credit, I’ll give you your bag credit!” In fact, I hadn’t insisted on anything, though I do think he was rather obviously making things up as he went along, because he hates the bald.

As it happened, I needed some cash, so I could tip mattress bringers and takers the next day. I had swiped my card and pushed the “credit” button before asking about the cash back.

He said, “You can only get cash back with an ATM card.”

I said, “Oh, actually, this is an ATM card.” I use it like it’s a credit card, but it is in fact a debit card.

He laboriously canceled the transaction and I started over. He took a twenty and a five out of his cash drawer and then I said, “Could I trouble you for two tens and a five?” Then I think I saw actual steam coming out of his ears, at which I allowed my lips to curve upward in primal enjoyment of another’s (self-inflicted) misery; his back was to me. He handed me the bills without a further word, ditto my receipt.

He was obviously shrieking bad words inside his head.

I was somewhat indignant that he had turned this routine transaction into a big hassle, and stopped to mention it to the kind-faced lady with the brown eyes who has worked at the customer service counter forever.

She said, “Really? We give bag credits? I didn’t know that. Well, I guess he should probably just do it.” Rainbow is a co-op: no managers to complain to.

Then I found myself mentally drafting a letter to Rainbow to let them know what a jerk this guy is, how wrong he was: “I wasn’t aware that the bag credit was a reward for spending a lot of money at Rainbow—though I do spend a lot of money at Rainbow!—but rather thought it was meant as an incentive not to acquire a container that may ultimately be harmful to the environment. Are you suggesting that buying twelve dollars’ worth of organic green tea in a new container is bad but that buying ten cents’ worth of salt in a new container is just fine?”

I was much more worked up drafting my letter than I had been during the actual conversation. And then I realized that this activity was a form of auto-unpleasantness, and that it wasn’t like anyone was going to write me back and say, “You’re right; this guy is a big jerk. We’ve fired him.”

So then I just dropped the entire thing and that was that, and my menu practice for the next day was not to think of Rainbow at all, and I didn’t.

They also have been storing a lot of crap near the bike racks, which irks me, but after I was there most recently and the checkout lady told me about Bike Coalition members getting ten percent off their purchases every day, I was very glad I hadn’t complained about the bag credit guy or the disrespect to the bike racks.

They don’t hate us, they love us.

Bald as a Negg

When I wrote that $3400 going down the drain is not a crisis to any First World person, I didn’t mean to suggest that no one in the First World is poverty-stricken. Plenty of people are, many going hungry every day. They’re just probably not stupid enough to spend so much on a mattress.

Friday afternoon I saw the charming Stefano at Vertical Clearance. I smoothed the hair back at my temple to show him where it’s falling out.

“Are you stressed?” he asked, meaning, “Geeze, I see what you mean.”

But, as he mentions often, I have (used to have) very thick hair to begin with, so he added, “You’re going down—wherever you’re going—with a full head of hair, believe me.”

“Are you saying that when I reach the gates of hell, I’ll have a full head of hair?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

On Saturday morning, my cheerful checkout person at Rainbow mentioned that they offer a ten percent discount to Bike Coalition members. At first I thought they were trying to console us for the fallout from the recent Critical Mass incident, but it turns out it’s been in effect for a while, every day, on everything.

I rushed home and laminated my membership card, which is going to save me $442 a year. Maybe gold-plating it would even be in order.

I made Hernerakkan (yellow split pea soup) from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant and Syrian Lentils in a Spicy Tomato Sauce from 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains.

The former was OK. It has turnip and parsnip in it, which I am not fond of, though I was prepared to be surprised and delighted, which I was not, particularly.

The Syrian lentils are pretty good served over brown rice.

As mentioned, via Craigslist I had secured an opportunity to play at a church on Easter. The music director mentioned that the other trumpet player would play a descant part for one hymn—a melodic line that soars above the regular melody.

That was fine with me, as trying to hit them high notes in public is bad for my nerves.

The music director kindly sent us all copies of the music and explanatory notes which said that I would be playing all of the lead trumpet parts and the other trumpet player would be playing all of the second parts (with two trombones playing the tenor and bass parts), no doubt simply because he heard from me first.

I saw the note about the other trumpet player playing the descant, but then my eye fell on the news that I would be playing the descant on another hymn. My first impulse was to telephone the music director with an incoherent demurral, but I decided not to be a wimp.

On Sunday morning, the music director warned us that some of the congregants are very curious and said we shouldn’t be surprised if, while we were playing, one of them walked right up onstage and peered over the top of our music stands at our music.

Sure enough, as I was warming up in the room below the sanctuary, a fellow approached me and said, “How old are you? What’s your name? When are you going to be 45? How do you spell your first name? How do you spell your last name?” He wrote down the answers in a little notebook.

I finished warming up and said, “I guess I’m ready. Does it sound like I’m ready?”

“Yes you ready,” he said.

The next time I saw him, he announced, without looking at his notebook, “You were born on June 6, 1962.”

The musical selections went very well. I wasn’t nervous in the slightest, partly because, for most songs, we were all but drowned out by an organ, a piano, and the congregation singing. We did have a couple of brass-only features, which went fine. As for the descant, I did miss my high note, but out of lip exhaustion, as it was the fourth time through the hymn in a row, not nerves, and even Bruce, playing trombone immediately to my left, said later he hadn’t noticed.

The church’s program for the Easter service ends with “Our worship ends, our service begins.” The pastor’s name is listed; for ministers, it lists “All the people.”

The pastor concluded by saying, “People think this building is the church, but they are mistaken. The building is not the church. You are the church. You are the good news.”

When I got home, Tom and I took the train to Sacramento for an Easter dinner at Paul and Eva’s. Here’s who was there: Paul, Eva, Steve, Julie, Dan, Sarah, Sarah’s boyfriend Josh, Tom, me, Jim, Melinda, Abby, and next-door neighbor Ofer and his girlfriend, who is a well-known Pakistani singer, who contributed a yummy curried chicken dish.

Steve, riding his bike earlier in the day, had fractured his arm in an encounter with a dog. It hurt a lot, so he arrived a bit late and left a bit early.

Mattress Critique and Critical Mass

Last night I tried flipping the McRoskey over and it’s the same on both sides: a bit squishier at the foot and head, more solid toward the middle. My affable salesperson said, upon being telephoned, that the mattress’s edges are manufactured differently than the center, so I’m persuaded that this mattress is not defective.

Next I vacuumed the part of my living/dining/bedroom that wasn’t covered with a bed and covered it with a bed. First I hauled the upholstered chair over a bit, leaving just enough space by my desk to sit in my desk/dining chair and uncovering 16 cat toys Hammett was storing under the chair (literally 16); then I turned the bed so one long side was against the wall, and then I dragged the mattress off the box springs and put it next to the box springs, so now my whole main room looks like Hugh Hefner’s bedroom minus the feathers and spangles.

There is one little rectangle of visible carpet left, fortunately enough for stretching. Otherwise I’d have to do it in the vestibule, lying on the Thelonious Memorial Bloodstain.

My back did start to ache a bit after I got into bed, but I writhed around a bit to loosen it up, and ended up getting quite a decent night’s sleep. I wouldn’t say I felt comfortable as such, but after a couple of weeks, I might conclude that this mattress will be just fine. It might even be fine on the box springs; maybe that was just too big an initial adjustment.

Today I offered the blow-up mattress for sale on Craigslist. It appears I won’t need it, and I just know I wouldn’t have been able to get myself to pump the thing up. Yes, there has been a lot of purchasing of this and that lately.

I think it started with Christmas, when I got so much wonderful stuff, including some gift cards, which resulted in even more wonderful stuff arriving in the mail in January, and then, before I knew it, a day without a box of stuff arriving started to seem oddly lacking.

I vow to return to a closer examination of my purchasing habits.

I also am going to pay myself back for the bed purchase using any money left over in the food and miscellaneous categories on payday. Instead of considering that to be money I can use for whatever I feel like buying, I will send it to my friends at the mutual fund company and note the amount as a payment on my debt to myself.

Locals will have seen the coverage of the March 30 Critical Mass ride in which cyclists surrounded a van containing a suburban family and broke the back window of the van by hitting it with a bike. My first reaction was indignation on behalf of the family and sympathy for the terror they must have felt, but it now turns out that the driver may have driven recklessly into a cyclist, knocking him off his bike, just before the window was broken.

It sounds like the driver got scared in the crowd and panicked and overreacted, and like the cyclists were also probably scared—a van can seriously damage a cyclist—and certainly overreacted, as well.

This is horrible, but I must say it: I looked at a photo of the driver and her two daughters and felt much less sympathetic. The mother’s face is a belligerent mask, and the two daughter’s faces are frozen and angry—probably not from being scared out of their minds by cyclists. Probably from spending their whole lives with a parent who puts her foot on the gas of her van when there are human beings right in front of it and then describes the incident in terms that suggest prior conflict of a legal nature: “If that's what the person alleges,” she snaps, “it's ridiculous.” “Alleges”?

I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of, “Goodness, I would never do such a dangerous thing!”

Having said that, I have rarely participated in Critical Mass myself because the confrontational mood puts my stomach in a knot. I have no trouble believing that cyclists were screaming and that they damaged property. I also have no trouble believing the motorist’s actions were reckless and harmful.

As we know, cars kill an enormous number of people every year (not to mention that they are helping finish off the ecosystem that sustains human life). Cycling is a good thing. If Critical Mass were the only tactic of bike advocates, that would not be so good. Fortunately, it is not. The velorution advances by a huge variety of constructive means, as well (such as my stint volunteering at the bike “road-eo”).

I saw about 1100 comments on the subject at the Chronicle’s website, most anti-bike, but relatively free from acrimony—unlike any kind of dispute that turns on gender—perhaps because most cyclists have had occasion to drive a car, and most car drivers have had occasion to enjoy riding a bike.

A Wee Sprig of Victuals

Last night was my third night on the McRoskey mattress. I slept for several hours, and then woke up with my back killing me. Hmm, maybe it’s so comfortable that you sleep so soundly that you don’t change positions, and then your back hurts. Actually, there is definitely a pressure point at my hip when I first lie down on it, so I don’t know if it can claim it’s just way too comfortable. (I hate a mattress that’s always bragging about itself, anyway.)

In the early morning, I was tossing and turning, unable to find a comfortable position, let alone sleep, and finally gave up and lay on the floor until it was time to get up, which caused a brief yet deeply sincere bout of self-pity.

Not quite what I was envisioning when I spent (brace yourself) $3400. I guess that probably doesn’t sound that outrageous to a lot of people. It probably sounds like so much to me because I’ve never purchased box springs before, and had never spent more than $300 on a mattress prior to the Tempur-Pedic.

At about 7:30, I called Tom. He sounded a bit groggy when he answered. He’s on vacation this week. “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss any of your vacation!” I said. “Thanks,” he said. I ran my problem by him and he said maybe I should give it a couple of days, but if I’m sure I don’t like it, I should just sell it and start over.

My mother said the same thing, plus lamented that I could have bought a computer with that money. “You know, they have computers shaped like mattresses,” she said. “You could have put some foam on it and slept on it.”

She also said (she’s a far better Buddhist than I may ever be) that it’s only money, and it’s not like I scrimped and saved for fifteen years to be able to make this purchase. In point of fact, I can afford to completely throw away $3400, highly unappealing though that prospect is. She said for any person in the First World, this is not a crisis. She is correct.

Tom agreed to lend me his camping pad and sleeping bag again, plus I do have a blow-up bed and pump under my desk at work, though I have a sinking feeling about that, starting with the hour it will probably take me to inflate it. If I think my back hurts now …

I could have bought an electric pump for the blow-up bed, but I was thinking, as always, about the coming environmental apocalypse, after which there won’t be any electricity and I’ll be walking along with Hammett under one arm and my blow-up bed and pump under the other, looking for a sprig of something to eat.

Under no circumstances does McRoskey issue a refund, but they will do a one-time exchange of the mattress or box springs to a component of a different comfort level for an additional $350.

Their firm mattresses are pretty firm, so I would probably have to put a foam topper on it. The idea of giving them any more money is rather repellent at the moment—particularly if by spending $3800, I am able to simulate a floor-like surface, since I already had one for free: the floor!

This reminds me that for many years, I slept on about four inches of foam encased in fabric and placed on the floor and it was perfectly comfortable (to me). It did turn a little green on the bottom. Was that mold? It wasn’t three-dimensional.

But I suppose if I spent $4000 (including, now, the foam topper) and had a bed I was happy with for decades to come, it would be worth it.

But what if I spent the additional $350 and it was still totally uncomfortable, with or without foam?

I called my salesperson at McRoskey and described the unevenness of the mattress and he said it’s supposed to be uniform. He said to try flipping it over, and if that makes a difference, then there is likely something wrong with the mattress and they can send an inspector out to confirm this. If so, they would replace it.

I will also try putting the mattress on the floor. He said that if this is better, it suggests I need a firmer mattress, but I think it will suggest I need to leave the mattress on the floor and sell the box springs.

Meanwhile, my coworker has a roommate who has a Simmons Exceptionale. She sometimes has occasion to sleep on it and says it’s so fabulous, she’s thinking of getting one for herself, though she also claims to be terrified to purchase any mattress whatsoever after watching my experience, not to mention hearing about it at length every morning while she’s trying to get some work done.

I didn’t want to get a Simmons or Serta or any of those because of the toxic flame retardant, but I’m ready to rethink that now.

Maitake Tempura Orgy

On Monday of this week I stayed home from work to supervise the disappearance and appearance of mattresses. Sleep Train was going to come get the Tempur-Pedic between eight and noon. I asked them to make it as early as possible so I’d have time to wash the bedding before the McRoskey arrived.

Let the record reflect that they came at 12:15. During the period of waiting, I got most of my tax preparation done. I had to call my father and ask him one thing, and had to call the IRS about Form 8606, which seems to have a chicken-and-egg problem: Line 14 depends on lines 1 and 2; to get what goes on Line 2, you’re supposed to see Line 14.

The first year you use this form, you’re supposed to enter zero on a certain line, and then after that, not zero, presumably, but I saw that, to be on the safe side, I had entered zero three years in a row. There’s a line where it says to enter whatever you put on a certain line the year before, but that was the line where I put zero when I probably shouldn’t have.

My approach to taxes is to try to get an intuitive sense of what they’re getting at and write down what I think will achieve the objective. Consequently, for many years in a row, I have gotten a letter in June or so saying, “You forgot something. We owe you more money. Here’s a check.”

I decided I’d better tackle this Form 8606 in a more detailed way, but really couldn’t make any sense of the instructions, which is when I called the IRS. You will not believe what happened next: After a reasonable period of time on hold (fifteen or twenty minutes), someone came on the line and answered my question! That is, she told me what really goes on that line: zero.

For all I know, someone has told me this every year. This time I wrote it down.

Of course, while I was on hold, the cell phone rang, Sleep Train saying they were about to come for the Tempur-Pedic, which was wedged into the vestibule, because I didn’t want the delivery gentlemen clomping about on the carpet.

Just as I hung up the cell phone, I could hear the IRS lady’s voice coming from the real phone: “Anyone there?” Thank goodness she didn’t just hang up.

The Tempur-Pedic and its heinous chemical odor left and then I went out to wash my sheets in lavender-scented Ecover Laundry Wash.

I got everything done and was home again before the McRoskey items arrived. To the naked eyeball, the mattress looked like its head and foot were a tad lower than the middle, though maybe they put a bit of extra stuffing there because that’s where people’s butts are.

I lay down on it and sank into a deep sleep for the next couple of hours.

The next morning, my back didn’t feel great, but that could well have been due to the inevitable mattress-wrangling done by myself the day before. It also seems not to be one hundred percent uniform, in that you sink into it farther sitting some places more than others, not to use the “L” word: lumpy.

Let us pause for a moment while my mother enjoys a hearty laugh in Michigan.

Ah, it’s only money!

And any sense of non-uniformity is not noticeable when lying on it (nor does the bubble in my level show anything of interest), though there is a detectable pressure point at the hip. I called McRoskey and they said they advise sleeping on a new bed for two weeks before making any further decision, but if there really is a problem, they will address it, as I have spent a lot of money.

It will probably work out fine. I might end up putting a pad of some sort on it. It certainly smells nice!

Some things lately that have been extremely enjoyable: The Art Blakey CD with “Nica’s Dream” on it. Two Horace Silver CDs: Song for My Father and Horace-Scope.

I bought another Peter Lieberson CD that features the vocalizations of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, on his Rilke Songs. They are really splendid. I like them even more than I initially liked the Pablo Neruda poems, though I now listen to the latter most days of the week. I think I am on my way to being a true Peter Lieberson fan.

After the Rilke Songs is The Six Realms (of Buddhism; the hungry ghost realm and so forth), for amplified cello and orchestra. Hammett trotted out of the room the first time this started playing, and I also wasn’t sure I liked it, after having just heard the Rilke Songs, which are so great.

But the second time I put on The Six Realms, I was swooning with pleasure.

Then there was lunch today with Lisa C. at Medicine, in which we each got our very own side dish of maitake tempura. As Lisa said, “We could share, but why should we?”

More Olive Oil, Less Technology

I have just finished Eric Brende’s Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, a account of his time living as part of a group he calls the “Minimites,” who avoid most forms of technology. One back-cover review praised the book in extravagant terms; the reviewer read it slowly, so as to savor it all the longer.

My opinion was the opposite. I thought the writing was unsatisfying and the author clueless, as when he says sexism is a myth because when a man goes into the kitchen where a woman, in her shapeless skin-concealing religion-mandated garment and floppy hat, is doing the women’s work of slicing potatoes, she’s allowed to tell him, “Please make the slices a bit thicker.”

He describes screaming at his wife for not having dinner on the table when he arrives home one late afternoon and happily announces that right after that, she got with the program and started cooking up a storm.

He did offer one insight I thought was worthwhile: That we assume manual labor is for morons because the machines we build to automate tasks do just one thing repeatedly, but if we choose not to use those machines, then in fact we must be quite ingenious and have much and varied knowledge at our disposal.

And of course, his aim of reducing his use of technology to the bare minimum is admirable.

On Saturday, I rode my bike through miles of seeming no-man’s-land—it was a bit eerie—to the opening of a children’s health center in the Bayview district, where I assisted at a bike “road-eo,” which teaches basic cycling skills such as stopping at stop signs, crossing railroad tracks safely, and glancing back over one’s shoulder while rolling forward.

I guided many tiny visitors around the loop over and over. I could tell that one little girl, seven years old, was on the verge of being able to ride by herself. We circled the course several times, but when I tried letting go of the bike, I could see she was going to fall over, and concluded it might be a while longer before she rode by herself.

Then she got going on a very gentle downward slope, and next thing I knew, she rode several feet on her own! It was thrilling. Her mother said, “We’ve been trying to get her to do this for a year!” She called the little girl’s father on her cell phone and announced, “Your daughter is riding a bike!”

Afterwards, I was rather exhausted and had a burrito from El Toro and took a nap.

When I got up, I took Hammett to the vet for a minor procedure. Then I had to wait an hour for a cab, with Hammett in his box beside me, and could hear a couple of the people who work there bantering in the back. One was saying, “Are you saying my dog isn’t cute?”

They decided I would cast the deciding vote and brought out a tiny round dog missing one eye (due to abuse by some human). I agreed with the dog’s owner that she is cute.

Poor Hammett was traumatized, a rigid little clump of cat, by the time he was finally freed from his carrier at home and rushed to hide behind the bathroom sink.

In the evening, Tom and I watched Little Miss Sunshine (spoiler coming up two sentences from now), the ending of which I absolutely loved. I laughed and cried at once. The spectacle of her family willingly making idiots of themselves in solidarity with her was very touching.

I am loving this thing of eating food; I should have started long ago. On Sunday, I made Pasta e Fagioli from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant (David C. assures me that when I say “fag-ee-OH-lee,” I have the pronunciation exactly right and I should hasten into the nearest Italian restaurant and ask for some just that way) and Smoky Black Bean and Tomato Soup from 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains.

I used the largest dried chipotle pepper I had for the latter and the result is quite spicy. I’m glad I didn’t succumb to the impulse to use two peppers or it probably would have been inedible. Near the end of the cooking, I said to myself, “Wait a minute, what happened to the part where you sauté something or other in six tablespoons of oil?”

I squinted at the recipe anew and indeed, there was no mention of sautéing anything in oil, nor in fact any mention of oil in any amount, let alone butter. Ach: fat-free! I upended my olive oil bottle over the pot and the soup came out to be very, very good; the Pasta e Fagioli is good, too.

It appears the author of the bean and grain cookbook aspires to fat-free-ness, which is good, because she then has to find other ways to make everything flavorful by other means, so once I add plenty of oil, the results should be extra-yummy.

Voluminous Head-Hole

This past Friday evening I saw my gentleman acupuncturist for the first time in several weeks. It was delightful.

On Saturday, I talked to the music director of the church needing a trumpet for Easter. I asked if he would consider sending me copies of the music in advance, and he said that wouldn’t be a problem.

As for attire, he said his church is extremely casual, with people wearing everything from blue jeans to suits, and very diverse, with homeless people down the pew from rich people, so it sounds like no clothes shopping will be required for this occasion—good news all around.

Later that day I had my mouthpiece extracted from my trumpet at Union Music and did a spot of mattress shopping at McRoskey, culminating in a down payment that would be enough to adopt thirty-four cats from the SPCA (and that’s just one end of the mattress), but then, what would I do with such a large fleet of cats?

A certain Midwest commenter says that if their mattress wore out, they would go straight to the thrift store and snap up the first semen- and booze-stained (those exact words may not have been used) pallet they spied, and they would do so with a light heart and peace of mind because they would posthaste encase it in a plastic protective cover.

However, I believe this same commenter and her gentleman companion own a house, a car, nine or ten computers, a big TV, central air conditioning and a badminton set with one still-usable racquet, all of which I have eschewed, in my high-minded way. Instead, I shall have a McRoskey mattress, full size, in case the nurse needs somewhere to set down the extra bedpan when I’m expiring; by all accounts, this mattress may last that long.

When I first received the telephone answering machine my parents sent me, their old one, the volume control worked perfectly, but it soon—within five minutes—got stuck on the loudest setting, blaring messages to all points. Passing Radio Shack the other day, I remembered that I had gotten my favorite phone there and went in to look at the phones.

They didn’t have any appealing phones, but they did have a little-bitty house brand digital answering machine with a 60-minute total recording time, for about $30, whose volume control goes all the way to silent and which is quite clear-sounding, both my announcement and the messages left by callers.

I asked my mother if she wanted me to send her old answering machine back and she said, “No! That’s the beauty part.” And thus concludes the search for an answering machine, happily.

Tom was away at a second qualifying brevet for Paris-Brest-Paris last weekend, so I spent Saturday evening trumpeting and puttering about. The first brevet was one hundred miles long, I believe he said, and a group of people did it on single-gear bikes, meaning they could not downshift to get up the hills! I very much admire their determination and athleticism, but that seems like a great way to guarantee double knee replacements later in life. This most recent brevet was 300 km, or about 186 miles.

I heard Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on the National Public Radio show Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! on Saturday, which was kind of neat. The host said he was the first Supreme Court justice to appear on a radio quiz show, and would probably be the last.

They asked him three questions, one each about David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Ozzy Osbourne. He got all three wrong. One of the panel members consoled him, though he didn’t seem at all chagrined, by saying something like, “This is one of those shows where failing is a mark of distinction. I now feel even more confident about your ability to defend the Constitution knowing you didn’t know the answers to these questions.”

She had a point there. What would it mean if he knew every little thing about Iggy Pop, including that he once ate nothing but sausages for an entire year?

The host asked Justice Breyer, “Do you like to be treated formally or like a regular guy. Do you say, ‘I don my robe one voluminous head-hole at a time like anyone else’?”

And, to assuage the concern of the panelist with OCD, the host asked if he has to maintain his robe with adhesive tape or other lint-removal device. Apparently it’s synthetic and doesn’t attract lint.

On Sunday, I made, from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, Turkish Spinach and Lentil Soup, which was extremely good—I wish I’d doubled the recipe and frozen some for later—and Transylvanian Eggplant Casserole, which is so-so; it seems to be mostly rice.

I finished Mary Karr’s wonderful book The Liars’ Club and had a satisfying drippy cry over it, ditto when I copied down my favorite paragraph so I could read it again after the book is back at the library. I am going to request her next memoir, Cherry, very soon. She is working on a third: Lit.

Ornery Trumpet Grips Mouthpiece, Won't Let Go

Something very thrilling happened this week, which was that, thanks to answering an ad on Craigslist, I played my trumpet in public for the first time in a handful of years, as part of a jazz combo at a café in the Western Addition.

When I talked to Ted on the phone, he said I would be the main soloist and player of melodies. I said that would be fine, and got to work preparing: rehearsing the heads to the songs we would play, improvising, doing some transcribing—learning to play a horn line by listening to the recording, with or without writing it down. I’m working on “Ecaroh.”

I became a bit worried about my lip lasting through the whole evening, as I would have very little recuperation time. I mentioned this to Ted and he said I should feel free to skip a whole song as needed.

The night before the show, a lifetime first occurred: I got my mouthpiece stuck in the horn and could not get it out, thanks to having dropped the horn several inches onto the carpet. I don’t think I’ve ever dropped it before, either.

I tried everything I could think of to get it out without damaging anything, including my back, and finally called my friend Alix in Guerneville, who plays trombone. She said I needed a mouthpiece-puller, that standard implement of the middle-school band director. The next day, I called Union Music, and they said that if I brought my horn over, they would extract the mouthpiece for me.

Fortunately, my trumpet fits in its gig bag (though not in the hard case) with the mouthpiece still in it. And fortunately, that was the mouthpiece I meant to use at the café (a good old Bach 7C).

I was scared the day of the show, and watched the waves of anxiety rise and fall. I noted thoughts such as, “Uh oh, you’re scared—that means it’s going to be a disaster.” I know for a fact that one isn’t true, because I am frequently beset by stage fright, and usually it ends up going just fine, though strong and persistent fear—dry mouth, shaking knees—can indeed have a disastrous effect on performance.

I remembered that as long as I physically survived the experience, that was really all that mattered and that the point isn’t to prove I’m an awesome trumpet player but to provide pleasure to the listeners—even one note that was beautiful or made someone happy would be enough. It is also true to say that I’m playing for my own pleasure, and if someone else enjoys it, that’s a bonus.

To avoiding jinxing it, however, the only person I told beforehand was Tom, who came with me.

The rhythm section, none of whom I met until the night of the show, proved to be quite good. I was quite nervous when I started, and my second note of the evening was a nice loud wrong note, which didn’t help my anxiety level.

But a couple of tunes later, I played, if I may say so myself, an absolutely gorgeous rendition of “Black Orpheus,” both the head and the solo. During my solo, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and with the beauty of the minor key, and nearly cried. Afterwards, I got an enthusiastic compliment from Ted, and from then on, all was well and I felt very comfy.

However, it was clear the little lip muscles were not going to make it for several hours of this, so it was very lucky that a guy walked up and said it was great to hear us playing and that he is in a group that sometimes plays at the same place.

We asked what he plays and when he said saxophone, we said, “Great! Run home and get it!” So he did, and then we had two horns for the rest of the evening, providing some periods of rest, and all in all, it was a very great thing.

The last time I had performed was probably at a church on Easter, and before that as part of a brass quintet in another church, and before that, an earlier Easter. (Though an atheist, I do love an Easter church service.)

Today I saw an ad on Craigslist looking for trumpets for Easter. The ad said respondents must be able to read in concert key, meaning to transpose up a step on the spot, as the trumpet is a B-flat instrument, meaning that when I see a C on the page and play the note I call a C, it sounds to the rest of the world like a B-flat.

Between you and me, I’m not a world-class transposer, nor do I have Easter clothes. But I said to myself, “Life is short,” and answered the ad. Lo and behold, the church’s music director wrote back and said he had already left me a message after getting my name from a trombone-playing friend of mine! Talk about synchronicity.

Trumpeting on Easter once again—yay!

Twelve-Hour Dal

Mattress shopping continues apace. I uncovered a highly pertinent fact, which is that you can’t put a rubber or European Sleep Works mattress on the floor, where we hippies like to put them, without fear of mold, which pretty much means: McRoskey, or continue to risk one’s very life on a Tempur-Pedic, so I went to McRoskey last Saturday. They have only four firmnesses (three if you’re going to omit box springs), making the choice much less of a strain.

My lady acupuncturist doesn’t think there’s anything to fear with the Tempur-Pedic. She has friends who have them and like them. But I already am beset by allergies, so I’d rather not take the chance.

I furthermore think it will be a twin size. Besides the fact that no one wants to be in a relationship with me, I don’t have time for such an undertaking. I was making a schedule for how I’d spend my days if I didn’t have to work; i.e., when I retire, twenty years from now, give or take. At first I thought I’d like to do a little volunteer work, but it turns out I’m not going to have time for that, so I certainly am not going to have time to have a partner, unless said operative will do all the cooking, laundry and cleaning.

Having a bed larger than a twin is tantamount to having a guest bedroom, which is silly given the size of my apartment. I sleep clinging to the very edge of my full-sized mattress, anyway. Having a twin-sized mattress also means I will be able to have my keyboard (i.e., piano) out all the time, which is currently impossible.

Sleep Train will exchange your mattress or take it back within 90 days, but I’ve noticed they get a bit terse when discussing returns, so I have decided to return the Tempur-Pedic and see the money back in my checking account before buying the McRoskey, regarding which I can find nothing but raves online.

Accordingly, I have just ordered an air mattress and foot pump for the interim period, for a reasonable sum. I’ll probably sell it on Craigslist when I’m done with it, assuming Hammett hasn’t finished it off. Yes, I can very much picture myself sinking inexorably to the carpet in the middle of the night amid a loud hissing sound while Hammett smiles in innocent kitten pleasure.

Once I have my keyboard out, I can get back to trying to find a stand which is a bit lower or a seat which is a bit higher. If Dr. Neve could see the relationship of my hands to the surface of the keys, she would disapprove. That’s the same Dr. Neve who said of musical performance, “It’s OK to be scared. It’s just not OK to act scared.”

I lately bought an Art Blakey record (see link that starts with “Go here”) for the Horace Silver tune “Nica’s Dream,” but there is another tune of his on it, “Ecaroh,” (that’s “Horace” backwards) which made every part of my body twitch independently.

I called Tom up and played the first part for him, and wished I hadn’t so recently called my mother to tell her what my lady acupuncturist thinks about coconut oil so I could have played the beginning of “Ecaroh” for her instead.

Last weekend I tried a couple of new recipes: Dal, from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, which came out great, and a recipe for spinach fettuccine with arugula and tomatoes from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which was awful: labor-intensive, lacking in flavor, and downright gritty, I suppose from the arugula, which took ages to clean as it was.

However, reheated in coconut oil and mixed with a liberal amount of grated parmesan, it’s pretty good, as are most things, unless they’re sweet, in which case fry them in coconut oil and coat with chocolate sauce.

I had been under the impression that I hate arugula, but it turns out it has a lovely, nutty flavor; therefore, it’s cilantro that I hate.

Afterwards, I couldn’t help reflecting that I had spent, including shopping, twelve hours to produce about five cups of dal, but I guess there’s no going back now to the pot-of-beans-and-pot-of-grains-for-the-week approach.

I’ve been fretting some about who will care for Hammett when I’m out of town, which is just upon me, only about eight weeks away. Tom would be happy to do it and cared for Thelonious for years without incident, but Hammett is zippier than Thelonious. Just yesterday I took some recycling out and came back to find his front half sticking eagerly out of a window I thought he couldn’t get to.

I decided I would feel most at peace with professional cat care. Friends recommended someone they have been very happy with, but to come to my neighborhood, she charges $27 a visit, probably because she has to hire a car and driver, since parking is out of the question, so I called Mission Pet Hospital and they recommended a woman they love who charges a bit less.

Hard-Drinking Employee Needed

Quite some time ago, I wrote that I was thinking of being friends with someone and then decided not to be (or if not, that’s what I should have written), which has caused our frequent meetings to be awkward. For a while, we said hello and nothing more, which was OK, but then one day I forgot that we usually said hello and so didn’t (it’s amazing how easily one can forget what, these days), and then we never said hello again, and it was uncomfortable.

She had made a good effort to mend fences after doing something that wasn’t necessarily bad, but had startled me unpleasantly, and so I felt kind of not so good about being the party most responsible for the mildly strained mood that has prevailed for some months.

Finally, last week I asked her if she had a few minutes, which she did, and I told her that I’m sorry for how awkward things have been, and that while I think we probably would not have success with a one-on-one friendship, I am all in favor of having a civil, even cordial, relationship in the current context, and also that I appreciate all she did to try to make things better.

I also apologized in particular for the day I forgot it was our custom to say hello; I said I was sorry that I didn’t have all my brain cells pointing in the same direction at the same time.

She was very warm and gracious—she said she understood what I meant about the brain cells—and I know things will feel easier in the future.

My meditation teacher talks about being “the witness for the prosecution”—focusing on what people have done wrong and how they, or we, should be condemned. It’s so easy to do. Many an engrossing ten-minute block can be whiled away thinking about someone else’s shortcomings (I can usually get through mine in a minute or two; of course, I have the most practice thinking about mine), but nothing worthwhile comes of it.

It doesn’t really feel good during, it doesn’t feel good after, and establishing unhealthy thought patterns brings many ill effects, including harmful words that slip out before one knows it. I don’t want to be the person who can so readily list what is wrong with others. I don’t want to be the person who can’t forgive, so I am glad, finally, to have cleansed my conscience at least in this particular regard, and I look forward to smiling and saying hello to this person next time I see her.

It would be great if everyone I knew met my every qualification, but better still if I can exercise the forgiveness muscle often enough that it can be employed when needed.

Plus the “it’s OK as it is” muscle, which really makes a huge difference. Here I must quote the Third Zen Patriarch:

“The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction,
however, and heaven and earth are
set infinitely apart.”

It is so true. I am practicing saying that such-and-such is OK as it is. OK as it is, and maybe even deserving of gratitude.

In another case of estrangement (I know you are startled I could have two) which has caused me much anguish over a much longer period, the other week, I found myself affirming that it was OK as it is, and further, offering thanks for a situation which may turn out to be the grindstone that removes parts of my personality that aren’t doing me much good, anyway.

It has certainly occasioned much reflection on where I went wrong, which I think is fruitful to an extent and then not, when it becomes self-flagellation. After I offered the thanks, very spontaneously I felt true remorse for a remark I had made that, in retrospect, was unkind and critical, so I think finally letting go of “This cannot be” is a good thing.

It also occurred to me that getting some practice in enormous losses is a fine thing, because sooner or later, we will lose everything, including ourselves.

I now have an answering machine because my parents sent me their old one. That’s the only way to get a decent answering machine now: your parents have to send you one.

It actually is also a tad murky, so I conclude that some digital machines just don’t work well on a DSL line, but I think it will do the job satisfactorily, until Hammett knocks it onto the floor.

I spoke to P. recently on the phone. He said this:

“I’d like to get a job with a stipend.”

“Like what?”

“Alcoholic.”

“You can get a job being an alcoholic and they’ll give you a stipend?”

“It’s possible.”

I realized later that since he is a (sober) alcoholic, he meant he would like someone to pay him just for being himself. That’s funny—that’s the job I want, too.