Arizona Wildlife

Arizona is hot and dry with its red-stone mesas and and mesquite and is nothing like Michigan, and I don't know if it was lack of sleep or simply the dry air that made my pale, protected skin wrinkle up and flake off while I was in Arizona. From the train, we saw elk, pronghorn antelope, and bald eagles. Once we were settled in Sierra Vista, we saw vermillion flycatchers, a battalion of Gambel's quail, black phoebes, black-throated sparrows, and a Scott's Oriole (and many more, just ask Chris). On the inanimate front, we admired hunks of petrified wood glistening like jewels, and we climbed mountains, ventured into caves and canyons. We tromped along the somewhat snowy "rim trail" along the far south edge of the Grand Canyon, inches from the abyss, where one might easily dispose of one's companions should they grow tiresome. There we saw moutain goats and two California Condors, #22 and #97 as their wing markers attested (only 150 of these condors live in the wild), sunning themselves on a rock ledge. We saw two spiny lizards embracing at the top of Ramsey Canyon south of Tucson, where in a one-mile walk, we gained 1000 ft in altitude. The saguaro cactuses were fabulous and funny, and we also had a rare sighting of Monica Friedman, alighting poolside in the city of Tucson. Her muscles are smooth and taut, her eyes bright, her hair glossy; though she has not yet secured a good boyfriend or a publisher for her two novels, this erstwhile midwesterner is flourishing in the southern Arizona climate. She explains that, as a Jewish girl, she is descended from desert people. "I'm comfortable at ninety degrees," she said, "and good up to a hundred and ten." It was about eighty-five when we saw her; her skin was radiant.

Feeding Jonas

Jonas works with Christopher as a line coordinator and every few weeks he comes over after work (at midnight) to eat meatloaf or pot roast or stew. Usually he eats burritos for dinner, from Taco Bob's, Chris says. After he and Chris ate beef stew last Thursday, I passed around some of my brother Mike's homemade toffee (oh, it's good.) Afterward we hung out on the screen porch while Jonas smoked, and then he and Chris ate more toffee (it's Mike's best batch ever.) Jonas is terrified of clowns, wholeheartedly, and the sudden appearance of a child-sized clown doll or a clown nose on a friend or a ceramic clown with glowing eyes will make him freeze in terror. Over the last few years, Christopher has been collecting clowns, clown noses, clown statuary and a really creepy clown lamp that has glowing eyes. Male friendships are strange.

Cleaning Hints

My house is a mess, and when I put on the clothes I find on the floor, they look lousy. So I asked my martial arts friends for advice. Most Wednesdays after kobudo class 8:00 - 9:30 pm we go out and have a drink. We used to drink at the dojo but the head people have banned drinking, so now we hurry up and tidy up the dojo a bit (I wiped down the bathroom floor with Mr. Clean, Jamie Blake vacuumed, others emptied the garbage and refilled the drinking water) and we skate out.
At the bar, Josh Yoder said the key to keeping your house clean is, “Don’t spill stuff and don’t get dogs.” Jamie said she’d just heard that you should clean up a red wine spill with white wine. She suggested that I save leftover beer from parties and use it as a hair rinse. Her whites are always so white; turns out she not only separates whites from colors, but dark colors from light colors. She believes in the bleach alternative additives too. Also, she says that you should just throw children’s poopy underwear away, don’t even try to clean them.
Josh separates out his whites from his colors, and he says the secret to clean laundry is the stain sprays and sticks. He says it doesn’t matter which one you use, they all work. Jamie thinks the stain spray in the yellow bottle might be better than the other ones, but she couldn’t remember the name of it. The new guy who wears the Hapkido uniform in class told me he didn’t like Tide laundry soap. Julie Soul said she knew how to stop dish soap from foaming in the dishwasher, just add salt. Josh has a scoop on carpet cleaner, something called Folex, and the bottle looks like it’s from the 1970s, he said, but it's better than all the others. With two applications, he said, you could take off paint.
Our Sensei, Shihan Wayne Kroll, just retired this week from thirty-six years at the post office and he bought us a round. We lifted our glasses and waved them back and forth and sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” He looked bright and sparkly.