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Sunday, August 9th, 2009
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9:48 am - Decisions, deciscion, decisions...
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I finally finished the first draft of my vampire book and will start revising it this afternoon. I also finished one short piece of HP fan fiction, and will do another one for an xmas exchange. The big question is what to pick for my next long piece of fiction. At the moment I feel like my mind has turned to mush, which happens once in a while. I think I'll do NaNoWriMo again this year, which takes care of November, but I still need some kind of glimmer of a plot, or at least a theme and a direction.
For those of you who aren't familiar with it, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a challenge to produce a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. There's a web site where you can sign up, forums where you can discuss your progress with other exhausted writers, and a word count program that tallies your final product. There aren't any prizes, just the satisfaction of getting it done.
Over the past couple of years I've written science fiction, murder mysteries, fantasy, and horror. I have no particular prejudice for or against any particular genre, but each of them has its own conventions and I feel more comfortable with some than I do with others.
The two things I have never tried are romance and westerns. I was raised on Zane Gray and I have a stash of Barbara Michaels romantic suspense books in the library so I suppose it's a possibility. I even live in a rural town where about 1/3 of the residents own horses and half of them own guns. It's fertile territory, that's for sure! Decisions, decisions, decision...
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| Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
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3:59 pm - A pleasant Afternoon
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My neighbors, Kimball and Maud, and I walked over to Ellen's for our monthly book club meeting yesterday. The temperature has fallen over the last week, and it was barely 70 degrees under a clear blue sky. It takes us about twenty minutes to walk over to Ellen and David's house, catching up on local gossip along the way. There are five of us in the group, but Patty lives on the far side of Ellen and always drives over.
David and Ellen have a nice garden and we had tea, gazpacho, and strawberry shortcake out under one of their apple trees. David isn't part of the book club, so after we all said hello, he went back to cultivating his blackberries and wetting down his compost. He's a dedicated compost enthusiast, and has a walloping great three-foot thermometer to prove it.
Originally we all read the same book and discussed it, but we've been getting together every month for five years now and have gone back to the childhood scheme of reading something and giving a report on it. Maud had re-read "The Red and the Black," which she loved as a teenager, but had to report that this time she couldn't even understand what the author was getting at. Patty is reading "The Great Influenza" aloud to her husband, who is having trouble with his sight, and Kimball is half way through a book on the Huchnom indians, who used to live in this valley. Ellen is reading an algebra book. I reported on a biography of C.S.Lewis (which Kimball promptly borrowed) and "The Elf King's Daughter" by Lord Dunsany. I also borrowed a book on autism that Patty had just finished.
It was a pleasant afternoon and at 5:30 we strolled on back to our end of the valley. Next month we're meeting at Maud's house, which is only about ten minutes from here. I guess I should pick something improving to read.
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| Friday, July 31st, 2009
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12:42 pm - The Joke's On Me
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I have not bought a new radio, although I've looked at some ads. My little plastic Cube is still playing the Spanish language station. I grew up in a Spanish-speaking section of Los Angeles, so it's kind of comforting, like going back to my childhood and hearing the neighbors.
Besides the Cube radio, I've got ten other electronic units in the house. There's a CD player, amplifier, video tape player, LP turntable, and two satellite receivers in the living room, one of which is for service that Chuck discontinued years ago.
There's another amplifier in the bedroom, along with the TV, DVD and audio tape players, and a laser videodisk player that takes 12" disks. (I've got a fair-sized collection of those, which we bought before DVDs became the norm for movies.)
Everything's in working order, but we hadn't used anything except the DVD and CD players for years. The other devices just became part of the scenery, as such things do. Last night I was reading in bed, and happened to look at the big laser disks stacked in the cabinet, wondering as I did so if I should pack them away so that I'd have more room for DVDs. My eyes strayed to the amplifier. It has a tuner display across the front? I blinked a bit and stared at it. "That's a radio," I said slowly, as my brain finally kicked in.
The only excuse I can make for this is that we never used it as a radio. The switch on the front has always been set to aux/TV and it handles the sound output from the other units. When I turned it on, set the switch to FM, and twiddled the tuner, it obligingly brought in some rock station. Of course, the skip was in last night, but when I tried it today I could pick up all sorts of stations.
I have a radio.
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| Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
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12:56 pm - Unleaking
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As part of the standpipe fix, I had to drain the water in the pipes off to the garden. I think it was about 30 gallons, but I may have lost track of how many buckets I filled and emptied. In any case, Paco took a look at the faucet and decided that it was shot so I now have a shiny new brass faucet in place of the old one, and no more leaks. I only had to pay for the faucet, which was sure better than paying a plumber!
Last night the water system switched over to the lower tank, which it would have done anyway because the upper spring always goes dry during the summer. I've got plenty of water; the lower spring has never gone dry (knock on wood) but the pressure is down to about half. I'm used to that, so it's no big deal.
So much for the domestic infrastructure.
I did go to see HBP, and have mixed feelings about it. What they did, they did very well, but as one friend of mine remarked, it's more like highlights from the book than a smoothly-conceived narrative. I did enjoy it, and I will buy the DVD when it comes out, but having seen it, I am glad that the producers decided to film the last book in two parts. We'll get more of what's in it.
Meanwhile, I have a first draft of my new HP fan fic short, and have gone back to work on the vampire novel. So far I haven't come up with a good ending for it, which is always a stumbling block. I think the problem is that my protagonist--the vampire--doesn't have any real goals to carry herself through immortality. I remember laughing a bit over Anne Rice's vampire, Maharet, who spent her centuries looking after her descendants. What it amounted to was that she had a hobby! I guess I could have mine take up dog breeding.
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| Friday, July 24th, 2009
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2:28 pm - A Little Less
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My neighbor Eve came over with her handyman this morning and he, Paco, drove my junk-laden truck to the recycle center. "Junk" is a subjective term. Someone, somewhere, is theoretically going to turn all of that stuff into bright shiny new use-ables. As far as I am concerned, it was eight boxes of junk mail and paper packaging, three large bundles of cardboard, and six tubs of metal and plastic that I wanted gone and out of my life. Paco liked the truck, incidentally. I told him and Eve that anytime they want to borrow that humongous great thing, they are more than welcome to use it. Happiness is getting ones ashes... err, RECYCLABLES hauled!
From now on, deciding on what to buy at the market is going to include consideration of how much packaging comes with the stuff.
Paco is coming back this afternoon to fix my dripping standpipe. It probably only needs a washer, but I am no expert on plumbing. (I'm not much of an expert at anything, to be honest.) I've already been up the hill to turn off the water at the upper tank. I am proud of myself for remembering that I have to turn off the lower tank too. The upper tank is the main water supply for the house. The lower tank is for watering the garden. But the upper tank usually goes dry around mid August, and there is an automatic shunt in one of the pipes to route water from the lower tank to the house when that happens. I'll turn off the lower one when Paco gets here, and hope that he can fix the problem with minimal fuss and bother.
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| Thursday, July 16th, 2009
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9:07 am - A Few Potterverse Things
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In honor of the release of the Half-Blood Prince film, I've been rereading the books. That led me to some speculation on the the Potterverse artifacts. For instance, where did Molly get that clock of hers? She mentions that she doesn't know anyone else who has one, but she doesn't say whether she bought it, or if one of her relatives whipped it up in his garage. Did a traveling clock salesman come to her door once upon a time, or did someone build it from the plans in the wizarding equivalent of Popular Mechanics?
As for wands, we know that there is a British wand-maker, Ollivander, and that Victor Krum got his wand from a European craftsman named Gregorovitch. The text doesn't tell us where Fleur Delacour got her wand, but Ollivander does not identify it as one of his--it has a veela hair core, which he does not use--nor as a product of the Gregorovitch shop, so we may assume that there is a wand-maker somewhere in France, probably near Beaubatons school. In "The Half-Blood Prince," Remus Lupin mentions that there are other wand makers, but he does not identify them. He also says that Ollivander is the best, but that may be insular prejudice.
Time turners are another puzzle. Hermione was able to borrow one in "The Prisoner of Azkaban" so we know they are available to non-Ministry personnel upon completion of an incredible amount of paperwork. The Department of Mysteries had a whole room full of them, in all assorted sizes. However, most of those were smashed in the battle at the end of "The Order of the Phoenix." The following semester at Hogwarts, Hermione tells Hagrid that she and her chums could not borrow another time turner because they have all been destroyed. It's hard to believe that there are no more time turners at all. There must be some kind of subcontractor, somewhere, that makes the things. Possibly the Ministry's new shipment is on backorder or--more likely--the funds for a new supply haven't been allocated yet.
That brings us to Pensieves, the memory-storage basins. Dumbledore says, in "The Goblet of Fire, "It is called a Pensieve," implying that it is not a unique item. When Harry sees a Pensieve in Professor Snape's quarters, he jumps to the conclusion that it is the same one he used in Professor Dumbledore's office. Of course, there may be some distinctive chips that identify it, or possibly those runes around the edge are the manufacturer's serial number. If it IS the same Pensieve, then Snape does not have one of his own and had to borrow the Headmaster's, implying that they are expensive and possibly rare items which Snape couldn't afford on his meagerly teacher's stipend. Or maybe Snape simply never felt the need to buy one. On the other hand, maybe Snape does have one of his own, and Harry was wrong. Is the Pensieve a special order item from some Living Treasure craftswoman who has a tiny shop in the mountains above Kyoto, or is it in-stock from Magik Tools with 24-hour owl shipping? I can imagine Dumbledore pouring over a catalog and trying to decide between the top-of-the-range "Deluxe Stor-All" or the "Economy Safe-Stor" models. Isn't it interesting that no matter how many memories someone pours into a Pensieve, they never get mixed up? I wonder if that's how one knows that the device has worn out, when memories of The World Cup get intertwined with Aunt Sophronia's trip to Bognor Regis.
current music: Handel - "Water Music"
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| Saturday, July 11th, 2009
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12:16 pm - Looking Through the Windows
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Tech Support at my ISP walked me through the email set-up, so everything is now operable on the new machine. I was only mildly surprised when he asked how the weather was, down here in Northern California. It turns out that he has moved to Oregon. He's wheelchair-bound, and services are a lot better up there. Telecommuting, gotta love it! He's been a great help to me, all through the computer problems I had right after Chuck died, and I'm really happy that he's still with the ISP.
There's a lot I don't know about on the new system, but I did manage to create folders in the "My Documents" directory for my fiction (fan and otherwise) and for images. I successfully copied my avatars back from IJ too, which gives me confidence that the function works okay.
There doesn't seem to be a graphics program on the Windows machine, so I guess that, eventually, I'll have to buy something to fill the gap. I've been using Gimp, under Linux, which is a Photoshop lookalike, but I don't think I feel like springing for the cost of Photoshop. Maybe the Kodak application, coupled with my scanner and camera download program, will do most of what I need anyway. I mostly used Gimp for resizing photos, creating avatars, and making book cover art. I'll wait and see what I really need.
The thing that I find awkward is the desktop configuration. My Linux machine divides the desktop into four separate segments, and I was used to moving between programs running in all four of them -- browser, mail, word processor, and Gimp. Having to juggle windows on a single desktop is perplexing at times. I'll adjust, in time.
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| Thursday, July 9th, 2009
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5:08 pm - Almost There...
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I am the proud possessor of a brand new Windows machine.
Unfortunately I don't have the email account set up on it yet, and my old machine can't access email either, because of a change in the static IP address. I CAN use the browser on either machine, and tomorrow I'll call the ISP and ask them how I should set up the email account for the new machine at my end.
The other hitch is with two directories that I hoped to move to the new machine. The installer did save them to an external hard drive that I've got, but the hard drive is set up as a Linux partition and Windows doesn't recognize it, so I can't load them on the Windows box. (I did take the precaution of printing my WIP this morning, so I can retype it if I have to.) I have a phone number for a local outfit that might know how to do that.
So, I'm kind of betwixt and between at the moment, and have a steep learning curve ahead as I try to re-learn Windows, which I haven't used in about five years.
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| Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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6:14 pm - An Afternoon Soiree
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4th of July was pleasant up here. Unlike some years when it is scorching hot, the temperature only got to 75. I skipped the annual parade. Chuck and I never went to see it in all the years we lived here, and who am I to break with tradition? I did go to an afternoon party, though. Neighbors at the west end of the valley decided to have a potluck after the parade, and one of my other neighbors offered me a lift in her car. I've driven over there twice, and had to slip the clutch to get back up the rather precipitous driveway. My neighbor has a four-wheel-drive sedan which makes the grade much more easily.
Pat and Patty, who own the house and have lived there for about twenty years, are folk musicians. She plays piano and guitar, and he plays those plus drums and great washtub! Two of the other people at the party brought guitars and we had music as well as conversation. I had a chat with a fellow who collects bamboos, and another with his wife, who shares my love of The Alexandria Quartet. I also discovered that one of the guests was a woman I'd been on a local gardening DL with a couple of years ago but had never met in person.
It was a small, friendly gathering with some very tasty food. One of the women brought home-made "California Roll" sushi, which was a remarkable coincidence because I had been thinking wistfully of sushi for a couple of days. All in all, a very pleasant gathering, and I came home feeling more relaxed and at ease than I have in a long time.
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009
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1:03 pm - It Flushes!
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Much to my surprise the hardware store did have handle/lift bar assemblies, so I didn't have to buy a complete set of toilet innards. I guess those things break more often than I thought. I had a choice of models at $3.95, $5.99, or a heavy duty, all metal one at $11.95. I splurged and bought the heavy duty one. It was easy to install, but the end of the rod kept slipping out of the lift, so I took the rod out to the garage, put it in the vise, and leaned on it a bit. The toilet is now fixed, and I have a nice sense of accomplishment. I think I'll rest on my laurels for the rest of the day, lest I screw something up and rescue disaster from the jaws of victory.
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| Saturday, June 27th, 2009
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11:13 am - If It Ain't One Damned Thing...
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... it's another! The flush handle on the toilet has seemed stiff for the past couple of days, so this morning I took the lid off of the tank to see if I could locate the problem. I flushed. The handle came off in my hand. Monday, when I go to town for groceries, I'll stop by the hardware store and buy a replacement kit. It's supposed to be 96 degrees in town today, so I'm in no mood to dash down to the hardware store right now. In the meantime, when I need to flush the toilet I have to take the lid off of the tank.
On the brighter side, I was musing over making felt puppets of some Potterverse characters and wondering how to construct artful genitalia. (My slash-enthusiast friends would never forgive me if I neutered their heroes.) The little bag is no problem: Sew, turn, and stuff. The rest of it is more complicated. My first prototype was a tube with a closed, curved end. I turned it, then pulled a fold into the shaft and stitched it in place. Very nice! The only problem is that felt is stiff, so there is a size limitation on how small it can be. Heavens! Now, THAT's an endowment!
What finally worked was to roll a piece of felt, stitch the free edge along the side, and then press down the inner layers at one end with a chopstick. I inserted a half-inch pink plastic bead with the hole running horizontally and stitched it into place to hold the outer layer of felt up around it. Quite satisfactory! It's sure going to spoil the set of their robes, though.
Having satisfied my curiosity about felt generative organs, I guess I'd better strip the water bed, wash the bedding, and see if I can find the damned pinhole leak.
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| Thursday, June 25th, 2009
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6:10 pm - Magazines and Curtains
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Summer has finally arrived. The thermometer reached 80 degrees yesterday and today, and was only 50 last night. That's not cold enough to turn the furnace back on again. I have unplugged the cats' heating pads.
I consolidated the contents of a couple more boxes and sorted through some magazines to see what I want to keep. If I was really honest with myself, I'd admit that I hardly ever re-read back issues of the magazines that I get. But they have such nice pictures and great articles that it seems like a shame to just heave them into the trash. I am seriously considering leaving some of them in the doctor's and dentist's offices the next time I have an appointment. All the dentist seems to have is Good Housekeeping, and the doctor relies on Road and Track. Whatever became of National Geographic? Are subscribers hoarding them? I once read a tongue-in-cheek article that blamed land subsidence on the weight of all of those National Geographics in basements and cellars.
The other thing I got done today was make a curtain for the shower room. I doubt that there is a Peeping Tom within ten miles, and the deer aren't tall enough to look in through the window, but people who are apt to stay with me long enough to need a shower come from the Big City, where windows are shrouded as a matter of course.
Oh yeah, I also cleaned out the cats' drinking fountain. I don't object to the skunk drinking out of it, but I sure wish he'd clean his paws first!
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| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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12:55 pm - Household Matters
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I went to the hardware store this morning and bought a door mat and a non-skid scatter rug for downstairs, and a chunk of Berber carpet to put inside the front door, upstairs. I don't remember where the ratty old piece of brown carpet that we had upstairs came from, but I've thrown it out. After eight or ten years, I think we got our money's worth out of it.
I also bought a night light; a "guide light," according to the package. This one is an LED, and the package boasts that one doesn't need to change bulbs. Right. When it burns out, throw away the whole thing. It's part and parcel of our throwaway society. Aside from that, the "bulb" is a flattened funnel-shaped piece of plastic, with some concentric circles at the top. I think it's supposed to be a rose. The light is blue. Sure enough, the package does say that, in very small letters on the back. Not what I expected, but I suppose a blue light is as good as any other kind. It sure looks eerie at the end of the hall, though.
Being in the mood to change things around, I dug my set of Corelle out of storage. I bought those dishes at some discount house--probably Target or Costco--the first time we drove up here from Manhattan Beach to spend the weekend, so we'd have something besides paper plates, which Chuck loathed. I think we used them that once, and never again. They're white with a blue line and little white flowers, look bright and summery, and suit my present mood.
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| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
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11:38 am - A Slight Smile from Fortune
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We're past the Solstice, and it's officially summer. The weather here is still nice and temperate. It's around 75 degrees during the day, but I have to turn on the furnace for the 38 degree nights.
I painted a pine board white yesterday, and today I lettered it: PLEASE LEAVE PACKAGES INSIDE DOOR, in dark green and deep rose. (Hey, it's what I HAD!) Tomorrow I'll erase the pencil lines and coat it with polyurethane. Now comes the exciting part. I not only found the cordless drill I need to mount it, but also the matching charger AND the chuck key!!
Considering that I seem to have completely lost a good bench brush and a blood pressure meter, this feels like a major change for the good in my fortunes.
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| Sunday, June 21st, 2009
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4:27 pm - It Could Be Fixed.
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I spent most of the day cleaning up the garage. I've got the back wall pretty much under control. The empty cardboard boxes are collapsed and sitting on top of the Mazda GXL Rotary (which hasn't been out of the garage in six years) and I put what I could on shelves and away in drawers. After I move all of the boxes of junk paper (stacked on the south side of the garage) into the truck, so they can go to the recycler, I'll put the cardboard on top of them. I'm shoving out-and-out trash into big black plastic bags.
Chuck's credo was "It could be fixed!" which applied to everything from broken office chairs to old microwave ovens. The hitch in this theory was that neither of us ever fixed any of these treasures. We bought a new one of whatever it was and the old one went into the garage or a storage building until we got around to it. Of course, we never DID get around to it. I can't blame him for all of the clutter. I've got three boxes of gourds out there; one filled with decorated gourds and two with gourds awaiting decoration. There are also about three linear feet of old vinyl lps, and a small ceramic kiln that I got in a barter deal fifteen years ago and never used.
Mostly I knew what what was out there, but I had forgotten about the 20 issues of Popular Mechanics from 1919 and 1920, which might have been interesting to a collector if they hadn't developed a dandy case of mold. I also found a novel in verse by J.G. Holland, about whom I know nothing, and various electronic devices which mean precisely nothing to me. Oh yes, and one flattened and desiccated mouse.
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| Friday, June 19th, 2009
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3:04 pm - Little Chores
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I decided, on the spur of the moment, to mop the new vinyl downstairs. There was a grayish film over it, from dissolved dry wall "mud," and since I had an old bottle of Mop 'N Glow in a cupboard and could actually find the sponge mop, I gave it a once-over. It looks much better. Hey, it's only been a month and a half since it was laid down!
That done, and driven by some impulse I cannot explain, I mended the top of a chocolate pot that I've had for maybe thirty years. I don't remember exactly when the top was broken, but I think it was when we moved from Santa Ana to Manhattan Beach, in 1984. The pot and its four cups have a pretty iridescent glaze and were given to me by my favorite aunt. She got the set from an ex-mother-in-law who was an amateur ceramicist and made it from a mold. That was back in the days when ladies served hot chocolate to feminine friends.
Having the bit between my teeth by now, I decided to Do Something about the printer that's been sitting on the deck for four months. It quit working sometime last December, and it was still in the house when Chuck died in February. My daughter helped me manhandle it out onto the deck a few days later and it's been there ever since, with some of its component parts in a cardboard box, covered with black plastic trash bags.
I carried the box out to a storage building, but the rest of the unit was 'WAY too heavy for me to move. I considered walking it over to the top of the stairs and giving it a murderous push, but that would still leave the debris to clean up. Of course, I could have loaded it onto the hand truck at that point and wheeled it out to the garden. When I was a kid and something stopped working, my grandmother always said, "Put it out in the yard and plant something in it!" I did the next best thing. I moved the two deck chairs apart and shoved the printer in between them. It makes a very nice table.
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| Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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12:42 pm - Adrenalin Rush
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A short while ago I heard a helicopter fly low over the house. I wouldn't have thought anything about it, assuming that it was on a pot-spotting tour or something, except that it circled back again. I went outside for a look at it, and it came by yet again, flying in what seemed to be awfully close proximity to a small fixed-wing plane. The two of them circled back, and I wondered if the 'copter was tailing the plane.
Then a red fire department car came up the driveway. When the driver slowed down past the laundry room and backed up, I ran over to ask him what was going on. He said a construction fire had been reported. I told him that I didn't think I had any problem here, and that the house number he mentioned was the house out by the county road. He asked if there were any other houses further up the hill along my access road, and I told him there were not. He thanked me, and backed out of the driveway.
The helicopter, plane, and car have gone so I guess it must either have been a false alarm, or my neighbors got everything under control. I never did see any smoke. It sure got my adrenalin flowing though. We're in fire season now, and the local hills are getting dry.
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| Saturday, June 13th, 2009
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9:21 am - Charming People
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I just heard that Bette Farmer, widow of Philip Jose Farmer, died on the 10th. I knew her and Phil many years ago, through conventions and through a writers salon that met in Los Angeles and Santa Maria. She was a charming lady. She and Phil were married for over 60 years, and she was well into her eighties when she died.
Tom and Terri Pinckard started their writers' salon in 1963 and Chuck and I were invited to join in 1971 or '72, somewhere around there. It was a fascinating, challenging, group. We met once a month at various member's homes, for a potluck dinner, an after-dinner talk by some guest speaker, and then dessert, coffee, and conversation. I remember that we had one of the first astronauts as speaker one time, and Chuck asked him the question that had always plagued science fiction writers: Is being in space like falling or floating? "Floating!" he told us firmly, which solved one little fictional problem.
Most of the friends who got together through that monthly salon are dead now. Terri herself died several years ago. I met a lot of interesting people through that group, people whom I liked very much and whose work I especially admired. Bob Bloch stands out in my memory, as do Horace Gold, Forry Ackerman and Van Vogt. They were always gracious, always friendly, and shared a wickedly wonderful sense of humor. Charming people.
current music: Salsa
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| Friday, June 5th, 2009
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12:03 pm - Little Lost Bat
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A couple of days ago I went through the laundry room and discovered a bat in the stationary tub/utility sink/whatever. It was hunched over the drain hole, so perhaps it was trying to get down into the dark. Thinking it was dead, I started to pick it up with a paper towel, but when the paper touched it, it moved. I retreated to get my heavy leather gardening gloves and a wide-mouthed plastic jug. I tried to chivvy the little creature into the jug, but it spread out its wings and refused. It did clamber up on the jug neck, hanging onto the rim with its little claws and baring its tiny teeth at me. It did not try to fly.
By then two of the cats had shown up to see what I was doing, so I couldn't simply dump the bat outside on the ground. I opened the loose-fitting door of the storage shed, set jug-with-bat-attached on the floor and closed the door. The little creature could easily crawl out around the door, or fly up to the roof and get out via the rotating air vent.
Alas, when I checked the following day, the bat was dead--a sad, crumpled, little heap next to the jug. I felt bad about that, wondering how long it had been in the downstairs and if it had died of starvation. Perhaps I should have dumped it into one of my shrubs where it could await the evening and a tasty meal of whatever insects are out this time of year. I gave it a decent burial under the rose bush.
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| Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
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6:59 am - An Aged Phrase
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Yesterday I walked over to the west end of the valley with three friends, to visit another friend for our monthly book club meeting. (We discussed Huxley's "The Doors of Perception.") On the way back, I mentioned something to Kimball about having gone to the market that morning. She said that was the first time she'd ever heard the Safeway referred to as "the market," and I remarked that I'd recently had a hard time explaining to a British friend what I meant by "stationary tub." Kimball admitted that she didn't know what I meant either.
"Laundry tub?" I suggested. She shook her head. "I think builders call them 'laundry trays'," I said hopefully.
"You mean a utility sink?"
Not exactly, but I decided that was as close to a meeting of minds as we were going to get. Like my Brit friend, she wanted to know why it would be called a stationary tub.
Well, that's what my mother and grandmother called it; perhaps because it was mounted in one place instead of being the sort of large galvanized tub that one would move around for other purposes, like soaking laundry, making soap, or taking Saturday night baths. The stationary tub in my parents' house was enameled iron, like a bathtub, and so were the ones in the big Victorian place where Chuck and I lived for ten years, and in the laundry room in our Santa Ana house. The one I have now is merely plastic.
"Just an old name for it," Kimball said.
Yes, I guess so. But then, I always have to remind myself to say refrigerator instead of ice box.
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