Wedding gift feast. Crisis managed. My job is fish.
I had a really good weekend - low key but satisfying on many fronts.
Friday night, I came home after work and Mick & I took our time getting cleaned up and dressed. We received a belated wedding gift recently - a gift card to a smokehouse & raw bar. I've been trying to get a reservation for two weeks and finally just suggested we show up and wait. It was drizzling and unseasonably warm as we drove downtown. We parked a couple of blocks away, unwilling to pay event parking prices. We walked past the burned out husks of Whiskey Row. There was a terrible fire a year ago and several of the historic iron-front buildings on Main Street burned. They are trying to save the facades, and in the process they have these huge bracing steel beams in place. I'm sure it is structurally sound, but it is a daunting sight to walk just under them on the diverted sidewalk below. It looks ready to crumble and topple over at the least breeze.
We made our way to Doc Crow's and only had to wait a half hour. I've been studying the menu so I knew which drink I wanted to try - Northern Lights - and Mick decided to try a variation on an Old-Fashioned - Kentucky Colonel. My drink used Uncle Val's Botanical Gin, Clove and Cinnamon Pear Syrups, Lemon Juice, Egg White & Rosemary, while Mick's drink had J.W. Dant Bonded Bourbon, Benedictine & Orange Bitters. They were both perfect - mine was crisp and herbal, perfectly balanced, and Mick's was warm and bright without the bourbon bite some drinks have. We ate hugely - a towering appetizer, platters of meats and shrimp and grits. We had to pass on dessert but we did both have a second cocktail. We drove home, moaning from the huge feast, and passed out shortly after we hit the door.
Crisis struck in Chez Mandermick Saturday morning - the coffeemaker broke. It would power on but wouldn't brew. We both got ready far faster than we had the night before for dinner. We headed to a local coffee shop for a coffee and pastry and some time to ponder our next move. Mick was pretty excited - he has wanted to get a new coffeemaker for some time, but I'd pooh-pooh the idea, pointing out our own coffeemaker was just three years old. We debated the advantages and disadvantages of Chemex versus French press versus drip brewer and finally settled on a stovetop percolator. We considered an electric one but decided that if we can't have coffee because the stove stopped working, we have bigger problems than coffee. I had a gift card I'd won at work the week before so I used that to buy a new percolator, filters and a replacement top. Since free shipping kicks in at $35, I had to make up the difference, so I bought a silicone ice mold in the shape of the Death Star from Star Wars. Hey, it can't ALL be serious!
We ran a few errands and bought housewarming gifts for Stella and Will (a colander, some kitchen towels, thick fabric trivets), bought some instant coffee to make do until the new coffeemaker arrives, and headed home. I made a large batch of hummus for that night and planned to wrap gifts. Instead, we lounged and talked about work we ought to do around the house... the afternoon slipped away. I was starting to get dressed and Gypsi kept crawling onto my clothing laid out on the bed. I was half-fussing and teasing her, asking if she wanted something to wear. As I took off my tank top, I put it on her but it hung comically loose on her. I tied a knot along the bottom hem to fit her more closely and sent her in to see Mick in the next room. She came forlornly back so I called her on the bed to take it off her. I undid the knot but only had it half off her when she leaned away from me to plop down. The hem was over her head and I laughed at the flap of pink fabric covering her face. She seemed unconcerned so I left her like that while I finished dressing. I saw the cat sitting up on his hind legs, pupils dilated and horrorstruck. He was on the floor staring up at the dog on the bed. He made some sound and she turned toward him, fabric wobbling with her movements. That did it - the cat broke and ran. The dog heard him and chased after, still with the shirt covering her face. Now the cat freaked out in earnest, tail a fluffed bottlebrush, running into the kitchen and knocking off recipe books and the container of wheat floor. I was laughing so hard I couldn't stop or help any of it. Mick had to extract the cat off the stove and got scratched for his efforts.
This last week, I got a garbage can from the TimeBank for their house. With four adults, three dogs, two birds and a cat, the kids were using a small trash bag in the kitchen. When I saw the offer of the garbage can appear, I jumped on it, figuring that they would be happy to have it. I showed up with the can in hand, some card games and the hummus - I arrived at the same time as my parents. Mom sat most of her time at the party looking horrified at the cacophony of unseen dog howls. With my Dad's kidney transplant, he has to be really careful about animal scratches. The oldest dog, Babygirl, is only about 40 pounds and nearly trained. She would be the calmest and least likely to jump on my folks, but still better-than-even odds she would. The two puppies are a husky and a pit bull and nearly completely untrained. I was already sporting scratches down my arms from the pit bull as I walked in first, and Stella suggested that they put the dogs up. My folks were right behind me and heard the fresh protests from all three animals.
It was a modest crowd - Stella and Will and their two roommates, my Mom & Dad, Will's friend Shawn, and my friends Tommy and Jamie. We all told stories and laughed and made fun of each other. It was an alcohol-free celebration (Tommy bought a housewarming bottle of Captain Morgan's regardless) as their roommates come from alcoholic families and are overly cautious. As the evening started breaking up, Stella spread her arms and said, "See? THIS is what it'll be like when we have another party!" Her roommate Brandon muttered something about as long as there is no wild loud music, that is okay. Stella scoffed and said that of course there would be no loud music, everyone there was 40!
Man, they need to make friends their own age around here.
We left the party about 8 and headed to our usual bar so Mick could watch a Bengals game. As soon as we walked in, there was a weird energy there. There seemed to be a higher-than-usual number of tweakers there - they all had a restless, itchy vibe and were in perpetual motion. Mick & I exchanged a significant glance, and he muttered that I should move my sweater back from the edge of the table. There was a woman pacing ceaselessly, and she kept brushing up against my sweater hanging on the chair, and looking too closely at the tables she passed. I think she was trying to feel if I had a purse hanging under my sweater. I watched several surreptitious drug deals being made - there was a guy working in the kitchen who kept coming out to argue with his girlfriend who seem to be embroiled in the whole thing. It was overly warm and I wasn't invested in the game so I told Mick I was going outside for some air. As I was headed back out, this sloppy guy at the jukebox caught my arm and told me to wait until he got his money in there, I should pick songs. He stepped on my foot by accident but I was pinned there. I tried to extract my foot and stepped out of my shoe, staggering a little. I said mind my foot, and I'd be back to help him pick songs after I cooled off. He looked so familiar, I figured I knew him from nights when people have Mick and me pick all the music (sidebar: when spending our own money, we have good taste in music, but some contrary part of myself makes me pick THE WORST sings when someone else is paying). I walked outside in the rain a little to cool off. When I headed back inside, the drunk guy was behind the bar. I frowned at that - I'd never seen him working there before. Mick was side-eyeing him as well. The sloppy guy was behind the bar, yelling at everyone to try the dollar shots he was serving. As he said that, I watched him take a large drink from the cocktail mixer before he started pouring them out. I saw the owner at the bar and called him over - I tartly asked if he'd hired new help.
He confirmed I'd seen the guy before but not in the bar. I'd seen him some years earlier on a reality show called "Full Throttle Saloon" - it is about a giant biker bar in Sturgis, ND that is open only during the famous bike rally there. As he was telling me this, I watched Fajita Mike (the now-identified D-list celebrity) behind the bar drop trou and waggle his parts at all the bar patrons, including the owner's mother. So classy. As it turns out, he has a distiller's license and was bringing samples of a moonshine that the bar brand is producing now.
It was just a weird night overall. I think the owners were horrified what they'd unleashed there. I asked them if they'd seen the show - the owner said no, but his Mom brightly said yes. I laughed and pointed out that she shouldn't be surprised by his behavior.
Sunday, we had a lie-in with the critters in bed with us. When we finally got up and moving, I made some breakfast for us and we read the Sunday paper in bed. We slowly got moving - we swept and mopped the basement, cleaned out the fridge, did dishes and worked on laundry. We headed out about four.
Before Mick got fired from the newspaper, he was working on a Thanksgiving story about whether Louisville is a compassionate city. In the course of his research, he came across a group called Fed With Faith who does homeless outreach in the city. Even though the story was never published (I don't think the editor liked that he determined it *is* a compassionate city here ,and didn't come down harder on the metro government), Mick found volunteer work that called to him. He has been out with them nearly every Sunday night since. I started going with him. Last night, we got our own route for the first time. We headed to my own neighborhood in the Highlands with hot meals, containers of soup and sack lunches, as well as blankets, coats, gloves, clean socks, Sterno cans, foot warmers and other clothing. This group has routes they service every Sunday, and then if the temperature is below freezing, they will go out to do welfare checks as well. There is a man who lives behind a church that sort of takes care of people in his part of town. I used to live across the street from that church - I knew people lived there. It used to be a funeral home and has that covered driveway where the hearses would pull in. The church allowed people to sleep under that covering. The place burned some time ago, but some people still make their way behind the fence to sleep back there. We meet at the McDonald's across the street and we handed out meals to half a dozen people waiting there. We had meals leftover as there were fewer people than usual out - last night was a "white flag" night.
When the temperatures drop dangerously low, the shelters declare a "white flag" and they open their doors to everyone. Usually, there is a list of people "banned" for one reason or another (some legitimate, most arbitrary and punitive) but the lists are ignored on white flag nights. They allow more people than they have mattresses to ensure people don't freeze to death on those bitter cold nights. Even then, some people won't go in on nights like that for different reasons. Sometimes they prefer the safety of a small camp elsewhere, or they fear for their personal safety within the shelters. Those were the people we were trying to reach last night. We drove downtown to meet another crew with our extra meals. While we were handing out food and supplies there, we met three young people who were strangers to Louisville. The car broke down and was impounded, and they were stuck in Louisville until a family member could raise gas money to fetch them. We gave them directions to the nearest shelter, and let them know what days they could find us there.
It was so bitterly cold last night with a biting wind - I can't imagine having to stay out in that. I got windburn on my forehead and Mick and I were both shivering as we headed home. I am never so grateful for our modest but cozy house as when we return from that Sunday night outreach. I read something last night on Facebook that applies. I'm not much for inspiration sayings, but this? This clicked for me.
Note to Self: Whether you give a man a fish or teach him how to fish, your job hasn't changed. Your job is fish. It is not to make value judgements about whether the man is deserving of fish. It is not to criticize the man for not knowing how to fish already. And it is certainly not your job to stand around and debate the relative efficacy of fish charity vs. fish education while the man in front of you goes hungry. This man is your brother. Your job is fish.
Friday night, I came home after work and Mick & I took our time getting cleaned up and dressed. We received a belated wedding gift recently - a gift card to a smokehouse & raw bar. I've been trying to get a reservation for two weeks and finally just suggested we show up and wait. It was drizzling and unseasonably warm as we drove downtown. We parked a couple of blocks away, unwilling to pay event parking prices. We walked past the burned out husks of Whiskey Row. There was a terrible fire a year ago and several of the historic iron-front buildings on Main Street burned. They are trying to save the facades, and in the process they have these huge bracing steel beams in place. I'm sure it is structurally sound, but it is a daunting sight to walk just under them on the diverted sidewalk below. It looks ready to crumble and topple over at the least breeze.
We made our way to Doc Crow's and only had to wait a half hour. I've been studying the menu so I knew which drink I wanted to try - Northern Lights - and Mick decided to try a variation on an Old-Fashioned - Kentucky Colonel. My drink used Uncle Val's Botanical Gin, Clove and Cinnamon Pear Syrups, Lemon Juice, Egg White & Rosemary, while Mick's drink had J.W. Dant Bonded Bourbon, Benedictine & Orange Bitters. They were both perfect - mine was crisp and herbal, perfectly balanced, and Mick's was warm and bright without the bourbon bite some drinks have. We ate hugely - a towering appetizer, platters of meats and shrimp and grits. We had to pass on dessert but we did both have a second cocktail. We drove home, moaning from the huge feast, and passed out shortly after we hit the door.
Crisis struck in Chez Mandermick Saturday morning - the coffeemaker broke. It would power on but wouldn't brew. We both got ready far faster than we had the night before for dinner. We headed to a local coffee shop for a coffee and pastry and some time to ponder our next move. Mick was pretty excited - he has wanted to get a new coffeemaker for some time, but I'd pooh-pooh the idea, pointing out our own coffeemaker was just three years old. We debated the advantages and disadvantages of Chemex versus French press versus drip brewer and finally settled on a stovetop percolator. We considered an electric one but decided that if we can't have coffee because the stove stopped working, we have bigger problems than coffee. I had a gift card I'd won at work the week before so I used that to buy a new percolator, filters and a replacement top. Since free shipping kicks in at $35, I had to make up the difference, so I bought a silicone ice mold in the shape of the Death Star from Star Wars. Hey, it can't ALL be serious!
We ran a few errands and bought housewarming gifts for Stella and Will (a colander, some kitchen towels, thick fabric trivets), bought some instant coffee to make do until the new coffeemaker arrives, and headed home. I made a large batch of hummus for that night and planned to wrap gifts. Instead, we lounged and talked about work we ought to do around the house... the afternoon slipped away. I was starting to get dressed and Gypsi kept crawling onto my clothing laid out on the bed. I was half-fussing and teasing her, asking if she wanted something to wear. As I took off my tank top, I put it on her but it hung comically loose on her. I tied a knot along the bottom hem to fit her more closely and sent her in to see Mick in the next room. She came forlornly back so I called her on the bed to take it off her. I undid the knot but only had it half off her when she leaned away from me to plop down. The hem was over her head and I laughed at the flap of pink fabric covering her face. She seemed unconcerned so I left her like that while I finished dressing. I saw the cat sitting up on his hind legs, pupils dilated and horrorstruck. He was on the floor staring up at the dog on the bed. He made some sound and she turned toward him, fabric wobbling with her movements. That did it - the cat broke and ran. The dog heard him and chased after, still with the shirt covering her face. Now the cat freaked out in earnest, tail a fluffed bottlebrush, running into the kitchen and knocking off recipe books and the container of wheat floor. I was laughing so hard I couldn't stop or help any of it. Mick had to extract the cat off the stove and got scratched for his efforts.
This last week, I got a garbage can from the TimeBank for their house. With four adults, three dogs, two birds and a cat, the kids were using a small trash bag in the kitchen. When I saw the offer of the garbage can appear, I jumped on it, figuring that they would be happy to have it. I showed up with the can in hand, some card games and the hummus - I arrived at the same time as my parents. Mom sat most of her time at the party looking horrified at the cacophony of unseen dog howls. With my Dad's kidney transplant, he has to be really careful about animal scratches. The oldest dog, Babygirl, is only about 40 pounds and nearly trained. She would be the calmest and least likely to jump on my folks, but still better-than-even odds she would. The two puppies are a husky and a pit bull and nearly completely untrained. I was already sporting scratches down my arms from the pit bull as I walked in first, and Stella suggested that they put the dogs up. My folks were right behind me and heard the fresh protests from all three animals.
It was a modest crowd - Stella and Will and their two roommates, my Mom & Dad, Will's friend Shawn, and my friends Tommy and Jamie. We all told stories and laughed and made fun of each other. It was an alcohol-free celebration (Tommy bought a housewarming bottle of Captain Morgan's regardless) as their roommates come from alcoholic families and are overly cautious. As the evening started breaking up, Stella spread her arms and said, "See? THIS is what it'll be like when we have another party!" Her roommate Brandon muttered something about as long as there is no wild loud music, that is okay. Stella scoffed and said that of course there would be no loud music, everyone there was 40!
Man, they need to make friends their own age around here.
We left the party about 8 and headed to our usual bar so Mick could watch a Bengals game. As soon as we walked in, there was a weird energy there. There seemed to be a higher-than-usual number of tweakers there - they all had a restless, itchy vibe and were in perpetual motion. Mick & I exchanged a significant glance, and he muttered that I should move my sweater back from the edge of the table. There was a woman pacing ceaselessly, and she kept brushing up against my sweater hanging on the chair, and looking too closely at the tables she passed. I think she was trying to feel if I had a purse hanging under my sweater. I watched several surreptitious drug deals being made - there was a guy working in the kitchen who kept coming out to argue with his girlfriend who seem to be embroiled in the whole thing. It was overly warm and I wasn't invested in the game so I told Mick I was going outside for some air. As I was headed back out, this sloppy guy at the jukebox caught my arm and told me to wait until he got his money in there, I should pick songs. He stepped on my foot by accident but I was pinned there. I tried to extract my foot and stepped out of my shoe, staggering a little. I said mind my foot, and I'd be back to help him pick songs after I cooled off. He looked so familiar, I figured I knew him from nights when people have Mick and me pick all the music (sidebar: when spending our own money, we have good taste in music, but some contrary part of myself makes me pick THE WORST sings when someone else is paying). I walked outside in the rain a little to cool off. When I headed back inside, the drunk guy was behind the bar. I frowned at that - I'd never seen him working there before. Mick was side-eyeing him as well. The sloppy guy was behind the bar, yelling at everyone to try the dollar shots he was serving. As he said that, I watched him take a large drink from the cocktail mixer before he started pouring them out. I saw the owner at the bar and called him over - I tartly asked if he'd hired new help.
He confirmed I'd seen the guy before but not in the bar. I'd seen him some years earlier on a reality show called "Full Throttle Saloon" - it is about a giant biker bar in Sturgis, ND that is open only during the famous bike rally there. As he was telling me this, I watched Fajita Mike (the now-identified D-list celebrity) behind the bar drop trou and waggle his parts at all the bar patrons, including the owner's mother. So classy. As it turns out, he has a distiller's license and was bringing samples of a moonshine that the bar brand is producing now.
It was just a weird night overall. I think the owners were horrified what they'd unleashed there. I asked them if they'd seen the show - the owner said no, but his Mom brightly said yes. I laughed and pointed out that she shouldn't be surprised by his behavior.
Sunday, we had a lie-in with the critters in bed with us. When we finally got up and moving, I made some breakfast for us and we read the Sunday paper in bed. We slowly got moving - we swept and mopped the basement, cleaned out the fridge, did dishes and worked on laundry. We headed out about four.
Before Mick got fired from the newspaper, he was working on a Thanksgiving story about whether Louisville is a compassionate city. In the course of his research, he came across a group called Fed With Faith who does homeless outreach in the city. Even though the story was never published (I don't think the editor liked that he determined it *is* a compassionate city here ,and didn't come down harder on the metro government), Mick found volunteer work that called to him. He has been out with them nearly every Sunday night since. I started going with him. Last night, we got our own route for the first time. We headed to my own neighborhood in the Highlands with hot meals, containers of soup and sack lunches, as well as blankets, coats, gloves, clean socks, Sterno cans, foot warmers and other clothing. This group has routes they service every Sunday, and then if the temperature is below freezing, they will go out to do welfare checks as well. There is a man who lives behind a church that sort of takes care of people in his part of town. I used to live across the street from that church - I knew people lived there. It used to be a funeral home and has that covered driveway where the hearses would pull in. The church allowed people to sleep under that covering. The place burned some time ago, but some people still make their way behind the fence to sleep back there. We meet at the McDonald's across the street and we handed out meals to half a dozen people waiting there. We had meals leftover as there were fewer people than usual out - last night was a "white flag" night.
When the temperatures drop dangerously low, the shelters declare a "white flag" and they open their doors to everyone. Usually, there is a list of people "banned" for one reason or another (some legitimate, most arbitrary and punitive) but the lists are ignored on white flag nights. They allow more people than they have mattresses to ensure people don't freeze to death on those bitter cold nights. Even then, some people won't go in on nights like that for different reasons. Sometimes they prefer the safety of a small camp elsewhere, or they fear for their personal safety within the shelters. Those were the people we were trying to reach last night. We drove downtown to meet another crew with our extra meals. While we were handing out food and supplies there, we met three young people who were strangers to Louisville. The car broke down and was impounded, and they were stuck in Louisville until a family member could raise gas money to fetch them. We gave them directions to the nearest shelter, and let them know what days they could find us there.
It was so bitterly cold last night with a biting wind - I can't imagine having to stay out in that. I got windburn on my forehead and Mick and I were both shivering as we headed home. I am never so grateful for our modest but cozy house as when we return from that Sunday night outreach. I read something last night on Facebook that applies. I'm not much for inspiration sayings, but this? This clicked for me.
Note to Self: Whether you give a man a fish or teach him how to fish, your job hasn't changed. Your job is fish. It is not to make value judgements about whether the man is deserving of fish. It is not to criticize the man for not knowing how to fish already. And it is certainly not your job to stand around and debate the relative efficacy of fish charity vs. fish education while the man in front of you goes hungry. This man is your brother. Your job is fish.