Month: February 2011

‘Zits’ and ‘Magnificent Bastard’

There, did that title get your attention? Zits is main character of the book I just finished reading, Flight by Sherman Alexie. It’s fast, it’s quirky, it’s fun, and it made me cry on the last page. The perfect book.

Now I’m reading Rich Hall’s Magnificent Bastards, a collection of short stories that knows no boundaries. Ever wonder what a werewolf does when he’s in the mood for Chinese food? Or what happens when a verbally impaired boyfriend decides to compile Google search results into love poems? These are fun stories.

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On the personal side, my husband has made two more trips to the emergency room at Albany General. His surgery two weeks ago is not working out so well. He seems to be deteriorating quickly. I honestly don’t know what will happen next. Prayers appreciated.

Never Take Winter Warmth for Granted

I watched in horror as sparks shot out of the pellet stove, landing on the carpet and the sofa. These bright balls of fire are a good thing—when they stay in the stove. They mean my heat source is working, turning the cylindrical wood pellets that look like rabbit droppings into lovely orange warmth. Soon the fan will turn on, sending heat throughout the house. But today, I had to turn it off in a hurry. Better to be chilly than burn the house down.

I often stand in front of the stove, soaking it in until I have to move because my thighs feel as if they’re burning. The dog lies between the sofa and the pellet stove for hours, cooking out the cold she accumulated during her night in the laundry room.

When the pellet stove is off, my house quickly chills to 60 degrees, lower if it’s snowing outside. A person can survive in that temperature, but it is not comfortable. I know I’m a California-raised wuss. There are families dying in minus-zero temperatures elsewhere because they can’t afford to heat their homes and government assistance has been cut. I heard on NPR about one person whose toilet water froze. That’s cold. Compared to that, my pellet stove not working is merely an annoyance.

I do have baseboard heaters in the bedrooms, but two are blocked by furniture and the ones I use only heat the rooms they’re in. A little wall heater hidden behind the kitchen china cabinet shoots a dusty band of heat straight across the kitchen and nowhere else. If the power goes out, I can light a fire in the woodstove in the garage-turned-den, but that only heats the den, and it requires constant maintenance. Still, it’s heat. I won’t die.

The pellet stove, my main source of heat, is an undependable creature. Officially, it’s a pellet stove insert, shoved into what used to be the fireplace. I don’t know how the former owners kept warm without it. It’s black, half-moon shaped, gold-trimmed with etchings of mountains and trees on the side doors and a clear front door that lets you watch the fireworks.

A diva of appliances, it needs frequent cleaning. Otherwise, ash builds up and it refuses to work. Pellets drop from the hopper into the clay pot and sit there until the igniter is in the mood to light them on fire. It takes a while. First it hums for about 10 minutes. Then it clicks and lights the first pellets or turns off and waits for you to push the reset button and start over. Eventually you wait a month in the cold until the county’s stove guy comes out to spend all day taking the stove apart and cleaning each little piece of metal while explaining how you have to do a better job of maintaining this baby. It’s a lot like the hygienist warning you to floss more often.

If the stove does light, first one then another pellet, then a bunch of pellets turn red and pop up like popcorn until they’re shooting like fireworks. It’s beautiful, but there’s no heat yet. Eventually an orange tongue of flame begins to burn in the pot. Finally the fan comes on. That’s when I rush to stand in front of the stove, often with a book in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other. But for the burning thighs, I would stay there all day. The dog spreads out below me, resting her feet on my feet.

Yesterday, the pellets were running low. I brought in a bag from the garage, cut open the top with the big red-handled kitchen scissors and started to pour. Suddenly pellets were coming down everywhere. A pellet avalanche poured out of a big hole in the side of the bag. Pellets sprayed around the hearth, the sofa, the cabinet, my feet, and all over the top of the stove. “Shit!” I said, hauling the dog out by her collar before she could start eating the pellets. They look like food to her. Then I started scooping up the pellets into an empty cottage cheese container. Of course I was dressed to go out and running late, but this couldn’t wait.

As I was scooping, I noticed the sparks. Pellets had fallen through the front grill into places they didn’t belong. Now they were lighting up and shooting out as I dodged and stomped, thinking any second my carpet would catch on fire. Or maybe I would catch fire. I turned the stove off. I unplugged it. It continued to roar and shoot out sparks until gradually the fan slowed, the pellets darkened, and the stove went off.

The house had not burned down, but it was full of smoke. My smoke alarms, which have new batteries, didn’t make a sound. They wail like the end of the world when I cook pork chops, but they didn’t do a thing when I had an actual fire creating actual smoke only a few feet away.

Sigh. Mechanical, I am not. Put the smoke alarms on the list for when Prince Charming in a tool belt shows up.

I went to my appointments, loving the warmth in my car so much I might never have come home if gas didn’t cost so much. I came home and vacuumed out the pellet stove, plugged it in, turned it on, and held my breath. Pellets dropped, they lit up, the fire started, the fan came on, and, praise God, the fire stayed in the stove. As heat poured out, the dog took her place on the warm carpet.

That was Tuesday. Today it only took three tries to get the stove going, which is good because it’s snowing.

But I don’t trust that thing. Never take winter warmth for granted.

Update on the ongoing family crisis

I don’t want to burden you with my troubles. I like to keep this site light, but you may notice my occasional absence or wonder whatever happened to the husband I previously wrote about. So, briefly, here’s the story.

Fred, who has Alzheimer’s Disease, is having a very hard time, and subsequently, so am I. When you’re together this long–27 years–and love so deeply, what hurts one hurts you both.

In the past month, Fred has been to the hospital five times. He had surgery a week ago, and was moved, unconscious, the following day to a skilled nursing facility. His condition has drastically deteriorated in the last few months. When I visited yesterday, the first day I saw him awake since the surgery, he could not speak, could not feed himself, and could not walk on his own. He has lost 25 pounds since Christmas. He has become one of those zombies who sits in his wheelchair and dozes or stares into space. The surgery, related to a failed bladder, appears to have been successful, but we don’t know what will happen next. It’s one day at a time. Complicating matters is the fact that Fred is in Albany, Oregon, and I’m on the coast. I’m spending an average of 3 1/2 hours per trip several days a week driving on a long, windy road.

It was only nine days ago that Fred was still able to say “I love you” to me and knew my name. It may have been the last time.

I’m signing off before I get more maudlin. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease, the sixth most common cause of death in the United States. As the boomers age, the number of people with AD is growing. For information, visit the Alzheimer’s Association website at http://www.alz.org/.

Anyway, that’s what’s happening. Please appreciate every little thing you can do all by yourself and all the many blessings that fill every day. Thank God Fred loved his life and his glass was always not just half full but full to overflowing.

Read away the cold winter with Stephanie Kallos

I have just finished reading the second of Stephanie Kallos’ two novels. They are both so good I want to share them with you.

Broken for You (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004) is a crazy, beautiful book, poetic, layered and loving. The plot wraps around Margaret, who has a brain tumor and has been living alone in a mansion full of antiques since her father dies. She rents a room to Wanda, a stage manager whose parents both left when she was little. Wanda is always searching for her parents and for Peter, the guy who dumped her. The story that unrolls is just beautiful. Among the amazing twists are Margaret’s sudden plan to start breaking all the glass that fills her house and Wanda’s inspired way to use the pieces.

Sing Them Home (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009) is another masterpiece, even better than Broken for You. Kallos is a weaver, bringing together many beautiful threads to weave one warm, luxurious blanket. She tells her story from multiple points of view, her protagonists both living and dead, past and present, but it all comes together in the end. We begin with Llewellyn Jones, the mayor, who insists on going golfing despite an oncoming storm. He is killed by lightning. His death inspires the events that follow. This is not the first time the Jones family loses someone to extreme weather. Llewellyn’s wife Hope disappeared and his daughter Bonnie was injured in a tornado back in 1978.

The book tells the stories of Llewellyn’s nurse and lover, Viney; his daughter Larken, a lonely art professor; his son Gaelan, a weatherman and avid bodybuilder, and Bonnie, an odd duck who lives in a converted garage and collects artifacts scattered by the tornado. We also meet Blind Tom, the piano tuner, and a host of other wonderful characters. So much happens, so much love, loss, and fun. We also get a heavy dose of the Welsh culture that pervades fictional Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, without ever feeling the weight of Kallos’ extensive research. This is a long book. The language is beautiful and requires concentration, and yet, at the end of 540 pages, I didn’t want to let it go. The people are so real I’m sure that if I went to Nebraska, I would find them there.

Kallos has had a varied career, including years working in the theater. She includes a hilarious resume at her website, http://www.stephaniekallos.com/. Take a look and have fun.