FireVaney

Betty says she has fibromyalgia.  Also,  Betty suffers from cold feet.  It's genetic,  her cold feet.  Nothing can warm them.  Even so,  the warmer the house,  the better for Betty.  Even in August.  Even when the temperature outside  hits the high nineties.  In winter,  a hot house is  not so much an issue,  not for me.  I'll go around in a loose T-shirt,  thin shorts,  and bare feet.  And,  when I'm in my room,  I'll throw open a window.  But that’s in winter.  In summer,  by the time the outdoor air heats up to eighty,  I  NEED AC.  But Betty will complain.  Pop’ll complain, too;  not because he's cold,  but because the AC costs  money  to run.  Not that times are tight.  Pop knows when the AC  condenser's running.  It blows the backyard bushes.  Using the furnace costs money,  too.  Only Pop...

 “We get a lot of letters from kids  who say they want to be DJs  when they grow up.  I always tell them they can’t do both.”  – Larry Lee Blankenburg,  aka, Larry Lujack

When you don’t want any bananas but there are nothing but bananas what do you want to do with the time of the next after simple joy of living in the mountains by the sea in the while I meant to write white sunshine of the darn I meant to write dark days of noon in the sun I meant to write sun why are you not eating that sugar cookie? How come the apples don’t want to sing in the while I meant to write white sunshine of your life? Is this going to be another one of your brilliant disguises? No? Why or why not? No? Why are the trees not eating the mixed berries? Are they all rotten? I think that they are all rotten. I think Theatre needs a new lease on life. Oh, are you going to eat that seaweed? Because it’s supposed to be good for apples. Yes, apples are good from tomatoes. And when the child in the box is not ready to dine in the basement why not set him up at the table upstairs? I won’t taste that pie. I will taste that cake. My mother smooshed – that’s a word. I could’ve sworn that ...

You would never characterize Betty as an irritable woman. Never in a million years. If anything, she’s too cheerful, she’s too polite. That said, when she settles into bed every night, if she isn’t greeted with absolute silence, then she’ll have to take a pill. * She won’t sleep in the same room with Pop because he snores. She’s taped the vents in the guest room over with cut-out rectangles from paper grocery bags. She doesn’t like “the blowing,” she says. It’s not so much the feel of “the blowing,” but more the sound of “the blowing” that keeps her awake. Even if it’s the middle of winter, and what’s blowing is heat, she’ll want the vents taped over. Never mind her interminably “cold” feet. What’s also interminable is the ringing in her ears. Does she prefer absolute silence to hear the ringing better? At the senior village, where Betty spends most of her time, a neighbor of hers plays loud music and owns a dog that barks too much. So Betty complained. The music stopped and the d...

When nearly nobody else goes, THAT’S when I go to the gym. I don’t like to wait for other members to wrap up their sets on any particular machine or finish their use of any particular free weights; and I hate it when other members wait for me to wrap up my sets. When other members ask to “work in” between my sets, I hate that, too, but not as much. As you might’ve guessed, I tend avoid crowds. I’ll make certain exceptions for sporting, musical, and theatrical venues—which I infrequently patronize. Otherwise, in most public settings, I’d rather not be in close proximity with people I don’t know. This is particularly true at the gym. In a perfect world, the gym would be filled with me and, at most, five other members. There’d be a guy who’s clearly stronger than me, a guy who’s clearly weaker than me, and three beautiful young women. And when it comes to “personal space,” please give me at least twice—no, three times—no, five times—the recommended distance, even if you’re a beautiful you...

Today I chauffeured Pop to the 2004 CEO Presentation and Annual Meeting of Redacted Bank Shareholders. My expectations of a grand assembly hall with hundreds of shareholders, bank executives, and lavish catering were not met. Instead, the meeting was held in a simple conference room in the basement of the Lincoln Square Redacted Bank branch. The catering consisted only of coffee, orange juice, and Danishes. Fewer than fifty shareholders showed up.  Pop, who hadn't attended an annual meeting of shareholders in two years, re-introduced himself to Jose Randolfstineberg, the bank's founder. Mr. Randolfstineberg, eighty-nine years young, was stuck in a wheelchair following a stroke he’d suffered two years earlier. Incidentally, Pop had also suffered a stroke right around the same time. Pop, though, he’d clearly fared better. [Also incidentally: Pop loved making use of the word, “incidentally,” that is, whether or not it was the appropriate word to wield when making a transition betw...

The paddles do not eat the peas or the cornbread in the wind when you chase the girl with the pink ribbons in her hair. Why you don’t want to eat the juice when it’s frozen is beyond me. Then again, the dogs whimper when you lick their joint accounts that have been liquidated by thieves. But why should I care when you haven’t bothered to eat cheese with the monkeys in the desert with the blue blob from Detroit. The Blue Blob is NOT from Detroit. He lies. I mean he lies about where he hails from, although, yes, he does lie on the ground and he does make sand-angels in the desert sand – until he’s bitten by a scorpion. That’ll be the end of that in the eatery that doesn’t end anything of the sort. I want cheese fries. I want cheese fried with tomato juice. I don’t want that silly man over there telling how I should live my life with tomato sauce eating the pop tarts and the pipe dream. I don’t eat pipe dreams because they’re bad for my teeth. They’re HARD, like my cock. No, apologies: Th...

The wallpaper as you go up the stairs was fraying, so Pop called up Martin to pull it all off. Pop wanted new wallpaper, but he didn’t want to choose, so he told Martin to paint all the wallpaper-less walls “buff.” Martin and his wife did the job over two Saturdays. On these two days, unless you were Martin or Martin’s wife, you weren’t going up or down the stairs. The planked apparatus that Martin had rigged up made it possible to reach the highest parts of the walls that flank the staircase. Martin propped open the front door, which is several feet from the bottom of the stairs; he also opened the window several feet from the top of the stairs. He’d done it to let out the paint flumes. [Indeed, the flumes, if any, but especially the fumes .] But doing it also let in the horseflies. Or maybe they were only houseflies. Whichever sort they were, they were eager to pester me, all of these flies were. But just me. Martin painted nearly every room on the second floor of the house, save for...

“Arthur makes coffee by putting eggshells and cinnamon sticks and an old nylon stocking into the coffee pot. His coffee tastes like a very spicy old foot.”  – From Nora Ephron's Heartburn