Cleaning up the horses

As one of his many housewarming gifts, my father sent me a set of six replica Tang horses. They're small: about six inches tall. Apparently they are recognizable as Tang because of the medallions or tassels on the sides of their saddles.

They're magnificent. The golden brown one is my favorite, perhaps because it does remind me of museum horses. As I unpacked each one, I lined it up with the others along the center of my dining room table. These will be in my life for a long time.

But the horses arrived coated in clay. I couldn't decide if I'd received poorly cleaned figurines or if it was intentional. Clay was flaking off of them.

I called the store to see if they had a quality issue with the supplier, and they said it was supposed to be that way. To make them look "real." Although a real Tang horse would be carefully cleaned and preserved. They said I could wash them if I didn't like it.

So I spent the evening cleaning the six of them. I soaked and gently scrubbed them, and they looked great until they dried. This is some sort of special gray clay, probably fired onto them in some way, that won't come off. I may try to exchange the black horse, which I've washed many times but which still looks like unglazed gray dirt. It's the third from the left -- from the catalogue picture of some pretty clean horses.

I did have to wash them anyway. To soak the large "Made in China" stickers off of the tops of the bases. These horses were replicas, but they were trying really hard to be authentic.

But when will I get to London?

I really, really want to see this:

"Godot" in London. So hard to get to from the west coast!

Time to wake up

The universe has been shouting at me since that last post: Stop dreaming! "I dream of being active." Get over it! Get out of the house and go work out! Rejoin a hockey league -- you can do it midseason.

And, while I miss hockey, I am certain that if I started playing now I'd injure myself immediately. I mean, I play recreational hockey, but I'm not even at a recreational level of fitness. And that's the problem. I really don't like all that fitness stuff, except for how it makes me feel afterwards. I can walk for hours, given something to look at or listen to, but going to the gym? Sweating? I don't think so.

Things I can do instead of working out:

1. Read
   
2. Nap
   
3. Watch my latest Netflix video
   
4. Do a crossword puzzle
   
5. Do a sudoku
   
6. Knit
   
7. Nap
   
8. Paint my walls
   
9. Go online to play with paint colors on fictitious walls
   
10. Unpack boxes in my extra bedroom
    
11. Clean something
    
12. Write something
13. Get together with friends and sit around and talk
14. Get together with friends and sit around a table and play poker or some other game.

All that time I was working out with a trainer and going to yoga: it was because

• I was bored, and
  
• I had an appointment, had paid money, and appreciated having someone make decisions about what I was going to do next.
  

I'm shaking my fist at the universe right now, shouting, "Um ... well, yeah, you! I ... um...."

Dream of the Blue Jersey

It's summer, and I dream of being athletic.

Specifically, I dream of playing hockey.

I dream I'm skating. The other night I dreamed I spoke to a woman who said she played in a league in San Francisco. I was thrilled when she said her league was fun and that it was at Yerba Buena. It all came back to me: where to park, carrying my bag in, the visual of being on the ice. I think maybe I've been back once since I broke my collarbone there.

It's summer, and I can't believe how long it's been since I was athletic. Before I started my current job, I was unemployed, working with a trainer, doing yoga, going to hockey camp. Since then, I keep setting a goal of being active, but it just hasn't happened. I took a break from hockey almost two years ago to recover from an unrelated injury, and I keep telling myself I'm going back. I am going back.

Summer is a great time to return because of the longer days, not having to leave in the dark for a late afternoon game. But I dread the idea of playing in Belmont, the rink where my league has so many games. A rink that is super-small and so poorly insulated that the ice doesn't freeze on warm days. So the puck comes to a dead, stuck stop when it hits a puddle. Where you have to lace your skates loosely because your feet swell as soon as you put them on, where you wish you didn't have to wear shoulder pads or a helmet because it's just too hot.

I miss the smell of the ice. I miss my regular pre- and post-game routines, including hydrating and handwashing before and then afterwards drinking Gatorade, eating a recovery hot dog, and laying out my sweaty gear to dry. I miss carrying my sticks, and I miss the sound and use of hockey tape. (There aren't really a lot of uses for it outside of hockey, unfortunately.) I step over low fences and other objects as often as possible to relive those many exciting times I stepped over the boards to get on the ice. (I do not haul myself over fences and other objects to relive the paralysis of utter exhaustion that accompanies getting off the ice.)

I'm a good hockey player. Not a great player; not even a very good player. Maroon #15 does not have a lot of presence in the record books, or even on the crumpled, damp scoresheets that live in the bottoms of captains' bags. I probably have had one or two penalties, and I can't even remember them. I've had very few goals but a few more assists. I'm most proud of my assists -- I love setting up plays and passing the puck to someone who can do something great with it. I miss freaking out the other team's defense (and surprising myself) with a threading-the-needle pass from behind the net through several players' legs and sticks to the blade of my waiting teammate (who usually has several people hanging off of her and can't get the shot off, but, hey, the pass was pretty). Mostly, I have been a smart teammate who can read a play and know where to be.

If I could, I'd be a full-time coach. People sometimes come up to me and thank me for coaching them, which sends me to the moon, even if I don't remember who they are. I love seeing my former players run a play that I taught them, which more often than not they're doing against my own team (while I'm sitting, helpless, on the bench, knowing they're going to do it).

But I can't just be a coach -- because it's too agonizing. Because no matter how slowly or poorly my body reacts to my brain's quick commands, I need to be physically in the game, not just thinking about it. It's also why I like to play forward positions: playing defense gives me way too much time in my head.

I do love having a two day weekend, not dealing with hydrating and carbo loading and traffic, having Sundays to nap or paint or do whatever else comes up, not being worthless on Monday morning. But I so dream of being on the ice again. I need to find a decent pick-up game. I need to get my skates sharpened. My hockey bag sits in my large powder room near the front door, waiting to be taken out again, falsely announcing to visitors that I am an athlete. I am not ready to retire. I need to be active again.

Rekindling an old flame

Sunday morning I flipped on the radio and caught the opening strums of "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request." One of the truly great baseball songs. I can exile myself from the sport, but it will always be a part of me, and I think it's time for me to allow myself to love it again.

I took last year off to protest the A's plans to move to Fremont -- to a location that BART does not reach. Also because they traded Marco Scutaro. Billy Beane keeps trading my favorites, and I was just tired of it.

My love of baseball is both recent and inevitable. Being from Cleveland, I grew up a football fan. But in 1995 the Browns were stolen and taken to Baltimore, so I boycotted football. I was in a job where I was working late, waiting for the traffic to clear and crunching numbers, so I turned on the radio, and out came baseball. Ernie Harwell calling the Yankees-Mariners wild card series. What an introduction to the game! I didn't know from Ernie Harwell or any players, but that was a series for the ages, and I was riveted. What a privilege to have had that as my introduction to the game.

The next year, I went to the Indians games when they visited Oakland, and I discovered the joy of live baseball. I went to more A's games, eventually switching my primary allegiance to the boys I could see every day. I got to see the A's in the McGwire-Giambi era, the Hudson-Mulder-Zito era. I took pride in my own #15 hockey jersey number because it was the same number that Hudson wore. (I think I had an option for #75, but I thought it was too fawning and flashy.) Zito's hammer curve was the sexiest thing in baseball. I have my scorecard from his first major league game, when he struck out the heart of the Angels order after loading the bases. Someday, I will get him to sign it for me.

I've been on the Jumbotron doing the macarena. I almost caught a Giambi pop foul that was coming right at me, but I freaked out and ducked. I've been to the All-Star Game (in Cleveland), where I ran into a very youthful Alex Rodriguez in the airport and took my picture with him. I saw McGwire hit the Budweiser sign at Jacob's Field with a home run, about which catcher Sandy Alomar said that if the sign hadn't been there the ball would have gone around the world and hit Sandy in the back of the head.

I have yet to score a perfect game or even a no-hitter, but I've scored a lot of games that have come close. I sat mezzanine-level behind home plate at the A's-Braves interleague game when Hudson got to compete against his idol, Greg Maddux. The ground-ball-fest was all it promised to be. Ground ball outs: my favorite part of the game.

I love baseball because you can look around the ballpark and see that women of all ages are fans. My great-grandmother was a Cubs fan, and she used to go to Ladies' Day. My grandmother was a Cubs fan; later, having moved north with my grandfather, she became a Milwaukee Braves fan. My grandfather went to New York to watch the Braves (featuring a young Hank Aaron) open against the Yankees in the 1957 World Series (which the Braves won). When the Braves left for Atlanta, they became Milwaukee Brewers fans. My grandfather wanted to be buried in the cemetary across from Milwaukee County Stadium so he could keep an eye on his boys. When the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, my grandmother was happy because at least some Chicago team had won.

Last summer, I went to my first Cubs game. With my friend, D., we looked to buy tickets from a scalper and were approached by a guy selling bleacher seats at face value. A virtual miracle, apparently. So I sat in the right field bleachers on a warm summer night, drank beer and had a hot dog, and hung out with Cubs fans. While I'm entirely certain that my great-grandmother never sat in the bleachers (my imagination won't deny her the beer and the dog, though), it was like returning to the mother ship.

The butter holiday

Most people think of Passover as the time of year when we eat matzah. And I love matzah: matzah brei, matzah ball soup, charoset on matzah. But, really, it's the butter holiday.

Growing up, it was the one time of year I was allowed to have butter, and my mother served Land O' Lakes sweet unsalted whipped butter in a tub. The rest of the year, we had margarine. But the corn oil in margarine isn't kosher for an Ashkenazic Jew. So we had that special treat of sweet butter.

On matzah. I became expert at perfectly evenly glazing a matzah with this butter. Amazingly thinly, too, because if I was caught eating too much of the butter I'd get in trouble. And then: the salt. My second favorite food, after butter. I'd coat the thin matzah with the thin layer of butter, then with a thin layer of salt. It was art. And I ate as much of it as I could.

In a perfect Hallmark moment, my oldest friend K. and I had a long phone conversation this weekend. While we spoke, she was cooking for her family in Philadelphia, and I was painting a wall of my condo here in Emeryville. (Boy, have we come a long way since second grade in Cleveland!) We took turns putting each other on speakerphone. She told me about her own memory of my mother providing sweet unsalted whipped butter.

(I will be making K.'s recipe for matzah kugel tomorrow. At her recommendation, I won't use the full 1/4 pound of butter it calls for.)

Several years ago I finally broke from sentiment and bought sweet salted whipped butter. I don't really know why my mother bought us the unsalted version. I got tired of the art involved, and now I just slather it on.

My Insolence certainly is.

I've moved on from fragrance obsession to many others, including my current obsession with interior paint colors. But today I was at Sephora and thought I'd explore a few fragrances. Bulgari (left forearm) because I didn't think I'd tried it, YSL's Paris (right wrist) because a colleague said she liked it and I know it got four stars, and Guerlain's My Insolence (left wrist) because it's Guerlain and they were showing it in a cute little travel size.

I usually have a pretty high tolerance for perfumes, but they've knocked me over. When I got home an hour later I ran to the sink and scrubbed like a surgeon. No luck. I feel nauseated and I have a headache. The My Insolence and Paris are duking it out -- I don't think I ever smelled the Bulgari. Standing in front of a window trying to breathe fresh air. Then I sprayed my own Arancia di Capri, which is pretty strong, all over my arms to try to cover the others, which only added to the problem. Advil and lots of water (orally). Heading towards a migraine.

So I googled "how to get rid of a perfume smell." And it's amazing what people have tried -- the laugh I got out of Perfumista's discussion almost redeems this situation. Acetone, Clorox bleach pens, Magic Eraser, witch hazel, Chapstick, baking soda, Mr. Clean sponge, baby wipes, a saw. I'm going to go for the original recommendation: unscented deoderant and Tide.

Update:
Paris and Bvlgari are gone! It took two rounds of deoderant and Tide to get My Insolence to a very faint level. I still reek of Arancia di Capri, probably because I sprayed it all over myself in my panic. I don't mind: so my sheets will smell of oranges tonight. Better than having nightmares of suffocating in butterscotch.

And now I find that My Insolence is only a two-star fragrance! Many expletives deleted. The upside is that I did identify its component scents.... From The Guide:

How could the brand that has made L'Heure Bleue to spec for a hundred years put out this cynical, trendy, hastily-cobbled-together cherry-almond sugary oriental? It's as if Hermes decided to sell a glitter-vinyl shoe with a lucite platform heel.

Love that rotten city

I had a surge of love for my little city tonight. I got home from work late thinking, "I want pizza for dinner." My choice was frozen Trader Joe's ... or Rotten City Pizza up the street. Until now, believe it or not, aside from driving by the Emeryville Public Market for a box of grease one night, I have not gone out to dinner after work. In my former home, I would make a quick take-out call and stroll down the street to pick it up. Here, not so many take-out opportunities. Plus ever since I've moved in it's been winter, and therefore dark when I get home, decreasing my desire to go for a stroll.

Well, it was dark tonight, too, but maybe not totally dark, and it had been light out recently. I strolled the block-and-a-half to Rotten City PIzza, enjoying the warm night (warm -- maybe that's why I hadn't gone out in the evening -- was it too cold?). As I approached, the door swung shut.

They were so sweet. The guy let me in, led me into the kitchen where they'd piled up the leftover cold pizza slices, and gave me a tour of the pile. He let me take my pick (one mozzarella/ricotta/pesto/arugula, one mushroom), packed it in a bag, and handed it to me at no charge. OK, you can think of all the reasons why he might not have charged me, but it was a very small town-feeling experience.