Burning Down The House

Getting On
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

The Photo

A few days ago, I posted a photo very much like this one without an explanation. So here's another photo in that series (taken by Dave) and some sort of explanation.

This is a photo of the old farmhouse behind our house. Dave took several photos (and videos) as the place fell victim to a fire set by vagrants. I guess that's as good an explanation as any, but I'm still tempted to take a stab at the symbolic nature of the event (assuming of course that the event does, in fact, have a symbolic nature). But I'm going to resist that temptation beyond the most obvious observations that fire, of course, is a kind of ritual purification; burning, a kind of passion.

I will say that the whole thing reminded me of a haiku by Basho that translates as:

Barn burned down. Now I can see the moon.

The Day

You ever have one of those go-where-the-day-takes-you kind of days? So far, it's been a bitty one of those days. I got up and fed and walked Crunch. The Brain said I had two choices: One, I could go back to bed. Two, we could go down to Dave's house and root around for chocolate.

An hour later, I was finishing up the half bar of Chocolove dark chocolate at the casita when Kelly called and issued an invitation to visit the cheese shop. The Brain said we were going despite having not showered or even changed out of our pajamas and again gave me two choices: One, macaroni and cheese for dinner. Two, cheese fondue for dinner. An hour later, I was standing in front of the crazy cheese lady asking for Emmentaler and Gruyere cheeses for cheese fondue. That still left the rest of the ingredients to buy: white wine, bread, vegetables for a salad.

I hesitate to say that it was lucky that Kelly needed to go to Costco because I hate Costco with the same intensity that I hate shopping malls, but it really was lucky that Kelly wanted to go to Costco, because they have everything I needed all under one giant, annoying roof. And it really wasn't that bad a Costco trip, as far as Costco goes. There were actually a few funny moments, like when some saleswoman in the wine department accosted Kelly with her sales-spiel about some fabulous winery that made the most fabulous wine for the most fabulous prices and Kelly was, like, oh, yes, I have tried your wine and it was so bad I had to return it and I never return wine. After that, the saleswoman couldn't end the conversation fast enough. She about pushed Kelly away from the fabulous display of fabulous wines. So that was funny.

Another funny thing happened when we were standing in line and some parents with a crying toddler pushed past us on their way to the bathroom. I only saw the backs of the mother and father, but even from the back, it was abundantly clear that they were in no way biologically related to the tiny Asian girl that was bawling at her father's shoulder. I said something to Kelly about buying children from China, wondering if they really were sold by the pound to the white, Angelina Jolie-wannabe colonialists. See, I'm all about it's taking a village to raise a child, but how come you never see--Oh, nevermind. It's so not worth a rant.

Welcome to America, little Ming-Ming Anderson.