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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
January 21, 2007
Previously unpublished fiction.
© 2007 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Snow, Picket Fence, 1987
© 1987 by Bud Grossmann
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MOM CAME HOME
From: David C. Fischer <d—@juno.com>
To: l—@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 16:30:56 -0600
Subject: Mom came home.
Mom returned home Friday afternoon, and a nurse, a large fellow not a lot younger than you and I, came out to the farm today. O.T. and P.T. people will soon be scheduled, too. Mom was not too bad today. I've begun to design a chart to try to record her ups and downs more precisely than "not too bad."
Congratulations on your health club membership. When I belonged to a gym, I got an idea for inspiring certain participants towards more frequent attendance: co-ed shower rooms. That is, three shower rooms, Men's, Co-ed, and Women's. Only the voyeurs and exhibitionists need use the one in the middle. Just a thought. I didn't follow through on it, but you can suggest it to the managers of your club when you are ready, and they can forward me a percentage of their increased profits.
For a week now I've been using snow shoveling as an excuse to fall out of my proper exercise routine. Still need to watch the DVD for the ab chair I bought before New Year's. Chair is out of the box but lying flat on my basement floor at this time, and it's therefore somewhat uncomfortable for crunches.
So you're well into next week's New Yorker, are you? Dad's and mine have not arrived. "Lucky You Live California," as your Gov. A. Schwarzenegger might have told you.
Just came in from shoveling today's drifted snow off my walk (easy) and drank a Pabst Blue Ribbon (easier yet!). Now I have to figure out what I'll put up on my Web site for tomorrow, and then I'll cook some burgers for supper. I made bread this morning, sometime past midnight. Even with my furnace turned up, the kitchen was so chilly my melted butter solidified in a few minutes' time, so I set the breadmaker on "dough" until it mixed the (re-melted) butter in, and then I set the timer to produce a loaf at breakfast time. I wondered if the dough would rise, but it did.
Mmm, boy! Burger, beer, and home-made bread while A Prairie Home Companion is on the radio! That's my plan for the evening. Oh, and exercise.
Miss you.
Love, Dave
From: l—@yahoo.com
To: Dave Fischer <d—@juno.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:31:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Mom came home.
Can I come to dinner at your house? Actually, I'm heading off to an Italian cooking class but could sure go for a burger and beer w/PHC.
More later, Love, L.
From: David C. Fischer <d—@juno.com>
To: l—@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:52:27 -0600
Subject: I would be pleased to cook for you.
Update on supper. While my daughter was here, I bought three or four pounds of fairly fat ground beef, borrowed my dad's Tupperware hamburger patty shaper, bagged the uncooked burgers in sets of three in quart Ziplocs, and froze them. Never needed them for a meal. This morning I moved a bag of burgers from freezer to fridge before I went out to the farm, but by suppertime, the burgers had not thawed. So, if you had come to eat with me tonight, I would have given you several choices (including venison or microwave-defrosted burgers), but what I myself ended up eating, contentedly and alone at my document-strewn dining room table, was one open-faced toasted sandwich, which was a thick slice of my whole-wheat with homemade mayo, thin rings of uncooked onion, chunks of garlic-beef summer sausage, and melted chips of Swiss cheese. I am still burping garlic and onion, of course, an hour past supper.
With the sandwich I enjoyed a salad of plain, torn lettuce topped with walnut halves and a store-bought creamy Vidalia onion dressing. I drank Mountain Dew over ice cubes in a Löwenbräu mug. I read a page or so of a recent Updike novel that I find deliciously slow-going (about oil painting) while trying to listen to A Prairie Home Companion out of St. Louis, on the living room stereo. For dessert, with my favorite teaspoon, a mateless, heavy, elegant, thrift-store item, I leisurely ate room-temperature macadamia nuts mixed with room-temperature semi-sweet chocolate chips served in a blue Mikasa coffee cup. I've self-indulgently set my house heat at slightly beyond seventy; the dial thermometer outside my kitchen window reports seventeen.
When I finished supper, I took my book into the living room, settled into a lumpy-seat rocker in front of the heat register, and regrettably napped through the News from Lake Wobegon.
I think I have an idea now of what I might put out to meet my publishing deadline.
I shall look forward to your report of higher education related to pasta and fine Napa Valley wines.
Until then, my friend, I bid you goodnight.
Love, Dave
♦
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