In the category of Seussical impressions regarding grammatics . . .

this email from September 2005 wins first prize.  I was once again doing a random search through my inbox archives (shut up, it's my thing) and was delighted to see how the following poem evolved. 

It came at a time when I had just started working for a publisher in Washington, DC.  As an editorial assistant, I was tasked with bathing copy in red ink before it went to press.  The rest of the time I spent emailing with my dear friend Angela in Chicago.  We were both feeling like lone reeds ("standing tall, waving boldly, in the corrupt sands of commerce") and so would cheer each other up with silly back-and-forths about nothing.

This was the observation she made to me that day:

"I think all those years of not capitalizing things is trying to make up for lost time. I keep inadvertently capitalizing random words in the middle of sentences. I feel German or something..."

To which I replied:

"I'm so proud of your turning of the proverbial capitalization new leaf.  Wow, if any of my old professors would have read that last sentence, I shudder to think of the amount of red ink that would have been spilled in the writing of 'awkward phrasing'."

 

That last bit put me in Dr. Seuss mode, which then resulted in the following limerick I sent back to her:

 

Upon penning the most jumbled of phrases,

I awoke from the most dazed of hazes.

I shuddered to think of the amount of red ink

to be lost in my grammatical mazes.

 

Coincidentally, this poem also wins first prize in the category of Nerdiest Limerick Ever.

But the sauce brings the dish together!

My sister was in town over the weekend.  We didn't do much except eat food and hang out with old ladies we're related to.  Now every time someone comes over to my grandmother's house, she hands them this book about how to never be sick again.  She presented it separately to me and my mother.  Now it was my sister's turn.  At one point, my grandmother was watching football and I got up to take a phone call, so my sister was left with the book.  When I came back, she had sped-read half of it and glanced up only to inform me that eating protein and starches together will kill you and fruit should not be eaten with anything else or it will turn it into a toxin.  

 

My sister was totally into it.  She said in Italy this is why they have the pasta course separate from the meat course.  I was like, but how far apart do you have to eat them?  Is it 20 minutes like swimming?  Do I eat the gnocchi first or the chicken marsala?  Does that mean no tomato sauce?  She said she didn't know, but the tacos I ate at lunch were currently rotting in my intestines.  

Here is what else she told me:  Drinking non-organic coffee means I'm consuming 200 pesticides*, over-the-counter pain relievers like Advil are poisoning our bodies, and I'm not getting enough Vitamin D.  I refuted that last point.  I am nothing if not diligent about taking gummy multi-vitamins for adults every morning with my pesticide-ridden coffee.

 

I guess I am pretty resigned to the fact that everything good in life causes cancer, so the next time she visits me, I told her I'm making a four food group pilaf.

 

And because it's been a while since we had a limerick, here is one for my sister:

In restaurants, there's nary a clue
of the mine field on the menu.
But quarantining your meats
away from your wheats,
leaves your insides like new and not goo.

*This may be an exaggeration.  The pesticides are making my brain foggy.

The horror of health

The vegetables in my refrigerator are causing me anxiety.  It's not that I don't want to eat them.  I do.  It's just that there's so damn many of them, they can't last.  I'm afraid to open the fridge for fear of witnessing the last throes of a tomato.  When it's dinner time I hesitate between the eggplant and the zucchini.  Which one faces a greater danger of expiring?  I pick up the zucchini.  "I'll come back for you, eggplant!  Tomorrow!  Just hold on!" Then later, guilt: "More.  I could have cooked more.  Why didn't I make ratatouille?  I could have used two for it.  And I didn't!"  It's a regular Schindler's list up in my kitchen.

Here's how it all started:  a couple months ago I joined a CSA.  It's great.  Everything is fresh and vibrant.  The colors are rich and coursing with nutrients.  It's all so plentiful:

It's also a lot of veg.  I didn't realize it at the time, but even between the three people in our household, it takes some considerable menu planning to use each and every one of those little life-givers.  First I took the approach of showing respect to nature by trying to feature each vegetable, but I soon came to grips with the fact that I am not creative enough to feature that many scallions.  Then it became a how-many-vegetables-can-I-cram-into-this-stir-fry type of deal.  I mean, we're only getting these boxes of veggies every other week so you'd think it wouldn't be so difficult, but the other thing to take into account is the time and effort that goes into cooking each meal.  My name is not Ina Garten.  I wish it was, I really do.  Where's Jeffrey? 

So now I'm left with the race to save the escarole from the garbage.  I've practically given up meat I'm eating so many fruits and vegetables.  This is what I get for pursuing a healthy lifestyle.  And yet, every night, triage:  The lemons are shriveling! I run for the juicer.  The grapes are two degrees left of raisins.  Pick out the good ones, refresh in cold water, leave the weak behind.  The plums are growing mushrooms!  There's nothing more we can do.  Body bag (trash).

I'm not ready to give up on the CSA yet or my veggies.  The situation is serious.  It calls for constant vigilance.  And a limerick:

The stress that healthy eating gives
cannot be the right way to live.
The veggies are crying,
the fruit's quickly dying.
How I long for some preservatives!

The Waste Land

I mentioned the other day that my neighborhood sometimes resembles the Gaza Strip.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

 

But then if I stand on my roof and turn slightly to the left, I see this:

 

And if I turn even further and tilt my head up I see this 

I was thinking about perspectives.  When I'm up on the roof, you can usually tell how I'm feeling about things/life at that moment by which direction I'm facing.

The urban palm tree view makes me feel inconsequential when I look out there and think about how many people are in this city.  Then I realize that I can't see any of them from where I stand so I imagine it's a post-apocalyptic neighborhood.  No matter how bad a problem I might be facing at the moment, there could always be zombies or flesh eating viruses that wipe us out.  Things are looking up! 

If I have writer's block, I like to sit on the top of the steps that lead to the roof and face the Hollywood sign.  I try to get past the horrible conventionalism of it and focus on the idea behind the sign.  Then I immediately flash to Pretty Woman where the guy in the street is yelling, "Everybody who comes to Hollywood's got a dream.  What's your dream?" Then I wish that I could write Pretty Woman.

If it's just a really gorgeous day out like most days in LA, I might take a beach chair up and face the sun.  I will open the latest issue of Bon Appetit magazine and I will plot ways to cook an enormous green tomato. 

Today, well, you're getting a limerick so guess which direction I'm facing.

Ode to the Spider I Killed Last Night

You're the second one I've seen so far.
As big as the freakin' Death Star.
Though your game was well-played,
you were foiled with Raid.
Yet I still wonder where all your friends are.

Grandma and the isotopes

You know when you're searching for something in your email?  You type in a word like "flapjacks" in the search box because you just know you have a flapjack recipe that your cousin sent to you three years ago.  You always meant to use it.  Surely you didn't delete it.  There are 7497 MB of storage space in this mailbox.  You keep everything.  Where is it?  Then you find yourself scouring message threads from years past (that may or may not have contained the word "flapjack") about which you had completely forgotten?  Sometimes you stop to read and reminisce or think about your situation at that point in your life.

Well, this happened to me when I searched the word "pie" (most of my searches are food-related), and I came across a series of emails between me and my sister, Tara.   This correspondence occurred over a period of time when she was living in Italy and I was staying with my grandmother for a summer in between semesters.   Tara was feeling full of woe, mostly due to the constant striking of the Italian transportation labor unions, which made her commute to work hellish to say the least.  Every day I was receiving an email with yet another tale of woe to the point where I ended up writing,

"No offense when I tell you that having a 'tale of woe' to look forward to in your emails is not the most scintillating thing.  Could you maybe change it up every once in a while and re-title these anecdotes more positively, like Tales of Once in a Lifetime Opportunities, or Tales of Doing Something Amazing?  That'd be swell and way more uplifting."

In return, I promised her a limerick.  Who doesn't like a limerick?  They are fun, they are familiar, they are rhyme-y.  They all consist of the same format and rhythm.  For many, they are a creative way to tell a dirty joke.  (We've all heard about that poor girl from Nantucket.)  But for my sister, I decided to try a daily dose of limericks based on the ridiculousness of my life living with Grandma.  Take, for instance, the isotopes.  I had forgotten all about them until I found this gem in the same series of emails:

"Today G'ma had her stress test.  I dropped her off at the doctor this morning and she told me to come back and pick her up when she was done.  Boy was she cranky this morning, having had no coffee for 3 days and no food since 6 am.  Well, when I picked her up she said, 'Now I have to drink lots of water because Tom told me that I'm full of isotopes.'  Tom was the technician at the doctor's office.  G'ma loves Tom because he was very nice to her and calmed her down.  She said she asked Tom how long she was going to be full of isotopes and he said, 'That is a very good question.'  And then he guessed that it would be about three weeks.  Now G'ma uses this excuse for everything.  Example:  'Lisa, I'm going to lie down because of the isotopes.'"

Well, upon reading this I didn't even remember what an isotope was, but this is what I wrote to Tara:

Do you know what an isotope is?
They're the cool thing to say in the biz
of handling old ladies
who drive big mercedes
to the doc for a stress test pop quiz.     

There it is.  Your daily dose of poetry.  It didn't hurt, did it?