Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: Armenian food: chicken kabob wrap and frozen mint lemonade.

I'm having a late start to my writing today anyway since I had an early morning doctor's appointment (just a regular check-in). So, I thought I might as well take a few minutes and write to y'all about the Armenian festival at St. Sahag Church that Shawn and I went to on Saturday afternoon. 

By chance, Shawn and I were reminiscing about this on the way to the clinic. (Miraculously, Shawn and I had appointments at approximately the same time.) It was a lot LIKE the open house at the Watershed District in that it had a very small town, friendly vibe, with one critical difference--a difference that made us enjoy the cultural festival a little bit less. 

To set the stage first, however. St. Sahag is a very unimposing orthodox church a half of block in from Marshall Avenue on Hewitt.  This means nothing to my non-Twin Cities readers, but so you can picture this church having one end of its block abutting a decently busy throughway that connects St. Paul to Minneapolis (Marshall becomes Lake Street on the other side of the river.) The cross street just gives Twin Cities people a sense of the nearby neighborhood, which is working class--with the general mix of houses found throughout St. Paul, hidden grand Victorians and post-WWII ranches and every style in-between all sharing the same block. 

When Shawn and I first pulled up, we weren't sure if things were underway, even though we arrived a full half hour after festivities were scheduled to begin. The outside, as I said, was somewhat unassuming. So, no big signs pointing us to food, though we could see a few tents set up in the back of a permanent playground where a group of men seemed to be grilling. We decided to tour the exterior, if nothing else. On the opposite side of the church from the grillers was a big open door to a church basement, from which wafted the most mouth-watering flavors!  

In we went!

Once inside, we were greeted by two people, a man and a woman, who asked us what kind of tickets we wanted. This was another ticket = food situation, only here you paid in advance of what you thought you might spend. They had menus (with prices) posted everywhere, but it was still kind of an overwhelming decision. Since I had it in cash, I decided to just go for $20 to see what that might get us. I was handed a punch card with twenty dots on it. 

We were able to get a decent amount of food for twenty dollars. We bought the chicken kabob wrap and lemonade pictured above, as well as a couple of baked goods options from the upstairs, where the grandmas all had their cookies and cakes and such like on display. 

But here's where I think the major difference was. 

I think if Shawn and I were food tourists, we would have preferred the Armenian festival over the Watershed open house. If we'd had an unlimited budget, I'm sure we could have spent several hours (and an easy hundred bucks, if not more,) trying All The Things and having an amazing time doing it. The Armenians seemed aware of this. All of the entertainment was scheduled in the dining hall/church basement, on a little stage. So, ideally, one could find a spot at one of the tables to sit, watch the dancing or listen to the music and the other programming, while getting up every so often to refresh the lemonade or to try out some of the other foods on offer. 

As it was, we had a limited budget. So, when we filled up our punch card, we went home.  We went home happy? But it wasn't like the Watershed place where we could continue to explore all the FREE activities for as long as we wanted without feeling like we were occupying a table that should go to a paying customer, as it were. The Armenians had a bazaar, but, for us, that could only be window shopping at best, which is fine and FUN? But, again, we kind of hurried through that so that people who were going to spend money had the opportunity to do so.

And the festival was a fundraiser. Like, I do NOT begrudge them that.

Shawn and I were just trying to parse what it was about the comparably dorkier Watershed Open House that we liked so much more. I mean, obviously, we're dorks and government agency wonks, but, beyond that, this is what we could determine. One thing I learned from a year or so as a movie reviewer for the local queer newspaper is that things are automatically more enjoyable when they are FREE. I had to watch my tendency to say "it was fun!" about movies like Matthew Broderick's Godzilla (universally panned by everyone in the movie reviewing industry, EXCEPT my reivew in focusPOINT.* Oops. That's my contribution to cinematic criticism, everyone! Whee. )

At any rate, we still had a great time and I was happy to know that my guess as to what Armenian food might be like was pretty much on the money.



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*doesn't link to my actual review, though depending on how many papers have been digitized, perhaps one could find it. (Ah, in my ancient CV, I discovered this citation: Lyda Morehouse.  “The Lizard King: ‘Godzilla,’”  focusPOINT 5 49: 206 (May 20 – May 1998): 13.)  It was even published on PAGE THIRTEEN. Yeah.... bad luck for me. I don't know how many more reviews I did for them after that, but it wasn't a whole lot.

 With my new book out, I decided to dust off my ancient website and update the information on it. What I SHOULD do at some point, is update the whole thing, but instead I am a stubborn old coot and have hung on to something I personally hand coded in 1999 or thereabouts. I mean, part of me, at this point, feels like the creakiness of it is perfect for a bunch of cyberpunk books?  But, it's not the best if a person is looking for information about...oh, I dunno, Tate's subsequent career in the modern era? 

I've had dozens of offers to upgrade and update. Feel free to offer your two cents, as well. After all, I think, since I lost Tate's domain, I will finally do something more modern for her.  Maybe a Word Press site or some such. Who knows, I might even hire someone to design something truly lovely.  

In the meantime, though, I spent the morning trying to remember how to do file transfers with CuteFTP.... which, I mean... yeah, wow. It was very 1999 here for a moment.

So, let's see, other news...  

It's sunny today and is supposed to eventually warm up into the 50s (approximately 10 C).  I'm hoping Shawn won't be too busy today with meetings and we can go for our semi-traditional, daily walk. If not, I may go on my own after 1:00 pm. I am going to have to brave the pet store (or Target) today because our eldest cat has decided that she no longer likes the seafood pate. Being 19, skipping meals is not the option it once was (or would still be for our 25 pound orange boy). Plus, I should buy another bag or two of kitty litter for the continued stay-at-home order.

Otherwise, I just have to make some bread for tonight's dinner. Vera is not quite ready for us to harvest, I don't think. But, my family is actually only so-so on sour dough, anyway, and I traditionally make my French loaves to go with something like the lasagna we're having. 

I've been thinking a lot about my inability to write and I had an epiphany when talking to my writers' group, Wyrdsmiths, last night on video chat.  Obviously, the majority of it is existential anxiety, no question. But, I think there's another factor that I hadn't really considered. There's, of course, a lot of talk about the hassles of having your office suddenly become your living room. No one is much discussing the fact that *my* office has now been invaded by my family, whom I love and get along with famously, BUT, with that has come additional pressure to provide.

It's no longer just, "Ima, what's for dinner?" It's become, "Ima, what's for dinner? What's for lunch? What's for breakfast? Are we out of x? Are you making bread/cake/cookies today? When should we go for a walk?" And, so on.  One of my love languages is feeding people, so, again, this isn't about feeling necessarily overwhelmed or resentful of all of this--in fact, I take a HUGE amount of pride in the fact that we are going on a month of stay-at-home and we have yet to repeat a single meal.

But.

I used to have several hours a day to write.

Alone. By myself.

With no thought about lunch, unless I was hungry or I knew a friend was dropping by.  

Also, with Shawn occupying the living room, even though we have the luxury of a lot of space to spread out, it's funny the extent to which her office stress gets filtered out into the rest of the family. So, that's new and different, too. And part of why I've shifted to doing things like quilting, because physical activity, for me, shaves off all that stress and puts it to use in something. 

Anyway, I didn't say it was a brilliant thought, but it was new to me. It's funny because our house doesn't really have the usual division of labor that comes with gender, but, since making the choice to be the stay-at-home parent, I have often ended up with the lion's share of the emotional labor of keeping a household together.  When everyone is home all the time, that increases exponentially. 

Again, I feel fortunate in that none of this is really anything I hate or find particularly onerous. I've just suddenly realized that these duties, if you will, now occupy the majority of the time that I used to set aside for writing. I'm going to have to go back to how I used to write when I had a full-time job... oh, wait, I used to just shirk.

Damn it.

;-)

Well, honestly? I can do that with this job a little, too.