In the words of either Lady Gaga or Deanna Durbin — it’s so easy to get them confused — I’m a free bitch, baby. LSVT is over, done, finito, and the SLP said it might be years before I need a formal refresher if I’m diligent about continuing my speech and respiratory exercises. Crankenstein brought home freshly baked cookies to celebrate, which was a nice way to mark the end of what’s been a dizzying number of medical appointments since July or August.
There are many things I’d like to do now that my schedule’s a bit lighter, including taking longer walks, finishing a bunch of posts still languishing in my ‘drafts’ folders (here and at Cranky), reorganizing some closets, and getting the house ready for winter. I also want to work on some dweeby hobbies, including two mystery builds still in their early stages. What will they become? More will be revealed in due time, but don’t get your hopes up — it’s nothing interesting.
Here we have an address sign for Crankenstein’s cabin and some props for recreating scenes from my early childhood; most will go in a diorama of my grandparents’ condo. The Tupperware has removable lids and the Rainbow Brite lunch box opens, which is neat, though it sadly lacks a matching thermos. My mom and maternal grandma used those yellow colanders for the longest time and this 1:12 scale copy is a tiny nostalgic marvel.
Next up are Pete and Basil items (poodle canisters, wig spray, sewing supplies, personal care products) and miscellaneous props for other scenes.* The pumpkin carving kit is a nod to Crankenstein and the Salisbury steak TV dinner tray is another early childhood reference. When I think of the kitchen at my parents’ old house, where we lived for the first five years of my life, three things instantly come to mind: Ziggy, sulfasalazine, and steak.
Ziggy was the nickname of my dad’s best friend, whose surname was something like Siegmund. He married later than others in their circle, or maybe there was an early divorce, and he often showed up on evenings and weekends in his flannel shirts and baseball caps to help my dad with DIY projects in exchange for beer and meals. Felix and I thought Ziggy was great, an overgrown kid who’d sit at the kitchen table with us and color. He even gave me one of the best gifts of my childhood, a Rainbow Brite bank.
Dad and Ziggy grew apart when he married a woman with an older son, but they still saw each other occasionally. We ran into him at the 1996 Bob Dole rally that I’ve complained about here without ever explaining, and by then he was a boring adult. A few times in my twenties and thirties, they tried to rekindle their friendship and politics got in the way. Like many former Republicans of a certain age, my dad lost friends as he felt more and more estranged from the right and drifted to the left.
It started when I came out to my parents at 17 and some of his friends were homophobic. My mom lost a couple of friends then, too. He became even more of a social pariah during the Obama years, when some of his friends completely lost their minds, and unfortunately Ziggy was one of them. To ineloquently segue from that tired tale to sulfasalazine, I took that medication in liquid form for many years pre-colectomy and every night one of my parents would summon me to the kitchen and I’d sing the “shake it up, baby” part of “Twist and Shout” as we shook the bottle before measuring my dose.
Part of this ritual was captured in a misplaced photograph: I’m sitting on the counter in pajamas — possibly a Care Bears nightgown — while my baby-faced father, his build still boyish, prepares my medication. This brings us, equally ineloquently, to steak. I chose Salisbury steak for a diorama because I preferred it to cube steak, which I couldn’t find in 1:12 form anyway. We had cube steak all the time when my parents were on a shoestring budget, but when Dad was gone on hunting trips or had to work late, Mom and I would share a Salisbury steak.
Unlike my dad, I’ve never been particularly carnivorous, and his only fond memory of my childhood illness era was the time I was so anemic that I craved steak. ‘Real’ steak, no frozen patties drenched in sauce. It was maybe the proudest he’s ever been of me, judging by his expression when he recounts the story for my siblings: “You’ll never believe this, but your sister once requested I bring steak to her in the hospital. Medium rare!”**
Everything else that’s pictured above has sentimental value or a practical purpose, and the flower box address plaque is a mini-project since I’ll need to fill it with something of my own making. We’ll get into the significance of the mothballs one day, but it’s a convoluted topic that will require a strange post of its own.
* I failed to get the label in the photo, but that’s a tiny tube of K-Y Jelly by an artist whose work I find amusing.
** Dad and Felix brought a home-cooked steak to my hospital room, I remember that much. There’s no way I specifically requested medium rare and my mom wouldn’t have, either, but if it brings him genuine joy to imagine me chewing on live cattle, who am I to take that from him?