Oliver Twist

What is it about Dickens, that stirs my soul? Could it be my own painful dark past, that makes me relate to his long suffering heros? I think there is more than a grain of truth in that assumption.

I am currently ensconced before the TV in my great room, my formerly trusty cozy quartz heater having finally gone on the fritz, yet here I remain completely mesmerized by a BBC production of Dickens' story of the hapless orphan Oliver. What a treasure Dickens' writings are, and what superb acting by the players in this wonderfully produced and directed mini-series! By the looks so far of Oliver, I'm counting on the rest of this BBC boxed set of Dickens' stories to be equally entertaining.

As usual, I went to my mother's for supper Monday night. When I get there, mom is usually in the kitchen, and I come in and fix myself a drink. She has an automatic ice maker, so I usually just grab a handfull of ice from her freezer and put it in a glass, then I reach for a two liter bottle of Root Beer or Dr. Pepper in her fridge, and pour a glassful. All went as expected until I reached for the ice. I put my hand into the pan holding the ice cubes from her automatic ice cube maker, but they were all frozen into a solid block!

I said, "Mom, your iced cubes are all stuck together", and pulled the pan out of the freezer to see what could be done about it. Mom..........yes my feeble ninety year old mom, took the pan away from me and hoisted it back into the freezer, where she proceded to bang the pan against the back wall of the freezer, in an attempt to loosen the frozen cubes! It seems she had previously left the freezer compartment door open, and all the cubes began to melt. Then, rather than just dump the defrosting mess into the sink and start a new pan of ice cubes, she just closed the door, and they all froze together into one solid block of ice! Of course her attempts to bang the cubes into submission was unsuccessful, and I asked her if she had an ice pick, which of course she didn't, but she did hand me a rather thin bladed steak knife, which I carefully began to chip the cubes apart with. Fortunately we only needed enough cubes for three drinks, since my bro-in-law and my niece weren't coming, and we sat down to a supper of chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes, a fresh garden salad, and chocolate pudding with a whipped cream topping.

Before I left my house for mom's I got a message on my phone from my sister. She wanted me to help her move a special reading device from an acquaintance of hers on a lower floor, up to mom's apartment. We would need a flat bed cart to move it, so when I arrived, I got the flat cart stored next to the utility elevator on the first floor, and proceeded to take it up to the tenth floor, on the utility elevator, but the utility elevator was out of service, so I had to take the cart around to the lobby and up on the the normal passenger elevator.

When I got there, my sister and I took the cart back down to the seventh floor and to her friend's apartment. What she was giving away was, a reading system for people with macular degeneration, which consisted of a 25" television set, and a camera system that mounts on a table over the book you are reading, and displays its text magnified many times on the TV screen. Mom was recently diagnosed with macular degeneration, and has had an increasingly difficult time reading, even with reading glasses, so this should be a big help to her.

I like to purchase DVD's, and when I'm done with them, I like to pass them on to my sister, for her enjoyment. Monday I gave her a two DVD set of an excellent mini-series called The Corner. It is about life in a run down black neighborhood in Baltimore, where some otherwise decent men, women and adolescents get caught up in the heroin and cocaine scene, and the resultant violence that has flooded their once peaceful neighborhood of row houses. It's a great series about a depressing subject, if you can handle it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and discovered how hard it is for those living in that environment to not get trapped in it, and once trapped, how hard it is to get out.

The ongoing TG vs TS war continues unabated, often hyperbolized in wishful thinking and self-serving rhetoric, but every now and then you hear a voice of reason. Teri, of Common Teri's Commentary is such a voice. She is a sweet, intelligent and talented trans woman, with her feet planted firmly on solid ground. Do yourself a favor it you haven't read her blog, and pay her a visit. By the way, she is a very talented audio, and visual artist! She plays guitar, writes and sings, and has done some very lovely photography, as well as some beautiful drawings.

The weather here has moderated significantly from just a couple of weeks ago. You'd think that spring had already arrived, with temperatures soaring into the mid to upper 70's°F several afternoons. Still, we had our sixth snowfall so far last night, albeit just a light dusting that was gone by mid-morning. My kind of snow!

Melissa XX