The full solar eclipse in Aries which occurred on April 8, 2024 at 3:18 in Western New York was supposed to be transformative. A whole new world, a whole new me. So far, nothing has changed me too much since I remain most concerned with what I ate while awaiting the shadow of totality. Watch this space for the next 6 months as I am to be totally different. In the meantime, enjoy this actually non-exhaustive list of everything I ate in order to prepare myself to view the eclipse. Not even the moon blocking the sun can interfere with me and my appetites.
Vacation Pasta Salad: I made this one and substituted almost all of the vegetables because of my hatred of food waste and I had some questionable asparagus and fresh mozzarella that wouldn’t make it the week without intervention.
Christmas Gravy: My mom made new gravy for my birthday and traveled with… three or four frozen 4-person servings. She is the smartest woman alive.
Perry’s Deep Sea Treasure Ice Cream Bars: 15/10, can’t wait to get my hands on more. According to the website, I can have it shipped by June to have 24 boxes. Seems like an overreaction. Will reevaluate after I get my period next week.
Buffalo Wings at Anchor Bar: The home of the Buffalo Wing! We waited forever for a table, drinks, and food but still had a good time. My dad got a really great roast beef sandwich (with a side of 6 wings) that came on a weck roll which is dusted with caraway seeds and sea salt.
Sponge Candy: I put this in our cart because I thought it was chocolate covered sponge cake. Let’s just say that when I took my first bite, I could not have been more wrong. It had the texture of what I believe chomping into a wasps’ nest would feel like. Once you get the spun sugar a little wet, it loses its scrape-y texture so it’s much more enjoyable. The outer layer of chocolate was the perfect thickness so just imagine if the interior candy wasn’t fiberglass insulation. I can’t be too critical of this Great Lakes specific candy as I like both candy corn and Necco wafers.
Eclipse Cake: Government issue supermarket cake but Special Edition Eclipse Version.
Western New York Specific Potato Chips: Why can I not have a garlic parmesan chip in Southeastern Pennsylvania? Can I have it? Please? The Italian Fisherman chips are so thin, they’re like a suggestion of a potato chip. They are so good at this chip that this is the only flavor they have and I don’t think you can buy them online. So special, so perfect. See also: Buffalo-specific Onion Dip.
This Week’s Vocabulary List
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
Scabrous (adjective) rough, knotty, difficult; dealing with indecent or scandalous themes
In context, all of the lower cost houses are described as having shitty craftsmanship and their shingles and siding are “scabrous.” When everything you’ve ever known is suddenly flipped upside down, it’s incredible what you actually notice. Like the shingles on your neighbors’ houses.
Scabrous, of or relating to and of scabs, is a gross word. Scabs are gross but they are descriptive and this word has plenty of definitions to show grossness, illicitness, and scandalousness. All manner of grossness found here!!
As I said before, I really don’t want to reveal anything in this book because it really defies explanation and I want to preserve any surprises! It’s not very often we get a new Kelly Link, after all.
I overdicked it with this book and I’m probably going to take the hit with fines in order to finish it and the book club book I have to finish in about 30 hours.
I have a feeling I’m going to be eating shit about my book club selection tomorrow night and honestly, too bad! If you are my friend, I expect you to comment on the stuff I read. Caryn is the best at this as our Goodreads accounts are just us reading what the other is reading. I tricked 10 of my smartest friends into reading something and I am not sorry.
Maybe a little sorry if they had nightmares. For night terrors of all stripes, I prescribe three seasons of Girls5Eva into the record as a salve for scaredy cats.
That being said, please read The Book of Love by Kelly Link so I can talk to you about it. Any of you. All of you.
Practical Applications
Our rental, the place where we kept all the food, was gorgeous but my one complaint is that it came with THIRTEEN STRANGERS for the eclipse. The property manager, the son of the homeowner, only disclosed that one person was stopping by the house to use the bathroom on Sunday afternoon that magically multiplied overnight into 12 additional adults by Monday morning. Curious! These folks took over the entire yard and ultimately pushed us onto the beach to stand in the scabrous sand and rocks while staring at the sky. In our family of 4, only 4 of our collective 8 knees fully function and sand is not the best standing surface. As much as I love sharing a collective human experience, I did not want to share it with these folks regardless if they offered me a Bloody Mary. I love other people (more or less), I just don’t want neighbors.
The neighbors who I’ve kindly referred to as The Coneheads (they come from France) here but we scabrously call them “the fascists” or “gli fascisti” since we do not like them and speak a 5th graders’ amount of Italian. (Can talk shit, ex: Three’s Company Season 4 Episode 10 “The Loan Shark*’, cannot order the assassination of the pope, ex Godfather III) One of their kids ordered literature for the Marines and had it sent to our address, which is one digit off from theirs. I imagine if you cannot fill out your own address to get a free t-shirt, lanyard, sticker, or water bottle, the armed services may not be for you. I just wrote “DOES NOT LIVE AT THIS ADDRESS” and a bunch of question marks and popped it back in the mailbox and let the postal service sort it out. I really don’t want the person living across the street with bad opinions to learn how to use a gun, so I’ll be administratively unhelpful to put it off as long as possible. The topography of my neighborhood is such that my street sort of dips in the middle so my house sits higher than the houses across the street. This means that when the windows are open, anything that happens outside sounds like it is happening in my workspace. I often see the above neighbors playing in their garbage cans or lighting a campfire in their driveway or jumping rope for 15 seconds and then going right back inside.
For now, this isn’t about them, this is about the chickens that live next door. The chickens are out. The chickens are out and are loudly searching for a better life where they don’t live under the flipped over hood of a camper.. Are they refusing enclosure due to the earthquake** and the eclipse? “Let us experience the wonders of being alive!” they cluck as they amble down the street toward an unknowable future, a thing I believe we all have in common with chickens. I am fully ensconced in the suburbs so it’s all fun and games until a chicken is scream-clucking at you at your desk to write faster. Disconcerting that the chickens can see into my professional worries but here they are, clucking and flapping their way into my musecage! Hopefully the transformation I’m supposed to undergo will quiet my mind and it’ll really be over for my haters.
Love,
Andrea
Thanks for stopping by Vocabulary School!
*There is nowhere in the known world but this newsletter where I can report that the actress who played the titular Loan Shark’s wife was in a 1979 Pocono Playhouse production of The Owl and the Pussycat with Gary Burghoff from M*A*S*H. The two-hander play is about a novelist/peeping Tom who spies on a sex worker who is simply living her life. Can they make it work? The 1964 original cast stars M*A*S*H’s Alan Alda and was then turned into a movie with Barbra Streisand and George Segal. Comparing the animal magnetism of Alan Alda/George Segal with Gary Burghoff is actually akin to having a crush on Big Bird.
** I missed the earthquake because I was driving west but everyone else felt it and I will be jealous for the rest of my life.