I'm finally able to drive in
the city and parallel park without too much pain, though
my arm does get tired and weak after awhile. My big
outings are now more interesting than the trip to the
grocery store or to Blockbuster for Jackie Chan movies.
Yes, now I can seek used books and birds (used birds?)
far and wide. Well sort of.
Anyway, Thursday was the first time
since I dislocated my shoulder that I was able to drive
to Central Square for my Thursday meeting. I made a real
outing of it, allowing extra time for browsing at
Rodney's and a sandwich at Falafel Palace. At Rodney's I
spotted Forbush and the Penguins in the bird
section. Penguins in
Massachusetts? Oh, not that Forbush. This is a novel. In
fact I think there's a movie made from it. It's brilliant
and I must have it. I came away with that plus Living
with Seabirds, which actually is a bird book by some
internationally renowned gannet expert, and a book on
snow goose migration for Nancy's collection of books
about geese. How does one become an internationally
renowned expert on gannets? Are there many job openings
for them? Could I make a living as an internationally
renowned expert on piping plovers? Doubtful. It would
help to be able to lift my binoculars I
suppose.
My goal in physical therapy is in
fact to be able to lift my binoculars and hold them
steady. Forget activities of daily living like bathing
and dressing. Who cares if I can hook my bra? So anyway,
I brought my binoculars to PT on Friday and told the
therapists: "You guys call yourselves Sports Medicine and
birding is a sport." They were astounded at how heavy my
huge 10x50 binoculars are. They did however analyze the
motion involved in getting the binocs on the bird and
came up with two exercises specifically for
that.
Saturday's treat was dinner with
Nancy at Mary Chung followed by ice cream at Toscanini's.
I have been dreaming of Toscanini's ice cream the whole
time I've been disabled with the shoulder thing. I have
longed for it so much that I was willing to skip dinner
at Mary Chung and just have ice cream. I had one scoop of
ginger and one of mango. They didn't have cardamom on the
menu today. Nancy had one scoop of sweet cream and one of
burnt caramel. All excellent choices. Oddly compelling
cello music drifted out of the sound system making us
progressively happier and more curious. Is that a cello
or bass? What kind of music is this? Why does it sound
like an electric guitar and a cello at the same time?
Finally, I, gray-haired old lady, approach the kid behind
the counter and ask what the music is. The kid grins
broadly as he tells me it's four Finnish guys who play
Metallica on cellos: Apocalyptica. He writes it down for
me. He doesn't know the title of the CD but tells me the
name of the first song is Harmaggedon. He writes
that down too and tells us we should stick around for the
last song on the CD. We do. It's fabulous. I love these
little forays into the big city. They're so... so
cultural. Every scoop of ice cream should come with
such a musical epiphany.
Nancy suggested driving to
Manchester by the Sea to walk around and look at the
water down the quaint alleyways on Sunday. This was after
we'd driven to Newburyport for coffee at Middle Street
Foods, where I entertained people standing on line for
their coffee with tales of how I can't sail anymore
because of the shoulder dislocated sliding head first
into second trying to stretch a ground ball into a
double, or yanking my arm out of the socket grabbing the
boom on an out of control sailboat in gale force winds.
Then I almost had a guy convinced that I am actually
Rocco (sure to be MLB rookie of the year) Baldelli's
grandma. I couldn't convince anyone that I'm Mia Hamm's
long lost sister Honeybaked though. What can I say? The
line for coffee was LONG.
Not inexplicably we ended up in
Manchester by the Book with g*d's own plenty of whaling
memoirs, Himalayan mountaineering memoirs, no great plant
hunter memoirs (this is the bookstore I discovered
because they had a Frank Kingdon-Ward in the window), a
few bird books in the birding section but nothing
special, then, then, in the "local interest"
section: Forbush. That would be Edward Howe "Birds of
Massachusetts" Forbush not the penguin-loving
Forbush. It's an unwritten law that all Massachusetts
birder-bibliophiles must possess Forbush, must quote
Forbush in all accounts of uncommon bird sightings, must
preface all historical information with "according to
Forbush". Yes, that Forbush. Right here in Manchester by
the Sea. I was ecstatic. Can I afford it? Who cares? It's
coming home with me.
All these new used books, and
Apocalyptica, and the Yankees in town to be destroyed by
the Red Sox. I feel better already.