December 8
 

Here it is.  The promised Play Doh Pic:

 
 
 

So later, when I remember not to be such a gigantic assbag and neglect to upload the photograph I'd intended to use in the entry, I'll actually DO that, rather than just talking about it.  No, really.  I will.  The thing is, I got some cool stuff off my wish list in the mail, the first thing being Play Doh.  Because I am a child, I ripped into it immediately and squashed all the colors into balls (separately, of course.  I'm pro Doh segregation.  There will be no mingling of the RED and the PURPLE, not under Dana's Rule, no no!)  Remember how it smells?  The texture?  (yes, I know you're all waiting for me to say "the taste"  but I, myself was never a play doh eater, I was the feeder, as you might imagine.  My dogs got to sample a little and lo & behold, it's just as nontoxic today as it was 25 years ago! Sweet!).

It was suggested I work with the play doh as a stress relieving thing, and that I post photos of my creations here.  I did and I shall.  I should also remember to take a picture of what I made, 5 days later.  It's not a pretty sight.  No sirree.

Speaking of the way things smell, it was snowing this morning. I may have made my Policy Statement about snow last winter, and as such, I'll not go into it in great detail beyond this:  Snow eats ass.  Anyhow, it was my first opportunity to test out the actual 4 x 4 all wheel drive basass power of my truck.  The Volvo, at the slightest whisper of snow on the ground, would slide and fishtail and skid like a bad comedy routine.  For the months of winter, I would have been just as safe with skis tied to the tires,  propelling the car around New Haven.  During the work day, if it started to snow with any significance, I'd freak out, knowing I had to drive in it.  I hate snow driving.  Hate it.  Hate it so much, it makes me want to just run from Connecticut to someplace warm.  The winter is for fools.  Ugh.

In any case, another thing about winter is that buildings start to smell bad.  Bad in a very specific, childhood invoking way.  I went to public school in Brooklyn when I was growing up and as everyone knows, public schools are never new.  The buildings are old and laden with asbestos.  The halls are long slabs of marble, dulled down and path grooved by years of children walking from place to place.  The walls are two tone, usually some combination of green on green or brown on brown.  There is a main office with a waist high counter.  On the counter there are plants, all cuttings from one big plant sitting on a sunny windowsill.  There is a swinging door, also waist height, at either side of the counter.  It is how the school secretary and principal get in and out.  As they walk through, the door swings, bumping kids with sniffles or fevers, broken bones or bad attitudes, waiting to be picked up by their parents.  The children watch the pattern the sun makes through the window gates.  They follow the sparkling reflection a young teacher's engagement ring throws to the walls as she feeds papers through the mimeograph machine.  She steps away from the machine, hands purple inky, a warm stack of addition problems which she walks to her classroom, where 35 children simultaneously hold the fresh papers to their noses for that first, sharp, fleeting smell of ink.  The classroom consists of rows of desks, the kind which flip up, revealing all the treasures of a 4th grader:  sparkly pencil, pink rubber eraser, stickers, books, candy, little velcro wallet with lunch money.  The huge cast iron radiators hiss and spit water through their valves.  They are a a neverending gobstopper of paint colors, peel away one, 10 lie beneath.  There is a blackboard, homework assignment written to the far left.  Above the board, a 20 foot horizontal poster of a printed, impossibly neat alphabet.  The coat closet hangs 35 little coats and seats a jumbled pile of snow boots, wet from the previous night's snow.  When the teacher begins herding the kids together to ready them for recess, the stampede for the boots leaves the floor soggy and gray and when they line up neatly and walk towards the staircase, they make a wet rubber sucking sound against the marble.

It is the staircase which retains the smell of Wet Boot.  Slightly sour and cold, mingling with the smell of ancient  heating system, usually coal, working to keep a building warm all at the same time.  Child boot and adult boot it is exactly the same:  the boot smell, in the hallway of a well heated old building that signifies the beginning of winter to me.  The first time I notice it, every single year, it brings me immediately back to P.S. 127.  My own boots.  The race to get to the schoolyard the day after the first snow.  My cheeks bright red and stinging from the cold.  My gloves sodden from throwing snowballs and making snowmen.  The absolute sheer joy of being in the 4th grade, when snow was the most perfect thing ever.  Snow perfect enough to make me forget all about summer.

Now that I am an adult, I am never, ever able to recapture that feeling.  My love for snow lasts precisely until I have to leave my warm home.  It is all downhill from there.  The stains from roadsalt soaking through my pants as I walk.  The big sweater too big to fit under a coat scenario. The cold air blowing out from a not quite heated engine. People driving like absolute assholes.  It's not a fair trade, as an adult.  Snow is for children, entirely.
 
 
 

Note:  It's not too late to ask  for a Christmas Card.
 
 
 
 

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She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love
But I can't help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run