A Few Days in Pittsburgh March 19, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , trackback
i intended to come home and sleep every day for twelve hours. i didn’t really accomplish that to the fullest. i mostly worried. summer employment, budgeting, the vagina monologues, the control freak just kept thinking and thinking. and i watched 19 mind-numbing episodes of friends, which made me feel like life might be okay.
my cousin jen turned 30, and had a fantastic party. jen is tall, gorgeous, composed. her mother and my mother are two peas in a pod. jen had some of the most fantastic food, hors d’oeuvres: stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta, spinach puff-pastry things, raspberry-filled cupcakes. it was literally painfully delicious — my poor stomach ached from over-eating. there were jello shots — my first encounter with them — and my mother took down quite a few like a champ.
two days later, we had our version of easter, a week early since i won’t be here. my mother made ham, “funeral potatoes,” corn casserole, jello salad, deviled eggs. i made the best fruit cobbler i, personally, have ever eaten. we went shopping at walmart for supplies, which i was not too keen on. we stood in the condiment aisle and pondered the difference between mustard powder and ground mustard. an employee asked us if we needed any help, and we repeated our conundrum. he laughed. “i went to culinary school, and this is what it got me: a job at walmart and a question i don’t know the answer to.”
today we made the hour-and-a-half long trek up to johnstown, pa. a hundred-odd years ago, johnstown suffered through a horrible flood: the water poured down into the valley before word could get to the poor town. then they just rebuilt — the town looks like it’s stuck in the 80s, but the people are as nice as could be.
we went because i was on a mission. i wanted a typewriter. of course, johnstown would have a place that sells and services them. i looked up the address and we pulled up to a two-car garage next to a man’s house. the upper level of the garage held the motherload: tons of typewriters, manual, electric, portable, half-apart, bits and pieces. the gentlemen looked a touch skeptical of the chubby girl with the messy hair that was poking and prodding at their babies, but they pulled out two portable manual typewriters for me to check out.
i tapped, typed, considered. and i ended up with the adorable smith-corona pictured up there. $70 got me the typewriter, an extra ribbon, and corrective papers. i carried the bulky thing out and felt genuine. this is my craft, i’m going back to the times where things were so much more agonized over — you couldn’t just hit a key and delete, you had to physically throw something away if you wanted to start over.
i head back to new york city tomorrow. it’s raining cats and dogs in pittsburgh, flood watches all over the place. i hope my flight isn’t delayed.
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