It's been about two weeks since my last post, a lapse that was altogether deliberate and purposeful, and whose artistic merit will soon be clear. I have not written for two weeks so that I could then come back and write two stunning weeks of my life in a montage. For you. Really! A montage! That film device where all of the improbable parts of the plot are glossed over and rushed through to the accompaniment of lame, getting-things-done music.
Ready?
Cue the music: something mid- to up-tempo heavily reliant on synthesizers-- think of that song in "Scarface" called "Take it to the Limit" that plays during Tony Montana's building-my-drug-empire montage.
Scenes in quick succession, one fading to the next:
me valiantly blow-drying my hair in an effort to make it look professional
circling the campus where I work in a fruitless search for parking among my students' Hummers and Lexi (plural of Lexus?) and giant tricked-out, ultra shiny pick-ups, I jauntily hold up my hand to block the rays of early morning sun, which light up my now hopelessly retarded hairdo like a brown fan around my head. still the music continues upbeat as I walk the three blocks to work.
at the front of a long classroom, I try to point to my email address scrawled on a white board while simultaneously trying to scratch my face, causing me to lose my balance and nearly fall. This happens a lot, this total lack of spacial orientation while trying to teach. Also, I am pointing with my arm bent at the elbow and clamped to my side because somehow I am sweating profusely in this mild-temperatured classroom and am mortified of being the community college teacher with sweat stains under her arms.
the community college teacher with sweat stains under her arms returns home and throws a frisbee for her dog in the semi-sadistic hope of finally depleting the dog's boundless energy. Useless. In the final nuclear winter that will end all life on earth, Abby will somehow survive and trot from one wasted horizon to the other with her frisbee clamped between her teeth, whining for someone to throw it, god damn it, Throw. It.
roughly halfway through our two-week artistic hiatus, a crippling depression strikes. The cheesy synth music must now fade into some Depeche Mode or, God forbid, Morrissey. For roughly 48 hours I am an intolerable cloud of barely muffled sobs, shuffling from refrigerator to couch staring at nothing and eating nothing. I tell my husband I no longer give a shit where we are stationed next because I can't imagine it getting any better. Then I go sit in my car along the sea wall, watch the waves, and write in my journal about the butch lesbians next to me in their pick-up, shotgunning Bud Light from the huge cans you get at Stop N' Go. Big lesbians with big square working-on-cars shoulders, who tromp over to the sea wall trash barrel to throw out their empties and stretch their backs as the evening breeze ruffles their squarish mullets. Feeling much better, I head home, eat a bag of M&M's and am much restored.
return of upbeat music, more quick shots of me teaching interspersed with shots of me being paid to surf the internet, where my blue-haired lady friend found this brilliant blog.
and then the final scene of the montage is me, fabulously drunk on a Spanish red wine whose name translates to "House of the Devil," devouring basil havarti cheese and poppy seed crackers with my husband while we watch "Casablanca" and recite all the lines.
And that was basically two weeks. See? Wasn't the wait worth it? Yyyyyyeeeaaaahhhhh....
The dude who lives next door with his wife and two-year-old boy is out in their postage stamp backyard (next to our postage stamp backyard-- creepily I can see them out our second floor window) with the kid teaching him to swing at a giant blue foam baseball with a giant red foam bat. The man stands about four paces from the little boy, crouches over with the ball in his hand and asks, "Are you ready?" The kid strikes his stance-- knees bent, ass out, arms nearly covering his face as he waggles the bat directly above his head-- and says, "Yeah" while taking a quick series of tiny hopping steps toward his dad to meet the pitch almost as soon as it leaves his dad's hand. Mostly this ends in the dad getting bopped in the knees with the bat, but as I was writing this I heard the whoop of victory-- the ball made it over the fence to drop softly on my car's hood.
Way to go, dude. At least somebody's making some progress around here.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Blackout #71
More evidence that I am living in a bad foreign art film and cannot read the subtitles:
I went to the military eye doctor yesterday to have him take a look at my beet red right eye, which has taken to sealing itself shut every morning with eye spackle. Perhaps it could be infected? The doctor nods at my symptoms and we face off on either side of that Star Wars-looking headpiece that harnesses the power of the sun and shoots it through my eyes and into the back of my head. Through the giant green blots in my vision I see him opening a bottle of numbing eye drops.
I don't do these.
For some reason that still remains a mystery, I faint every time these drops go in my eyes. This has been tested and retested to a comic degree because no one believes me. So I go ahead and give it a try, for what is now the sixth time an eye doctor has borne down on me, dropper at the ready: "Hey, so is that alcaine? Please don't put it in my eye because I faint. Seriously. I don't know if I'm allergic or what, but I faint and sometimes have a seizure too. Please don't use it on me."
Somehow, this translates into: "Hey, so I'm batshit crazy and nama nama nama blah blah blah," because the doctor replies, "Oh, this stuff is different-- it's just a dye that helps me see infections--" drop, drop! "-- now just lean in and hold real still... you probably won't like this next part..." And then the rest of what he's saying dissolves into cotton and handbells and I remember my face dragging across the headpiece thing, and then reaching for my feet, and then nothing.
I wake up to startled (yes, startled!) male nurses and a retreating doctor saying, "Watch her-- I don't know what happened! There are no warnings in her file." I flop my mouth like a fish and wonder where I am and a giant Hawaiian guy tells me to breathe through my nose while he tries to hold down my jerking shoulders. I slur drunkenly that I might barf and he brings a trash can, but I can only dry heave. My hands and face are numb and I am drenched in sweat. For the next fifteen minutes, the Hawaiian guy sits calmly by my side and reports on my returning color, joking about how I may be a pale white girl, but no one should be that pale. Then he says, "So I guess you're allergic to the alcaine, huh?"
"That's what that was?"
"Yeah. It's a numbing drop."
"Really. You know, this is the sixth time that's happened. No one ever believes me."
"Then you should go to an allergist and get it checked out. Get a medic alert bracelet and have it put on your driver's license."
The Hawaiian guy leaves for a minute and the doctor comes back, but now the official explanation is that I must have what's called "White Coat Syndrome," which, he explains, basically means I have some sort of psychological freak out around doctors. Nevermind that I googled this term and it actually refers to unexplained high blood pressure in the presence of doctors, and that fainting is technically caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure. Silly patient.
So now I have yet another brain reboot under my belt, adding to my already impressive and dramatic collection, and am still no closer to answering that all important question, "What the fuck?"
Pieces of the puzzle: 1) I faint when sitting up for blood draws and when getting alcaine drops, once when my appendix was getting ready to explode, and once when I was drugged up from wisdom tooth surgery, 2) sometimes I have fun seizures that scare the living shit out of healthcare professionals, 3) I have incredibly low blood pressure, and, perhaps most tellingly, 4) my mother and brother faint from blood draws and proximity to exceptional gore, though this last one has never claimed me.
I'd say the score is a tie between heredity, low blood pressure, and fear-- but tell me, is there a reason NOT to be afraid when doctor after doctor just plows past blatant warnings from my repeated experience? I'm not sure how to make myself clearer than "I know what that is, don't use it on me, I will faint."
Perhaps my mistake is using logic, and words. In the world of the foreign art film, sometimes symbology has far greater sway. I think next time I'll kill a seagull and dance around weeping and see if that helps.
I went to the military eye doctor yesterday to have him take a look at my beet red right eye, which has taken to sealing itself shut every morning with eye spackle. Perhaps it could be infected? The doctor nods at my symptoms and we face off on either side of that Star Wars-looking headpiece that harnesses the power of the sun and shoots it through my eyes and into the back of my head. Through the giant green blots in my vision I see him opening a bottle of numbing eye drops.
I don't do these.
For some reason that still remains a mystery, I faint every time these drops go in my eyes. This has been tested and retested to a comic degree because no one believes me. So I go ahead and give it a try, for what is now the sixth time an eye doctor has borne down on me, dropper at the ready: "Hey, so is that alcaine? Please don't put it in my eye because I faint. Seriously. I don't know if I'm allergic or what, but I faint and sometimes have a seizure too. Please don't use it on me."
Somehow, this translates into: "Hey, so I'm batshit crazy and nama nama nama blah blah blah," because the doctor replies, "Oh, this stuff is different-- it's just a dye that helps me see infections--" drop, drop! "-- now just lean in and hold real still... you probably won't like this next part..." And then the rest of what he's saying dissolves into cotton and handbells and I remember my face dragging across the headpiece thing, and then reaching for my feet, and then nothing.
I wake up to startled (yes, startled!) male nurses and a retreating doctor saying, "Watch her-- I don't know what happened! There are no warnings in her file." I flop my mouth like a fish and wonder where I am and a giant Hawaiian guy tells me to breathe through my nose while he tries to hold down my jerking shoulders. I slur drunkenly that I might barf and he brings a trash can, but I can only dry heave. My hands and face are numb and I am drenched in sweat. For the next fifteen minutes, the Hawaiian guy sits calmly by my side and reports on my returning color, joking about how I may be a pale white girl, but no one should be that pale. Then he says, "So I guess you're allergic to the alcaine, huh?"
"That's what that was?"
"Yeah. It's a numbing drop."
"Really. You know, this is the sixth time that's happened. No one ever believes me."
"Then you should go to an allergist and get it checked out. Get a medic alert bracelet and have it put on your driver's license."
The Hawaiian guy leaves for a minute and the doctor comes back, but now the official explanation is that I must have what's called "White Coat Syndrome," which, he explains, basically means I have some sort of psychological freak out around doctors. Nevermind that I googled this term and it actually refers to unexplained high blood pressure in the presence of doctors, and that fainting is technically caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure. Silly patient.
So now I have yet another brain reboot under my belt, adding to my already impressive and dramatic collection, and am still no closer to answering that all important question, "What the fuck?"
Pieces of the puzzle: 1) I faint when sitting up for blood draws and when getting alcaine drops, once when my appendix was getting ready to explode, and once when I was drugged up from wisdom tooth surgery, 2) sometimes I have fun seizures that scare the living shit out of healthcare professionals, 3) I have incredibly low blood pressure, and, perhaps most tellingly, 4) my mother and brother faint from blood draws and proximity to exceptional gore, though this last one has never claimed me.
I'd say the score is a tie between heredity, low blood pressure, and fear-- but tell me, is there a reason NOT to be afraid when doctor after doctor just plows past blatant warnings from my repeated experience? I'm not sure how to make myself clearer than "I know what that is, don't use it on me, I will faint."
Perhaps my mistake is using logic, and words. In the world of the foreign art film, sometimes symbology has far greater sway. I think next time I'll kill a seagull and dance around weeping and see if that helps.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
I want my own Red Tent, damn it
Things seem pretty hopeless today, but that could be because I'm reading The Red Tent and a whole village of men just got involuntarily circumsized and then murdered by the narrator's asshole brothers.
I must be careful about what I read because it inevitably effects my personal life. For weeks on end I see reality through the scrim of whatever book plot my brain is marinating in. My creepy Dostoyevsky phase nearly convinced me that my husband regretted marrying me and that my many sins were unforgivable; my Lolita phase had me noticing (not without a large ick factor) the highly sexualized culture of young girls; and my recent fling with Werner Herzog's documentary The Grizzly Man and Nick Jans' The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears has me wondering if perhaps the best treatment for my own mental illness might be forging psychotic friendships with hungry sharks.
This is all to point out that "the book I'm reading now is fucking with my head," is almost always an accurate statement for me. Small things like doing the dishes or making meals now carry the weight of subservience, and though my book-addled mind resents these tasks, it also prevents me from asking for help. I'm afraid if I do ask, the undertones of hysteria will be unmistakable, and I'll have to explain that I'm nursing a grudge for a tribe of long-dead Canaanite women.
And it's not just household chores that this book is affecting-- I'm also feeling the ache of missing my female friends, some of whom I got to see over MLK weekend, which was wonderful. It's been hard to make friends in this new landscape of permanent impermanence-- it's been hard to feel like the risk and the effort are worth it. You can tell a good husband anything, but you can't always expect him to understand it, or for his companionship to fill every corner of your world.
If my mind were a book, today it would read:
"It's windy outside today, enough to make the eaves whistle and the screens rattle, and the early afternoon sun has scoured the last of the shadows from the fields around my house. The world feels overexposed and lonely and I would like nothing better than to retreat to the secret, sheltering shade of a tent with my own tribe of friends."
I must be careful about what I read because it inevitably effects my personal life. For weeks on end I see reality through the scrim of whatever book plot my brain is marinating in. My creepy Dostoyevsky phase nearly convinced me that my husband regretted marrying me and that my many sins were unforgivable; my Lolita phase had me noticing (not without a large ick factor) the highly sexualized culture of young girls; and my recent fling with Werner Herzog's documentary The Grizzly Man and Nick Jans' The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears has me wondering if perhaps the best treatment for my own mental illness might be forging psychotic friendships with hungry sharks.
This is all to point out that "the book I'm reading now is fucking with my head," is almost always an accurate statement for me. Small things like doing the dishes or making meals now carry the weight of subservience, and though my book-addled mind resents these tasks, it also prevents me from asking for help. I'm afraid if I do ask, the undertones of hysteria will be unmistakable, and I'll have to explain that I'm nursing a grudge for a tribe of long-dead Canaanite women.
And it's not just household chores that this book is affecting-- I'm also feeling the ache of missing my female friends, some of whom I got to see over MLK weekend, which was wonderful. It's been hard to make friends in this new landscape of permanent impermanence-- it's been hard to feel like the risk and the effort are worth it. You can tell a good husband anything, but you can't always expect him to understand it, or for his companionship to fill every corner of your world.
If my mind were a book, today it would read:
"It's windy outside today, enough to make the eaves whistle and the screens rattle, and the early afternoon sun has scoured the last of the shadows from the fields around my house. The world feels overexposed and lonely and I would like nothing better than to retreat to the secret, sheltering shade of a tent with my own tribe of friends."
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Holiday plunder has put me in the mood for feathered mullet
A short list of some of the great things about Christmas:
1) a collection of ten species of carnivorous plants to grow in the kitchen window, courtesy of my mother-in-law, who has the preternatural talent of perfect gift-giving.
2) a gold hotel desk bell, also from afore-mentioned mother-in-law. You never know how many things are slam-the-bell-worthy until you have one of these things. New pot of coffee? Ding! Husband's smacktabulous ass going by? Ding! Kitten nearby and way too calm? Ding ding ding!
3) Sublime Stitching. This woman has single-handedly battled my winter break depression for three weeks. And does she even know it? No. But I have slightly pornographic kitchen towels now and plans for a Tupac tribute apron.
4) Avenging Unicorn action figure playset. My mother has a tradition of having a parallel universe gag Christmas right after the real one. We all load up on wine and exchange gifts mostly from this, the greatest toy store in all creation (despite its over-abundance of hipsters on any given day).
5) MONEY. Oh, Money, I've missed you. We parted ways quite a while ago, didn't we? What was our falling out about? Oh right, I was tired of taking it up the ass for you. But there you were in my Christmas gifts, peeking coyly out of an envelope and offering a truce: the promise of a drafting table. I hunger for the 36"x48" Alvin Workmaster Jr. with 35-degree incline and adjustable floor height, the figurative launch pad for my legion of creatures and stories. Come to me.
Side note, almost too embarassing to admit: I had a rather *intimate* dream last night about Ben Stiller. Weird, but weirder still is that it was Ben Stiller from "Dodgeball." And it was GREAT. Sadly, I have no change in medication or recent crack habit to which to attribute this.
1) a collection of ten species of carnivorous plants to grow in the kitchen window, courtesy of my mother-in-law, who has the preternatural talent of perfect gift-giving.
2) a gold hotel desk bell, also from afore-mentioned mother-in-law. You never know how many things are slam-the-bell-worthy until you have one of these things. New pot of coffee? Ding! Husband's smacktabulous ass going by? Ding! Kitten nearby and way too calm? Ding ding ding!
3) Sublime Stitching. This woman has single-handedly battled my winter break depression for three weeks. And does she even know it? No. But I have slightly pornographic kitchen towels now and plans for a Tupac tribute apron.
4) Avenging Unicorn action figure playset. My mother has a tradition of having a parallel universe gag Christmas right after the real one. We all load up on wine and exchange gifts mostly from this, the greatest toy store in all creation (despite its over-abundance of hipsters on any given day).
5) MONEY. Oh, Money, I've missed you. We parted ways quite a while ago, didn't we? What was our falling out about? Oh right, I was tired of taking it up the ass for you. But there you were in my Christmas gifts, peeking coyly out of an envelope and offering a truce: the promise of a drafting table. I hunger for the 36"x48" Alvin Workmaster Jr. with 35-degree incline and adjustable floor height, the figurative launch pad for my legion of creatures and stories. Come to me.
Side note, almost too embarassing to admit: I had a rather *intimate* dream last night about Ben Stiller. Weird, but weirder still is that it was Ben Stiller from "Dodgeball." And it was GREAT. Sadly, I have no change in medication or recent crack habit to which to attribute this.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
New Year's
Back in our coastal town and I am already missing the stunning graffiti of Austin, its pockets of expensively maintained women (roaming Breed Hardware looking bored, bored, bored), and most of all the way winter light takes on a golden cast and picks out all the contours and shadows in the hills, especially the ear-popping ones near Mansfield Dam.
I spent New Year's Eve at a wedding, one of the best I've been to and not just because it was for a bride who had to relearn how to walk for it. Pretty much nothing beats a brisk, cloudless night in the hill country with good beer, good food, good music, a hot date who's tethered to you for life, and gorgeous three-inch heels bought hours earlier for under $40. But add a bride who giggles through her ceremony while the entire audience is in tears, and who can two-step beautifully even with a titanium femur and a rebuilt neck, and you get something truly special.
I spent New Year's Eve at a wedding, one of the best I've been to and not just because it was for a bride who had to relearn how to walk for it. Pretty much nothing beats a brisk, cloudless night in the hill country with good beer, good food, good music, a hot date who's tethered to you for life, and gorgeous three-inch heels bought hours earlier for under $40. But add a bride who giggles through her ceremony while the entire audience is in tears, and who can two-step beautifully even with a titanium femur and a rebuilt neck, and you get something truly special.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Centering the first year
On year ago today I was in the front seat of a Ryder moving van speeding over the Atchafalaya Swamp in Lousiana thinking, "This would be the greatest place to hide a body." I had been married less than 36 hours and my wedding bouquet, a spray of dark red roses larger than my head, was swinging upside down from the rearview mirror.
Four hurricanes and two moves later, my husband and I celebrated with a quiet weekend together making pizza from scratch to cook on the grill. He stretched and kneaded the dough, singing a little song about yeast farts, while I chopped artichoke hearts and cracked open two cold beers. We dodged each other and the refrigerator door, the dog wove happily between our legs hoping for scraps, and I felt as weightless and exactly right as when I was little kid diving for quarters in the deep end of the pool.
It wasn't always like this. The first eight months, living together in a recently destroyed city, were clumsy and tense. Not having a job or peers and getting lost every time I left the house was like having all the identifying features wiped right off my face. My roots, long buried and (too) deeply established, were naked and trailing behind me, but I had no idea how or where to replant them. I got sick over and over again and I slept a lot. I sympathized with the plowed earth and toppled people of Pensacola.
Interacting with my husband during this time was awkward because I was disoriented and off-balance and he was always there-- there in the bedroom, there on the couch, there at the computer. All the Mine and Yours was now Ours, including space. I ended up taking hideously long showers and reading way too much Dostoyevsky, feeling the characters' overwrought guilt and paranoia as my own and eyeing my husband suspiciously as he retreated into the X-Box, where victories are solid and quick. Was this what he expected when he married me? Surely not, surely he must be disappointed. Is he quiet right now because he's regretting marrying me?
Three things happened, though: I got a job (a crappy one, but I made several good friends), someone began painting the phrase "YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL" in big block letters on bridges and walls around town, and I took a pottery class. The job regulated time, created a separate space for me to putz around in, and brought in some extra cash. The graffiti gave me something to hunt for, measure, describe and puzzle over. I'm still trying to write about its effect on me and its meaning in a larger sense in a city that was so wrecked.
Pottery was something close to religion.
We spent the whole first class spinning bumpy lumps of wet clay into smooth lumps of wet clay. Centering. It takes your whole body, it takes shoving and muscle and then gradually the lightest pressure from the sides of your hands and the pads of your fingers. Honestly, it takes closed eyes and smooth breathing and it takes lots and lots of fucking up because it is the art of fucking up and accepting it and gently moving it into something else. Every Thursday afternoon I drove just over the Alabama border and practiced fucking up, coating my jeans and hair in mud, spinning the soft skin off my hands from the grit of the clay, and at the end of class I would drive home in the dark feeling like my whole ribcage was full of light, like the revelation was enough to make me cry.
My husband and I have been centering for a whole year now. The lurching, oscillating chaos of the beginning has quieted down, and I can feel the shape of something smooth and whole emerging. Here's to patience, closed eyes, and smooth breathing.
Four hurricanes and two moves later, my husband and I celebrated with a quiet weekend together making pizza from scratch to cook on the grill. He stretched and kneaded the dough, singing a little song about yeast farts, while I chopped artichoke hearts and cracked open two cold beers. We dodged each other and the refrigerator door, the dog wove happily between our legs hoping for scraps, and I felt as weightless and exactly right as when I was little kid diving for quarters in the deep end of the pool.
It wasn't always like this. The first eight months, living together in a recently destroyed city, were clumsy and tense. Not having a job or peers and getting lost every time I left the house was like having all the identifying features wiped right off my face. My roots, long buried and (too) deeply established, were naked and trailing behind me, but I had no idea how or where to replant them. I got sick over and over again and I slept a lot. I sympathized with the plowed earth and toppled people of Pensacola.
Interacting with my husband during this time was awkward because I was disoriented and off-balance and he was always there-- there in the bedroom, there on the couch, there at the computer. All the Mine and Yours was now Ours, including space. I ended up taking hideously long showers and reading way too much Dostoyevsky, feeling the characters' overwrought guilt and paranoia as my own and eyeing my husband suspiciously as he retreated into the X-Box, where victories are solid and quick. Was this what he expected when he married me? Surely not, surely he must be disappointed. Is he quiet right now because he's regretting marrying me?
Three things happened, though: I got a job (a crappy one, but I made several good friends), someone began painting the phrase "YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL" in big block letters on bridges and walls around town, and I took a pottery class. The job regulated time, created a separate space for me to putz around in, and brought in some extra cash. The graffiti gave me something to hunt for, measure, describe and puzzle over. I'm still trying to write about its effect on me and its meaning in a larger sense in a city that was so wrecked.
Pottery was something close to religion.
We spent the whole first class spinning bumpy lumps of wet clay into smooth lumps of wet clay. Centering. It takes your whole body, it takes shoving and muscle and then gradually the lightest pressure from the sides of your hands and the pads of your fingers. Honestly, it takes closed eyes and smooth breathing and it takes lots and lots of fucking up because it is the art of fucking up and accepting it and gently moving it into something else. Every Thursday afternoon I drove just over the Alabama border and practiced fucking up, coating my jeans and hair in mud, spinning the soft skin off my hands from the grit of the clay, and at the end of class I would drive home in the dark feeling like my whole ribcage was full of light, like the revelation was enough to make me cry.
My husband and I have been centering for a whole year now. The lurching, oscillating chaos of the beginning has quieted down, and I can feel the shape of something smooth and whole emerging. Here's to patience, closed eyes, and smooth breathing.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
The S.S. McShitty
Only pictures can tell the story of yesterday, but since the disposable water-proof camera is days away from yielding its treasures, word-pictures will have to suffice.
First shot: My husband and I, knee-deep in freezing algae attempting to hoist the sails on a small rented Sunfish at the base marina. Our MWR (Morale, Recreation, and Welfare) life jackets glow against the nubbly-gray sky through which a few strands of sunlight reach to the water. We are smiling. Today is my first day sailing on a two-person boat!
Second shot: Out on the water now, waves chuffing at the sides of the boat, my husband is explaining the mechanics of tacking to me while I nervously look for a place to put my feet in the boat's shallow dugout bottom. It is smaller than the foot space in my Honda and two inches of freezing gray water slosh back and forth in it.
Third shot: A mile from shore, and I am finally comfortable with the process of ducking beneath the sail and shifting my ass to the opposite gunwhale when we change directions. My husband and I are huddled together on one side of the boat, soaked in spray. He is laughing and pulling in the sail and I am kissing his ear. The water-proof camera is working double time to keep up with my artsy shots of the sail and the sun peeking through the gray and the water splashing off the bow.
Fourth shot: A stark photo taken seconds after THE FUCKING MAST SNAPS IN HALF, plunging the sail into the water and stopping all motion of the boat a mile from the shore. My husband and I shout in unison, "WHAT THE FUCK?!" We then hurriedly get to work pulling the sail from the water before it sinks, billows in the current, and becomes heavier than the boat.
Next, a series of shots in which we scrap several ideas of how to get out of this situation: 1) My husband plunges heroically into the water and attempts to pull us to shore, but after 30 seconds in the biting cold, realizes that he will go hypothermic before we reach the shore; 2) I try to convince my husband that I am the stronger swimmer and will go for help even though we both know what a wretched sissy I am about cold; 3) we consider screaming at the old man in the fishing boat 300 yards away, but are both too embarassed to do it; 4) we try to ascertain which way the current is pulling us-- out to sea or back to the bay?-- and fail to reach consensus; 5) both of us look to the sky, me wondering how to signal the planes that we are in trouble, my husband evidently flashing back to years of boy scout training.
Next shot, the MacGuyver moment: my husband is hit by a stroke of genius and figures out that by removing the shattered stump part of the mast, he can partially re-rig the sail to the remaining length of mast, shove it into the mast hole at the front of the boat, and partially raise the sail, catch the breeze, and so limp slowly to shore. A few direction changes are required, and in order for him to tack with a partially rigged sail, I must completely compress myself into the tiny bilge water dugout. Finally yoga pays off-- I am a perfect fit!
Final shot: Triumph! We are back on shore, hosing off the S.S. McShitty before checking it back in to the marina, where they will have to take it out back and shoot it like Ol' Yeller. To my utter shock, the man behind the counter seems only mildly surprised at our misfortune. "Yup," he replies, "it's the corrosion. Saltwater gets up in there and before you know it--" snap! He makes a cracking motion with his fists.
Huh. I guess this was covered in the waiver on which I scrawled my name in those heady, pre-sail moments, but still. No hero's welcome? No props for cheating death?
We settle for a blessed retreat to the back seat of my car where we struggle into dry clothes, tangling elbows and feet, both threatening to throw open the doors and alert bystanders to the presence of moon-white naked ass, and, finally, laughing about a good story to tell.
First shot: My husband and I, knee-deep in freezing algae attempting to hoist the sails on a small rented Sunfish at the base marina. Our MWR (Morale, Recreation, and Welfare) life jackets glow against the nubbly-gray sky through which a few strands of sunlight reach to the water. We are smiling. Today is my first day sailing on a two-person boat!
Second shot: Out on the water now, waves chuffing at the sides of the boat, my husband is explaining the mechanics of tacking to me while I nervously look for a place to put my feet in the boat's shallow dugout bottom. It is smaller than the foot space in my Honda and two inches of freezing gray water slosh back and forth in it.
Third shot: A mile from shore, and I am finally comfortable with the process of ducking beneath the sail and shifting my ass to the opposite gunwhale when we change directions. My husband and I are huddled together on one side of the boat, soaked in spray. He is laughing and pulling in the sail and I am kissing his ear. The water-proof camera is working double time to keep up with my artsy shots of the sail and the sun peeking through the gray and the water splashing off the bow.
Fourth shot: A stark photo taken seconds after THE FUCKING MAST SNAPS IN HALF, plunging the sail into the water and stopping all motion of the boat a mile from the shore. My husband and I shout in unison, "WHAT THE FUCK?!" We then hurriedly get to work pulling the sail from the water before it sinks, billows in the current, and becomes heavier than the boat.
Next, a series of shots in which we scrap several ideas of how to get out of this situation: 1) My husband plunges heroically into the water and attempts to pull us to shore, but after 30 seconds in the biting cold, realizes that he will go hypothermic before we reach the shore; 2) I try to convince my husband that I am the stronger swimmer and will go for help even though we both know what a wretched sissy I am about cold; 3) we consider screaming at the old man in the fishing boat 300 yards away, but are both too embarassed to do it; 4) we try to ascertain which way the current is pulling us-- out to sea or back to the bay?-- and fail to reach consensus; 5) both of us look to the sky, me wondering how to signal the planes that we are in trouble, my husband evidently flashing back to years of boy scout training.
Next shot, the MacGuyver moment: my husband is hit by a stroke of genius and figures out that by removing the shattered stump part of the mast, he can partially re-rig the sail to the remaining length of mast, shove it into the mast hole at the front of the boat, and partially raise the sail, catch the breeze, and so limp slowly to shore. A few direction changes are required, and in order for him to tack with a partially rigged sail, I must completely compress myself into the tiny bilge water dugout. Finally yoga pays off-- I am a perfect fit!
Final shot: Triumph! We are back on shore, hosing off the S.S. McShitty before checking it back in to the marina, where they will have to take it out back and shoot it like Ol' Yeller. To my utter shock, the man behind the counter seems only mildly surprised at our misfortune. "Yup," he replies, "it's the corrosion. Saltwater gets up in there and before you know it--" snap! He makes a cracking motion with his fists.
Huh. I guess this was covered in the waiver on which I scrawled my name in those heady, pre-sail moments, but still. No hero's welcome? No props for cheating death?
We settle for a blessed retreat to the back seat of my car where we struggle into dry clothes, tangling elbows and feet, both threatening to throw open the doors and alert bystanders to the presence of moon-white naked ass, and, finally, laughing about a good story to tell.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Not a Well Woman
School is done for the winter break and depression has descended like a fog. I've lost track of the last several days and have instead taken to marking time in stranger increments-- late night runs through the heavily decorated neighborhood (this town goes all out for the holidays), random phone calls from my mother, endless batches of cookies that I lose interest in as soon as they leave the oven.
And now a protracted battle with the military hospital, for which I have few kind words. "It's free." That's the end of my kind words. Today has been marred with a string of awkward phone calls, each beginning with the same tired recap of events and circumstances, like a bad sitcom picking up after the "to be continued" cliff hanger because there is no continuity or logic involved in military healthcare.
Imagine seeing a brand new doctor every time you get sick, and having to explain and justify every medical decision made prior to your meeting. I once had an argument with a doctor over why I had been prescribed anti-depressants TEN YEARS AGO, even though I was there for a heinous ear infection that felt like it was gnawing away at my brain. She finally let the issue go when I burst into tears and fell back on the paper-covered table in resignation.
There is also no privacy or delicacy. No matter what may or may not be going on with your VAGINA, you must first discuss it in detail with an 18-year-old enlisted guy from Kentucky. Then you may proceed to your brand new doctor, who will want to discuss something completely different, alter all existing prescriptions, and then dash off somewhere else.
Today it's birth control. Despite the recent hatemail from my uninhabited uterus, I would like at least a little control over my reproductive functions, and up until today this was no problem. But now I'm getting the runaround on why the prescription was never refilled, even though I requested it A WEEK AGO and am now in dire need. I actually got a call from some dude named Bill this morning (why they bother telling me their names is a mystery-- I NEVER deal with the same person twice) nervously asking me if I could maybe drive to CVS, pick up the original prescription and drive it all the way across town to him at the base because my doctor wants to see it before she'll refill it.
What the fuck? Are they still using mimeographs or something? Isn't this what computerized medical records are for?
At any rate, there was plenty of time to discuss this when I brought it up during my "Well Woman" exam, the one where she auctioneered me out of getting a pap smear and all but ran out of the room. It was like she and the other docs were having some kind of relay race and she had to pass the baton.
So Dr. Auctioneer has an appointment with me today at 2:00 and I am not a Well Woman. I am a weepy, angry woman who just wants her fucking birth control and her Prozac and maybe something warm to drink so she can disappear into a book for about a week.
**Update:
HA! Success! Not only am I back with many months' supply of baby repellant, I have gotten the Good Shit, the version I was on for years and years but which the military switched me off of when we came to this town, claiming that they didn't carry it. Apparently it's more expensive for them while being the same free for me, so they thought they'd try me out on something different for a while. La, la, la-- everybody wins!
But no.
For the past three months, my hormone levels skittered up and down, my normally placid (if vocal) uterus bucked and writhed in monthly pain, and the general level of Fucked-Upedness in my mind rose like an ugly watermark.
But today, Dr. Auctioneer, suddenly contrite with me sitting there scowling and shaking in her exam room, revealed a magical form she can fill out that unlocks a secret vault in the pharmacy, from which golden light and birth control pills spill forth.
I felt like kissing her fleeing feet...
And now a protracted battle with the military hospital, for which I have few kind words. "It's free." That's the end of my kind words. Today has been marred with a string of awkward phone calls, each beginning with the same tired recap of events and circumstances, like a bad sitcom picking up after the "to be continued" cliff hanger because there is no continuity or logic involved in military healthcare.
Imagine seeing a brand new doctor every time you get sick, and having to explain and justify every medical decision made prior to your meeting. I once had an argument with a doctor over why I had been prescribed anti-depressants TEN YEARS AGO, even though I was there for a heinous ear infection that felt like it was gnawing away at my brain. She finally let the issue go when I burst into tears and fell back on the paper-covered table in resignation.
There is also no privacy or delicacy. No matter what may or may not be going on with your VAGINA, you must first discuss it in detail with an 18-year-old enlisted guy from Kentucky. Then you may proceed to your brand new doctor, who will want to discuss something completely different, alter all existing prescriptions, and then dash off somewhere else.
Today it's birth control. Despite the recent hatemail from my uninhabited uterus, I would like at least a little control over my reproductive functions, and up until today this was no problem. But now I'm getting the runaround on why the prescription was never refilled, even though I requested it A WEEK AGO and am now in dire need. I actually got a call from some dude named Bill this morning (why they bother telling me their names is a mystery-- I NEVER deal with the same person twice) nervously asking me if I could maybe drive to CVS, pick up the original prescription and drive it all the way across town to him at the base because my doctor wants to see it before she'll refill it.
What the fuck? Are they still using mimeographs or something? Isn't this what computerized medical records are for?
At any rate, there was plenty of time to discuss this when I brought it up during my "Well Woman" exam, the one where she auctioneered me out of getting a pap smear and all but ran out of the room. It was like she and the other docs were having some kind of relay race and she had to pass the baton.
So Dr. Auctioneer has an appointment with me today at 2:00 and I am not a Well Woman. I am a weepy, angry woman who just wants her fucking birth control and her Prozac and maybe something warm to drink so she can disappear into a book for about a week.
**Update:
HA! Success! Not only am I back with many months' supply of baby repellant, I have gotten the Good Shit, the version I was on for years and years but which the military switched me off of when we came to this town, claiming that they didn't carry it. Apparently it's more expensive for them while being the same free for me, so they thought they'd try me out on something different for a while. La, la, la-- everybody wins!
But no.
For the past three months, my hormone levels skittered up and down, my normally placid (if vocal) uterus bucked and writhed in monthly pain, and the general level of Fucked-Upedness in my mind rose like an ugly watermark.
But today, Dr. Auctioneer, suddenly contrite with me sitting there scowling and shaking in her exam room, revealed a magical form she can fill out that unlocks a secret vault in the pharmacy, from which golden light and birth control pills spill forth.
I felt like kissing her fleeing feet...
Friday, December 09, 2005
Robin joyriding in the Batmobile
I have a confession to make.
But before I do, please consider the circumstances: First, it is cold. That simple fact mitigates anything for me, even murder. I hate being cold. Second, I have no sweatpants. I gave up sweatpants back when I decided it was time to get rid of the Christmas hams hitching a ride in the back of my jeans, and anyone with a fat ass knows that having sweatpants around is like leaving foil and a lighter in the room with a crackhead. And third, I needed to run.
So I borrowed a sweatsuit from my husband, but not just any sweatsuit. I borrowed the fancy military sweatsuit, which screams in CAPITAL REFLECTIVE LETTERS that the wearer survived a very intense training school-- a 3-month soul-killing regimen of You Might Die workouts combined with You Should Die psychological battery at the hands of marine scout snipers.
An ex-boyfriend of mine wouldn't even let me wear his silly frat shirt TO BED, long after he'd graduated, because it was against The Rules, but somehow I am allowed to don these sweats for my piddly run around the neighborhood. How can this be? I am drunk with power, like Robin stealing the keys to the Batmobile. Once I leave the house and start my run, I usurp my husband's badass status and am now the girl who beat the odds, who had to work extra hard to keep up with the guys, running on her own to keep her stiff upper lip fighting spirit so that she can one day defend the world from Evil.
The weird thing is that I actually know a real girl in this circumstance and am nothing like her. She could snap me in half, dip those halves in ranch, devour them, and then belch louder louder than I could scream.
But I block that out and happily continue my run.
The downside to the badass sweats is that I can't walk in them. My fantasy and paranoia and guilt prevent that. I can't even slow down. Instead, I force my legs past the jello point, my lungs past the coated-in-Vicks-vapo-rub burning point, the hitch in my side past spasm and on closer to shiv wound.
Two cars honked at me tonight (why the hell do people do that?), and in my exhaustion I concluded that they were either cheering me on or hazing someone they assumed to be legitimately in the military. More likely they were alerting that crazy looking white girl tear-assing down the street to the imminent explosion of her heart.
I plan to continue this sham as long as I can because it brings me back to my pathological childhood obsession with dressing up and becoming someone else, and it also gives me one hell of a workout-- far, far better than my real self could manage.
But before I do, please consider the circumstances: First, it is cold. That simple fact mitigates anything for me, even murder. I hate being cold. Second, I have no sweatpants. I gave up sweatpants back when I decided it was time to get rid of the Christmas hams hitching a ride in the back of my jeans, and anyone with a fat ass knows that having sweatpants around is like leaving foil and a lighter in the room with a crackhead. And third, I needed to run.
So I borrowed a sweatsuit from my husband, but not just any sweatsuit. I borrowed the fancy military sweatsuit, which screams in CAPITAL REFLECTIVE LETTERS that the wearer survived a very intense training school-- a 3-month soul-killing regimen of You Might Die workouts combined with You Should Die psychological battery at the hands of marine scout snipers.
An ex-boyfriend of mine wouldn't even let me wear his silly frat shirt TO BED, long after he'd graduated, because it was against The Rules, but somehow I am allowed to don these sweats for my piddly run around the neighborhood. How can this be? I am drunk with power, like Robin stealing the keys to the Batmobile. Once I leave the house and start my run, I usurp my husband's badass status and am now the girl who beat the odds, who had to work extra hard to keep up with the guys, running on her own to keep her stiff upper lip fighting spirit so that she can one day defend the world from Evil.
The weird thing is that I actually know a real girl in this circumstance and am nothing like her. She could snap me in half, dip those halves in ranch, devour them, and then belch louder louder than I could scream.
But I block that out and happily continue my run.
The downside to the badass sweats is that I can't walk in them. My fantasy and paranoia and guilt prevent that. I can't even slow down. Instead, I force my legs past the jello point, my lungs past the coated-in-Vicks-vapo-rub burning point, the hitch in my side past spasm and on closer to shiv wound.
Two cars honked at me tonight (why the hell do people do that?), and in my exhaustion I concluded that they were either cheering me on or hazing someone they assumed to be legitimately in the military. More likely they were alerting that crazy looking white girl tear-assing down the street to the imminent explosion of her heart.
I plan to continue this sham as long as I can because it brings me back to my pathological childhood obsession with dressing up and becoming someone else, and it also gives me one hell of a workout-- far, far better than my real self could manage.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
PBS and the biological clock
Hark! The timorous clanging of my biological clock's alarm, long praised for being defective and silent.
I am officially receiving hatemail from my uterus. Last night I had a dream about being suddenly and heavily pregnant and having to go about my daily tasks with a belly that rocked and swayed like huge, tumescent fruit. It was not my first preggo dream. They started almost exactly halfway through my 26th year and have been increasing with alarming frequency.
Other changes: my eye snags on particularly cute baby clothes in Target, ones with little footies and dump trucks and little bugs sewn on them, even when I'm there for condoms and pretzels; I react with pleasure when handed someone else's infant, instead of holding the thing carefully away from my body like a bomb covered in feces; and most recent and perhaps strangest, I do not feel the urge to projectile vomit when a pregnant woman discusses her pregnancy with me.
For most of my fertile years, pregnancy has either been a non-issue or worst-case scenario, the image of my genetic materials combined with those of the person with whom I was involved being enough of a nightmare to scare me into uber-meticulousness. About the only steps I had taken to prepare for parenthood were avoiding that huge, full-abdomen tattoo and staying off the heroin.
But now that my husband and I have held the marriage together for NEARLY A WHOLE YEAR, my traitorous uterus (what a great name for a metal band!) has taken the presumptuous decision that now is the time to start pumping out the kids. In idle moments it whispers to me, saying things like, "Hey, how old are you now? 27? Your mom was on her second kid by now. Your grandmother was on her fourth. And what are you doing? Oh, right-- reading the New York Times. No, no really. Go ahead. I'm just going to hang out down here. Getting OLDER."
I do plan on having kids, but I feel like there are so many things I'm supposed to have done first-- I'm supposed to have been well established as a Promising Young Novelist with a healthy 401K. I'm supposed to have at least a master's. And my husband and I are supposed to have been married for at least four years-- four years being the magical and somewhat arbitrary length of time I have deemed sufficient to build a Stable and Non-psychotic Relationship That Will Not Heinously Scar Offspring.
This is all to say nothing of the fact that he's in the military, which brings up such an ocean of variables that I find it more convenient and useful to just bang my head against a table repeatedly rather than try to sort it all out. Stupid war. Stupid, evil president!
So instead I try to be patient. I try to ignore my bullying uterus and vent my maternal urges by tickling my nephew and making him point to his umbligo. But days like this make it harder-- with our recently neutered cable offerings, the best thing on TV today was PBS's show-- I've already forgotten the name-- about this little Scottish pig and his cow buddy. Mel Brooks provided the voice for a sheep. Genius! And I had no one to watch it with.
Poor old PBS-- slowly strangled to death by Republicans (stupid, STUPID Republicans!) and now at the point of shitting the bed. I feel like I'm sitting by the bedside, holding its dying hand and at the same time threatening it that it had better hold on until I have kids.
I am officially receiving hatemail from my uterus. Last night I had a dream about being suddenly and heavily pregnant and having to go about my daily tasks with a belly that rocked and swayed like huge, tumescent fruit. It was not my first preggo dream. They started almost exactly halfway through my 26th year and have been increasing with alarming frequency.
Other changes: my eye snags on particularly cute baby clothes in Target, ones with little footies and dump trucks and little bugs sewn on them, even when I'm there for condoms and pretzels; I react with pleasure when handed someone else's infant, instead of holding the thing carefully away from my body like a bomb covered in feces; and most recent and perhaps strangest, I do not feel the urge to projectile vomit when a pregnant woman discusses her pregnancy with me.
For most of my fertile years, pregnancy has either been a non-issue or worst-case scenario, the image of my genetic materials combined with those of the person with whom I was involved being enough of a nightmare to scare me into uber-meticulousness. About the only steps I had taken to prepare for parenthood were avoiding that huge, full-abdomen tattoo and staying off the heroin.
But now that my husband and I have held the marriage together for NEARLY A WHOLE YEAR, my traitorous uterus (what a great name for a metal band!) has taken the presumptuous decision that now is the time to start pumping out the kids. In idle moments it whispers to me, saying things like, "Hey, how old are you now? 27? Your mom was on her second kid by now. Your grandmother was on her fourth. And what are you doing? Oh, right-- reading the New York Times. No, no really. Go ahead. I'm just going to hang out down here. Getting OLDER."
I do plan on having kids, but I feel like there are so many things I'm supposed to have done first-- I'm supposed to have been well established as a Promising Young Novelist with a healthy 401K. I'm supposed to have at least a master's. And my husband and I are supposed to have been married for at least four years-- four years being the magical and somewhat arbitrary length of time I have deemed sufficient to build a Stable and Non-psychotic Relationship That Will Not Heinously Scar Offspring.
This is all to say nothing of the fact that he's in the military, which brings up such an ocean of variables that I find it more convenient and useful to just bang my head against a table repeatedly rather than try to sort it all out. Stupid war. Stupid, evil president!
So instead I try to be patient. I try to ignore my bullying uterus and vent my maternal urges by tickling my nephew and making him point to his umbligo. But days like this make it harder-- with our recently neutered cable offerings, the best thing on TV today was PBS's show-- I've already forgotten the name-- about this little Scottish pig and his cow buddy. Mel Brooks provided the voice for a sheep. Genius! And I had no one to watch it with.
Poor old PBS-- slowly strangled to death by Republicans (stupid, STUPID Republicans!) and now at the point of shitting the bed. I feel like I'm sitting by the bedside, holding its dying hand and at the same time threatening it that it had better hold on until I have kids.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
College degrees well earned
"If you were a dinosaur, you know what you'd be?"
"What?"
"Nipploticus."
"Nipp-- what? Oh... because I grab your boobs all the time?"
"Yeah."
"Know what you'd be?"
"No."
"Naptodon."
"What?"
"Nipploticus."
"Nipp-- what? Oh... because I grab your boobs all the time?"
"Yeah."
"Know what you'd be?"
"No."
"Naptodon."
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
A Story of Heartlessness and Cruelty
This is a story about when I was a heartless 24-year-old, about when my fumblings toward an authentic life routinely burned small cities and ran over kittens.
There is a scene in "Dances With Wolves" where Kevin Costner (will his star ever stop rising?) shoots a buffalo as it charges a young Sioux boy. One of the warriors comes over and carves out an unidentifiable hunk of buffalo flesh (heart? testicles? tongue?) and offers it to Costner to devour, apparently as a show of manliness and triumph. Costner takes a girly nibble and declines, but the warrior takes a giant bloody bite and lets out a whoop, kind of a Sioux "boo-yah, bitch!"
I offer this in comparison with something I once did to a man's heart, in full view of people trying to have a nice dinner.
D. and I dated for about a year and half, which was my standard at the time for figuring out that someone was completely and unmistakably Wrong for Me. Unfortunately, D.'s intentions developed along an entirely different trajectory, one involving rings and Crate & Barrel, and he shared this information with everyone but me. Inevitably, right as we reached our separate conclusions, talk of The Future came up.
It was a balmy, batshit-smelling night on the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, and after our movie ended, D. and I walked across Town Lake to the picturesque little gazebo, whose roof looked like a dinner napkin plucked up by its center. He was advancing his case for me to move with him to D.C. on the basis that he thought public policy sounded interesting and maybe he'd like to study it. I resented the cavalier way he insinuated that I had nothing going at the time (in fact I didn't-- I hated my job) and could drop everything to follow him and a hunch.
We reached the gazebo and I sat down on one of the rocks surrounding it. He sat on the grass next to me. We tugged each way on the knot between us and finally It came up. The Future, the Long Term, Us, Marriage.
I told him about a nightmare I had the year before about having to marry some guy in a church basement in the commercial break of a football game. There were Cheetos and my dress had poofy sleeves and the zipper broke. The despair had followed me for days.
"I don't see myself getting married," I said.
"What?" His voice got high and tight. "Like ever?" A family of swans came out of the reeds by the shore and cut long graduated z's in the reflection of the city lights, two large swans and three little ones following. I am not making this up.
"Pretty much."
He sat up on his knees and faced me and his eyes filled with tears. I forget what he said at this point because a riverboat strung with white Christmas lights emerged from beneath the bridge and the occupants, seeing us and the swans and the last reflections of the setting sun, rose from their chairs and applauded us, some lifting wine glasses.
Had they only looked closer, they would have seen the still-beating heart (or tongue? or testicles?) in my hand and the blood smeared across my mouth.
There is a scene in "Dances With Wolves" where Kevin Costner (will his star ever stop rising?) shoots a buffalo as it charges a young Sioux boy. One of the warriors comes over and carves out an unidentifiable hunk of buffalo flesh (heart? testicles? tongue?) and offers it to Costner to devour, apparently as a show of manliness and triumph. Costner takes a girly nibble and declines, but the warrior takes a giant bloody bite and lets out a whoop, kind of a Sioux "boo-yah, bitch!"
I offer this in comparison with something I once did to a man's heart, in full view of people trying to have a nice dinner.
D. and I dated for about a year and half, which was my standard at the time for figuring out that someone was completely and unmistakably Wrong for Me. Unfortunately, D.'s intentions developed along an entirely different trajectory, one involving rings and Crate & Barrel, and he shared this information with everyone but me. Inevitably, right as we reached our separate conclusions, talk of The Future came up.
It was a balmy, batshit-smelling night on the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, and after our movie ended, D. and I walked across Town Lake to the picturesque little gazebo, whose roof looked like a dinner napkin plucked up by its center. He was advancing his case for me to move with him to D.C. on the basis that he thought public policy sounded interesting and maybe he'd like to study it. I resented the cavalier way he insinuated that I had nothing going at the time (in fact I didn't-- I hated my job) and could drop everything to follow him and a hunch.
We reached the gazebo and I sat down on one of the rocks surrounding it. He sat on the grass next to me. We tugged each way on the knot between us and finally It came up. The Future, the Long Term, Us, Marriage.
I told him about a nightmare I had the year before about having to marry some guy in a church basement in the commercial break of a football game. There were Cheetos and my dress had poofy sleeves and the zipper broke. The despair had followed me for days.
"I don't see myself getting married," I said.
"What?" His voice got high and tight. "Like ever?" A family of swans came out of the reeds by the shore and cut long graduated z's in the reflection of the city lights, two large swans and three little ones following. I am not making this up.
"Pretty much."
He sat up on his knees and faced me and his eyes filled with tears. I forget what he said at this point because a riverboat strung with white Christmas lights emerged from beneath the bridge and the occupants, seeing us and the swans and the last reflections of the setting sun, rose from their chairs and applauded us, some lifting wine glasses.
Had they only looked closer, they would have seen the still-beating heart (or tongue? or testicles?) in my hand and the blood smeared across my mouth.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Pap smear reprieve-- going once, going twice, sold!
I think I just got cheated out of a pap smear. I am equal parts indignant and elated.
My hyper-caffeinated doctor, who missed out on a great career as an auctioneer for prize heifers, explained the following to me in about four and a half seconds:
"Pap smears test for varieties of HPV, and there are many varieties but only four or five really cause cervical cancer. You've been having yearly pap smears for what, nine years? And none of them have ever come back abnormal? OK, well HPV grows really really slow, so even if you picked it up the day after your last pap smear, it wouldn't show up today. And since you're in a nice stable married relationship the chances of you picking up HPV any time soon are pretty low, unless of course you find out your husband's cheating on you or you get divorced, in which case your lifestyle would change and then you'd need to make another appointment. Otherwise, come back next year."
Prescription for more birth control and out the door I go. Huh?
Why do I feel vaguely unsettled? Did she just really not want to look at my lady bits? Or did my infuritatingly conservative hairdo tricked her into thinking I am the picture of virtue and therefore immune to disease of any kind? Maybe she really had to poop and needed some quiet alone time.
Once again I am reminded that military dependent healthcare is free, and you get what you pay for.
My hyper-caffeinated doctor, who missed out on a great career as an auctioneer for prize heifers, explained the following to me in about four and a half seconds:
"Pap smears test for varieties of HPV, and there are many varieties but only four or five really cause cervical cancer. You've been having yearly pap smears for what, nine years? And none of them have ever come back abnormal? OK, well HPV grows really really slow, so even if you picked it up the day after your last pap smear, it wouldn't show up today. And since you're in a nice stable married relationship the chances of you picking up HPV any time soon are pretty low, unless of course you find out your husband's cheating on you or you get divorced, in which case your lifestyle would change and then you'd need to make another appointment. Otherwise, come back next year."
Prescription for more birth control and out the door I go. Huh?
Why do I feel vaguely unsettled? Did she just really not want to look at my lady bits? Or did my infuritatingly conservative hairdo tricked her into thinking I am the picture of virtue and therefore immune to disease of any kind? Maybe she really had to poop and needed some quiet alone time.
Once again I am reminded that military dependent healthcare is free, and you get what you pay for.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Another entry mentioning penises
Yesterday we went sailing. Or, more accurately, yesterday we went to the base to rent a tiny two person Sunfish to use at the marina and I, horrified at the 20-knot wind and itchy, gray, weird smelling water, watched from the shore as my husband and his buddy sailed. And capsized. And sailed again.
The first time we went sailing was in Pensacola, and it was a gorgeous, only-P.Diddy-does-this-kind-of-thing experience. The water was choppy and the sky was dramatic because a wall of thunderstorms sat on the city but out in the bay, the sky was aggressively blue and dotted with chunky white clouds and helicopters, and it was raining marines. The helicopters would come out, flattening the waves and spraying surf everywhere, squat briefly over the water and squeeze out three marines, and then peel off for half an hour while the marines treaded water and tried to save strength for climbing a rope when the helicopter came back.
Our friend's boat was large and sleek and sturdy looking, and it had a little room with a kitchen and bathroom below where masochists could hang out and get thrown from sink to couch to toilet and back again. I hung out on the deck and took artsy photos and trailed my legs from the side and generally felt like a fragrance ad in a magazine-- insoucient, sun-kissed, and lovely. Then I took the wheel and tipped the boat at such an angle and at such a speed that even our pathologically laid back friend said, "Um...whoa. Might want to straighten 'er out there, Cap'n."
No such hijinks yesterday. Maybe I'm a sailing snob and won't get on anything smaller than 19 feet. Maybe I was a little unnerved by the skin-peeling speed of the wind. Mostly I think it was the grave warning from the desk rental guy who had a lisp: "If you get thtuck on the far thide of the bay where the currentth are thtrong, jutht wave really big and thomeone might be able to come get you before the current pullth you out to thea." No thanks. I chose the option of walking along the crusty, morning breath bay trying to keep my hair from whipping out my eyes while I watched the man tear across the waves getting great gulps of bay water as he screamed "Fuck yeah! Is that all you got?!"
I also got a chance to watch wind sailing class, which is where the mention of penises comes in. Hosting an intro to the sport on a day with 20-knot winds makes bad memories for the participants and good theater for the spectator. It looks like this: four grown men in three-foot deep water wobbling on surf boards and then bending over granny-style to try and haul this giant sail erect. If they succeed, they spend the next five minutes alternately hanging their butts out over the board in a half-squat and then snapping their pelvises forward in an attempt to stay on the board and pull the sail upright. It looks like someone trying, and failing, to hump another larger being before finally being slapped back into the water. I really think erectile dysfunction drug companies should look into amateur wind surfing as the perfect polite metaphor for their commercials. A voice-over about four-hour, painful erections and blood clots just naturally pops to mind.
My husband and his friend came back hoarse and soaking. So far, no major skin abnormalities from the water, only exclamations like, "Why haven't we done that before now? Want to go back tomorrow?"
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Baltic Penis Cookies
As I grow more frolicsome and less resentful in the kitchen, I've come across some great "learning experience" recipes. These were recipes that originally sounded delicious and not so challenging and ended up either jeopardizing my physical safety or resembling surgical leftovers. A few examples:
New Orleans Lasagne
Prepared the same as regular lasagne, but submerged in a soup of water that I neglected to drain off of the canned tomatoes. Conveniently refuses to maintain structural integrity from dish to plate.
Low-on-Prozac Chicken
A burned unholy mess left untended in the oven while I cried. Sobs increased upon discovery.
Boozy Lady Fingers
Small sausages wrapped in ready-made croissant dough, dipped in hot mustard, and consumed with much beer. Delicious!--until the last batch, where the beer catches up with me and I horrifically burn four fingers by not using the oven mitt.
Noodle Water
Pretty much just some fucking water. Noodles were supposed to be added, but evidently something fell under the burner and into the drip pan and caught fire, filling the kitchen with acrid smoke and setting off the fire alarm. Repeatedly. Interesting tableau as I balance the tasks of waving a towel under the shrieking alarm and trying to extinguish the tiny fire under the burner, while adding the noodles anyway because hey, the damned water's boiling-- I'm not starting over.
Baltic Penis Cookies
After a long winning streak in the kitchen (read: edible food, no emergency room trips) I got cocky and decide that delicate cookie-cutter Christmas cookies were in order. Unfortunately, I hadn't brushed up on my eyelid surgery skills and was thus totally unprepared for the uncooperative dough. Stars and snowmen and Christmas trees soon turned to Baltic states which soon turned to penises. Penises are remarkably easy to fashion, and can even be made quite festive with a few raisins and some cinnamon sugar. By the time it occurred to me to make a few yuletide vulvas, I was out of dough, so that will have to wait.
New Orleans Lasagne
Prepared the same as regular lasagne, but submerged in a soup of water that I neglected to drain off of the canned tomatoes. Conveniently refuses to maintain structural integrity from dish to plate.
Low-on-Prozac Chicken
A burned unholy mess left untended in the oven while I cried. Sobs increased upon discovery.
Boozy Lady Fingers
Small sausages wrapped in ready-made croissant dough, dipped in hot mustard, and consumed with much beer. Delicious!--until the last batch, where the beer catches up with me and I horrifically burn four fingers by not using the oven mitt.
Noodle Water
Pretty much just some fucking water. Noodles were supposed to be added, but evidently something fell under the burner and into the drip pan and caught fire, filling the kitchen with acrid smoke and setting off the fire alarm. Repeatedly. Interesting tableau as I balance the tasks of waving a towel under the shrieking alarm and trying to extinguish the tiny fire under the burner, while adding the noodles anyway because hey, the damned water's boiling-- I'm not starting over.
Baltic Penis Cookies
After a long winning streak in the kitchen (read: edible food, no emergency room trips) I got cocky and decide that delicate cookie-cutter Christmas cookies were in order. Unfortunately, I hadn't brushed up on my eyelid surgery skills and was thus totally unprepared for the uncooperative dough. Stars and snowmen and Christmas trees soon turned to Baltic states which soon turned to penises. Penises are remarkably easy to fashion, and can even be made quite festive with a few raisins and some cinnamon sugar. By the time it occurred to me to make a few yuletide vulvas, I was out of dough, so that will have to wait.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Swingin'
There's a weird dude in my neighborhood who sits on the swing set in the little public park across the field behind my house. All day, just swinging, with the swing chains going creak creak. Every day. He's Tweedle Dee huge and always wears a yellow hat and sits with his left hand behind his back.
My first thought was sex offender, and I haven't really had a second thought yet.
Every day the dog and I run past him and even though it's at a point in my route when my lungs are on fire and my legs feel noodley and made of cement at the same time, we always pick up the pace. He's probably some eccentric genius with heartwarming tales of human suffering and redemption, but I'm just chickenshit enough to let that opportunity pass.
By the way, I totally needed a jacket today. Someone at this website needs their internal thermostat sissy-fied.
My first thought was sex offender, and I haven't really had a second thought yet.
Every day the dog and I run past him and even though it's at a point in my route when my lungs are on fire and my legs feel noodley and made of cement at the same time, we always pick up the pace. He's probably some eccentric genius with heartwarming tales of human suffering and redemption, but I'm just chickenshit enough to let that opportunity pass.
By the way, I totally needed a jacket today. Someone at this website needs their internal thermostat sissy-fied.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Thanksgiving Hurl-a-Thon
What do you do when the man you married rises from the bed ashen-faced at two in the morning, lurches into the bathroom, and then morphs into a terrifying human fountain of partially digested Thanksgiving feast? You wake your brother- and sister-in-law, gather a pile of their medicines, and then try to reassure them that nothing's happening in their guest bathroom-- not scenes from The Exorcist, not that stomach-dwelling thing from Alien-- and then you cower in the hallway and wait for the bathroom door to open so you can toss in Immodium and Pepto and Advil and words of encouragement.
Earlier that day: the husband and I are standing in a long line at one of San Antonio's Army bases waiting to be issued two soldiers to take home and subject to a family Thanksgiving. Always fond of pointless delay and formality, the Army makes 1,000 soldiers stand at attention for half an hour while the civilians are subjected to bizarre music blared over loudspeakers. "Proud to Be an American," which has to qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention, is followed by a strange rendition of "Under the Boardwalk," complete with totally-out-of-place Tejano yipping and "ay-ayyyyyy"-ing, and then finally, two smiling clean-cut soldiers in blindingly shiny shoes are issued to us. Thoroughly briefed on good manners and polite conversation, our guys were fun and easy to talk to-- which made it all the more difficult to break it to them that though it was now 9 in the morning, dinner would be at 6. A whole day to kill.
Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard. We played pool at my mother-in-law's house and ate her cookies, and then went over to the brother-in-law's for some X-Box and some taunting of the two-year-old nephew. (My nephew now has a fully-developed alter ego whom we have named "Lyle." Lyle announces his presence by issuing some kind of ear-splitting Comanche howl and then jumps straight up into the air, lands full force on his ass, and then lays back and thrashes and screeches. All because you stopped him from dialing Sweden on your cell phone.) Before we knew it, both soldiers were coated in a thick layer of dog and cat hair (just the ambient air of pet-dwelling homes is enough to do it when you're wearing nicely pressed dark green wool pants), the X-Box was exhausted, and it was time to head back to the mother-in-law's house for dinner.
My mother-in-law goes all out for major holiday cooking. Almost every other day of the year she and my father-in-law subsist entirely on cereal, but for big family gatherings, hers is the test kitchen from the Food Network, and she presides over it with the kind of nervous energy that makes everyone else subconciously hunch and tiptoe when they enter the kitchen. Part of this is the presence of her own mother, an ancient Oklahoma panhandle plainswoman, who sits in one corner by the breakfast table and watches the commotion, occasionally throwing out a remark that could be 50/50 "just making conversation" or "subtle, soul-crushing criticism." My mother-in-law rolls out homemade pie crusts with grim, tight-lipped competence, and I distract her mother with tales of my outlaw ancestors and my own shitty tomato-slicing skills.
The dinner was beautiful, the conversation amazingly light after all the stress of preparation, and the soldiers actually seemed sad to go when we took them back to the base. I found myself praying for each of them to break their ankles or something on the way back to the barracks just to be good and sure they wouldn't be headed to Iraq any time soon. They were both so young.
My husband and I returned to the brother-in-law's house to play with the dual personality nephew (as heinous as Lyle can be, the real nephew is angelic) and bed down for the night. And then 2 a.m. rolled around.
Your first marital bout of explosive diarrhea and unstoppable vomiting is really an underrated milestone. I believe scrapbooks should make room for this moment. Here is where you find out if you're both in it for the long haul. Are you willing to hold a trashcan in front of someone whose colon is rebelling so that they can simultaneously vomit themselves inside out? What about when that vomit is a stage by stage recount of your delicious Thanksgiving feast? And are you willing to find and point out weak bright spots like, "Hey, it's been 12 hours-- we're almost halfway!" or "I haven't seen sweet potatoes the last two times-- I think we're nearing the end of your stomach contents."
As near as we can tell, it was a virus brought home a week ago by Lyle, spread to both his parents simultaneously (imagine the irony of changing someone else's diaper when you could really use one of your own), and then passed on to the mother-in-law and possibly the great grandmother. Somewhere in all of this it found its way to my husband but not to me. Yet.
Remember that scene in "Stand By Me" where the pie-eating contest goes horribly wrong and the protagonist of the story, a kid named Lard Ass, sets off a chain reaction vomit melee? I've been riding out my probably temporary pocket of digestive health and fanatasizing, with no small measure of guilt, that this scene is taking place in a barracks packed full of young soldiers right now, and that any plans for deployment have been scrapped because of it. Permanently.
(By the way, try image googling "explosive vomit" and explain what that random woman is doing there.)
Earlier that day: the husband and I are standing in a long line at one of San Antonio's Army bases waiting to be issued two soldiers to take home and subject to a family Thanksgiving. Always fond of pointless delay and formality, the Army makes 1,000 soldiers stand at attention for half an hour while the civilians are subjected to bizarre music blared over loudspeakers. "Proud to Be an American," which has to qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention, is followed by a strange rendition of "Under the Boardwalk," complete with totally-out-of-place Tejano yipping and "ay-ayyyyyy"-ing, and then finally, two smiling clean-cut soldiers in blindingly shiny shoes are issued to us. Thoroughly briefed on good manners and polite conversation, our guys were fun and easy to talk to-- which made it all the more difficult to break it to them that though it was now 9 in the morning, dinner would be at 6. A whole day to kill.
Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard. We played pool at my mother-in-law's house and ate her cookies, and then went over to the brother-in-law's for some X-Box and some taunting of the two-year-old nephew. (My nephew now has a fully-developed alter ego whom we have named "Lyle." Lyle announces his presence by issuing some kind of ear-splitting Comanche howl and then jumps straight up into the air, lands full force on his ass, and then lays back and thrashes and screeches. All because you stopped him from dialing Sweden on your cell phone.) Before we knew it, both soldiers were coated in a thick layer of dog and cat hair (just the ambient air of pet-dwelling homes is enough to do it when you're wearing nicely pressed dark green wool pants), the X-Box was exhausted, and it was time to head back to the mother-in-law's house for dinner.
My mother-in-law goes all out for major holiday cooking. Almost every other day of the year she and my father-in-law subsist entirely on cereal, but for big family gatherings, hers is the test kitchen from the Food Network, and she presides over it with the kind of nervous energy that makes everyone else subconciously hunch and tiptoe when they enter the kitchen. Part of this is the presence of her own mother, an ancient Oklahoma panhandle plainswoman, who sits in one corner by the breakfast table and watches the commotion, occasionally throwing out a remark that could be 50/50 "just making conversation" or "subtle, soul-crushing criticism." My mother-in-law rolls out homemade pie crusts with grim, tight-lipped competence, and I distract her mother with tales of my outlaw ancestors and my own shitty tomato-slicing skills.
The dinner was beautiful, the conversation amazingly light after all the stress of preparation, and the soldiers actually seemed sad to go when we took them back to the base. I found myself praying for each of them to break their ankles or something on the way back to the barracks just to be good and sure they wouldn't be headed to Iraq any time soon. They were both so young.
My husband and I returned to the brother-in-law's house to play with the dual personality nephew (as heinous as Lyle can be, the real nephew is angelic) and bed down for the night. And then 2 a.m. rolled around.
Your first marital bout of explosive diarrhea and unstoppable vomiting is really an underrated milestone. I believe scrapbooks should make room for this moment. Here is where you find out if you're both in it for the long haul. Are you willing to hold a trashcan in front of someone whose colon is rebelling so that they can simultaneously vomit themselves inside out? What about when that vomit is a stage by stage recount of your delicious Thanksgiving feast? And are you willing to find and point out weak bright spots like, "Hey, it's been 12 hours-- we're almost halfway!" or "I haven't seen sweet potatoes the last two times-- I think we're nearing the end of your stomach contents."
As near as we can tell, it was a virus brought home a week ago by Lyle, spread to both his parents simultaneously (imagine the irony of changing someone else's diaper when you could really use one of your own), and then passed on to the mother-in-law and possibly the great grandmother. Somewhere in all of this it found its way to my husband but not to me. Yet.
Remember that scene in "Stand By Me" where the pie-eating contest goes horribly wrong and the protagonist of the story, a kid named Lard Ass, sets off a chain reaction vomit melee? I've been riding out my probably temporary pocket of digestive health and fanatasizing, with no small measure of guilt, that this scene is taking place in a barracks packed full of young soldiers right now, and that any plans for deployment have been scrapped because of it. Permanently.
(By the way, try image googling "explosive vomit" and explain what that random woman is doing there.)
Friday, November 18, 2005
Hair of a Hulk, then of a Bush
(Image courtesy of Wallsoffame.com)
This is a remarkably close approximation of the haircut I got in April. I paid close to $100 for it, and then went to a wedding the next day where I was the maid of honor, or as I called it, the freakish Hulk-head of honor. I was sans corrective eyewear on the day of The Haircut, and feeling pretty dumpy besides, so I directed the stylist to "make it fun-- update it." Apparently "fun" to this woman is waking up every morning with a bushy box-shaped head and hearing the sad, lonely piano theme song of "The Incredible Hulk" as you brush your teeth. As punishment, every strand of my hair that has grown in since April has been lightning white, as if terrified that one day it will meet a similar fate.
Luckily, the wretchedness of the original haircut has been ameliorated over time with several careful, way over-instructed haircuts from various women across the Gulf Coast. One curious lingering aftereffect of the layers growing out is that every morning, straight out of bed, my hair looks as though it's been styled for the next Republican Convention. Conservatives coif me at night. So my morning routine has become unnecessarily complicated as I try to realign my hair with my political affiliations.
On unsuccessful days, it looks like this:
(Image courtesy of cesnur.org)
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
No Excuses
Typical conversation at our house:
"Hey, how was work today?"
"Eh, you know-- OK. I got to use my Boba Fett oxygen mask and dive between some cloud banks, and then I dipped my wing tips into the tops of the clouds. Then I did a few barrel rolls. What about you?"
"Well, I paced around a tiny room of bored twenty-somethings bitching about how in America, we punctuate inside the quotation marks."
Boo-yah. I think we all know who the badass is here.
Today my students had a paper due. Actually, calling it a paper is like calling golf a sport-- it was a mere paragraph with a single source citation. Still, I got all kinds of excuses. Per course policy, I had to turn down every one of them, but that didn't stop them coming. And the tragedy! The drama! The variety! Nothing would surprise me at this point.
"My grandma got shivved at the Jiffy Mart last night and I had to fly to Baltimore to pick up some replacement organs for her, but then someone broke into my truck and stole my god-baby, so I had to go sit up all night with her parents, you know, as moral support. Plus, I have diarrhea."
By far, the best response to my "I don't accept incomplete work" speech came from one of my oldest students, a part-time rapper. "Oh, word?" he said. "Shit." Then he smiled, shrugged, and let it go. I've got to admire that. That's called taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions, which was one of my dad's all time favorite Droning Lecture topics.
Update on my dirtbag neighbor, the hit and run bandito (incidentally, also a juicy example of not manning up and facing consequences): the bashed up pick-up disappeared within an hour of the cop finding it. I can only guess the thing's been impounded. Whatever else happens, I hope there's at least one prolonged, awkward encounter where he has to face the girl whose car he totalled, and who he left behind without even checking to see if she was OK.
"Hey, how was work today?"
"Eh, you know-- OK. I got to use my Boba Fett oxygen mask and dive between some cloud banks, and then I dipped my wing tips into the tops of the clouds. Then I did a few barrel rolls. What about you?"
"Well, I paced around a tiny room of bored twenty-somethings bitching about how in America, we punctuate inside the quotation marks."
Boo-yah. I think we all know who the badass is here.
Today my students had a paper due. Actually, calling it a paper is like calling golf a sport-- it was a mere paragraph with a single source citation. Still, I got all kinds of excuses. Per course policy, I had to turn down every one of them, but that didn't stop them coming. And the tragedy! The drama! The variety! Nothing would surprise me at this point.
"My grandma got shivved at the Jiffy Mart last night and I had to fly to Baltimore to pick up some replacement organs for her, but then someone broke into my truck and stole my god-baby, so I had to go sit up all night with her parents, you know, as moral support. Plus, I have diarrhea."
By far, the best response to my "I don't accept incomplete work" speech came from one of my oldest students, a part-time rapper. "Oh, word?" he said. "Shit." Then he smiled, shrugged, and let it go. I've got to admire that. That's called taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions, which was one of my dad's all time favorite Droning Lecture topics.
Update on my dirtbag neighbor, the hit and run bandito (incidentally, also a juicy example of not manning up and facing consequences): the bashed up pick-up disappeared within an hour of the cop finding it. I can only guess the thing's been impounded. Whatever else happens, I hope there's at least one prolonged, awkward encounter where he has to face the girl whose car he totalled, and who he left behind without even checking to see if she was OK.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
My Neighbor the Dirtbag
Near the end of my daily commute today, I came across a terrible hit and run accident in front of what my husband and I call "Pee Pants Day Care."*
As I turned onto the street I could see that it was showered with the light green glittery stuff that means "no more back window," and off in someone's front yard was the rear bumper of an otherwise pulverized silver TransAm. A scared looking woman in pink heels was pulling out a cell phone and running over to check on the driver, who was signaling with her hands that she was OK. I pulled up and asked if I could help and Pink Heels told me the guy who did it had just driven off in a gold Chevy pick-up.
Check.
If there is anyone I'm willing to ride on fucking gangster-style it's a hit and run driver. A friend of mine was almost killed in June when a couple of boys in a stolen car somehow flicked her truck over the rails of an overpass in Houston, rolling it and wrapping it around a light pole like a wad of foil and breaking her neck in five places. The week before her wedding. And then they ran, convinced they'd killed her. So I'm riding with the retroactive wrath of a broken-necked bride (who is recovering beautifully, by the way) and giving the stink eye to all the gold pick-ups I come across but not finding one bashed up in the front.
I went back to the accident, which was by now crawling with cops and firemen, and apologized for being a useless revenge posse. The driver looked mostly unhurt, but was badly shaken, and I wished more than anything that I could have told her that I found the guy. But instead I headed home. There, in the alleyway leading to my carport, is a bashed up gold Chevy pick-up, parked at my neighbor's house with the driver's door hanging open and radiator fluid spouting out the front. The front tires are wedged pigeon-toed. The only thing missing is a terrified trail of urine leading into the house and upstairs to the underside of the bed.
I pulled out my phone to make possibly one of the most satisfying calls ever, but right as I do, a police cruiser rolls into the alleyway and up to the house, and for the first time ever, I am so happy to see a stocky, buzz-cut cop saunter out of his car holding a big fat notebook.
Neighbor, thou art a dirtbag.
*(Pee Pants Day Care got its name when I was in town on initial apartment-hunting recon, and I happened to pull over to read a map in front of this day care place. A little boy was trudging out with a towel around his waist, hanging his head in shame, and his day care teacher was leaning over trying to say something encouraging, but you just knew this was one of those formative moments that would burn itself into his subconscious. So I helped by christening his school Pee Pants Day Care.)
As I turned onto the street I could see that it was showered with the light green glittery stuff that means "no more back window," and off in someone's front yard was the rear bumper of an otherwise pulverized silver TransAm. A scared looking woman in pink heels was pulling out a cell phone and running over to check on the driver, who was signaling with her hands that she was OK. I pulled up and asked if I could help and Pink Heels told me the guy who did it had just driven off in a gold Chevy pick-up.
Check.
If there is anyone I'm willing to ride on fucking gangster-style it's a hit and run driver. A friend of mine was almost killed in June when a couple of boys in a stolen car somehow flicked her truck over the rails of an overpass in Houston, rolling it and wrapping it around a light pole like a wad of foil and breaking her neck in five places. The week before her wedding. And then they ran, convinced they'd killed her. So I'm riding with the retroactive wrath of a broken-necked bride (who is recovering beautifully, by the way) and giving the stink eye to all the gold pick-ups I come across but not finding one bashed up in the front.
I went back to the accident, which was by now crawling with cops and firemen, and apologized for being a useless revenge posse. The driver looked mostly unhurt, but was badly shaken, and I wished more than anything that I could have told her that I found the guy. But instead I headed home. There, in the alleyway leading to my carport, is a bashed up gold Chevy pick-up, parked at my neighbor's house with the driver's door hanging open and radiator fluid spouting out the front. The front tires are wedged pigeon-toed. The only thing missing is a terrified trail of urine leading into the house and upstairs to the underside of the bed.
I pulled out my phone to make possibly one of the most satisfying calls ever, but right as I do, a police cruiser rolls into the alleyway and up to the house, and for the first time ever, I am so happy to see a stocky, buzz-cut cop saunter out of his car holding a big fat notebook.
Neighbor, thou art a dirtbag.
*(Pee Pants Day Care got its name when I was in town on initial apartment-hunting recon, and I happened to pull over to read a map in front of this day care place. A little boy was trudging out with a towel around his waist, hanging his head in shame, and his day care teacher was leaning over trying to say something encouraging, but you just knew this was one of those formative moments that would burn itself into his subconscious. So I helped by christening his school Pee Pants Day Care.)
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