Giving up

I still have a few hours to decide. To give up or not to give up, that is the question. Whether ‘til nobler… Actually, it’s not a question of nobility. Until I put pen to paper, I really didn’t know what it was. It is a question of whether or not I can do it. It’s a question of whether or not I even want to do it.

I grew up with it, living in a small town, with small-town mentality. The school menu featured fish on Fridays and spring break always revolved around Easter, but we’re not that strict about Lent. I am Christian but not Catholic. More like Catholic Lite. Or Diet Catholic. As such, we get to bend some of the rules, including Lent.

Besides, I am not even an active churchgoer these days. I tried on Sunday. I really did, but that big beautiful church by the Supreme Court moved the service up an hour for a congregational meeting. I walked in 45 minutes late. I was invited to stay the last 15 minutes (we’re one-hour people) but I decided to go shopping instead.

But Lent. Lent is something I generally follow. To test myself, to test my faith, to remind myself that I do believe in something.

Generally, I give up something hard – drinking, swearing, sex with random strangers. Okay, some things aren’t that hard, but the year I gave up both drinking and swearing nearly broke me. I give up candy, soda, negativity in general. I step up the volunteering, the keeping in touch with friends and family.

This year, I have sacrificed chocolate and caffeine. I don’t have much choice about it. Doctor’s orders. Given my four (4) Diet Coke-a-day habit, caffeine hurts. Six days in, I want to curl up, I want to crawl up under my desk. Build me a shelf, set the alarm and call me George.

The chocolate is easier or so I thought until I made brownies for a party or went to the cupboard for pudding. No sneaking miniatures from the big bowl in the kitchen at work. No granola bars or trail mix unless I pick out the chocolate, and where’s the fun in that?

Chocolate and caffeine: Indefinitely restricted unless, of course, I do actually have cancer and that’s another issue altogether. Giving them up with be hard, the timing funny. It does coincide with Lent but do they count? Do I want them to?

I worry that I won’t stick to anything else. It might be too much, too taxing on my overworked body and mind, but that might be the point. Lent’s not supposed to be easy.

I don’t know what to do but I have six hours to figure it out.


Tag: Lent Mardi Gras Faith

O' Christmas Tree

On the way to the metro this morning, I passed a sight I did not expect to see: A Christmas tree. I don’t think it was the tree itself that through me off but rather the fact of a tree, on a curb, waiting for pickup, on the second to last day of February.

On the way to the metro this morning, on my way to work, I envisioned the life of a tree. Growing up straight and proud on a tree farm in rural West Virginia, waiting years until this one. This Christmas. A chance to be the stuff that songs are made of – how faithful are thy branches.

I remember the first time we got a live tree, the year my mom remarried. Our tall plastic tree with the even branches stayed in the attic and the weekend before Christmas – actually, it might have been Christmas Eve – we piled into the Caravan and hit the lot next to the dealership out by Reisbecks.

The smell of winter and nature seeped out of the living room and into our dreams. The sap stained my gloves, my winter coat. I didn’t care.

On the way to the metro this morning, I imagined a family picking out a tree at Eastern Market, carrying it home, setting it up proudly in the corner. Mom swearing softly while sticking sappily to the tree, holding it up, holding it straight while Dad screws the base in place.

I envisioned the grand decoration of the tree: dropping a few of the glass balls, stringing popcorn and cranberries (pricking a finger or five with the sewing needle, considering a run to the Potomac Yard target for wooden beads or plastic or maybe just another set of lights).

Christmas morning. Paper flying. All of the presents open before dawn and someone decides to take a nap well before noon. Dressing up for the grandparents. Taking pictures. Fighting over toys. Fighting from too much sugar and not nearly enough sleep.

On the way to the metro this morning, on my way to work, I envisioned the life of a tree. The holidays past, the tree growing older, graying in the corner of the house. Brightly lit through the New Year’s holiday but shedding ornaments as surely as the needles whispering to the floor.

Martin Luther King Day. Groundhog’s Day. Valentines. Presidents. And still the tree stands, all but forgotten in the corner. Needles stick in slippers and stockings, dragged through out the house. Mom grudgingly waters the tree, trying to minimize the fire hazard while the tree itself grows invisible. A wall flower. A wall tree?

Dinner parties avoided. Guests discouraged from coming over, from stepping deeper than the foyer. The family growing embarrassed by the tree dying a slow painful death in the corner.

Finally, in the dark of night, under a shroud of clouds and dressed in black, Dad drags the tree out the front door, wrestling it down the steps. Needles flying. Dogs barking. He drags the tree down the street, leaving it in front of a neighbor’s house. Furtively, he glances from side to side, checking for witnesses. As he leaves his house in the morning, he crosses the street to avoid the sight, to eschew the embarrassing memory of two extra months with a dying tree.

Then, again, maybe they just don’t care.


Tag: Christmas Tree Washington

Decisions

“I’m going to the store,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute. Does anybody need anything?”

Mom asked for soda. My sister said she was fine. My niece looked on me with longing in her eyes.

“Laney? Do you want to go with me?” I asked and she stared at me with wide-eyed fear. She wanted to go; she wanted to stay. She couldn’t decide. For 15 minutes, we wheedled and pleaded and tried to bribe the girl to make a decision. Finally, I walked out.

From two doors down, I heard the howl. I heard my sister’s voice.

“Laney? Do you want to come with me?” I called. I walked back to the house and out she tore in her pink puffy coat and magenta cowgirl boots. She held my hand tightly and we walked a block to the store.

The market at the end of my block resides in redbrick row house and down a handful of stairs. It is the smallest store I’ve ever shopped, including my stint on Mackinac Island with pricey convenience stores gouging strapped locals and feeding off fudgies.

My niece gazed in wonder at the short narrow aisles.

“Can you see mayonnaise?” I asked, looking at the condiments and salad dressings, certain I was in the right area, certain they would have it. She stood very still, looking quite carefully at crowded shelves. She tilted her head, scanning toward the ceiling, and she turned to look at the shelves behind her. She shook her head.

The store offers fantastic selection, providing almost everything I seek with exactly one, maybe two bottles of each. I knew that I would find mayonnaise on the shelf; it just took a little time.

“Light or regular?” I asked. She considered a minute, tiny brow furrowed in concentration. She pointed to the pale blue label, light. We took the jar and the soda for mom up to the counter. I asked her what she wanted; I had promised her a treat.

“I don’t want anything,” she whispered, the sound barely escaping her down turned face. We made our purchase, exchanging cash for goods and slipping the bottle and jar into my bag. She gripped my hand and danced out of the store, kicking and twirling down the street. Happy to have all of her people together again.

She lost her tonsils a couple of weeks ago. She lost her independence with them.

As she left that night, my mom handed her the rose I’d promised, the end wrapped in a wet paper towel covered in foil, all of it placed in a bag for safekeeping. She panicked then, my 5-year-old niece.

“What if I don’t want it?” she asked.

“Give it to your sister,” I replied.

“What if she doesn’t want it?”

“Give it to your mom.”

“What if she doesn’t want it? What if nobody wants it?”

“Honey, it’s yours. If you get home and decide you don’t want it, toss it in the yard,” I said in exasperation, uncertain of the words I needed to make it fine, to calm her panic.

I can sense the same panic in my mother now, as she sits on my couch, watching movies. She won’t pick a film, frightened of picking the wrong one. She won’t say what she wants to do: shopping, museum or movie, restaurant or home. She stares at me with wide-eyed fear, wanting to go, wanting to stay. I don’t know the words I need to make it fine.


Tag: Decisions Family

Dinner conversation

“Mom, have you ever heard the term 'douche bagged?'” Brokekid asked, leaning across the table and shouting over the din of conversation, dinner noise and music.

Our mother, a bemused smirk on her face, nodded and shrugged. The rest of us, my brother’s friends and I, tittered like schoolgirls.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” I said, under my breath. “To our mother.”

“Does Tourette’s run in your family?” my brother’s friend asked, half seriously.

My brother, Brokekid, continued to explain his case. The point escapes me now as it escaped me then. I was stuck on the phrase “douche bag” and the fact that Brokekid lobbed it across the table to our mother, the woman who gave us life, while chomping on corn chips and swilling a mojito at the Banana Cafe.

Then, again, I should have known better than to be surprised. The Brokekid is, well, Brokekid – unlike anybody I’ve ever known – and Mom encouraged us to talk about anything and everything at the dinner table growing up.

Scooby Doo flashback to 1983: Brokekid, age six, me seven, asking questions about those books with the pictures. My sister, 11, mortified and melting into her seat. I would have been embarrassed, too, if I’d had the sense.

The books with the pictures - What’s Happening to Me? Where Did I Come From? Divorce Can Happen to the Nicest People – were Mom’s way of having “the talk.” Peppered with some Judy Blume, read much too young, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, seen much too early, I had a pretty solid education and a firm basis for questions.

The dinner conversations and my sister’s mortification continued for years, her ears burning, our questions answered. Mom didn’t really draw a line. We didn’t really have rules about what we could say and what we couldn’t; though, when Brokekid did get in trouble for sitting on the front steps and shouting “Fart Face” at passersby, but that’s a different story altogether.

The lack of borders led to problems later in life, when my mother remarried; her husband believed we didn’t respect her, we didn’t fear her enough. We probably didn’t, but we did talk. His boys lived in fear of a drunken tirade or an upraised fist, hiding Victoria's Secret catalogs under the mattress and stealing alcohol from the cabinet. Great communication.

We talked of him, our former stepfather, her former husband, over dinner that night, after the food arrived and another round of drinks. We found ourselves talking of my former stepbrother, a man now married with three children, a man I saw at a friend’s wedding in April.

“He’s gained 60 pounds,” I said. “He looks just like his dad,” sparking a discussion of the father’s lesser physical attributes, leading to another round of giggles and prompting my mother to shrug.

“We talked about everything over the dinner table,” she said, shrugging off our conversation.

“We talked about those books. We talked about everything. Now, here we are – talking about douche bags and bitch tits.” Giggle.


Tag: Family Conversation

Stories

Sitting in my office, looking out at the horizon of Northern Virginia, I see a cluster of tall buildings in the distance. I cannot quite figure out where they are. I believe Seven Corners. Ella thinks they are too far south and far too tall but she has yet to supply a better answer.

Sitting in my office, trying to get up the gumption to start a new task, my gaze wanders. I face the window, which means that everyone can see my screen and I must work. I face the window so that when I am not working I can look out at the mass of metropolitan municipality below.

Late last spring, we caught a couple in flagrante in the grass below, hidden from the street by trees but not the 14 stories of windows on the west side of our building, my side of the building.

Often, I see the man on his 12th story balcony of the apartments across the way, a man in khaki shorts (only) year round, sitting, smoking, appearing quite naked until he stands. I see men on the roof of the same building, at least 13 stories high, walking around, standing on the ledge, making me rather nervous but fascinated all at the same time.

I see the buildings in the distance, building of an undetermined area of Arlington or Falls Church, towering several stories about the now barren trees.

Sitting in my office, trying to work, I think of stories. I think of a single word that means the number of floors in a building, the amount of life in a person.

How many stories is the apartment building across the way? How many stories make up this office tower? I can think of some, far more than the 14 flights of stairs or tiers of windows.

How many stories make up me? How many levels?

Sitting in my office, wondering about stories and stories, I realize I ought to get back to work.


Tag: Stories Arlington Virginia

Know nothing

I awoke early, having fallen asleep around eight on the couch. I rallied for about an hour before giving up and curling up under my red flannel sheets. I slept well, hard, deep, but when the alarm went off at 5:30, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get up.

I silenced the beeping with a hit to snooze. The second alarm, a few minutes later, brought the voices of C-SPAN to the silence of the room. Snooze. The two, beeping and talking, competed for my attention over the next hour while I lay, eyes open, staring at the ceiling in dawn's early light.

Eventually, I silenced the alarms, padded down the hall to turn on the computer, back to the room to flick on the TV and crawl back into bed, curling into myself as I listened to the news.

Finally, at 6:45, I sat up and looked at the TV, squinting to see the time in the corner, not trusting any of the eternally, infernally wrong clocks in my room. Sighing, I threw off the covers. I dressed quickly, quietly, having showered the night before, afraid of the lingering effects of shower gel.

No deodorant. No perfume.

I checked the computer, read a few messages, double-checked my directions and left. Driving for the first time in days. Driving in early rush hour traffic. Driving to the hospital.

Blue parking. Radiology. Women’s imaging.

In I checked and in I stayed, trying to read, struggling to concentrate over the voices at the registration desk, over Romeo and Juliet on the TV – the 1936 black and white version with Norma Shearer – and my mind raced through images from the 1996 version. Youth. Beauty. Prince songs and crying doves.

Focus. Read.

“Kristin?” called a nurse. “Please follow me.”

I walked back to the dressing area, the changing room, the place where I would leave my clothes and my dignity. I saw a picture of a mammogram machine and thought, “So, that’s what it looks like.”

“Kristin? The radiologist won’t be in for another half hour. We’re not sure if he’ll actually do a mammogram – you’re so young and the tissue is too dense. We don’t want to start anything until he gets here. Why don’t you go to cafeteria? Come back at a quarter ‘til?”

Waiting. Sitting. Romeo and Juliet. Reading. Trying to concentrate.

A man came into the women’s imaging area. I realized, I remembered that men get breast cancer. Men die from breast cancer. He took a seat and waited. From the back, a woman in white came out to water a plant, spilling water on the table, magazines, and a placard or two. She walked back with the plant. A well-coiffed, fake blonde walked in, red lacquered nails, big bridal bling flashing in the dimly, peacefully lit room.

“Kristin?” a half hour had passed. “We are doing the sonogram first.”

And she did, this woman whose name I never learned. Great globs of blue gel on my breast as I lay on the table, legs out, arm curled over my head, staring at the ceiling, the concentric squares of the vent. Wondering if squares can be concentric. Sitting up, cupping my breast with my left hand, gel on my fingers, poking, trying to find the lump.

Papertowels. She cleaned the paddle before handing me a stack of paper towels. She left, returned with the doctor, a man who shook my hand before palpating my breast, finding a “thickening” and inviting the nurse, the tech, whatever, to feel it. He guided the paddle, performing the ultrasound himself, while I sat under more great globs of blue, holding my breast, eyes unfocused, mind unfocused.

“We are going to do a mammogram,” the woman announced, handing me a dry towel and another stack of paper towels, leading me into another room. “Your breasts are dense. It may hurt a little. If it gets to be too much, let me know.”

An aerial view of my breast, flattened, smashed between two plates. My breath stopped when the top plate descended but no pain. No pain until the side view. She tilted the platform (\\) and pushed me gently toward it, wrapping my left hand around the bar on the side, right shoulder curled in, right breast pushed aside, hips pressed back, head up.

“Wow,” I thought. The top clear plate included a ruler. The numbers stopped at seven and my breast, smashed thick, doughy, flat surpassed even that. “My breasts are friggin’ huge. How big is a personal pan pizza?”

The first press ached, and my head was in the way. The second press hurt. I twisted my chin over the awkwardly placed right shoulder, tears in my eyes, pain in my breast. It still hurts.

I wondered how the man in the waiting area would position himself.

I dressed quickly, forgetting the deodorant in my bag. I waited, eyes grazing the words in my book, until the woman brought me to the doctor.

“We can’t see anything,” he said, “but we can feel it. There’s definitely something there. Hopefully, it’s benign.” Benign. That’s a good word. Hopefully. That’s a little less good. “Hopefully, it goes away. We want it to go away.”

No. Really? I thought I’d keep it and name it Stan.

No chocolate. No caffeine. An appointment with a surgeon in two weeks.

No punch line; no moral. I know nothing.


Tag: Women Breast Cancer Cancer

What if

I want to vomit. Granted, that might have a little to do with the four Hefeweizen on an empty stomach and hours upon hours in a smoky bar talking with bartenders, friends and bartending friends at the Pour House.

It might have a little to do with two hours of sleep followed by two and a half hours in the same meeting that I have every week, having the same conversation that I have every week and accomplishing nothing.

Personally, I think I want to vomit because I am scared. It is a “completely irrational, I am embarrassed to talk about it” kind of fear. It is stupid. I will be fine. But what if I’m not?

After the meeting, I walked into a coworker’s office.

“What are we doing?” I asked and she ran through a quick list. I shook my head. “But what am I doing? Should I focus on writing up the caveats if we’re not focusing on hubs?”

“Yes,” she replied. “You’re the only one who can do it. I could start it, but….”

“I could take that to the hospital with me in the morning,” I said, thinking aloud, trying to find a way to juggle my schedule, to finish everything that I need to do in time that I do not have. She gave me a very funny look. “You know, type while my breast is smashed between two plates, flat as a pancake.”

I gestured, one hand on top of the other in front of my chest.

“Or not,” she replied, making a face before turning back to her computer.

Until yesterday, I thought that my breast would be smashed between two plates vertically (||), not horizontally (=). I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about it and I cannot ask my mother, my sister, anyone in my family. I don’t want them to know. My boss is too young, as are many of my coworkers, close friends. I feel stupid calling my doctor about it.

Finally, yesterday, I walked into a coworker’s office. Knocking lightly, leaning against the frame, I posed the question.

“It’s completely personal and I apologize in advance if it’s inappropriate, but have you had a mammogram? I have one on Thursday and I don’t know anything about it. Do you get the results right away? Do they go to your doctor? Do you have to schedule another appointment? Which way do they smash your breast – this way [||] or this way [=]? Do you sit or stand?”

We talked for an hour. As it turns out, she discovered the day after Christmas that she needed a follow up, that her results were shady, for lack of a more technical term. Three weeks later, she had an ultrasound. A week later, she had the results. She was fine but for four weeks, she fretted and wondered. She thought she would be fine but the what if got her.

The what if is getting me. I have known for a month that there is a lump in my breast. I am sure it is nothing, but I cannot seem to squelch that niggling little doubt - what if it’s not? If it were truly nothing, I wouldn’t have to go in, stand topless, vulnerable, sweating without deodorant or talc, while a stranger palpates, positions and smashes my breasts, one at a time. My fantastic boobs. Right.

The other night, after Ella told me that my boobs looked fantastic, I poked the left one, my unpainted nail digging into soft flesh.

“Right there. I have a lump right there.”

She made a face then, too, the only one to see and the only one who knew.

“You’ll be fine, honey,” she said.

I am sure she’s right. I will be fine.

I do not write for sympathy or empathy. I write for me, for the words that have been swirling around my head and my heart for the past four weeks. I know that I will be embarrassed that I made such a big deal about it, that I wrote about it, that I worried about it. But I can’t help wondering what if.

I am sitting at my desk at three on Wednesday, trying to do the work that only I can do in the time that I do have, before being sucked into doctors’ appointments, meetings, training, a conference and my mother’s impending arrival.

I am sitting at my desk at three on Wednesday, putting together a playlist of songs guaranteed to either make me cry like a nancy boy or make me feel better about myself with Keane, Killers and Crystal Gayle. “Don’t it make my brown eyes blue.” Peter Gabriel’s crooning yields to the Counting Crows and a “Big Yellow Taxi” followed by the Beatles and “Norwegian Wood.” The Shins, Air, Iron & Wine, Belle and Sebastian, Fiona Apple and Sheryl Crow. My strangest list yet.

I am sitting at my desk at three on Wednesday, putting songs together, putting words together in a desperate attempt to think about something, anything else.

I am sitting at my desk at three on Wednesday, shaking a little.

I am sitting at my desk at three on Wednesday, wondering what if.


Tag: Stress Women Cancer Breast Cancer

Girls night out

“Honey,” Ella shouted over the music at Ozio, “Your boobs look fantastic in that shirt.”

That’s how I knew she was drunk.

It wasn’t the boob comment – they did look fantastic. I have a handful of shirts, which, when combined with the proper support, have been known to make old black women drawl, “Lawd, child. If you’ve got them...”

I knew Ella was drunk because she called me “honey.” She always calls me “honey” when she’s drunk.

“I can’t stop looking at them,” she said, dropping her gaze involuntarily.

“Me, either,” Jane said. “I thought it was just me. I’ve been doing this all night.” She twisted in her seat, staring intently at Ella’s face, blocking me out with a sheath of blond hair.

I kept the girls in the night before, wearing jeans and a t-shirt to dinner with friends, because I knew they’d be out for the night on Saturday. Girls’ night out.

We were an odd crew. The shortest a girl from Thailand, a friend of a friend of a friend, and measuring in at just over five feet; the tallest just back from two years in Japan, a 6-foot-tall blonde. Five of the girls were married, two newlyweds. Two of the other girls in serious relationships; two of the other girls a little bit slutty.

For the most part, despite the appearance of my breasts, the night wasn’t about boys. It was about friendship, drinks and most of all, dancing.

“Who’s spinning?” Ella asked when we walked up to the door at Five. The answer, Farid and Tom B, was the answer we wanted. The bouncer let us in for free, which affirmed our decision to stay.

We climbed the steps, up a second set for the coat check and back down to the floor. The leggy blondes hit the floor first. I followed soon after. We all did. I felt the tiny blonde hairs on my arms stand up straight. I felt the bass in my legs, my hips, reverberating through my left ear, the eardrum I am certain is damaged.

The beat didn’t end, the songs didn’t end – one morphed into another and then the next. Farid laid track upon track, with the eternal thump, thump, thump of the bass competing with the strobe of the lights. Music, light, motion melding together.

Climbing the stairs to the bathroom, to the balcony, to watch the dancers below, I knew my knees would ache in the morning but I went back down to the floor (clinging to the rail, given my inclination to fall, drunk or sober). I danced next to a man apparently made of rubber.

At the bar, getting another beer, a boy gyrated his way to Ella. He grabbed her hand and started to dance. When he grabbed her ass, she stopped. I couldn’t hear the words between them, but I felt the arm around my shoulder, sliding down, the hand grabbing mine. I found out later that I just became Ella’s lesbian wife and we danced away.

The boy’s friends followed, a 25-year-old in clear braces coming up to apologize and offer us drinks. He brought friends, asked us to dance and we danced for a while.

I hit a brick wall around one-thirty or two. I found myself shivering in the draft by the entrance, my left ear starting to hurt. I got my coat and plJaned to leave, to cab back home when Jane fell on the dance floor. I think she managed to spin out two 360-degree pirouettes but crashed on the third. Too drunk to drive.

I waited by the bar, sleepy and warm in the big red coat. A man came up to me, begging me to smile in a heavily accented voice, in a voice I struggled to understand. I smiled. He asked me to dance. I danced, and then I walked away. He followed me upstairs. I found my friends; we zipped Jane into her coat and headed out for the night.

They crashed at my place, Ella and Jane. Playing trivia, listening to Iron & Wine, eating Ore-Ida fries from the 5-pound bag in my freezer, toasted. I doled out sweatshirts and pajama bottoms to all, donning my own, putting my fantastic breasts away for the night. I climbed into bed as the sky turned light, tired but happy. The beat still running through my head.


Tag: Washington Dancing Friends

Sleep on it

“I need your help,” I called out from the bedroom.

“With what?” came the reply.

“Picking out bedding... I mean online. Check out the sites I have pulled up.”

“I like this one. The one with the trees and shit. That’s really nice,” she called.



“Oh, this one’s nice, too.”

“You don’t think it’s too ‘whorehouse chic’?” I asked, walking back from the bedroom, brushing my hair, leaning over to look at the picture again.



“It is a little... busy.”

The third earned approval and a decision. Later, much later, after clubbing (another story altogether), an impromptu slumber party and no sleep, I headed out. I climbed into my Jeep and drove down Route 1 to the Crate and Barrel outlet in Old Town. I didn’t know if they had the bedding, the Riata duvet cover, but in the interest of leaving the house at least once today and maybe saving myself the price of shipping, I embarked wallet in hand, hope in heart.

I should have known that a trip to the outlet would save me nothing in terms of cold hard cash. Exactly three minutes into my visit, I found the duvet cover. Two minutes later, I found one for the guest bedroom followed quickly by a sham. Pillowcases. A rug. A throw pillow. Standing in line at the registers, I picked up a couple of dishtowels for good measure.

Less than 10 minutes in the store, and I managed to spend $150, but I wasn’t quite done. I asked the man behind the counter if they had any shams to match. (I hadn’t seen any in the Riata pattern, just one for the guest room.) He ignored the line behind me and ran upstairs to check. He returned with three, throwing one in the bucket by the display. I told him I’d take them all. Over $200. On bedding.

When did this happen? When did I become a woman concerned with matching duvet covers and shams? When did I learn the words “duvet” and “sham”? What happened the girl with the Mickey Mouse comforter? The quilted throw pillow? The twin-sized bed?

I still have the bed. It’s in my guest room now, that four-poster bed. I have its mate in storage [read: my sister’s attic] until the day I have a bigger place. I have a lot of things in storage. My Barbie dolls, Cabbage Patch Kid and Cat in the Hat books. I have my artwork and my grandmother’s crystal.

I don’t know if I will ever have a bigger place. I don’t know if I will have kids to play with my toys or even if they would want them.

Over the past few years, my things have started seeping from the corners of my sister’s attic. The mattress and box spring cushion my nephew’s sleep, when he sleeps in his own bed. My niece drags around my Cabbage Patch Kid, a doll I put on layaway and bought myself in fourth grade. The Barbies, the clothes, the dollhouse. I can feel myself seeping out of my sister’s attic and into their lives. They are a part of me – the things and the kids. They belong together.

This apartment is part of me, too. With my parents’ china and my platters from New Zealand, London, Avignon. The cherry red lamps. The scuffed table I refinished myself and rather poorly at that. The twin-sized four-poster bed with a duvet cover that I picked up this morning.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have a bigger place. I don’t know if I will need one. I just need a place that feels like my own, a place that feels like home.

Now, I need to go and make up my beds, test out the bedding, make sure it works and make it mine.



Tag: Bedding Home

She hates me

Yesterday, after my day of holding and non-jury duty, I found myself tired, cranky and sore from database work (too much mouse time, not enough keyboard time). When a coworker asked if I wanted to go to the paint store, I jumped at the opportunity to get out of the office, to do anything but sit, staring at my screen.

Benjamin Moore. She wanted paint samples, to slap some color on her wall before deciding between Peanut Shell and Henderson Buff. We looked up the directions, down 29, past I-66, Glebe, George Mason and the corner of 29 and the K street, whatever that was.

“Is it in that shopping plaza?” my friend asked, leaning over my lap to look out the passenger side window.

“No. It’s the K street. They’re alphabetical. Keep going,” I replied. We got to the K Street and found a shopping plaza. We didn’t see the store. “Go around the block. I’m sure it’s here. I know it’s the K street.” (I am a woman who stands behind logic.)

Finally, we found the store and pulled into the parking lot, a woman standing in front of the car glanced over at us. She wore baggy black leather pants, boots, a sweater – I almost made fun of the pants but then I saw the hair, short, flaming hair pulled into a messy ponytail.

“Ah, fuck,” I thought. “I know her.”

Not my typical reaction to someone I know but if the woman with the hair, the woman in the baggy black leather hates me.

We were friends once, a hundred years ago. We worked together and played together. When her house burned down, I bought her gifts, went shopping with her for housewares and underware. The night she was laid off, we went to a concert. I scalped tickets for Nelly Furtado for that girl. Nelly Furtado. Come, on. When her fiancé broke their engagement, I listened to teary tirades and choleric curses; I accompanied her to loud, smoky parties and loud, smoky bars, watching her pull.

Much of our relationship was based on drama, but not always. We lunched together at work. We went to Target. We picked up my new bed at noon on Tuesday. We motored up the Potomac on lazy Sundays – docking at the waterfront in Georgetown, drinking a Bloody Mary at under the sun at Tony & Joe’s.

Yesterday, as we entered the store. I ducked my head and snuck a glimpse of the redhead, of the girl in the baggy black leather. My glance fleeting. The face confirmed what I knew, but I couldn’t be sure. Five years passed since that night at the beach.

Fourth of July fell on a Thursday. A group of us decided to go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Even the house rental stage stirred tempers. Sage found a house in Kitty Hawk– a house with a pool, a house on the beach, a house with five bedrooms – but the red-haired girl refused, without explanation, without apology.

“Keep looking,” she ordered and Sage kept looking, finding a tiny house in Nags Head, three bedrooms, two bathrooms for eight girls, but beachfront and within our price range. That was enough.

We spent most of the week on the sand, in the water, driving around in my Jeep, roof down, hair blowing in the wind, making excuses to drive 25, 30 miles to the Corolla Surf Shop and Cosmos Pizza. One girl left early for a bridal shower. The rest of piled into the redhead’s Cherokee (with me as DD) to head to bars, restaurants, to meet up with the boys we met up on the first night or the ones from the second night or the ones from the third.

We had fun but quarters were tight, personalities strong and tensions high. By the last full morning of the last full day, we had spent the better part of five days together. Seven, sometimes eight, girls in a small house, together all day, every day. The redhead, the high drama girl, was accustomed to having her own way and often dictated plans; the rest of us tried to roll with it. I just wanted to lie on the beach reading or to get behind the wheel of my car. Wind blowing and all that.

By the last full morning of the last full day, people needed a little space. We splintered. I spent the morning 4-wheeling with the redhead and my roommate because that’s what they wanted to do. I spent the afternoon on the beach, at the movies, out for a drink with the other girls.

Later that night, we missed connections. The redhead called and berated me for not finding them. I later discovered they had cabbed to the bar after a day of drinking (and driving) and expected a ride. In my Jeep. With four other passengers. Seven people do not fit in a Wrangler, so I dropped off three and drove back to the bar, Sage along for the ride.

We got to the bar, found the redhead and my roommate on the balcony, watching a band and the dancers below. I went to get a drink; I don’t know what happened during that time. I returned to find tempers flaring, girls screaming, people staring. In the background, my roommate sobbed. (She’d just seen her ex and she was drunk.)

“Can’t we all just get along,” she bawled.

Sage turned to her. “No, we can’t,” and with that, the redhead walked out. I followed, giving them money for a cab, staying with Sage to cool her down, to separate the fighters.

By the time we got back, the Cherokee was gone. In the morning light, we discovered that the redhead not only left drunk, in the middle of the night, she left without two passengers. We spent the morning cleaning, packing, calling rental car companies, trying to fit six people plus kit into a Jeep Wrangler and a 2-door Civic. We spent the next six hours crammed into spaces much too small, in traffic much too slow.

Over the next few weeks, our friendship faltered. I found that the redhead transferred her anger, transferred her wound onto me. She didn’t believe that Sage could dislike her; she couldn’t believe that her own words and actions contributed to the argument. She thought I failed her. She told me that; she told me I had been a bad friend. She attacked me over and over on the phone, via email, through my friends.

I stopped caring. I stopped apologizing. I stopped talking to her.

I heard later that she had moved to Charleston, South Carolina, that she was happy. I heard later that she still blamed me for everything. I realized it didn’t matter and I forgot about her. I forgot about her until two on Friday at the Benjamin Moore paint center on Route 29, a place I had no business, a place I had never been before, a place I would never see again.

As we walked through the store, picking up paint chips, culling color samples, the redhead stayed at the front, flipping through books. I stayed in the back, hiding behind racks of wire, paint and paper. She didn’t acknowledge me and I didn’t acknowledge her. I gasped with relief when my friend paid, when we left the store.

Settling back into the car, I looked up and caught her eye through the window. A single look and I saw: she knew who I was, she knew I was there and she wished I were dead.

“She hates me,” I sighed.

Tag: Friendship Girls Beach

Please hold

I have a headache. That song, the one from the McDonald's commercial with the piano recital keeps running through my head. Actually, it keeps running through my office, in an endless rotation, with no beginning and no end, just the song and an occasional break.

“Hello. You have reached the Jurors’ Office of the District of Columbia Superior Court. At the present, all agents are assisting other customers. Please hold for the next available agent. Thank you.”

I have been holding for the next available agent for the better part of five, yes, five(5), hours; though, I admit part of that is my fault. About a half-hour into it, I started dancing in my chair and hopping up to see if I could find a coworker without leaving my office.

“I need to pee. I need to pee. I need to pee,” I thought as I bounced around my office. I considered leaving the phone on hold and running to the bathroom but knew that the next available agent would ring through just as I found sweet release in stall number two. Another 10 minutes or so passed; I just hung up.

All I want to do is reschedule my jury duty.

I awoke this morning with the eager anticipation of a first day at school. I awoke much too early but couldn’t get back to sleep. Jury duty. I tap-danced through my shower – shuffle tap-ball change in a soft shoe routine, splashing water around my ankles. I dressed carefully, wanting a somewhat professional outfit but not wanting to wear something I might wear to work because today was not a workday. I wanted something comfortable for sitting and waiting for hours on end, settling on brown cords and a cranberry turtleneck, again reminded of the first day of school and the deliberation over a perfect outfit, the perfect outfit to start the year.

Ready far too early to leave, I sat at my computer, emailed a friend, munched on Kix straight from the box. I packed a bag – books, postcards, a water bottle, my phone. I called my sister, chatted a while, constantly looking at my watch and finally gave up any semblance of restraint and danced out the door.

I practically skipped to the Metro on this beautiful, sunny, unseasonably warm day. My train arrived immediately, as did the connection. Within minutes, I was back under the glorious sky, heading to the courthouse.

Walking up, I noticed a largish crowd outside. I was early, very early, and figured that they didn’t admit jurors until closer to the time. I sat down by the smokers (they had all the prime spots) and watched.

A tiny little thing in raspberry pants and a red felt jacket ran through the crowd, weaving between legs, veering in random directions, while her mother followed - phone in one hand, backpack the other. She shouted occasionally but the girl paid no mind. I imagined her intrigue with the sounds of sirens and construction.

A trio of boys passed in their well-cut suits and messy hair, phones pressed to the side of each head despite the company they obviously kept. Another well-dressed man in a dark pin-striped suit, a lilac shirt and tie seemed to step from the pages of GQ as he posed, briefcase in hand.

Jean and suits. Alligator pumps and sneakers. The crowd continued to grow as I sat on the wall, watching, waiting.

A woman flagged down a cop, asking how long. He said maybe an hour. I started listening to the woman next to me, a smoker on a cell phone. I heard the word "evacuated."

I realized, somewhat slowly, that the sirens I’d heard ebbing and flowing were not general city sounds but noises associated with the courthouse. At least some of the fire trucks, police, ambulances seemed to be stopping in front of us. Eventually, someone made an announcement, someone at the front, by the doors. I couldn’t quite hear it. People started walking away.

“Court's canceled. Everybody go home,” sang a woman in braids as she sauntered down the sidewalk toward a television crew from News Channel 8. Someone else stated that court was canceled for the day, rescheduled for tomorrow. Employees needed to report back at noon; everyone else should go home.

I noticed more police officers, a couple of men in Marshal jackets, men in black with walk-talkies. The trio of messy-haired cell phone boys posed for a photo in front of the empty building.

I watched and waited with other jurors, trying to figure out our role. I understood the order to go home, I did not know if that meant to come back tomorrow, next week, to reschedule for another date and time.

I tried calling the jurors’ office but realized that it was empty, the employees evacuated and planning to return at noon. I laughed my way back to the metro, amused at such a beautiful day and so bizarre. I called my boss, came into the office. I don’t know how to complete my time card – do I mark the time “Jury Duty”? Do I work three extra hours? What do I do tomorrow?

I would provide more explanation, more detail, if I had any but at the present, all agents are assisting other customers.

For the record, the song is Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”


Tag: Jury duty Washington DC DC Superior Court

Someone I used to know

The phrase earns me flak, from time to time. People balk at the statement “I used to know her.” I can’t help it. It seems the most accurate way to say it. Just because I knew someone when I was 8 years old doesn’t mean I know her now or she knows me.

I think the thing that riles most people is that I don’t just apply it to acquaintance or even friends. I apply the term to family.

My cousin Heather, for example, grew up in Chicago, miles away from my Ohio home. Every summer for years, her mom brought her to visit, to celebrate her birthday with her Ohio cousins (her only cousins for a while).

She’s a year and two weeks older than me, Heather is, and every year, her visit meant the end of summer, the start of school and my birthday. She didn’t like cake, so it also meant pie – generally peach. I don’t like pie or peaches, but that’s about all that it meant to me.

Heather’s the reason Grandma and Grandpa made us eat plain Lucky Charms; she ate all the marshmallows. It was disgusting - bowls full of plain Lucky Charms and her belly full of dried sugar. She also ate all of the pickles, all of the cheese and all of the cookies. She ate a lot, my beanpole cousin, without apology, without thought, she just did what she wanted.

She cried a lot, too, the “boo-boo kitty” and I swear she must still carry around the threadbare, faded pink poly robe she called binky. I just know it’s in her bedroom somewhere.

I remember dancing with her, when she let me. I remember her singing “Shake your boo-bangs” instead of groove thing and laughing at my version of “Devil Inside.” I haven’t really sung since.

As we grew older, when my sister moved to France, we got along better. She liked dressing me up, curling my hair, playing older sister, but as soon as my sister returned, I was cast away by a girl too old for dolls, even 15-year-old living ones. She was my idol; my sister was hers. My brother was left to fend for himself.

Those summers after my sister returned, they partied together, occasionally inviting me along, but more often than not, leaving me at home. Heather driving her mother’s red Blazer, my sister riding shotgun, cruising up and down Wheeling Avenue, down Clark for a loop around the park and back to the main drag. Field parties, house parties, picking up boys.

The summer visits stopped when Heather went to college. I followed a year later. She dropped out of her Minnesota school; I stayed at mine in the plains of Ohio. We grew up. We grew apart. We were never really together.

A couple of years after college, I drove cross-country, stopping to see Heather and her mother, my aunt, in Chicago. For the first time in my life, the beanpole outweighed me. We talked through dinner about jobs, boyfriends, life. She’d been living with hers, the job and boyfriend at least, for a couple of years. She seemed happy with the third, with her life, but other than family, other than roots, we had nothing in common.

I didn’t see her again until her wedding three years later. We smiled. We hugged. We took a lot of pictures. I haven’t seen her since.

The other day, Valentine’s Day, I got an email from my grandmother. (Grandma Mavis is quite technologically savvy these days.) She sent a Valentine greeting, thoughts of love and a request for prayers. My cousin Heather, it seems, has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

I don’t know that that means.

I told my brother; we googled it. I still don’t understand. I think I remember a walk-a-thon or maybe a read-a-thon growing up. Fundraisers of some sort and glossy pamphlets for the parents, mimeographed sheets for us.

I understand the words on the website: autoimmune disorder; changes in sensation, vision, muscle control; depression; difficulties with coordination and speech. I understand impaired mobility, disability. I can understand “without a cure.” I just can’t equate them with the beanpole or the boo-boo kitty, the 10-year-old in a tube top, knobby knees and scabs or the 25-year-old in a wedding dress. I can’t equate them with the girl I used to know.


Tag: Multiple Sclerosis Family

'Tis a gift

I don’t shop at CVS. Ever. For the past five years, I have participated in a one-woman boycott of the drug superstore, which is harder than it sounds. In the District, there’s a CVS on every corner and little in between to help with the combination contact lens solution/motor oil/greeting card emergency.

It would be easier to stand by my convictions if I remembered what caused the embargo but that’s gotten a little fuzzy over the past five years. All I know is that it has to do with an infection, a lost prescription and extended periods of misery. Hell hath no fury like that of a woman suffering, but even if I can’t remember the cause, I clearly recall the effect – I do not shop at CVS.

However, that does not keep me from entering the store with frantic friends, such as a newlywed who neglected to buy her Boo a Valentine’s card. She chose the store due to proximity more than anything else and the fact that it would, it should carry cards.

I’ve never really gone to a card store on the day of a Hallmark holiday. I generally buy my cards in advance, long after the fact or just not at all. I’ve got to admit that I’ve been missing out.

The ragged racks of cards, sparse, ravaged, exhausted offering up a meager selection of red-headed stepchildren. Nervous customers, reaching, hesitating, plucking up cards in desperation.

A man with a cart blocked our way. We stepped aside, my friend and I, we stepped aside to let him pass with his cart and his card, the only item in the basket. She looked at the racks in despair, I in amusement.

“Ah, come on. This one is hilarious. It has the word horny. In a poem.” She glanced at the card, laughed and shook her head violently.

“No,” she replied as she picked up a card with a bear on the cover. “Is this too cheesy? I call him ‘Bear.’”

She opened it up, read the inscription (Wishing you a beary, beary special Valentine’s Day), and put the card back.

“It is too cheesy.”

Scouring the racks, she saw a big, sparkly one near the top of the rack, under the word “Husband” and next to one with cartoon monkeys. Red, simple but for a little glitter. The words I’ll slaughter with my distracted memory - If I could live my life over, I would want to meet you sooner, so I could love you longer. It was sweet. It was right. (It was still there because it was a $5 card.)

My friend didn’t completely neglect the holiday. She and her husband spent the weekend furniture shopping, offering each other the gift of a new bed, bureau, table and chairs instead of chocolate and champagne.

Nevertheless, she felt a little guilty, my friend. Her husband woke her with a kiss and a present. She thought she ought to give him something.

After the cards, I didn’t think it could get much worse. I didn’t expect the seasonal gift aisle. Again, the man with the cart and the card. People walking around aimlessly, singularly uninspired with the selection, looking a bit dazed. Gifts? Even the ring pops were gone, a single broken cherry one left in the box. A massive pink mug, covered with hearts, holding a frog. A satin robe for only $9.99. A frighteningly hard stuffed animal covered in wiry brown fur.

“They call it... puppy love,” it crooned when I pushed the button in its hard little belly. I jumped and then called out. “Hey, it’s a puppy! Oh, wait. I think I’m supposed to turn it off. Hey, where are you?”

She was in line, my friend, having given up on the gifts.

“Maybe I’ll buy him a gift from behind the counter... You know, dip for him, Nicorette for me.”

“You could quit smoking – that’s a nice gift,” I replied. “Or, you know, get him some camera batteries and a phone cord.”

“I could get him a phone card for the phone we don’t have.”

“Or, you know, some Sprees.”

She went with a bag of Kisses and the card. When we got back to the office, she left the bag in the car to keep the chocolate safe from office chocolate thieves. You know, ourselves.

Turns out she needn’t have worried. She walked into my office with news, with a joke from one of their best friends. He wrote one line: “You know, you husband expects fellatio tonight.”

I looked at her and laughed.

“Guess we could have skipped CVS,” I said. “Can we eat the chocolate now?”

Tag: Valentine's Day CVS

I wear red

Walking to the metro this morning, I glanced down at my red, corduroy-clad legs and realized that I am an optimist. I wore red as I have every February 14 for as long as I can remember. With or without a boyfriend, with or without the hope of a boyfriend, I wear red.

I expect no cards, no candy, no balloons, flowers or declarations of love. I will stay in tonight, avoiding the crush at restaurants and overly affectionate couples. The Express item noting a "Lovapalooza" in the Philippines, with 2,000 couples making out at the stroke of midnight actually triggered my gag reflex on the morning commute, but I still wear red.

My heart breaks every other morning when I see a man on the platform at Eastern Market. He reminds me of my ex: dark curly hair brushed with gray, a little taller than me with a trim build, a firm jaw and freckles, brown eyes set in a maze of happy little wrinkles. My breath catches for a second, my heart stops until he turns and I know that it is not him. Every other morning, and I wear red.

I buy presents for people when things remind me of them. I made soup, hummus, pudding, chocolate chip cookies and ice cream for the Super Bowl because my brother’s friend had jaw surgery and can’t eat solids. (Okay, I bought the hummus and ice cream, but that’s because my freezer isn’t cold enough for my ice cream maker.) I believe in doing things, in being nice because I want to, not because of the day, but I still wear red.

I opened my mail this morning to find a card from my grandmother. I opened a card from a friend. I expect to see cards from my nieces and nephews, the youngest spelling her own name with the R at the end instead of the beginning, as she always does, as she did in lipstick on her bedroom floor. They make me happy and I wear red.

On the walk to the metro, I noticed the girl in front of me in mulberry trousers, a woman in a bright red skirt, another in handknit bubble gum scarf and hat, a coworker in a baby pink sweater. I smiled, wondered if they dressed for the day, as I wear red.

I wished a Happy Valentine’s Day to the Express woman, the one outside the Metro, and to my favorite man with The Examiner. I wished the same to the man at the Courthouse Metro Market, the man who always gives me a smile and a piece of chocolate, even if I am just waiting in line with a friend.

I am single. I am happy. I believe in love and days dedicated to love. I wear red.


Tag: Washington DC Valentines Day Red

Chant singing at the Lucky Horseshoe

You know, when Piano Man starts playing around midnight and all the drunkards start singing along? There's American Pie, Jack & Diane, Friends in Low Places.

Saturday night I heard chant singing to Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer.

WTF?

"Kiss me, beneath the milky twilight."

Of all the songs in the world you shouldn't chant sing too, that ranks in the top 5. Of course it was just another spectacular distraction to add to the rest of the weirdness of that bar.

It was like a college frat bar all over. The Lucky Horseshow was filled with falling down wasted people, 18 year old girls too young to drink, it reaked of vomit and there were people grinding all over each other that probably should not have been.

And there was chant singing to Sixpence None the Richer.

Sometimes I forget I'm in DC, but that night, I really had no idea where I was.

Tag: Singing

Instant gratification

I hate IM. Hate, I know, is a strong word. But I do. I hate it.

My mother believes that it replaces actual conversations and supplants the need to return phone calls. Ever. Of course, it might, if she actually responded to IM, but she is a bit spotty with it.

An IM conversation with my mother is bound to go something like this:

Kristin: “Mom – When are you coming to visit? I need to buy your ticket.”

Mom: “Just a second, hon. I’ll be right back. There’s somebody’s at my desk.”

[An hour later]

Kristin: “Mom?”

[An hour later]

Kristin: “Mom?”

MSN: The following message could not be delivered to all recipients:
Mom?

Mom may not reply because he or she appears to be off line.

I am not entirely sure she gets it. My grandmother does not. Occasionally, she’ll draft an email, drop it in IM and hit send. She doesn’t understand what’s going on when a response pops up. I can almost see her shaking her head, muttering “I must have done something wrong. I will never get this,” and turning back to Spider Solitaire.

My friends know how it works. If they see me online, they send a message, initiate a conversation, chat about anything from grammar to gossip, from former bosses to evening, weekend and travel plans. If I am online in the middle of a workday, I am probably doing something that I don’t enjoy but needs to be done. I am busy and probably grouchy.

It’s not just IM, though; I also hate talking on the phone.

A friend used to call whenever she was stuck in traffic for no reason other than the fact that she was stuck in traffic. She never seemed to grasp that I was not stuck in traffic, that I did not have two hours to spend chatting on the phone while her cell dipped in and out of receptive areas. Entertain me, she begged as she sat behind the wheel, facing deadlock.

I think it is the distraction factor mixed with a healthy lack of control that drive me nuts. I teeter on the edge of losing it these days with a workload heavier than I can bear. The ringing phone, the ill-timed IM seem maliciously intent on pushing me over the edge.

See Kristin typing. See Kristin struggling to figure out what fields (of the 600 or so in the current, never-before-seen table) could give her the same result set that somebody else pulled without recording the steps or defining the criteria. See Kristin answer the phone and explain to client why data is late. See Kristin emailing second client to balance “top priorities” between two people who want everything yesterday. Literally.

See IM pop up asking Kristin “what’s new?” “what did you do this weekend?” and “what’s the name of that movie?” while Kristin juggles phone, typing and pointing at files for coworkers to take, screw up and return. See Kristin’s head explode. Another day in the life.

Of course, today isn’t just another day in the life. Today, I am the offender. No, not with IM. (I generally “appear offline” but for the times I am snagged before changing my status. I probably ought not log in at all, but I like getting the new message alerts, notification of mail in my inbox.)

Today, I am emailing like a fiend. Our network is down. All system files and corporate email locked a virtual never-neverland. Actually, we’re not sure if it’s ever coming back, but we’re pretty sure it’s not coming back today. So, I am emailing everyone. Responding immediately because I know when I’ve got a message.

I am reading blogs. Commenting. Awaiting updates. Checking back for more comments. Greedily devouring every written word, hungry for more. Entertain me! Give me instant gratification.

What do other people do at work all day?


Tag: IM Work

Ask and you shall receive

Snow. I wanted snow. Lots and lots of fluffy white frozen goodness. I prepped and I planned and I spent most of the day yesterday, on the couch, recovering from a pre-snow bout of revelry and moping for the lack of delivered goods.

Around dusk, it finally started snowing. I spent the night on the couch, in front of the fireplace and watching movies (or rather sleeping through most of them) and when I awoke this morning, I ran to the window to find snow. Glorious snow. Inches and inches of snow.

I ought to be upset that it didn’t come on a workday, that it stopped the world on a weekend, but I’m not. Today was the perfect snow day.

I made my first soup well before noon. The rhythm of the knife, the steady clicking of metal on a cutting board soothed my frayed nerves. I listened to Lisa Loeb, Number One Single for a while but after an hour, turned it off in favor of Weezer.

“Watch me unravel. I’ll soon be naked. Lying on the floor, lying on the floor I've come undone,” I sang as I danced around my tiny kitchen, sidestepping bowls of vegetables and errant grapes.

Peeling, chopping, dicing, sautéing. Acorn squash, carrots, potatoes, onions. Mincing garlic. Slicing kale. Draining and rinsing cannellini beans. Autumn minestrone.

I put away the Christmas presents under my bedroom window. I even found an unopened gift from my dad – magnetic poetry with movie lines – I don’t know how I missed it the first time. I found space for a bevy of bath products; I filed my filing.

Bouncing back and forth between the kitchen, living room and bedroon, I watched a terrible romantic movie (Just Write) starring Jeremy Piven. It was wretched and unbelievably perfect for a snowy afternoon.

I chopped carrots, two-pounds. Celery. Onions sliced thinly.

I realized that I had forgotten a lime. I could have used lemon, but after two days inside, I wanted a walk. I would have wanted a walk anyway on a day like today, so I dug out my scarf, gloves, hat and fleece.

Late afternoon, with the sun still high but listing a little to the west, I walked through silent streets to Eastern Market, passing couples with dogs, a single girl with a baguette from Bread and Chocolate, a man with a bag from Yes! Organic Market.

At the corner by Eastern Market, in the little park bordered by Independence and North Carolina, I heard the shrieks of boys before I saw the snowball fight. I heard the deep belly laugh of a man, a man in camouflage and hunter orange who seemed to enjoy the fight even more than the boys.

I entered the brick building, walking past the abandoned flower shop, the cheese counter, the stool-topped tables of Market Lunch. I walked through the smell of seafood and the odor of blood. I walked up to the vegetable stand, requested a lime, an onion, two pears, celery. Taking my money, the woman behind the counter peeled a banana from a bunch and added it to my bag with a smile. Walking out, I passed the single vendor braving the elements with a table of hats.

“It’s nice out now,” she said. “Not too cold.”

I nodded and smiled. “It’s perfect.”

The street was empty but for a few cars, illegally parked on the street, a snow emergency route. People with dogs. Silence broken by the steady plop of snow melting, shaking from trees, dropping from gutters. The sidewalks were as clean as they would get, and I am certain that they are freezing now, crusts and valleys of ice formed by footprints in the slush.

I finished my soups, spicy carrot peanut and pear parsnip. I have four and a half quarts of soup in my freezer. The same amount in the fridge and vegetables in the oven. My apartment smells like cinnamon and nutmeg; parsnips, potatoes and turnips; fire, winter and warmth. Home.

I am happy.


Tag: Winter Snow Soup

To the man clipping his nails on the Metro...

Gross.

It's one of those normal, run-of-the-mill activities you never really think about until you see someone doing it in public, like bowel movements.

It wouldn't have been so awful if he'd cleaned up after himself, but he didn't. He left a huge pile of nail clippings on the floor of the Metro. I was sitting there with my mouth only partially agape (for fear of an arrant nail clipping shooting into my mouth) wondering what this man could possibly be thinking.

So it's not like he was spray painting a swastika on the side of a church or throwing rocks at old people, but still. Leaving parts of your body in a Metro car when you exit is kind of gross. Aside from the stray hair or flaky skin, anything else is a huge faux paux. It got me to thinking, what type of world does this man live in where behavior so offensive and out of the realm of social norms passes as acceptable? He's the same guy that drink's the last of the Kool-Aid and puts the empty jug back into the fridge. He's the same guy that borrow's $100 and you never see again. He's the same guy that cut's you off on 395 and flicks you off.

Don't you just hate people sometimes?
Tag: Gross

Bring on the snow

They advised, warned, promised that we would have snow today, the powers that be, waxing endlessly about six to ten inches of wintery white wonder.

All around the metro area, schools, agencies and offices have canceled their plans. News 4 has been running a ticker of cancellations. They even broke out the snowy graphics with pretty static flakes and active flurries. Salt trucks are standing by, engines idling, waiting.

It’s not snowing. It’s cold and wet and miserably gray, but there’s not a flake in sight.

I am disappointed. I have prepared for snow. I went out last night and got properly drunk. I tied one on for the weekend, knowing I wouldn’t leave the house again. I have a mess of movies in the DVR. I have fire. I have marshmallows. I even participated in the great grocery raid that follows every hint of inclement weather. I was that girl.

Pulling into the parking lot took some effort, I swerved to avoid the car parallel parking across the entrance. An approaching car with Massachusetts plates, five passengers swung in front of me, cutting me off. People with carts sauntered past, in front of my car as I made my way to the far side, looking for a spot.

I think I got the last one. I am certain that other people made their own and that the cars lining C and D streets belonged to patrons. I considered driving through, heading home, foregoing the trip. I went a week ago, waiting in Super Bowl lines. I could probably make it another month or so, but I wanted soup. Good soup. Homemade soup and the rhythm of the knife chop, chop, chopping a mass of vegetables that would end up on top of the fridge, in the sink, in a bowl on the floor of my tiny kitchen awaiting the right moment to hit the stock.

I pulled a cart with me as I joined the queue at the door, the line to enter the store. I wandered the aisles, uncertain of what I might need and uncertain of where to find anything in the new design of the store. At the back of the store, under the frozen meat, I found the bundles of wood. I sorted through them, looking for a packet without condensation on the plastic, mold on the wood, but I soon gave up.

I wandered through produce, searching out baby carrots, organic and two-pound bags before finding the five-pounder. Spicy carrot peanut soup. Potatoes, parsnips, squash, onions and kale for autumn minestrone. Turnips, rutabaga, sweet potatoes and shallots for roasted root vegetables. Pears for a pear and parsnip soup. Grapes because I like them.

I am never going to make them all. These soups. Not if it doesn’t snow. But I have the fixings for comfort foods.

I headed back to the front, stopping for beans (black, white, garbanzo), cheese, and milk for my pudding. I picked up some marshmallows – big ones for roasting, small ones for my hot chocolate.

The shelves were already sparse, certain to grow more so throughout the course of the night, into the morning with a threat of snow. Bread, milk, eggs, paper towels and toilet paper - gone.

Joining the even longer line at the registers, I looked around, checked out other people’s carts. I had nothing better to do. A man walked by with a five-pound bag of Ore-Ida crinkle cuts. Another man with a toddler and a heart “I love you” balloon. These men would wait a half hour, 45 minutes to make their purchases. Cat food and pudding. Three family size packages of puckered poultry. A plastic bag filled with handpicked greens. (I saw him handpicking them.) A 12-pack of Miller Lite.

An infant wailed in the cart behind me, snot and tears running down her ruddy face. The 8-year-old boy in charge of her while Mom ran to pick up a few more things, wandered over to the Valentine section, pushing the buttons on animated stuffed animals.

“Gracie. Gracie! Over here,” and it worked for a second. She tilted her head and watched a dancing gray horse. Or was it a hippo? I couldn’t quite tell.

Soon, enough, I found my way to the head of the line, the conveyor belt and placed the little plastic divider between pudding/cat food woman’s purchases and my own. A twinge of guilt ran through my mind at all of the hand-keying and weighing my purchases required, as I thought of the line behind me, but only a twinge.

An hour and a half gone. An hour and a half of my life spent in the great grocery raid, the Southeast Safeway, waiting for the snow that has yet to come.

Tag: Snow

The man on the train

I heard him first, behind me on the train.

“Excuse me,” a gentle voice with a slight accent.

Without turning around, I knew who it was and I knew what came next. After “Doors closing. Please stand clear of the doors” and before “Next stop: McPherson Square,” he started singing. I couldn’t see him without turning around and I didn’t want to be that girl, the one who stops reading and turns around to gawk at the man singing a hymn on the Orange Line train in the direction of Vienna/Fairfax. Honestly, nobody else seemed to pay him much mind.

The women in the seat across the aisle chattered in a tone generally reserved for gossip. Another woman, a few seats up, rested her head upon the plexiglass and napped, her plump, turquoise terry encased legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. The conductor announced the next stop.

The hymn was new to me. I cannot recall a single word, but I remember his voice: a strong, clear, pleasant tenor. I have heard him before, singing hymns on the metro. I wondered briefly if he paced himself or chose songs that filled the space between two stops.

We arrived at McPherson Square, the woman next to me with the braids and a bright blue hat, stood up as did the women across the aisle and the man in front of us. The train emptied about halfway, crowds milling at either end and in the middle while the man kept singing.

I tried reading but couldn’t reconcile the words on the page with the words floating over my head. I turned, tried to see him, tried to see how others reacted. I didn’t see anything.

The hymn ended and then, I caught a glimpse, more than a glimpse. He walked up to the doors in front of me. A plain man of medium build in black trousers, flannel shirt and green corduroy jacket. Older than me but not old. He waited at the door, looking up, his eyes darting back and forth as he bounced slightly on the balls of his feet.

Tucked under his right arm, the man carried a well-worn hymnal, his finger marking the page. I wondered briefly if sang the same song every day, in every car of every train, if he sang from a selection of familiar favorites, if he tried new songs.

We pulled up to the station, Farragut West. The doors opened and out he bounded, jogging to the next car. I strained my neck, to see if I could see him in the car in front of me, but I couldn’t.

I settled back, turned to my book and tried to concentrate, but all I could do was think of this man, the man on the train singing hymns in a strong, clear tenor. A man who asks for nothing but attention and doesn’t get that. I wondered briefly about his motivation, his reward.

I wondered about his family, his job, his church, his friends. Do other people, the people in his life know that he is the man on the train, the one singing hymns? Does anyone think it odd, the singing, the hymns? Is his mother proud, worried, indifferent? What does his wife think? His kids?

Hours later, I reflect on him, the man on the train.


Tag: Washington DC Metro Hymns

Take me with you

The Capitol Lounge reopened officially, fully, finally last night, with a full staff, full menu and 9-cent wings. (For anyone counting, this was the third opening since the August fire and I’m pretty sure it’s the last, but as long as they keep opening, I’ll keep going.)

I met up with a couple of friends, sidled up to the downstairs bar and parked myself for a couple of hours of chatting, eating and of course, drinking. Stella! STELLA! (Sorry. Flashback.) The night was normal - teasing the OCD bartender, chatting up the guys cutting in to get drinks, storytelling. A normal night at a bar, at my bar.

And then, I went to the bathroom. As girls with beers are wont to do.

I came back, settled into my seat and pulled up my beer. A voice from behind, “I’ll buy you a drink if you can name this song.”

“The Gambler,” from my left. My friend got the song and the beer. She also got the buyer, a guy from Austin in town for a conference. He was nice enough. Actually, he was nice enough for a five-minute conversation. He stayed for hours.

At one point, he talked about going to Buffalo Billiards. We tried to encourage him; he had friends to meet.

“Come with me,” he requested, demanded, implored.

“Sorry. I live here,” I responded, without apology.

“You live in the bar?” he asked.

My friend clarified that we lived on the Hill; I was fine with him thinking that I lived in the bar. It’s close enough and at times, I feel like I do. Live in the bar, that is. He offered to buy us drinks all night if we went with him.

“But I don’t always pay for drinks here,” I answered. “You should really go, though.” For friends, for drinks, for pool, for darts. We cited a number of reasons but he stayed.

Yawns didn’t work. Stilted conversation. The sudden silences when he appeared. I found myself wishing the OCD bartender replaced by any of a number of other bartenders, ones I know better, with whom I could flirt, kiss, or generally depend upon to divert unnecessary attention. (Granted, they also throw ice down my shirt/into my cleavage on occasion, but overall, it is a fairly symbiotic relationship.)

He asked if we planned to close down the bar. We said no, citing the school night.

“What - you’re a teacher?”

Um, no.

“You’re in school?”

No.

“Every day is a learning opportunity?”

I wished. Maybe yesterday could have been the day that I learned to shake unwanted attention, but no. I just meant that it was a weeknight, that I had to get up early, that I wouldn’t be staying up late, partying, going back to his hotel (last night or ever). We planned to leave and wished him a good night.

“Take me with you.”

“I’m going home,” I replied.

“I can come home and hang out with you.”

No. You can’t. What is with people?


Tag: Capitol Lounge Washington DC Bars

Random thoughts

I know it's a cop out. I am a little disturbed and a whole lot of busy today, so no time to post fully, to give my thoughts justice.

Does anyone else find it strange that we can view Coretta Scott King’s funeral live on MSN? It seems a mockery of the sanctity of life and death and the commercialization of a very great woman, but maybe that’s just me.

I am frustrated that my client requested a government email address for me without telling me and then started emailing me at that account. Even the IT department got in on the act by sending notification and a password to the account that they had just created. I just found out. I have been missing messages and requests for the past month.

I am depressed by the callers to some C-SPAN radio talk show I heard this weekend. They were talking about Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique. One caller said that the feminism movement has contributed to the degradation of our education system. His logic: Women who were once qualified to be mathematicians or college professors were forced by society to be high school teachers, giving kids a better quality education. Now that women can actually get jobs for which they are qualified, children are suffering.

I don’t e