Fire at Eastern Market (part II)

Despite my PBS-influenced upbringing, I was never really a fan of Mr. Rogers. The sweaters. The slippers. The Neighborhood of Make-Believe. (Actually, I loved the Neighborhood of Make-Believe with King Friday and Prince Tuesday. Henrietta Pussycat. X the Owl.) Other than that, though, I wasn't much of a fan of the man with the sweater. I watched him to while away the time until my sister got home from school.

Sesame Street, though, I loved well beyond the normal age. Big Bird and Snuffleupagus. The Count. The letter of the day and the number of the day and singing. Always singing.

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day...

Even today, I sing the song on occasion, bits and fragments of happy memory. I grew up in small-town southeastern Ohio, in the foothills of Appalachia. I lived within blocks of my church and my schools, the local library and the city park. I walked everywhere. I didn't get my driver's license until I was 17 and a senior in high school and even then I didn't drive much, padding barefoot and safe through the streets.

Years later, when I went "home" for a festival, long after my parents had moved, I recognized the man behind the post office counter as a boy I once knew. People on the streets. At the grocery store. Working the booths at the festival. I knew so many faces and places, I felt right at home.

I never expected those small town feelings in the middle of a big city. I had lived in the DC area for ages but never really appreciated it until I moved to Capitol Hill. For the first time in years, for the first time since leaving home, I lived in a neighborhood.

I walked everywhere and quickly attained regular status at a local bar and a local bookstore, knowing almost the entire staff at both Capital Hill Books and the Capitol Lounge. The man at the Metro, handing out the Express (a man I hugged after his three-month absence); Conrad, the man selling Street Sense; the man at the corner market; the woman next door with the incredible garden; a dog or a baby in every house, including upstairs in mine; and the vendors at Eastern Market. These are the people in my neighborhood, the people that I meet each day.

In the middle of the night, my neighborhood suffered a tremendous loss with a three-alarm fire at Eastern Market. One of the few public markets in Washington DC (and the only one retaining its public market function), Eastern Market opened in 1873. The South Hall is… was… open daily with local merchants offering everything from fresh produce and flowers, to delicatessen, bakery, meat, poultry, cheese and dairy products.

On weekends, year-round, farmers line the sidewalks with crates of fresh produce. Local artisans distribute their wares: jewelry and paintings, books and purses, scarves. The hippies sell hummus and homemade, organic dressing. Furniture and rugs, artwork and tableware fill the lot across the street, and inside the South Hall, a line snakes toward the Market Lunch where I have waited many an hour and endured abuse for the sake of blueberry buckwheat pancakes, drowning in butter and syrup.

On weekends, year-round, I buy my produce from the stand near the corner. An older woman sits in a chair in front of a heater, weighing my fruit and vegetables, taking my money. She always calls me "honey" and tells me what to put in the bag first, careful that my fruit doesn't bruise.

Seldom a weekend passes that I don't walk through the market twice. Maybe three times. Or four. Or seven. Sometimes, I need something: a gift, flowers, rutabaga. Sometimes, I just need to be around other people. To see the dogs and the babies. The woman in her chair. The hippies with their hummus.

It's one of my favorite places in the world. It feels like home.

This morning, on my way out the door, I checked my cellphone and realized I had two messages from a friend down the street. She'd been awake since 1 o'clock with the noise of firefighting activity. According to NBC4, about 160 firefighters fought the blaze. The fire, which might have started in a trash bin, caused significant damage and the collapse of part of the roof.

Firefighters in cherry pickers hacked at the roof hours later, when I passed on my way to work. People stood in clusters, watching the activity, water spouting from a nearby hydrant, roads closed.

Rumor has it that the market will be rebuilt, that it will reopen. It cannot be soon enough.

Oh, a fireman is brave it's said
His engine is a shiny red
If there's a fire anywhere about
Well, I'll be sure to put it out

'Cause a fireman is a person in your neighborhood
In your neighborhood
He's in your neighborhood




Tag: Eastern Market Washington DC Fire Neighborhood

Fire at Eastern Market (part I)

The Wave

The name itself inspires a, um, wave of images: An infant peeking over his mother's shoulder on the metro, smiling, flirting, flapping his hand. A look of recognition, a nod, a two finger salute. Walks on the beach, the sea crashing again the sandy shore. Surfers off the New Zealand coast. The book by Todd Strasser, the recreation of Nazi Germany in a Palo Alto classroom. A swell, a rush, a fluttering. Baseball games.

"Wait for it.... Wait for it.... Now!" Our arms flew into the air. The girl on my left stood, jazz hands held high. We shouted and giggled for the silly, juvenile thrill of it as we watched the ripple carry around the stadium and die somewhere between third and home. An arm or two in the air. A couple of people stood and suddenly, it picked up somewhere out in left field.

On the field, the players played on, but most of us watched the rippling movement through the upper deck of the stands. A swell, a rush, a fluttering of sound and movement. Three times around, children and adults contributing to the movement.

It was late in the game, the sixth inning, the seventh or eighth. Before the bases were loaded and cleared. After the Mets home run, the only point scored for the day. People stretched languorously in the afternoon sun while we shivered in the shade, watching the sun slowly drift in our direction.

We missed the Racing Presidents, looking for food, for chicken fingers and fries, a pretzel and a working ketchup pump as the bobble-headed patriarchs ran toward home. Rumor has it that Thomas Jefferson won after a strong start from Teddy Roosevelt, who took an early lead but bolted into the stands instead of crossing the finish line.

A little girl scribbled frantically, making endless loops on a dry erase board. She cried for a while, in her mother's lap with a Strawberry Shortcake Band Aid on her dirty knee. Behind her, an infant Mets fan slept, curled against his mother's Mets jersey.

"Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow," I observed, nodding in their direction. My friends turned to look as the girl on my left started nodding herself, drifting off into a food coma inspired by greasy ballpark goodness.

We stood for D.C. Washington's rendition of God Bless America and the seventh inning stretch.

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don't care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game.

We cheered for the Nats and for the boy in front of us, an evident fan in his autographed T-shirt, autographed hat and embroidered shoes.

"Up here!" he shouted every time a ball came anywhere near right field, near the stands.

"Up here!" he shouted when Screech shot T-shirts into the crowd. "Up here!"

"Up here!" we joined in the shouting. "Give that kid something.... Anything!"

He joined in the wave, springing from his seat, gloved hand in the air. We joined in the wave, cheering and laughing, waving our hands in the air: women in our 30s, one in her 40s, enjoying a warm spring day at the park.


Tag: Baseball Washington Nationals

Showers

I'm done with them. I'm launching a one-woman girlcott against the institution: No more showers.

I'm not talking about bathing upright. Not a brief fall of rain or of hail or snow. Not a fall of many objects, as tears, sparks, or missiles. I'm talking about "a party given for a bestowal of presents of a specific kind, esp. such a party for a prospective bride or prospective mother: a linen shower; a baby shower."

No more.

The girlcott actually inspires grand feelings of guilt. With few exceptions, I am a good friend and intentionally missing a day important to people I know feels horrible. Unfortunately, the guilt just doesn't eclipse the grand feelings of being treated as an ATM, of being used.

As a single girl in her 30s, as an outgoing girl who maintains friendships with people from all parts of life, I've been a party to many showers. Some, I've planned. Others, I've attended and lately, a slew that I've skipped.

I love my friends. I rejoice in the opportunity to help them celebrate the events in their lives. I will shower until the power of the Lord comes down, if that's what makes my people happy. I just have trouble justifying a Saturday afternoon and a $50 gift for someone I haven't seen in a year, for someone who doesn't return my phone calls, who doesn't attend my parties and doesn't know my address or the name of any of my last three boyfriends.

Work showers are different. We all pony up for the shower gifts, for the babies and the weddings, for charitable walks. In the past five and a half years, I've given every time I've been asked – including my first day of work for the IT guy's marriage (since ended) and a rash of babies two years ago (five born within a 6-week period). It's part of working in an office.

Other than a few close friends at work, I don't expect wedding invitations. I don't know their children or their husbands or their lives. They don't know mine. They know me as the girl with the data, the girl with the Excel skills. Most of them spell my name wrong, with an "en" instead of the "in." I exist as a signature on a card.

It's just one of those things.

The personal showers, though, those are the ones that get me. The invitations to showers for girls I barely know, for girls I used to know who have fallen from my life and I from theirs.

The last minute invitation. The call for my address, two and a half, three years after moving. The misspelled name. The included list of registry locations.

I would like to think that invitation is more than a call to fill the coffers and fill the room and pictures with pretty professional women, more than a call for a present. Sometimes, it's just hard to believe.

No more. The girlcott is on.


Tag: Showers Friends Gifts

One with the couch

I have become one with the couch. Can of Coke in one hand, remote in the other, I have spent the past several hours in sofa city catching up on the DVR. The Riches, The Shield, and hours of The Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search. I repeat: hours of The Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search. On the DVR. Because I recorded it.

Liliana "Lil" Lovell, Coyote Ugly Saloon Founder, selects nine of her best veteran coyotes from all over the country to compete for five spots in the Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search 2007. The nine girls battle it out in dancing, bartending and entertaining challenges. The five selected will then be paired with a partner, and together they will compete for $50,000.

This. This is what I've recorded and spent hours watching. The competition whittling down the Coyotes from nine to five. The open auditions. The auditions for Lil. The first days of bootcamp. Hours of girls and women trying to get a slot and a shot at $50,000 and a claim to fame as the Ultimate Coyote.

For the record, I'm not exactly a fan of the chain.

"I developed my business plan here and that has propelled me to where I am today: beautiful girls + booze = money," Lovell wrote on the company website.

As much as I admire the woman's ability to make money (and loads of it), I just don't like the bar. The chain aspect. The objectification of women. The meaning of the name: A man gnawing off his own arm to get away from an unattractive drunken hookup.

I prefer dive bars. Scruffy bartenders with Gatorade and a book behind the bar. The smell of stale beer wafting over tunes from a jukebox in the corner. A favorite stool. Regulars. Coyote Ugly doesn't seem like the type of place where a girl might develop regular status, a bartender crush or friends. Coyote Ugly seems like a place where a girl could feel out of place and/or get ridiculously drunk while her date ogles the girls dancing on the bar.

Nevertheless, I am hooked on the show. Hook, line and sinker. Boobs and boots fly across the screen as women from all walks of life fight to earn the title of Ultimate Coyote. Seriously. A 53-year-old woman auditioned in shiny black pants and a red cowboy hat, dancing around my TV screen. 53. Years. Old. Hoping for a chance to be Coyote Ugly.

Clogging. Flaring. Bartending. These women take it all so seriously. Crying over making it. Not making it. One girl threw up after her (miserable) audition. The girls are talented singers, dancers, entertainers, half-dressed and gorgeous, but their ways frighten and confuse me. It's just so alien to my little world.

And the show itself? Harsh judgments from witchy coaches. Country music. Far too many commercials. It's a train wreck and I cannot stop watching. I have become one with the couch.


Tag: Television Coyote Ugly

Sweet dreams

I love Stevie Nicks. It's an instant reaction. Every time I hear Sweet Dreams, the words fly from my mouth.

Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

"I love Stevie Nicks."

As people are wont to tell me, Stevie Nicks doesn't sing the song. It's Annie Lennox. The Eurythmics. I know this. Have known it for years, but still, whenever I hear the song, I say, "I love Stevie Nicks."

It all started with a boyfriend in college. Murph. If not for fighting, we would have had no relationship at all. I met him at the college paper. He was the sportswriter with caustic wit and a chip on his shoulder. I was a young copy editor who knew nothing about the news. Boys. Life.

The first words out of his mouth were "I hate it when girls wear hats like that. You need to bend the brim."

He took the hat, the brand new hat, off my head and cupped the brim, wrapping a rubber band around it. "Keep it like this for a couple of days and then you can wear it."

I stood there with hat head and burning dislike. He pushed every button in my little OCD head. Drove me nuts. We fought incessantly. We fought for the sake of fighting, about TV and movies and music. We fought about the weather. The temperature. The color of the sky.

Anything and everything brought out the bicker in us. We scared our friends – his roommate and mine dated for years. They couldn't stand to be around us. Neither one of us took it personally, though.

For the most part.

One day, at a bar, I think, or maybe in the newsroom, the Eurythmics came on.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something.

Absentmindedly, I said, "I love Stevie Nicks."

With a vein throbbing in his forehead, he replied, "Stevie Nicks doesn't sing this song."

"I know," I said. "But I love Stevie Nicks."

The vein popped even further as he attacked my logic or lack thereof. Annie Lennox. The Eurythmics. Music, in general. And I stood my ground. "But I love Stevie Nicks."

Every time I heard the song after that, hundreds of times throughout our tumultuous relationship, through college and beyond, I said the same. "I love Stevie Nicks."

Every time, a vein throbbed in his forehead and he went nuts. I don't think he ever figured out what I was doing.

These days, it's almost Pavlovian. I cannot hear it without thinking of Murph. The newsroom. College days and button-pushing. I love the song. And Stevie Nicks.


Tag: Music Sweet Dreams Relationships

The Condemned

"It's so bad, it's good!" Jess exclaimed.

"I loved it!" I replied and giggled my way to the car.

I had planned to go myself, with free tickets to a movie that looked decidedly bad.

The Condemned stars WWE Superstar Steve Austin as Jack Conrad, a death-row prisoner in a corrupt Central American prison who is “purchased” by a wealthy television producer to take part in an illegal reality game show. Brought to a desolate island, Conrad finds himself trapped in a fight to the death against nine other condemned killers from all corners of the world. With no possible escape – and millions of viewers watching the uncensored violence online – Conrad must use all his strength to remain the last man standing…and earn his only chance at freedom. An action-packed thrill ride, THE CONDEMNED co-stars Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, X-Men: The Last Stand) and Rick Hoffman (Hostel).

I wasn't exactly familiar with WWE, Steve Austin or violent "let's kill everyone – it's OK because they're bad guys" films, but it was a Tuesday. I had nothing. I decided to go.

"Wanna go to the crappy movie with me?" I wrote. "It's free!"

In hindsight, I might have told her a little more about the movie. Or something. Other than the fact that it featured WWE superstar Steve Austin and yummy bad boy Bullet Tooth Tony, Big Chris, the Mean Machine Danny Meehan: Vinnie Jones. I might have a thing for Vinnie Jones. Former footballer with a hard man image. A goolie grabber. Always the bad boy... Where was I?

The Condemned. We planned to meet at the theater in Georgetown. The weather was gorgeous, so I hopped a bus to Rosslyn and walked across the Key Bridge into the District.

On Wisconsin, in the home stretch, a man started talking to me. In Spanish. I don't think he expected me to reply, much less appropriately and in Spanish. He walked with me, shooting rapid fire Spanglish in my direction. In two languages and hybrid of both, he told me he liked me. He loved me. He wanted to be my boyfriend. He wanted to have children with me.

I smiled and stepped up the pace. By the time we reached the theater, we were practically running. I, in my flip flops and floral wrap dress, and he, in something I didn't dare turn my head to see, ran two blocks to the cine.

Jess and I had planned to meet outside, but I ducked a hug and raced through the doors. I text messaged her from the bathroom.

"I had to come inside to avoid a man. I'll meet you in line."

I joined the queue and made friends with a man, his 14-year-old son and a couple in their 20s. They didn't think "I want to have children with you" was a very good pickup line, either. Though, the female half of the couple, freckly cute, had experienced similar offers in her role as a Strayer admissions officer. They saved my space when I went to look for Jess. (The line snaked down the hall and around the corner.)

I found her outside. We cut back into place and entered the theater without much of a wait. Despite the seat savers at the front of the line, we found a good spot.

As Jess left to feed the meter/hit the concession stand, a gangly college boy sat down on the other side of her purse. He deflected requests for the empty seat on the other side, and I handed him my bag. When he left in search of the missing moviegoer, we became those girls: Seat savers. Fortunately, there were seats to spare.

"Hey. Hi. Can I have some popcorn?" his friend, gangly college boy #2, asked. I handed over the bag and he grabbed a handful. A second later, I passed him a napkin. After the movie started, after we'd filled up on popped corny goodness, Jess passed the bag to the boys.

My friend, my plus one, didn't mind sharing the popcorn. Not only that, she snickered appropriately at the cheesy bits and whispered conspiratorially throughout the film.

"All of the bad girls are chesty; all of the good girls are flat," I whispered. "I'd totally be a murderer."

"And I'd be the 'uh, uh' girl."

Good guys. Bad guys. A rather attractive federal agent.

"Nobody that hot works at the FBI," I whispered.

Violence upon violence for the sake of violence. It was a little formulated, a little predictable, and incredibly gruesome. It was also a heck of a lot of fun. The girls were busty. The boys were bad and stone cold Steve Austin played an entirely likable, fairly credible tough guy.

Strike that.

The tough part was completely credible, the movie not so much. It was fun, though.


Tag: The Condemned Vinnie Jones Steve Austin Movies

Footsore and happy

"My feet hurt," I thought as I walked gingerly from the couch to the kitchen, wincing the entire way. I realized it could have been the walk to Georgetown on Sunday, the 4-mile walk in flip-flops on Monday. I struggled to place the pain, the ache in the middle of my foot; it seemed to precede the walks.

Lightbulb: Friday night.

On Friday night, after work, I went home and coiffed. I coiffed and moisturized and put on big girl shoes. I pulled back my hair with a twist and a pony tail. I wrapped several strands of beads around my neck. I donned a dress and heels. High heels.

Kayla drove to the happy hour. We planned to pick up Jess, park at the office and walk to the bar.

"I hurt so bad I can hardly stand up straight," I said, as I crawled into the car.

"Are you sure you want to go?"

"Definitely."

We got to the bookstore, to the meeting place, on time. I went in and looked for Jess but didn't see her. I tried calling but the phone rang endlessly.

"I think I might have to go to CVS and buy some painkillers." A major admission of pain. Not only do I avoid pill-popping; I haven't shopped at CVS in over seven years, maintaining a one-woman girlcott of the chain.

"I have something in my office," Kayla offered and we decided to drive there, park and then meet Jess. I popped the pills dry and called our friend. We arranged to meet at 19th and M, outside of Rumors and close to the happy hour spot of Mezza Luna. Kayla and I walked to the corner and waited.

I called Jess, "Hey… Haven't talked to you in a while so I thought I'd call… Um, where are you?"

"19th and L."

"Oh, we're at 19th and M."

"19th and M? M? As in I'm standing on the motherf–ing wrong corner?"

"You walk our way. We'll walk yours and we'll meet in the middle."

Teetering on high heels, we met mid-block, hugged, air-kissed and walked through the (nonexistent) picketers to the blogger happy hour. Down the steps and to the left. A quick wave to Virgle Kent, standing with an absolute knockout by the bar. Veer right for drinks.

Average Jane looked up from the bar and walked over to greet us. "I have food. Are you hungry?"

"I'm a little... sick."

With hugs, we chattered away, losing Jess to the bar to get us drinks. Virgle walked over to introduce the knockout, his divine sister. He'd pulled a Vinnie Chase. They drifted away as Jess returned with Stella. Artois. My girl.

Arjewtino walked past on his way to a shot, smiling apologies for not stopping and talking. Roosh stood in the door, talking for what seemed like hours to a man I didn't know; I wondered if I'd ever actually met him: Roosh. He always seemed to be talking to someone.

Across the room, Virgle Kent stood looking GQ in black on black on black, leaning against a table with a martini and watching the crowd, making sure everyone had a good time. The appearance of I Now Pronounce You, directly related to the appearance of SoCo and lime, ensured that they did.

INPY chatted with Jess about her writing, calling her "mind candy" as she undertook a Monty Python impression.

"One day, lad, all this will be yours! ... What? The curtains?" The words echoed through the bar, "What? The Curtains?"

The lovely and statuesque Dagny Taggart walked in, and we talked of John Galt and Ayn Rand, of ideology and birthdays. Stella ran dry and I turned to Hef as I chatted with MM and a beautiful girl whose name I forgot if I ever quite caught it. The Hef ran dry as I talked with Patrick, with Martin, with LMNT and Circle V and KassyK.

Conversations ran together. I talked more, subjecting Texpundit to a lengthy discourse on a friend's voice. Genevieve, Roissy and Jo, I'm sure I saw from a distance. I've lost the names of others with whom I talked, dance, laughed.

The beer and SoCo flowed almost as easily as the conversation. I laughed hard and often, losing track of time and myself. I most definitely danced in my high heels.

By the end of the night, by the end of happy hour, walking from one bar to another with friends, I slipped off my shoes and walked the city streets barefoot, footsore and happy.


Tag: Blogging Bars Happy hour

Critter pants and cattitude

After a rousing Saturday night (read: chick flicks, SNL and dozing on the couch with one of my best friends - cut me some slack, I slept too little on Friday night, drove to a mountain, got a flat and battled an infection earlier in the day), Sunday dawned bright and clear. Sunny. Warm.

I settled down with an ongoing project, scanning pictures and watching Manhattan. Through the open door, I talked with the neighbors, with the toddler who still doesn't understand my role in his life as the girl under the stairs.

"Tell Kristin the good news," his mother urged. "We're leaving."

"Park," he said. "Park. Ball."

"We're going to the park to play soccer," his mother explained, offering a respite from the ongoing onslaught of noise from upstairs, a toddler racing over my head all day, every day.

As much as I appreciated the quiet, I envied the trip to the park. I wanted to go out and play. Instead, I sat with my movie and my pictures, scanning for hours until I could stand it no more.

I emailed Kayla or she emailed me. I suggested lunch. She mentioned the gym. We decided to take a walk from our Capitol Hill homes to the waterfront in Georgetown: Five miles on a warm, sunny day.

I met her at her house, navigating Eastern Market, swarming with shoppers, bursting at the seams and sprawling onto surrounding sidewalks with extra flea marketty goodness by the pool next door. I met her at her house and we walked toward the Capitol, along the Mall, the monuments, the Reflecting Pool. We walked through Rock Creek Park.

"This is so much better with someone else," I observed. "It goes so much faster."

In no time at all, we found ourselves on the waterfront. I slipped out of sneakers and into flip flops in an attempt to less strongly resemble a tourist or a mom or a mom-like tourist.

"You look fine," she said as I hid beneath my cowboy hat.

"Do you want to stop for a mimosa?" I joked. She raised an eyebrow and replied, "I could do one mimosa. Or beer."

Several drinks later... We found a spot on the steps and watched the people passing.

"Oh, bad dress."

"Where?"

"Coming around the circle... Wait for it... Wait for it... There."

She cringed and turned to watch the preps with popped collars. Critter pants. Polo shirts. Monogrammed totes.

"Is that a critter belt? I think that is a critter belt!"

"Do those pants count? They've got a skull and crossbones."

"I don't know. They kind of rock as far as critter pants go."

I made a friend at the bar. Joe. Terrible teeth but he was nice. The bartender remembered my name, my tab and my drinks. I returned to our spot on the steps.

"Oh, I know I don't look good," I prefaced my cattitude as a girl in a doll-sized dress teetered past, "but what is that? Where is the rest of her dress?"

I fell half in lust with a boy at the table in front of us. Cargos. Button down. Aviator glasses. "If he starts to smoke, I think I'm in love."

He started to smoked.

The Very Drunk Boy at a table to the right mocked the preps, popping his own collar and laughing hysterically. From the shortest of shorts to the girl with knee-high boots, we saw it all, and people were there to be seen.

Eventually, we had to leave. We made our wobbling way through Urban Outfitters, Sephora and Kiehl's. We flip flopped to Foggy Bottom, stopping at GWU Hospital to hit the bathroom before the metro home, and settled into the ride. We got home hours late. My nose was burnt. My head was light and I seem to have bought another wrap dress. It was a wonderful end to a beautiful weekend.


Tag: Weekend Washington DC Waterfront

Waiting for the shoe

I have this thing about karma. Boiled down, I could explain it as the worse my day, week, life gets, the nicer I am. I figure I must have done something really, really bad to warrant a smack down from the universe.

The funny thing is that I've never really thought about the inverse. I've never really thought about the karma of good things happening. When all is right with the world, my second little theory kicks in, Newton's Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For all the good in my life, something bad will happen.

It's a muddled place, my mind. If something bad happens, I probably did something to deserve. If something good happens, something bad is sure to follow. Norwegians aren't exactly known for fatalism, nor are kids from Ohio, but thus is my lot in life.

Over the past couple of days, people have been really nice to me. Exceedingly nice. Exceptionally, excessively, extraordinarily nice. At happy hour Friday night, people told me that they liked me. They really, really liked me. Or my writing, at least, which embarrassed me immensely while making my head and my heart swell with pride. It wasn't just the words; it was the source. I talked to several very talented writers. I respected them, their words, and their opinions deeply.

Not only that, they humored the rather drunk girl in me. I had stopped for painkillers on the way to the bar, suffering rather seriously from the effects of my on-again, off-again infection. I could barely stand up straight. The painkillers killed the pain and accelerated the alcohol – I enjoyed myself immensely.

Compliments aside, I had fun. I spent time with friends old and new and met people whose words I'd read many times over the past weeks, months, years for some of them.

I should have awoken with a hangover. I should have crawled out of bed with a bit of guilt, an emotional hangover to tip the edge of my tippling. A headache. A stomachache. Low feelings of self worth. But strangely enough, I was fine, crippled by kidney pain, but otherwise fine, as I showered, dressed, baked a couple dozen cookies.

I knew something was decidedly wrong when I found myself perusing analgesics and squatting in a men's room without a lock at a gas station in Maryland on my way to the woods. I was supposed to stay over night. I was supposed to cabin it with members of my book club, without electricity, without plumbing. The weekend was prime – clear, sunny warm – but my body rejected the idea. I pulled into the site after a sleepy, three-hour drive, full of remorse.

"I don't think I can stay," I lamented.

"I'm surprised that you came," offered more than one of my friends. "I would have skipped it."

People hovered around me, lavishing attention and food on me. Drinks. Antibiotics. (Seriously. I received a packed of antibiotics.) I sat in my comfy chair with a pillow behind me, a dog in my lap, and enjoyed several conversations at a time, not the least of which revolved around the book that the entire club liked, a rare occurrence in general and a first for a selection from me. We ate s'mores – actual candy sandwiches - snapped pictures, joked, talked and enjoyed the sun.

When passing hikers noted a flat on my car, one of the guys in the club changed it for me, talking me through the process as he jacked up my Jeep (risking his life given the awkward offroad parking). I didn't even know where to find the jack, much less how to use it.

"I think you should go home, call your doctor and go to bed," instructed one woman after resting a hand upon my forehead. "You have a fever."

One couple offered to lead or follow me on the three-hour drive. Another woman offered to keep me company and a third offered to drive my car while her brother took hers.

"I'll be fine," I said. "Really. I had a low-grade fever for a year once. I'll be fine."

With shakes of their heads, I was bundled into my car, given water bottles and pain killers, phone numbers to call in case of emergency. I felt loved. I felt anxious. I just waited for the other shoe to drop. People were being so nice. It couldn't last. For every action…

I thought I lost my phone in the woods. I was happy. I could handle losing another phone if that was the way I'd have to pay for all the kindness, but as it turns out, I was just sitting on it. I worried and waited, wondering how it would end, what might go wrong.

Granted, I felt like death. My body fought an ongoing battle with a mystery ailment. I slept too little. I got a flat. Maybe the shoe did drop. Maybe I just didn't notice in my happiness.


Tag: Sickness Friends Happy Hour

Oops

I just did something incredibly stupid.

For the record, I am sick. I am sick and my hippie/granola/tree-hugging/workaholic mind refuses to wrap around the concept of going to the doctor and getting medicine for anything.

The Kristin cure for all life's ailments revolves around hydration. Hangover? Hydration. Allergies? Hydration. Cold, flu, scarlet fever, rubella? Hydration. I have a limited repertoire of self-healing remedies.

On Tuesday, when I started feeling sick, I decided to (surprisingly enough) hydrate. I remembered a jar of juice in the fridge.

Scoobie Doo flashback to Tuesday night: Kristin in bed with a book and a jar of bitter, bitter, unsweetened cranberry perdition. Straw between her teeth. Grimace upon her face. "This is so... gross."

By the time I fell asleep, I had imbibed the equivalent of two pounds of cranberries.

On Wednesday, the ick got worse. I drank gallons of water and stopped at the local market for juice. Nothing helped. I called the doctor. I reached the machine time and again. "Please call back during working hours."

"This is working hours... I can't help it if you're at lunch," I stewed. "I'm in meetings during working hours."

Finally, I reached a voice, an actual voice of an actual nurse.

"You'll have to come in," she said, despite protests and pleas to just take my symptoms over the phone. The office wasn't metro accessible and by the time I could get home, find my car, and drive back to Arlington, I'd be too late. Coworkers offered to drop me off, leaving me stranded, as it were, in North Arlington.

I rummaged through my wallet. Two bucks. Not enough for a cab. I decided to ignore the ick and push through the day, to wait until morning, to go to happy hour. By 10 p.m., I felt better. Of course, I couldn't feel anything below my belly button, but in my limited understanding, I was happy. Healthy. Ready to take the world.

On Thursday, I'd already planned to work from home around my appointment. Still in the throes of happy health, I skipped the doctor and spent the day hydrating, lounging in my pajamas and working from the couch.

Still not quite 100-percent but markedly improved, I continued with my plan. Juice. Water. After laundry, I stopped at the ghetto grocery and picked up jars of organic 100-percent juice, scanning the labels for grape juice among the cherries and berries and pears. Grape juice makes me puke. (I should have thought more on that as I picked up a liter of youngberry juice.)

"I don't know what this is, but I'm sure it will work."

In hindsight, I realize the error of my ways, drinking a liter of untested, unfamiliar juice. At work. Topped with six liters of water and food from Five Guys when I'm sick and I've never eaten anything from Five Guys in my life. I am a vegetarian, filled to my gills with grease, water and some funky juice. On a positive note, the infection seems to have passed.


Tag: Health Stupidity Juice

Three links down

183 dead in four Baghdad blasts. It was the third headline down, buried beneath news from Blacksburg and the massacre at Virginia Tech.

Wednesday brought the "highest death toll since The Associated Press began recording daily nationwide deaths in May 2005." 233 dead. My heart broke a little, thinking of the juxtaposition, an ongoing massacre half a world away and one on a college campus a couple of hours southwest of home.

My heart broke with each image, each story, with Dr. Librescu, a Holocaust victim who gave his life to save his students. Ryan “Stack” Clark, resident adviser, friend. Beautiful dancer, loving daughter Reema Samaha. Three gut-wrenching stories of 32. All day, every day, the news focused on the tragedy: the victims, the survivors, and the man who caused so much pain.

I trawled the headlines, looking for something different, anything different. Guilty about wanting to stick my head in the sand, I looked. Three links down: 183 dead, a nationwide total of 233, in a single day. I might have missed it if I weren't looking for something different, anything different. In my search for something to pull my mind from tragedy, I sunk even deeper.

I thought of the college-aged boys I'd met at the bar, military men barely old enough to drink and willing to give their lives in Iraq. I thought of the New York Times website, the piece from New Year's, the multi-page spread with images of United States service members who gave their lives. Lost their lives? Military men and women. Barely out of high school, some of them.

In my recent read, Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing up in the Shadow of Saddam, Zainab Salbi told a story of opulence and oppression, growing up in Iraq under the despot. She gave the people of Iraq names and faces.

183 dead in Baghdad, 233 nationwide might have included boys from the bar, Salbi's family and friends. In Blacksburg, 32. I struggled to avoid thoughts of Waco, of Oklahoma City, of Columbine. I could only process so much.

I thought about sending care packages to Tech students. About care packages to soldiers. I changed the channel and buried myself in work. I wouldn't hide from the news but I would monitor my exposure. On the weekend, I would volunteer. I would spend time my friends, my family and live a good life. What's a girl to do?




Tag: News Overwhelmed

OCD friends

"That's why I love you," I said without thinking. Probably not the most appropriate thing to say to a friend's husband, but he didn't notice and she didn't care.

"Did you hear that?" she asked, calling to the man in the kitchen, the man she married almost two years ago. He looked in our direction. "[Insert adorably cute nickname for me] just said that's why she loves you."

He looked puzzled.

"Because you shut the cabinet doors," she elaborated.

He smiled and lifted his chin in a half-nod of approval. "I love you, too, [insert adorably cute nickname for me]."

It was the first time I'd seen their new place, a fabulous new condo in Columbia Heights with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a rooftop deck. A view of city and the Washington Monument in all its glory. High ceilings. A loft. Light.

In the 45-minutes since we arrived, I had already planned sunbathing sessions, thinking back to the best man's speech about the Tropicana Girl who became his best friend's bride. I'd planned barbecues and asked about the grill they bought with the neighbors, friends, at the old place. I'd planned fourth of July and a midsummer's eve. I hadn't quite shared the plans with them, but we had all the time in the world.

They had officially moved on Saturday. Perhaps, I'd be better saying they unofficially moved on Saturday. Friends with a truck helped with the beds and dressers, the Very Big TV, a chair leaving much of the furniture in place, staging for potential buyers. I arrived Sunday to pack a few boxes, take a load in my Wrangler and generally get in the way. I wanted to help, almost as much as I wanted to see the new place.

"I love it," alternated with "It's so big."

The vaulted ceilings. The massive windows and streaming light. I would have envied my friends if I weren't so happy for them in their beautiful new space.

"This is your room," they said, showing me the guestroom. I grinned idiotically, happy for my own room even though I live in the same city and it will be shared by an endless rotation of friends and family. Boxes littered the living room floor, the bedroom, the kitchen. The walls were blank, the cupboards barren, but the place felt like home.

After the tour, after a few minutes of awestruck gazing at the view, we went back downstairs and unloaded the cars. We quickly established a routine. I moved boxes to the door, my friend moved them to the elevator and her husband up to the condo. In no time at all, the vehicles were empty and we headed back to the penthouse.

The boxes were carefully labeled and each contained no more and no less than expected. Shifting box from room to room, unpacking clothes, wedding dishes, cords and wires and thingamabobs, we emptied the boxes and broke them down for another load, another trek, another time. For the moment, my friends owned two houses and while saying goodbye to one, they good make the other home. They had time. They made lists of organizational bits and pieces, things for Home Depot and things for Radio Shack. They figured out where things belonged.

Finishing up in the kitchen, the husband made one last pass of the cupboards and swung the doors closed. The cupboards were orderly. The drawers pristine. The closets organized by garment type and season. A place for everything and everything in its place. So pretty. So logical.

I love my OCD friends.



Tag: Friends Moving

World 16,184, Kristin 0

I feel like crap. For the first time in what feels like years, I actually awoke on time and rested. I slept enough and awoke before the alarm, naturally, without the parade of elephants (read: the toddlers upstairs) startling me awake. Things oozed downhill from there.

The local news droned in the background as I separated my laundry for post-work hijinks at the old laudromat and dressed for work. The Today show started with a special broadcast from Blacksburg, from the campus of Virginia Tech. My head pounded as the world came rushing back to me.

I forgot. In my sleep, I forgot. The word "massacre" screeched from the television.

With a few minutes to spare, I booted up the laptop and checked out DC Blogs. I clicked through to Piglet of Fire and a list of school shootings. Halfway down the page, I started to cry. I kept reading.

In the background, I thought heard someone on the news claim that since the shooting in Littleton, Colorado, since Columbine, there have been over 200 school shootings. The number took my breath away.

"I must have misheard," I thought, struggling with disbelief.

In the meantime, I realized that I needed to pee. Again. For the fourth time in 20 minutes and as soon as I finished, as soon as I stood and buttoned and lathered my hands, I realized that I had to go again.

"That’s a problem," I thought. "I should call a doctor."

On the metro, reading the Express and hitting the entertainment section, I wondered, "Is it Thursday already?"

Tuesday. It is Tuesday.

At the office, I got in trouble for responding to a client’s request, my client’s request, for information. The email originally went to my boss and she told me to handle it. Apparently, I provided too much detail. Apparently, I should route such requests through my boss. I tried not to think of the misplaced logic, given that she had sent it to me, and apologized profusely.

In my reply, the dateline jumped out at me, and I realized that we quickly approached the anniversaries of Waco and Oklahoma City. Dates etched into my mind from days at the college newspaper. Columbine, just one day later on Hitler’s birthday.

I’d write more but I have to pee again before my meeting.

Start of the day: World 16,184, Kristin 0.


Tag: Complaining Whining Get Over It Already

Senseless

And the death toll rises. In the hours since I posted this, the number has climbed from 22 to more than 30 dead in what MSNBC has referred to as "deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history."

Twenty-two dead? Twenty-eight wounded? How does that happen on a college campus? An editor friend asked if I had seen the story, which I hadn't. (My job includes working with numbers. Other than the occasional "my query is running and I cannot do anything that requires bandwidth" foray into the internet, I don't really browse during the day. I never really browse.)

She sent a link: Police: Gunman killed 21, injured 21 at Virginia Tech

I picked up the phone and called a friend. We had plans to go to the Nats game later. All morning, I thought about calling and pushed it off. Work got in the way. When I saw the news, I forgot about all numbers but hers and I dialed.

"Hey. It's me."

"What a crappy day," she said. Her husband went to Tech, still knew people there including one boy, a brother of a friend, confirmed on lockdown on the fourth floor of his dorm. "They were just reporting one person dead... How do they go from one to 22?"

We sat in silence for a while. Not much to say.

"Is it bad to hope that it's no one that we know?"

Eventually, we decided against the game. Nobody really wanted to go in gale force winds (not that I know what gale force winds are but it is miserable outside). Nobody wanted to go with tragedy looming.

I graduated from college a decade and three states ago. My only experience with school violence (other than living in Colorado during Columbine) was a stabbing at my university the weekend of my 21st birthday. A man left a party, knocked on a couple doors and found a house rented by college girls.

"Is Jenny here?" he asked, according to rumors and half-forgotten lore, using the name of approximately one in six university girls. They had a roommate named Jenny who was out that Saturday night.

The man, the boy, a 19-year-old local, walked into the house, picked up a knife from the kitchen and stabbed both girls in their living room. Julie Kane died. The entire campus felt violated, victimized and traumatized by one senseless act of violence.

Twenty-two dead?

"Who does something like this?" I wrote to my friend. "I cannot even imagine what would make anyone kill someone else, much less go on a rampage and kill dozens of strangers."

"thank goodness. thank goodness we can't, y'know?"

In a corner

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner…"

With those six words, I knew I could crawl into bed a happy woman. The weekend was over. Nothing more to see here, folks.

Friday night set a wonderfully bad and a terribly good precedent with several nights packed into one. I caught up with many of my favorite people and a night that started early and ended when I stumbled home late to a glass of wine, The Tudors and bed left me exhausted.

Saturday night, my body knit itself back together in sleep as I crashed on the couch around midnight and awoke at 11:04, officially four minutes late to meet a friend at the National Gallery. I raced to get ready, pulling on clothes, brushing my hair, accessorizing with a hat and necklace. Actually, I have no idea why the accessories. I figured it a byproduct of alarm clock shock to my sleep-muddled mind.

Rain pelted down at an angle. My friend's umbrella blew inside out. I think my mind blew inside out, trying to understand Johns' work, whether he was an impatient man, a passionate one or both. I wondered if he tired of the primary colors, if he fought to stencil "green" on a canvas. Ochre. Celery. Violet. Anything other than red, blue or yellow.

I wondered what he thought, casting a mold of his own penis. Did he think that anyone would see it? Did he fear success of the piece? Rejection? Was that his nipple? Did he have an exceedingly weak chin? And what a distinctive brushstroke.

We meandered through the exhibit, An Allegory of Painting, walking together, talking as we walked. I laughed over some of the descriptions, wondering if he consciously focused on the four major motifs: the target, the device, the naming of colors and the imprint of the body, or if he simply painted what he liked, what worked for him, and expanded on those elements.

Even the brochure said that Johns spoke empirically of his work, focusing on the technical aspects and viewing art at utilitarian. He moved canvases around his flat as he worked with them, treating them like furniture. "A painting," Johns said, "should be looked at the same way we look at a radiator."

At the time, the sentiment struck me. Hours later it lingered and I wondered if he considered a radiator as art or art as necessary to survival as heat and food. My friend and I discussed it at the time, walking through the exhibit and later over coffee, which actually consisted of Orangina and an apple for me, a muffin for my friend.

We braved the weather outside and drove through the city, looking for parking and trying to find a way to entertain ourselves without paying for parking or getting wet. We drove for a while. We continued to talk about art and the artist as well as books and movies and life. We enjoyed comfort foods (butternut squash soup, macaroni and cheese) and wandered through books in two local stores (Kramers and Olssons), pointing out books and music we liked.

The weekend ended quietly, walking through the rain, jumping over puddles and huddling under our umbrellas in the cold April wind. Home again, home again, I napped on the couch to the sounds of children playing upstairs and suicidal patients finding themselves On the Edge.

When I awoke, debating a fire in the fireplace and turning in my 9, I emailed friends and flipped through channels, stopping on Dirty Dancing.

"As soon as the movie ends," I wrote. "OK. I cannot, in good faith and straight face, finish that sentence."

After a weekend of books and art, culture and conversation, I ended the weekend on the couch, half-asleep and half in love with Johnny, the dance instructor. I would have been embarrassed if the flick weren't as comfortable as my ratty old jeans and the mac and cheese, comfortable, familiar, easy. I waited.

"Me? I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of what I saw, I'm scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you."

Tired from the week that passed, anxious for the week to come, I watched until I heard the words.

"Nobody puts Baby in the corner."

I sighed with adolescent wonder and put myself to bed.


Tag: Sleep Dirty Dancing Culture

A bookish bind

Books dominated so much of my weekend – book club, Second Saturday, lazy Sunday. Each event, each friend, each synopsis and spine and recommendation highlighted the gaps in the literary knowledge.

On Friday night, I met with one of my book clubs at Café Divan in Georgetown. We'd read "Between Two Worlds," the memoir of Zainab Salbi, the founder of Women for Women International and the daughter of Saddam Hussein's personal pilot.

Days ago, reading the book on the metro between my office and the client site, I started crying a quiet cry. It was the middle of the day and the car wasn't full, but I quickly brushed away the tears hoping no one had seen. At my stop, as I stood and walked toward the door, a hand reached out and grabbed me.

"Hey. Hi. What are you doing?" I asked my friend, trying to pull myself together in front of someone I hadn't expected to see. He'd leave in two days time for Korea, to teach English as a second language. He'd spent the past nine months in Nicaragua doing the same. Before that, he was a Peace Corps volunteer.

I had just cried over pages of a woman from a simultaneously opulent and oppressed background who realized that she needed to do something to make the world better, safer. The tears stemmed from her accounts of women traumatized, victimized and quite literally raped by war. I smiled at my world-saving friend and pretended my cheeks weren't streaked by tears.

I told the story over dinner. Over hommus and Anatolian wine, over coban salad and kebab, we talked of the book, of life and families, choices and war. (We picked a Turkish restaurant, the best in DC, unsure of the availability of an Iraqi or Iranian venue given the current political climate.) We talked about the book. (I thought the writing paled in comparison to the force of the story but it still made me cry.) We talked.

My night spun, seemingly endless, sharing a bottle of wine with a friend and talking, a birthday celebration at Busboys and Poets, a scavenger hunt, drinks at Local 16. All with a half-dozen books in my bag. My current read, my book club book. A handful of tomes I'd lent to a friend. Six in all, weighing me down and lifting me up.

On Saturday, the second of the month, I invited a friend to one of favorite places in the world – Capitol Hill Books. Wine and cheese, a 10-percent discount for "Second Saturday." We meandered through "two cozy floors of quality used books, first editions and rare books." One might say three floors as they've expanded into the basement, having already stocked the stairwell, the closets and the bathroom. Books teetered precariously as I juggled wine and cheese, contemplating books on the top shelf and political T-shirts.

After two hours, a glass of wine and a half, we walked home. My friend carried a T-shirt; I carried another six books: still my current read (always a camera and a book in my bag), two recommendations from my friend, one from an employee pal and two that I just wanted. All in my bag, slung over my shoulder as we walked and talked. I piled the books on my groaning shelves, mentally calculating how much I could shift to the bedroom and how much room I could save by stacking vertically and doubling the rows. I left them wobbling as I sank into the couch and the flavor of the week.

On Sunday, after a panicked late start to a date with Jasper Johns at the National Gallery of Art, after a drive through the city looking for parking on a cold, rainy, "people driving everywhere if they bothered to even leave the house" kind of day, Jess and I found ourselves at Kramerbooks and Afterwords Café for comfort food and browsing. My friend, a fellow member of my second book club, and I picked up the book for my third club.

"I don't know who does the displays here, but I always want… everything," I said as I leaned over the table by the door, realizing how many books I'd read, how many books I wanted to read.

"Like a kid in a candy shop," Jess replied.

I wandered with a kid's greedy gaze, picking up books and putting them down, hungry for more, even though I'd just sated myself with a stack from Capitol Hill Books. I shook my head in dismay, knowing that I would never have enough, read enough, know enough to close the gaps in my literary knowledge, but I was happy to try.


Tag: Books Reading Washington DC

Road trips

I've been watching Elizabethtown over the past several days. The same movie. One time. Over several days. It's not that I don't like it. The reviews were pretty much crap but I could sit and watch Orlando Bloom sleep for two hours. No plot, no talking, little in the way of facial expression except sleepy twitches. I adore the curly/lanky thing, but that's not why I've been watching the movie for days.

It is not Orlando Bloom. It is not an experience worth savoring. I'm not bored with the story. I've just been busy; life has gotten in the way.

I guess that's the point of the movie. A floundering shoe designer finds himself back in Kentucky in the midst of family tragedy. There's a little romance, some self discovery, and a really big road trip. Chopping it up has given me the ability to compartmentalize the movie.

Today: tap-dancing and road tripping, both of which struck a chord.

I've shuffled off to Buffalo more than I can count, resorting to rudimentary tap to make people laugh. I used to know more: brushes, steps and taps. Paddle and roll, chug-shuffle and riff-drop are always good for chuckle, even on the gloomiest of days. Something about watching Susan Sarandon tapping on stage before a room of mourners made me laugh and cry a little.

The road-tripping made me think. As Bloom chugged (without a shuffle or riff-drop) through Tennessee, I thought of my last Really Big Trip, the last leg of a summer of driving. When I left my job, when I left Colorado, I spent months on the road, visiting family and friends. I covered the country, visiting family and friends, leaving my hair in Ohio, leaving my stuff in Minnesota.

Eventually, I ended up in New Orleans. After a month of staying out all night and reading all day, after a drive to Mexico with a friend named Joe and the guy who lived downstairs, I wanted to go home. Granted, I didn't have a home, but I knew I needed to leave the Big Easy. I knew I needed a job and a life. I needed my own space. I got up at five after barely two hours sleep, kissed my friend goodbye and headed northeast.

I had no money and I had no map. I drove for hours, watching the sun rise and hover somewhere over Mississippi, Alabama, across a corner of Georgia and into Tennessee. I got stuck in Tennessee. A traffic jam in the middle of the day, in the middle of the state. Somewhere close to Pigeon Forge, I sat in my car for hours. Reading, dancing, thinking about kissing.

I heard Mambo #5 for the 17-thousandth time.

A little bit of Monica in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side
A little bit of Rita is all I need
A little bit of Tina is what I see
A little bit of Sandra in the sun
A little bit of Mary all night long
A little bit of Jessica here I am
A little bit of you makes me your man

I sang along despite my growing hatred for the song. I danced. I considered napping beside the road. Eventually, HazMat arrived and cleared up the mess ahead of us. We moved. I finished my trip in darkness, arriving at my sister's house 19 hours after leaving New Orleans, tired, happy and still thinking about kissing.

Watching my daily segment of a fairly crap movie, my life came rushing back. All that from a scene or two with Orlando Bloom sitting in a car.


Tag: Elizabethtown Movies Roadtrip Tennessee

Harrison Bergeron

7th Grade. That's when I first met him.

Halfway through the year, the school pulled me from my reading class with semi-permanent substitute Mr. McCracken and a 14-year-old teacher's aide who showed us pictures of her baby at home. Halfway through the year, the school pulled me from my boredom and shoved me into a newly-formed advanced reading class.

I spent my days dreaming of boys who didn't know I existed, sketching and keeping my head down. Ms. Whitler, unkindly dubbed Hitler by selfish students, scared the life out of me. At 12 years old with low self esteem and a really bad perm, I was scared of everything, including my own shadow, but Whitler earned my fear. Until that point, I hadn't been challenged.

A couple of years ago, looking out at the Las Vegas strip from the Ghostbar on the 55th floor of The Palms, I met a boy: Bill from Philly. He was there for his bachelor party, and while the rest of the boys partied, slamming vodka and Red Bull, we talked movies, music, books. He brought up Oscar Wilde.

"I love 'The Importance of Being Earnest,'" I said, quoting, "'I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.'

"I've been into him since reading 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' in 7th grade."

"Where did you go to school? There's no way you read Wilde in 7th grade." The blue collar boy doubted the small town girl.

"Of course, I did," I replied and subjected him to a synopsis of a book I'd read a dozen years earlier. "Wilde. Baldwin. Joyce. Vonnegut. It was a weird semester."

We talked through the night, leaving his friends and drinking cheap wine at a bar in a casino on the strip. I fell half in love with him that night, Bill from Philly, but that's all we did. Talked. Told stories. He reminded me of stories I used to know, stories we learned in Whitler's class.

The Monkey's Paw. The Catbird Seat. The Lottery. Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. That was my favorite. I didn't know anything about Slaughterhouse-Five. Cat's Cradle. Breakfast of Champions. I didn't know anything about literature, about Orwell or Huxley or Atwood. I was 12, with bad hair and low self-esteem; I didn't know anything.

I knew I loved that story Almost two decades and hundreds of books later, I remember it still.

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."

Something about Vonnegut's scary glimpse into the future struck a chord. Despair. Freedom. Equality. Hope. It was terrible and frightening and completely believable. I doubt I can articulate it now, what it meant to me. I couldn't articulate it then. I probably got a B on participation (I always got B's in English and Reading) but the grade didn't matter. I was hooked.

In later years, I read more of his work. I reread the works I'd read before and each reading gave me greater understanding and appreciation. They made me laugh. They made me think.

Kurt Vonnegut died Wednesday night at age 84. A good life lived, maybe. A long one, anyway. Hard. Generous. He gave us his words and he gave us his stories. I am grateful.


Tag: Kurt Vonnegut Books Literature Harrison Bergeron

Timing

Timing is everything. I ran into her in the hall.

"I hear we are neighbors," I said, in the way of small talk as we waited for the elevator in the end-of-day slowdown when cleaning people took four or five of the six elevators out of service.

"Really?" she asked, knowing that we were. She had invited me to her housewarming and I had invited her to my Christmas party. Neither of us went, despite living blocks apart. "I'm moving again. Back to New Mexico."

We'd worked together for more than five years, since I started at our small company. We never served the same clients or worked the same projects but in a company of barely 50 employees, we all knew everyone. She was employee number three. We were never friends, never enemies but I knew her.

Actually, I knew so much of her, of private details, intimate knowledge of love and loss and even a temporary foray into madness. While knowing she would never read my words, I hesitated to write too much, to invade her privacy, this woman I'd known from a distance for years.

"Are you going back to the same position?" I asked. She'd worked remotely with one of our clients before moving back to the District several months ago, before moving into my neighborhood.

"No, I resigned," she said sheepishly and told me of her plans. She looked happy, and I was happy for her.

Eventually, an elevator arrived and we stepped aboard, exiting together at the lobby level, walking through the front doors. I panicked for a second or two wondering if I should head the opposite way, duck into a store, walk to another metro station but I was tired and I wanted to get home. Idle chatter with a woman I barely knew, a woman I'd barely known for more than five years, seemed the price I'd have to pay to get home early.

I thought of the book under my arm as we walked to the Metro and waited for the elevator. We talked of our neighborhood, of her dogs. We walked through the turnstiles, discussing our projects. On the escalator, we talked of mutual friends. We stood on the platform and talked of her move, her opportunity, of change.

As the train approached, we walked together toward the edge of the platform, through the same door. I breathed a sigh of relief to note that it was somewhat crowded, that we could not sit together and continue our forced conversation for another 10 stops. She pulled out a magazine and I tucked into my book across the aisle from one another, grateful for the lull.

At the stop, at our stop, we rose together and walked toward the door. Again, we chatted across the platform, up the escalator and through the turnstiles. Again, I considered feigning plans, exiting early or late, heading in the opposite direction, but I need not have worried. She'd driven to the station and we drifted easily, quietly apart in the sunlight with a wave and a nod.

As we headed in different directions, I to my house and she to my car, I looked back at this woman I'd known for years, my coworker, my neighbor. I realized I would never see her again. We might have been friends at a different time, in a different place. We had much in common, but I knew her during the hardest years of her life. I wished her well.


Tag: Coworkers Friends

Magenta

Note to self: Stop dropping/washing/losing expensive digital toys

Apparently, keeping a camera in my pocket at all times isn't such a great idea. In the past seven months, I have taken thousands, literally, thousands of pictures. Travel shots. Drinking shots. Birthdays and holidays and bored at work days. Friends. Family. Random strangers. Random buildings. Videos of camping and singing, turtle sex and ax men.

I have documented my life through pictures, sharing the images with friends and family. Creating albums. Writing captions. Capturing even the most banal of events for posterity.

I am positively addicted.

It took me a while to get into the craze. As everyone else moved toward digital imagery, I gratefully accepted roll upon roll of surplus film from photographer friends. I started buying box cameras, a wind-up 8mm, a Lomo and a Holga. An early Polaroid. Photo paper. I have cameras for which I cannot find film and cameras I wouldn’t know how to use if I could find it.

I moved backward as the rest of the world moved forward into the digital age and I didn’t mind a bit. Of course, I couldn’t quite whip out a giant camera plus lenses in a restaurant or bar. I couldn’t easily share pictures. I couldn’t get over scanning my negatives or slides to create an album. I couldn’t quite afford the cost of developing dozens of rolls of professional-quality film.

Eventually, with a slight inheritance, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a digital camera. I went with something recommended by consumer reports. I wanted a micro-mini version but went with something slightly larger, the ability to augment the lens and higher quality pics at 9 mega pixels.

I didn’t expect to anything great from the digital. I still carried my trusty 35mm SLR(s) plus lenses, but slowly, my addiction to digital developed. A couple hundred pictures from a weekend camping trip. No lie. Two days. Two hundred pictures. That I kept. Photos of beer. Martinis. Glasses of wine. Cats and hats and boys named Matt. Everything I've seen and done.

Of course, my tendency to keep a camera in my purse, at ready access, means that my camera is always in my purse. At ready access. Jostled and juggled, poked and prodded and ready to fall. It has bounced across pavement from Anchorage to Istanbul, from New Orleans to New York City. I’ve dropped it more places than I can count. In the past seven months, I’ve taken a brand new, 9 mega pixel camera, and reduced it to miserably scratched hunk of metal and dirt with peeling rubber and a spotted lens.

I’ve also taken thousands of pictures. I figure it’s a fair trade.

Monday night, though, something happened. I pulled out my camera to take a picture or 10 of friends and family and trivia at Fado. I switched from black and white to color where lo and behold, my only choice was magenta. Not normal and not only that, the pictures were simultaneously blown out and streaky. Definitely not normal.

Of course, I continued to take pictures in that condition, wondering whether it was the display or the pictures. As it turns out, it was the pictures. As it turns out, I’ve discovered a problem that was supposed to be fixed in 2004 and should not have affected my camera as it wasn’t released until a year after the fix.

Then, again, if there’s ever a potential problem with equipment or software, I seem to find it. The pink pictures were kind of cool but not a feasible fix for my photographic craving. I troubleshot the issue and discovered that it wasn’t exactly my fault. Not entirely. I found out how to fix it – send it in to the manufacturer – and what to expect in terms of cost and time. Little and a lot, respectively.

I found another camera and bought it while waiting for the instructions to print. I don't know what happened - one minute I was diagnosing the problem, the next I was spending hundreds of dollars on a camera. I couldn’t quite imagine quitting the habit, even for a few weeks, a couple of months, until the camera came home.

Then, again, I worried about what the manufacturer would say about the peeling rubber and spotted lens. I thought the repair tech might laugh and tell me it’s not worth saving, my miserably scratched hunk of metal and dirt. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing it. Not completely. There are birthdays and holidays on the horizon and one never knows when she might stumble across turtle sex or ax men.


Tag: Camera