Too much

I thought it would be my easy day. No more heavy lifting. I even managed to get the treadmill from the back of the house out the front door to a friend who promised to use it, to try to use it. (It had found its way to the closet when I moved to the hill and I traded the tread for these city streets.)

I spent hours sorting through my clothes and papers, purses and boxes, making a pile of things to donate or sell or pitch, making a pile of things I no longer used, no longer needed.

I made a list of things I needed to do for the day, the week, and I planned to stick with it. Sunday didn't seem too hard. Even though I planned to continue the sorting, filing, and tossing, I had taken care of the hard boxes, and sorted a lifetime of files, with hopes to attack them again, in more depth, later.

And then I got to the cards.

I planned to toss all the cards. They'd actually found there way into the trash a half dozen times only to find their way back out. To the floor. The foot of the bed. The dresser. For some reason, I decided to go through them before pitching the bag in toto, to pick out my favorites, a select few.

That didn't work so well.

I ended up sorting the cards by size and keeping them all. A shoebox full of birth announcements and birthday cards, thank you notes and wedding invitations, Christmas cards and graduation proclamations. Formal missives, engraved and covered in tissue. Notes from my grandparents who have left this world and drawings from infants long since grown into children and teens. My parents, my siblings, best childhood friends. The memories they evoked overwhelmed me.

As I sifted through the cards, the images and words, I realized that they represented both the givers and the person they thought I was.

"I'm just feeling so French. For your birthday, let's go out and pretend we're French," one card announced, while the inscription read, "I think I liked this card because you are the one person I know who would be likely to actually pick up and GO to France if you were feeling Frenchy. Or to Jazz Fest if you were feeling Jazzy… and so on!"

The card arrived three and a half years ago. I spent my last birthday in France. In a few short weeks, I'll be at Jazz Fest and two weeks ago, I went to the wedding of the man who sent the card. I had forgotten all about it.

At the end of this life, someone else can toss the box. At the end of my time in DC or this apartment, maybe I'll do the same. If I don't look at them again, maybe I don't need them. For the moment, though, I can find room for a shoebox full of memories.

I probably wouldn't have missed the cards if I'd actually removed the bag that made its way from the bin to the floor, the foot of the bed, the dresser but I'm glad I didn't. I'd apparently tossed in a handful of irreplaceable photos from my own childhood, photos that I knew and loved.



Spring cleaning might be making more of a mess than it's relieving, but I feel all the better for it.

Tag: Cleaning Friends

Spring cleaning

Sighing, I glanced around the apartment. At the piles. The bags. Boxes of papers that hadn't seen the light of day since sometime in the mid-90s.

Did I really need to keep the postcard that announced my position on the Dean's List? Did I need to keep all of them? "All" being a relatively large number given graduation in eight semesters but certainly not eight.

The report card from my worst semester: all Bs and a C? It was the season of my sister's wedding and my mother's move out of the country. I'd taken off a week for the former and stayed put for the latter. It was the semester I started working full time instead of just weekends with the occasional odd weeknight job. First aid at intramural sports. Tutoring. Editing papers. It was the semester I started working at the paper, a job that would change my life. Words at the bottom of the sheet announced that I was in "good standing." I would have begged to differ. My footing was shaky, at best.

Loan papers from a car I no longer have, that no longer exists? After a year of loaning it my sister and brother-in-law, they wrote me a check and bought it outright. The title had not yet transferred when somebody rear-ended them, raining glass from the shattered back windshield onto my nephew in his car seat. The car was totaled and he had nightmares for years from an event he really couldn't remember.

Insurance documents from the car before that? I gave it to my brother when I graduated from college – more of a curse than a blessing as I found myself without a car for six months and he found himself working to keep a car running to get him to work. He fell asleep at the wheel after a long shift at work, driving East to see our sister and her new baby, the baby that was in the accident above. I bet that one of my newspaper friends still has the picture of us, the car (Li'l Vicious) and myself at a service station/video/bait shop.

Letters from my brother and my mom when they lived in that other country? Hand-written letters addressed to "Kristi" and "Kiki" respectively. I drove back from Canada, not as far as it seems, for a 45-minute phone call with them during spring break, talking in the backroom of my friend's father's hardware store, the smell of sawdust… I'm not sure if that was real or if I've imagined it and assigned to the memory. The same with the feel of flannel, do I just remember it from pictures I barely remember in Detroit?

I drove back to Canada after the call. I never managed to visit them in the Caribbean. I just didn't have the money. My brother stayed with me for a month the next summer, the summer that she stayed on an island and he bounced from couch to couch. I was almost 20; he was just 18. Neither of us really knew how to take care of ourselves, much less each other.

A handwritten recipe for my grandfather's apple kuchen. He tried teaching all of us, at various points. I might have been the only one who wrote it down, but I haven't tasted it since before he died. I looked for the recipe for ages and couldn't find it. There's a scribble in the corner of the page from where I tried to get the pen to work. I don't remember that. Knowing myself, though, I probably sucked on the pen to try to get the ink to flow and ended up with a blue tongue.

I spent more time sorting paper than anything, than wrestling boxes and a treadmill from the closet, than sorting clothes, purses and hats, trying to get rid of that which I didn't use. I took a break, late in day and baked cookies for friends, sharing a beer or two in a bookstore that stayed open late so that we could share beer and cookies. They gave me a book and for the rest of my life, or as long as my mind holds onto it, I'll think of the ale. The honeyed oatmeal cookies. The friends.

Maybe I shouldn't get rid of it all.


Tag: Cleaning Memories

Welcome to the neighborhood

It was a uniformed cop pounding on my door at 9:15 this morning. A Saturday morning.

"You've got a ticket," he said, motioning toward my Jeep. "He said he's had the signs up for a few days."

"What? I don't drive. My car's been there since Sunday."

"Well, he said the sign's been there for days."

Apparently, my new neighbor had posted "Emergency: No Parking" signs earlier in the week, reserving our side of the street for his moving truck.

"I. Don't. Drive. My car's been there since Sunday."

I hadn't seen the signs, which were posted sometime midweek.

"You still have a ticket."

"Fine."

He stood there and stared at me in my pink pajama bottoms and oversized sweatshirt, glasses and hair, loose around my face. I stood there and stared at him with his gun.

"I don't know what to do about the other car," he said, gesturing to a red sedan.

"I have no idea whose car that is."

"You still have a ticket."

He stared a while longer. As he turned to go, I slammed the door and stomped to the back of my apartment to slip into flip flops, the first shoes I found. If I'd looked in the living room, I might have donned a pair of brown heels, red stilettos or pink, flowered rain boots. All would have looked equally appropriate given my current attire.

I slammed out of the house and into the car, pulling the ticket from the windshield. I pulled a U-turn in the middle of the street; the cop had returned to his station at the end of my block, stopping vehicular traffic for the National Marathon.

The neighbor and his movers stood on his doorstep and watched as I parallel parked across the street.

"Thanks!" he called.

"Have a nice day," I yelled, thinking of alternate meanings for the word "nice." I slammed the door and tore my closet apart, finally motivated to wrestle boxes, clothes and a treadmill from my closet. Angry spring cleaning better than none.

He'd had me ticketed and confronted by a uniformed police officer at 9 o'clock on a Saturday. On his moving day.

Welcome to the neighborhood.


Tag: Neighbors Tickets Bad weeks

Insult to injury

A decade ago, maybe more or less, I hosted a party. My first since college. I invited the friends I'd made in Colorado including a handful of coworkers.

One of the girls at work was probably my best friend in that place at that time. She'd totaled her car and I gave her rides to work in the morning and home at night while she sorted through the insurance mess. We hung out on weekends. At night. I spent more than enough time in her twisted group house with her pregnant sister, the sister's ex, the girl, her ex and the random couple with the cat and the tarot cards in the basement.

The party? It was pretty lame. Christmas music, cocktails, finger food. A fire in the fireplace. Fine, just nothing special but for the fact that it was my first party since college, my first party in the grownup world.

Not everybody made it. I'd thrown a number of parties by that point, if not in the "grownup" world; I didn't expect to see every face that went with every name on the list. I shrugged it off.

And then I got to work on Monday.

"Hey, I'm sorry I missed your party," the friend said as I walked through the door.

"No problem. Hope you had a great weekend!"

I made my way to my office and started to work. Later that day, when the second shift started, another friend emailed from his station on the floor.

"Hey, sorry I missed your party," he wrote. "Actually, I didn't miss it. I came to the party but I ran into Tammy [the friend] outside. We thought about coming in but decided to go to a movie instead."

Ouch.

Not only did he not come to the party, he actually came to the party but decided a movie with one of my guests would be far preferable to coming inside, even though he'd come from another city for the event.

He didn't understand why I might be upset - he'd come to the party, in his mind. He just didn't come to the party, from my point of view, which would have been fine if he hadn't told me the rest, that he was at my doorstep and rather than knock, he just left.

I'm convinced that there's a whole category of information that people shouldn't tell each other, that there is no benefit in passing along information that can only be seen as hurtful.

I would have preferred that he had never told me.


Tag: Friends

Fraud

The man walking down the street in front me seemed less than impressed with my swearing into the phone.

"Hello?" answered the voice at the end of the line.

"Hey," I replied. "Get this. The [expletive] who stole my [expletive] credit card number apparently gave my [expletive] cell phone number as a point of contact. When the card was declined, the [expletive] company called to tell me to verify my shipping address with the bank and asked for another [expletive] credit card."

"Seriously?"

"And then they put me on hold."

The company wanted me to cancel the order, the fraudulent order, that I hadn't placed.

The man walking down the street might not have been amused, but I felt better having shared the news with my sister.

"What was the company?"

"I don't know. I couldn't understand the message that they left."

I'd found a message when I walked home from dinner, a message telling me to call with a new number. I probably didn't need to do anything but I was a little irate at the use of my mobile phone so I called back to say, "That was fraudulent use of my card. You can ship whatever it is that you're shipping but you're not going to get paid for it."

I'd scribbled the number down on my pizza box. The order number, which might have been wrong. The name on the shipping address.

"Hello, this message is for Gary… Gary Roach," the message opened, as if my greeting indicated that it might have been remotely the right number to call with "Hi, this is Kristin" in my little girl, phone voice. Caller #3 on the new phone and it only served to make me angry. I could only imagine what earlier vendors must have thought, calling to check on the declined card and finding the number out of service, in a completely unrelated but equally annoying incident.

The thing that got me about the theft of my number, my address and name and telephone number, was that the person bought stuff. Shoes and computer equipment. An online dating profile. He ordered flowers for his mom/girlfriend/boss for Easter and shipped something from the post office. Most of this should have come with an address.

I could only hope that the credit card company investigations unit, with whom I've had multiple conversations as charges keep hitting my account, would show up at his house in camouflage and Kevlar and massive machine guns to demand justice. Pacifism be damned; I'm annoyed.

I just spent 10 minutes on hold.


Tag: Money Credit cards Theft

Stop-Loss

"It's easy," I thought, "so easy, to forget that we're at war, that men and women, some barely more than boys and girls, risk their lives every day. Lose their lives every day. In a war that nobody seems to understand, why we started or how to end."

I struggled to wrap my mind around the movie, the war, the just-turned-21 Marines I saw almost daily in my neighborhood, at the Metro station, in the bars.

Newscasters tried to remind us – with announcements of the five-year anniversary, 4,000 dead, photos, and words – but it didn't reach beyond an initial recognition, a wave of awareness followed by other, bigger waves crashing on the shores of my consciousness as I worried about my weekend plans and when I could my check from the economic stimulus package.

"New clothes?" I wondered. "Vacation? And am I really satisfied in my job? Might I prefer an interior office without an officemate to the view and the questions?"

What is wrong with me?

People are dying. Dying. And many of those who don't die are returning broken – physically, mentally, emotionally – by what they have seen and done. And here I sit, worried about plasma TVs, boys and booze.

In her new drama "Stop-Loss," co-writer and director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), examines the policy, in the United States military, of the retention of troops to remain in service beyond their expected term of service.

Filled with beautiful, tortured men - Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) – the movie moved me to tears at one point, despite the Texan accents, despite long, slow bits and Tatum's verbal stumbles, despite the violence or maybe because of them.

King encounters a hero's welcome when he returns to his small Texas town after a tour of duty and tries to return to his life, to pick up the pieces of a world he left behind, only to find that he's been ordered back to Iraq.

The DC audience cheered at some of the lines, the rebellion, the anger that King showed while fewer appreciated the hopelessness. We were, after all, just a movie-going audience in a major metropolitan area. Few of us had ever, would ever, see the sands of Iraq unless 15 years down the road, 20, after the war, somebody opens a 4-star hotel and offers a package deal to see the sights that have survived.

I was embarrassed as I walked out of the movie, about my life, my ignorance, the fact that we're still at war and it doesn't really affect my life.

It should.


Tag: Movies

Unknown

I didn't realize how much I looked forward to seeing him until he was gone, my Express guy, replaced by another whose name tag, face, smile meant little to me. I missed the man I had seen almost daily for over two years.

He used to work by the mouth of the station where I started. Over recent months, he'd moved to the terminus and I smiled at him, wished him a good morning, even if I already had the paper. Especially if I already had the paper. He was part of my routine and part of my life.

And this morning he was gone.

With a start, I realized that I didn't remember if I'd seen him yesterday either. Was he there? Was it the new man? Did I walk right past without noticing the change, the absence of a man I thought I knew?

A couple of weeks ago, I saw him resting against a building near the Metro elevator. He'd removed his boot, hiked up his jean and started pulling at his sock.

"Taking a break?" someone asked.

"No, I just need to…" he pulled off the lower part of his leg.

How could I have seen the man almost daily for over two years and not known he wore a prosthetic limb? Did I know him at all? Maybe the name on his badge wasn't even his own.

A lifetime ago, when I cleaned rooms at a local hotel, I wore my own badge when I remembered and somebody else's when I didn't, the same with my days as a cashier, my name varying from day to day.

How could I have seen the man almost daily for over two years and not know him at all?


Tag: Neighborhood

Views

There's a crane outside my window.




Every day, as I work, I experience a vague sense of dread. I am half convinced that it will swing into my office.

On some level, I know that it will not. On the same level, I know that it means a hotel will soon block my view.

In the meantime, until the hotel progresses from a hole in the ground, men with plans on blustery days, and earth movers, I plan to enjoy the view. I will not turn my desk from the window despite my looming fear, despite the looming crane.

I've been here for more than six years, in this office for three and a half. I'm not sure that I ever really appreciated the view.


Tag: Work

Declined

It took me a minute to figure out the little white slips that came back to the table. Two slips for signature under my friend's card but no place for my name under mine.

"It was declined," I said in wonder. "Do you have your phone?"

It was the first time I regretted the loss of my phone. Maybe the second. I wouldn't have minded calling for an ETA as I sat at the bar hours earlier, but I managed without one. Now, though, I needed to know what happened to my credit card.

"For security reasons, please enter your 10-digit account number…" followed by the last four-digits of my social security number, the first three letters of my mother's maiden name, my birth date and all of it again, with my complete address and name led me to a customer service representative.

"My card was just declined and I'm trying to find out why."

I had long since moved past the point in my life when my cards might be legitimately declined.

"Is there another card I can use?" the waitress asked and I slipped another from my wallet to pay my half of the bill.

"Are you at the HP Store right now?" asked the phone.

"No, I'm at Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar," and hugely embarrassed.

"Did you just buy something from Zappos?"

"No."

"Zappos.com."

"No."

"And the HP Store?"

"No."

"The Apple Store?"

"No."

"Singles.com? Orbitz? Yes! Organic Market?"

"Most definitely not Singles.com but yes to Orbitz and Yes."

"And you haven't lost your card?" she asked.

"No," I replied. I had just tried to use it.

"It seems that there's a lot of fraudulent activity on this account."

It did seem that way. She walked me through the steps they'd take, that I (in my wine-fogged mind) barely understood. A new number to memorize. New links to make between other accounts and bill payment. I wondered if I'd get miles for the fraudulent charges, doubting it but amused at the thought.

It tainted my evening. I felt off, disjointed, displaced until some time had passed. By the time a stranger lifted my hand to his mouth and slipped off my thumb ring, by the time a 23 year old draped his coat around my shoulders and slipped his arm, unbidden, around my waist, by the time I ran into an exboyfriend, The exboyfriend, I had forgotten all about the credit card. The night had spun into a degree of strangeness I couldn't understand. I could handle the card.


Tag: Theft

Habits

Waking up, disoriented, I didn't know if half the day had past or if I had beat the rooster's crow. Cocks don't crow all that much on Capitol Hill, at least not those of the feathered variety.

I looked at the clock and realized that I was somewhere between early and late. I thought about sleeping more but pulled myself free from the clutches of sleep and padded to the living room, realizing that I had nothing to do, nowhere to go. I found a pair of glasses, my laptop and a blanket. I found the remote and turned on the TV, as if I'd never left.

Nothing changed.

Nothing ever changed.

At some point, I made it into the kitchen for breakfast, knowing full well that I didn't really have anything to eat or anything to drink. I poured myself a glass of water, scrambled eggs, toasted the bread that seemed on the verge of molding. I found a box of muffin mix that had lived in my bedroom for ages before making it to the kitchen counter.

I baked for the boys at the bookstore, slipping into a familiar role, an old habit, giving my life meaning on a cold Saturday morning.

Making my rounds, to the bank, the bookstore, the farmers market and grocery, I wandered through my neighborhood, whiling away the hours. Talking with friends. Doing the things that needed to be done.

At home again, I would shelve the groceries and stretch out for a nap, not quite ready to slip into chores, to continue the cleaning, the unpacking and sorting. To think about spring cleaning and clearing out the things that I didn't need. To make something for dinner.

I had time and I was tired.


Tag: Habits

Into Africa

Lesotho.

Until three months ago, I couldn't pronounce it. Not correctly, anyway. I still stumble over it, wanting to make a long "o" of the letters that sound something more like "oo."

Until three months ago, I barely considered the landlocked country, the mountainous country, surrounded by South Africa. I might have found it on a map but I wouldn't have tried.

Now I find myself planning a trip. To South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia. To Lesotho.

A couple of months ago, a friend boxed up his belongings and headed to Africa with a battered suitcase and a job. On Tuesday, his girlfriend follows with two bags and a backpack.

Last night, I wandered through their empty apartment, picking up a laptop, a handful of condiments, the recyclables for which she didn't have room in the bin.

"Where are you going to sleep?" I asked. Someone had just come to pick up the mattress. The bed frame had long since gone. The sheets. The shower curtain.

"In a sleeping bag," she replied.

"Do you want to stay at my place?" I asked, offering a bed on her last night in DC. She gently refused, wanting to pack, to sort, to get her life together.

We walked to dinner. She was wrapped in my scarf, her winter coat had disappeared. Given away. Sold. Put into storage. Somewhere. Gone. She tucked her arm through mine and we braved the blustery night for one last dinner together, a pint of beer, conversation before she left it all behind.

And then I said goodbye.

I'd see her again. My friend. Her boyfriend. In the mountainous country of Lesotho, whether or not I could pronounce it.


Tag: Travel Friends

Important people

The girls at the end of the bar, the women in their matching pink twin sets and headbands, in their pearls, chattered loudly about bridesmaids and dresses, shoes and accessories, while I poured over my report and pretended to ignore them.

None of us fit with the sea of black suits. Not the sorority girls at the end of the bar, not me in my pink hat, my green skirt, my sweater, even with a laptop bag and small rolly. They were orange. (The bags, not the girls.)

The rest of the stools in the bar at the end of the airport were filled with businessmen waiting for commuter flights. Trips home. Many of them carried little more than a briefcase.

“Do people really still carry briefcases?” I wondered as I tapped out OK Go with my pen. Basketball played on the screens overhead, and I flashed my ID for a beer. Carded.

A black-suited woman claimed the stool next to me and ordered a Grey Goose gimlet. A grownup drink. A professional drink. She pulled out her Blackberry and started to type. Then, she started to talk.

“How was the wedding in Dubai?” she shouted over the din.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” I wondered and that was the intention. She asked to be transferred and chattered inanely about business class tickets. I ignored her and nodded to the man on my right, a man who’d just found his way to a stool.

“Less like a frat party,” I observed as he graduated from plastic to glass. Only the seated earned glasses.

“How long until I get my second passport?” shouted the woman to my right and I buried myself in my report, focusing on the appearance of charts. Of graphs. Of left alignment versus the center.

At some point, after that first beer, maybe during the second, I realized she wasn’t all that. She might have needed a second passport but I found my way to the airport for a flight to a city I loved with people I adored.

I had forgotten that they could be considered Important People, my friends – Manhattan doctors whose wedding ended up in the New York Times, Louisiana lawyers who ended up in the Wall Street Journal – even if I wasn’t anything more than just me. I only knew that I liked them.

The weekend would be one of the best I’d ever had.


Tag: Travel Airports

In between

"Hey, we were just driving past and noticed that the doors were open and people were coming out. Do you want to go back to the house?"

"Yes."

Yes, yes, yes.

"We'll be right there."

A new friend went off in search of her son, the charming 5-year-old ring bearer with whom I'd chatted at the rehearsal dinner. He had quite the collection of beads. We'd talk again later, at the reception. The 5 year old. His mother. Me. We made plans and broke them in the careless ease of fast friends.

Another friend, an older one or longer anyway, wandered in search of a program as I talked on the phone. We spilled onto the sidewalk with other displaced wedding guests after a surprisingly short and incredibly beautiful ceremony with a nervous, willowy bride and her nervous, smiling husband. He had a bit of the Cheshire cat in him, leaning in twice when asked to kiss his bride. His wife.

We almost followed the bride down the aisle, arriving seconds before her entrance, later than most and earlier than some. We edged into a pew, raising the kneeling pad with well-shod feet, behind a 4 month old who giggled and cooed at us. She was with her parents but it was the 4 month old who held our attention when the priest's voice waned, giggling and cooing back at her.

Barely an hour passed before the friends who dropped us off at the church called, passing on their way back to the house and the parade with a lap full of fried chicken, with sides and plates and bottles of water.

Hardly anyone drank the water.

We found our way to the upper balcony, up narrow, unstained stairs and through rooms filled with sawdust and promise. We ducked through the massive windows and onto the balcony where friends in green sipped at icy beer on a hot, New Orleans spring day.

People came and went, through the yard filled with trash, through the huge, dusty house halfway between studs and walls. The "Fight Club" house.

I stood on the balcony, barefoot and dressed in an evening gown, sipping my water. My beer. Opened by a boy in beads using the end of a lighter he'd found in one of the folding chairs. As the parade rolled past, the skill faded and he blamed the lighter over the beer.

We cheered for those who passed, calling out for beads. For flowers. For cabbages and potatoes, for balls and boas. A year earlier, someone with a decent arm managed to break one of the windows off the second story balcony.

All too soon, the parade had passed and so had our hours. We found our way back to the Quarter with a friend of a friend for the reception in a banquet hall in an old bank building. A bar tucked into the vault. Another by the dance floor and a third not too far from the entrance. Food in every corner. A room for the cakes.

The bride and the groom danced, their tension melting. The 5 year old danced in a feathered mask. My batteries died and we found ourselves locked into the hall when we tried to leave to get more. The night passed quickly. Too quickly. By the time I found my way home again, back to DC, it seemed a bittersweet memory of almond flavored icing and regrets. I should have danced. We should have talked. If only...


Tag: New Orleans Friends

Weekend in New Orleans

I'm winding down. Crashing hard. I worked on a video of my weekend in New Orleans using some of the new music released by Nine Inch Nails under Creative Commons licensing.

Of course, with my hour of sleep, my flight, my work, given that I'm all melancholy about leaving the city behind, I picked a song at the pace of molasses. On a cold day. In Maine. Given the same video and a bit of energy (or a lot more caffeine than I had), I would (or I will) make something a little peppier.



Then, again, I am sad about leaving.

Tag: New Orleans

Impressions

Tired. So, so tired. I'd blame the early flight, the late night with a puppy racing around overhead, but it wasn't that. Maybe it was that but only a little.

I yawned long before the sleepless night as we walked through the Quarter on our way to dinner at Irene's where we got lost in the shuffle with seating and serving, breaking plates along the way, garnering free dessert and sloshing a lovely red.

When I get my head about me, when the fatigue wears off, when the caffeine kicks in, I might be able to find the words to describe my trip. In the meantime… well…

Puppies and parades. Drinking at 9 o'clock in the morning in formal attire. Tuxedos. Evening gowns. Boas and hats. Cleavage. Three parades. Twice a participant. A day in a limo. We slipped from a carriage to make our way to the rehearsal dinner. Finding ourselves bedecked with beads on a balcony as floats rolled past in fits and starts, throwing beads and bags, cabbage and potatoes.

Drinking wine in the courtyard, in the gloaming, as the temperature dropped and wrapping myself in the comfort of conversation with good friends. Streetcars. Weddings. Receptions. The New York Times. Friends. Friends of friends. Friends of friends of friends.

Walking and talking and drinking more wine. Sparkling. Bubbling. Laughter.

So tired. So happy.


Tag: New Orleans

Unsupported

Months. I have known about this wedding for months. Maybe even a year. I could have planned better.

Of course, that's the story of my life: I could have planned better.

Sometimes, I do. I worked a solid chunk of the weekend and the early part of the week to complete a report due sometime on Friday. I actually drafted two versions of the report to give the customer options and delivered them Tuesday morning in their bright, shining, fully of deliberately-vague glory. Clear as mud. As requested. And early. I wanted to give it plenty of time to percolate, and so I waited for final word on the work.

And waited.

And waited.

Late Thursday morning, I received instruction to revise a whole bunch of text. Oodles of text. Reams of text. At my discretion. I needed to read and reread the 119 pages and make it make sense with three regions instead of eight, deleting text, revising graphics, updating links.

By noon 59, I had made my way through much of the report, reading in desperation, chopping entire pages, updating graphics, inserting random page breaks. Hoping that someone would read over the tracked changes and knowing that nobody would.

I planned to leave in an hour, maybe two, if I didn't want to check luggage. I considered slipping a version of the report into my bag and reading it, instead of my novel, on the plane and calling in with last minute revisions.

I panicked a little.

But that wasn't the worst part.

On Monday, I ordered new bits and pieces in hopes of getting them before the wedding. I had actually been (somewhat drunkenly) measured on Saturday night and given that stores didn't tend to carry my size, I hoped for the best. It was the closest to official that I had.

I went to a site that I knew and trusted. I picked styles with which I was familiar. I even paid for two-day delivery so I'd have them in time. Apparently, they were delivered yesterday. To Rural Hill, NC.

I live in Washington, DC.

I have the feeling that I'm going to be less supported than I'd like at this wedding. At work. In life.


Tag: Rush Procrastination

My Friend Hoss Part IV – Presents, Parrots and my Transvestite Doppelganger

By: NOLA Celeste

"Celest [sic] and Joe. I'm at Molly's. I have Cleo" stated an all-caps note that was duct-taped to the front door. "Happy Birthday Hoss!! Love, Mom" was written on the flip-side of the note in careful second grade teacher handwriting. A fuzzy bear sitting in a flower-filled field chasing a butterfly occupied the note's bottom-right corner.

At the top of the note was printed in scroll font: "Margaret F_____," who I guess is the mom to one Ronnie D___ "Hoss" F_____, the 300+ pound pony-tailed part-time offshore oilfield services worker, part-time Goth bar bouncer, part-time walker of my Doberman (the "Cleo" referenced above) and full-time French Quarter denizen who, at the time, was residing in the back room located off of the balcony to my former French Quarter apartment.

Hoss has a mom? Hoss has a mom with pre-printed stationary? Hoss has a birthday? Yes, yes and yes. In fact, he was turning 50 the next day.

The concept was confusing. I guess everyone has a mom and a birthday, I just had not associated either truth with My Friend Hoss.

I secretly know why Hoss wanted us to join him for his birthday that night. He had not been offshore for several weeks and probably spent all of the money he earned through odd bouncing jobs for various French Quarter bars on booze and call girls. We joined him at Molly's, a dog-friendly bar, with Cleo in tow. His friend Brian was there. Brian was meant to be his "minder" for the evening and was in charge of making sure that at 6:00 a.m. the next morning Hoss would meet a van that would take him to a helicopter port and then to a helicopter and then to an oilrig somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

After several rounds of drinks and a round of pool, Cleo the Doberman started to get grumpy, so we walked her home. "Where to next, Hoss?" inquired my husband.

"How 'bout Le-Round-Up?" he suggested. My husband and I shot each other suspicious sideways glances. Le-Round-Up has a colorful reputation. For starters, it is a gay bar, but that is neither here nor there. There are numerous gay bars in the Quarter where open-minded straight folks are quite welcome, particularly if they like dance music. Le-Round-Up, however, is a place where a Larry Craig-type bathroom foot tap would absolutely result in a "favor." In the same way that frequenting a Time Square massage parlour featuring teenaged-looking Asian girls in the 1980s would result in a "happy ending."

I have no idea why Hoss wanted to go to Le-Round-Up. I have no idea why we followed him there.

It was a lot brighter on the inside than I thought it would be. A large u-shaped bar occupied the front of the room, which was quite oddly painted white. Individual tables populated the back of the room. Various neon-lit beer signs (mostly with a rainbow theme) and posters of massively-muscled, chest hair-free men in tiny underpants adorned the wall.

Hoss introduced me to a person named "Seleece" who was leaning against the bar, digging in her Coach handbag. "OH MY GOD!" she said in response to learning my name. "People call me Celeste ALL THE TIME," punctuating her statement with air kisses and a gigantic hug.

She was dressed in stylish but far from Olsen twins-trendy jeans and a v-neck top covered by a fitted jacket. She had slightly-longer than shoulder-length brown hair, parted to the side. She looked like she stepped out of an advertisement for Ann Taylor Loft. She looked a lot like… me. Me with an Adam's Apple and man hands, the two features that estrogen therapy and makeup could never hide.

All of a sudden, a burst of color flew by and landed on my shoulder. "OH that's OSCAR," said Seleece. Oscar was a tiny parrot. His owner waived at us from across the bar. "If you make KISSY NOISES at Ocsar, he will SMOOCH you back," Seleece explained. "Um… okay," I said, making a "kissy noise" in Oscar's direction. As promised, Oscar responded by giving me a tiny peck on my lower lip.

Joe and I sat there for a while, sipping our beers. He spoke to Oscar's owner about the incredible ability of parrots to outlive their human handlers. Seleece and I mused over why models in lime green hot pants were passing out free Garnier Fructice shampoo samples on Bourbon Street. Hoss sipped on a glass of whiskey.

A slender person in a gold lame unitard with gold platform shoes, fishnet stockings and gold fake nails approached Joe. Tiny estrogen therapy-induced buds protruded through her thin top. "Heeeeeeeeeeyyyyyy," she said, grabbing Joe's arm. "Um, we have got to get out of here NOW," remarked my husband in a panic as he quickly shook his arm away. "Happy Birthday Hoss," he yelled, throwing $50 on the bar in Hoss' direction.

"So we've been to Le-Round-Up," he remarked as we walked out the bar.

"Yep, and we never need to go there again."

We decided to grab a drink at M'sER, partially to share our story with people who knew Hoss and partially to digest what had happened. A few minutes later, Hoss' minder Brian walked in. "Have you seen Hoss?" he asked. "Last time we saw him was at Le-Round-Up," I replied. "Well," Brian said, "He can take care of himself. I just came from there and he was nowhere to be found."

It's true. Hoss could take care of himself. With the help of an otherwise absentee out-of-state mom who sends him new overalls for his birthday, the bar owners who forget the too-many-to-count instances that he passed out at their bars or forgot to show up for work, and the friends and tourists whose hearts (and wallets) he won over with a simple "Hi… My name is Ronnie D___ F________, but my friends call me Hoss."
This strange evening is just one more line item on the list of reasons why I could only live in New Orleans, for only in New Orleans could a straight female lawyer clad in head-to-toe Ann Taylor and sensible shoes and her Ohio-born occasionally seersucker-clad (while in season) straight lawyer husband walk into a transvestite bar on an average Saturday night and make out with a parrot.

And, only in the French Quarter could a place like Le-Round-Up wind up rounding out our six-month stay at the corner of St. Philip and Royal, a half block from Pat O'Brien's, a block away from Bourbon Street and just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral.

I wonder where Hoss will wind up next?


Tag: New Orleans Hoss

Bluesday

With blues for Tuesday running through my head, I listened to Chris Isaac croon in a dirty whisper, "Baby did a bad bad thing" and read about Eliot Spitzer in the Washington Post.

The juxtaposition - the governor, the prostitute and the song - did not go unnoticed, and I giggled like a schoolgirl. It might have been the highlight of my morning but for Dr. Laura Schlessinger on the Today Show blaming Spitzer's wife.

I've missed Dr. Laura. I don't remember when I listened to her or why, but I distinctly remember many hours in the back of my own car, riding home from Mexico, and listening to her views on marriage and the role of women in society. I shouted from Brownsville to the Louisiana border. Only she would blame the wife.

Then, again, maybe others would find fault with a woman who didn't keep her husband out of the arms of a multimillion-dollar prostitution ring.

No one on the panel bothered to mention the timing of the whole get-together with the pricy prostitute. The night before Valentine's Day leading up to the morning of a day dedicated to love. Lovers. I can only hope that the gift he gave Mrs. Spitzer exceeded the $4,300 gift the guv bought for himself.

At least he didn't write a personal check.


Tag: News

Slumber party

After Saturday's slumber party, traveling on single-tracked trains, picking up a friend at the airport, shopping without buying, my body gave up. It gave in. I came home and crashed.

In a T-shirt, flannel pajamas dotted with Mickey Mouse and sprinkled doughnuts and red satin sandals, I fell asleep on the couch. I slept for almost 15 hours.

Eventually, I lost the sandals. I had been trying to break them in, teetering around my black and white tiled apartment, climbing on furniture to fix a falling blind, folding and shelving laundry, in flannel pajamas and spiky heels. I woke up enough to take them off, to move the bags of groceries into the kitchen and to crawl into bed.

I slept with the lights on and the heat off. I awoke, freezing, rolled over, pulled a blanket around my shoulders and went back to sleep.

The alarm sounded too early. Early enough. The sky was black. I curled into myself and decided to work from home, to sit in pajamas on the couch all day, trying to accomplish all that needed to be done in too little time. My stomach flipped and I curled into myself, willing everything to be all right.

On Saturday night, I slumbered with friends. On a futon. On the floor. In a grownup version of the schoolgirl's treat, we played poker and drank wine. Talked too late. Made it out to a bar at the point when nobody needed another drink or a bar. We measured ourselves for bras. It made sense at the time and most of the guys had left but the one passed out on the couch.

We didn't wear pajamas or curlers. We didn't paint our nails or our faces, but we did talk about boys. About love. Marriage. Books. Celebrity gossip. We stayed up too late on a night that would steal an hour of sleep.

The metro ride there, the single tracking, an indigent smelling of urine. The metro ride home, an hour and a half of waiting and slow moving trains. The everything in between. It took something out of me. Fifteen hours of sleep barely put it back.

Vacation. Four days and I would be on vacation. In the meantime, I have work to do and my sanity to preserve.


Tag: Sleep

This is the day

It's amazing what makes one think. Four words in an M&Ms commercial.

"This is the day…"

Scenes from Empire Records. Liv Tyler and Renée Zellweger, Anthony LaPaglia and Johnny Whitworth, scoring one for the little guy and dancing under the night sky.

I have never danced on a roof. I did climb up on one, though, in a blue cotton sundress. I lay under the haze of light pollution and looked for stars, drinking cheap beer and eating chocolate chip cookies.

The fire escape tore into my hands and bare feet. The rooftop left dirt on my bare shoulders, my arms and legs. The windowsill through which I'd climbed left bruises on my leg and the ladder left blisters on my hand. Up. Down. Sweater. Bathroom. Up. Down.

I hoped the night would never end, there on a cool July night, on a slanting rooftop in Brooklyn.

"This is the day…"

Just a bite of the song and my mind devoured the entire thing, even the balding, hairy green M on the screen.

I had some in the fridge, in the freezer. M&Ms. Dark chocolate.

In first grade, learning to spell, I poured over a workbook struggling to place the first letter of the images I saw.

"Sound it out."

"Ca... ca... cat. What letter sounds like 'ca'?"

I don't remember much of first grade. Mexico, my teacher, the girl who put paste in my hair, and that workbook.

Another picture.

"That doesn't start with 'F,'" my teacher prompted. "Sound it out."

"But it does start with 'F,'" I protested.

"No, it doesn't."

I pouted awhile in my little plastic chair at the kidney-shaped table and stared at the picture.

"Fridge. Fridge starts with 'F.'"

"Re-fridgerator."

I still think I was right.

I wonder what happened to the girl who pasted my hair.

I didn't eat any M&Ms last night, but I did think about it. I definitely thought about the commercial - the song, at least - all night.


This is the Day
By The The

Well... you didn't wake up this morning
Because you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes
Turn red
The calendar, on your wall, is ticking the days off
The calendar on your wall is ticking
the days off
You've been reading some old letters
You smile and think how much you've changed
All the money in the world
Couldn't bring back those days.
You pull back the curtains, and the sun burns into your eyes,
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky.
This is the day – Your life will surely change.
This is the day – Your life will surely change.
You could've done anything – if you'd wanted
And all your friends and family think that you're lucky.
But the side of you they'll never see
Is when you're left alone with the memories
That hold your life together like
Glue


Tag: Songs Memories

Jury duty

What did the video call it? My "civic responsibility." After the first hour, I had checked in, gotten myself oriented (with the help of a video) and finished "Valley of the Dolls." Civic responsibility? Just doing my job, ma'am.

I also ate a Clif® Bar in Jurors' Lounge, which was verboten. Breaking the rule was the highlight of my morning.

Starkly vast, the room resembled less a lounge than an airport gate. Row upon row of half-empty, sturdy blue chairs. Hundreds of seats. Overhead, Jodi Foster frantically tried to convince the in-flight crew of her daughter's disappearance on a half-dozen TV screens. Newspapers rustled. Strangers talked softly in their boredom.

In line, as we waited for badges, for acknowledgment that we'd met our obligations, I met a woman who worked for the same agency as I. She found a seat a half dozen rows in front of me, working on a report. She planned to be at work in the morning, to find some way out of a case were she called. For the moment, though, no judges had requested panels. No selections. No need to stay. Not after we were dismissed, anyway.

An announcement floated through the air. A second round of jurors. At the front of the room, an elderly woman with bristly white hair shouted "I'm back" in the way that only the hard of hearing could shout personal details.

"I was in the restroom!"

At the end of the row in front of me, a woman curled awkwardly in her sturdy blue chair, pulling her coat up to her neck and trying to sleep. Within minutes, the coat rose and fell with her breathing. Snoring rumbled soon after.

Overhead, Jodi Foster screamed at two men. They screamed back in heavily-accented tones.

"This woman is crazy."

I wondered what happened to the woman in the wonderful Scarface jacket, Al Pacino airbrushed in denim glory. She had stood in front of me in line.

A thin woman, lumpy under a tight black shirt and pants, with an artfully slung scarf and carefully tousled hair, rummaged in her bag, paper crackling as she dug out a can of Diet Coke - the crack and fizzle of cold caffeine. Noisily, she rooted for a pastry wrapped in waxed paper.

"No eating or drinking in this area."

No cell phones either, but the man behind me talked business on his, loudly, as snores rumbled softly. The girl with the scarf and hair, with the soda and scone, pulled a newspaper from her bag, snapping it open and tapping the front page loudly. The woman beside her, a blond in a houndstooth coat, looked from side to side, glancing over her shoulder more than once, with the panicked nature of a woodland creature preparing to spring.

Coke. Pastry. Paper.

Jodi Foster continued to search. Frantically. I barely remembered the film. A hand? A heart? Traced on the window.

Conversations rose and fell. The room started to fill. The sturdy blue chairs started to fill. Row upon row. Hundreds of DC residents including a half-dozen, maybe more, very pregnant women. I turned to "Darkmans," my other (less trashy) book.

"Wow, that guy is kind of hot," I thought as a man took a seat next to the woodland blond. "And somebody really smells."

Baby powder. Body odor. Bad highlighting. Coughing. Movie. Texting. Texting. Texting. Talking. Sleeping.

Civic responsibility.

At some point, I was strong encouraged to leave the lounge. Kicked out. So other, newer jurors might watch the orientation video and thrilling as it was, I gave up my seat and found my way to the business center to read, to shiver, to wait.

And wait.

And wait.


Tag: DC Jury duty

Yesterday

Yesterday, I found out that coworker's mother died. I didn't know what to say, standing at her desk, waiting for her signature.

"I was with her," she said. "That's what I wanted."

She looked up as she handed me the form.

"I miss her."

I wanted to wrap my arms around her in a comforting hug, to tell her that everything was going to be all right, but it wasn't and we were at work. One doesn't give comforting hugs at work. One offers condolences and exits stage left, with a sympathetic scowl.

Yesterday, I found out that a friend was in labor. Induced. After years of waiting and wondering, after years of hoping and disbelieving, she would have a baby.

We hadn't talked in ages. A friend of a friend of the mother-to-be sent me the message, let me know that she was in the hospital for the planned delivery of her baby. I vaguely knew she was pregnant. I don't know how I forgot; every mention, thought, email of it, made me happy.

Yesterday, I worked too much. I slept too little. I read a trashy novel and enjoyed every second of it. I wanted to buy myself presents and didn't. I thought baby gifts, flowers, donations "in memory of." A day passed. A night. And life went on.


Tag: Time

Spoke too soon

I should have known better. Complaining about being a woman alone? Because of a spider? It sounds petty, even to my own ear, especially followed by my work email.

"Security Alert," announced one tag line with a little red envelope to designate urgency. It was from the office admin, though, and I skimmed over it on my way to other, more important, client-related messages. To tasks and questions. To things that kept me gainfully employed.

At some point, I came back to the red envelope. Apparently, a female coworker was accosted in the parking garage. Chased by a stranger. At three in the afternoon.

I read that part twice: 3 p.m.

I don't think I've ever left the office by three, not for anything short of an emergency, vacation or a meeting in another location. OK. So the meetings happened fairly regularly, but I often found my way back to the office to finish my normal eight-, 10-, 12-hour day with just one more thing to do, read, find, send.

I have worked well past midnight on occasion. As late as four or five in the morning. As early as four or five in the morning.

In the middle of the day, in the middle of Arlington, a man accosted my coworker, a friend, in our garage. She got away. Nothing happened, nothing more than a terrible fright, and she filed a report with the building's security who called the police. She would be OK. For the most part.

"Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions or concerns," the message closed, as if anyone could really address our concerns.

In Annandale, a man has been accused of entering a woman's apartment and trying to sexually assault her. Another man has been accused of abducting a Woodbridge woman from a park and raping her on Saturday. Authorities are alerting residents near the University of Maryland about a man who has been jumping into students' beds and groping them before fleeing.

That's what I really hate about being a woman alone. I can handle the spiders.


Tag: News

Girly

Sometimes, I hate being a girl, a woman, alone. I'm not actually sure which part of that makes the statement true – "sometimes, "a woman," "alone" – but it is so.

I have a box by my door, a red shoebox with a striped lid. It's my cricket box. I use it to pick up the camel backs I find in my house and to take them outside. My urban English basement apartment draws the cave cricket like, well, an urban English basement apartment draws cave crickets.

Apparently, I should not pick up and discard individual crickets. I should use a vacuum but I have images of them breeding in my Hoover and coming back to reclaim the apartment. Cave crickets climbing through the hose and escaping into my closet. Thousands of little legs clicking on the tile floor; though, to avoid starvation, they have been known to devour their own extremities. Depending on the length of their incarceration, they might be less a leg or two.

House centipedes serve as a natural predator, but that would require centipedes running around my house, which isn't any better.

I could spray with chemicals I cannot pronounce or I could invest in sticky strips, which would require disposal of decaying little carcasses. Not only that, I wouldn't know where to begin. I'd have to carpet my entire apartment with stickiness; those suckers can jump.

"Given their limited vision, cave crickets will often jump towards any perceived threat in an attempt to frighten it away. Their large hind legs allow them to jump high and far." [Reference.com]

They climb the walls. The shower curtain. Into my bed. And that's when I have a problem. Crickets in my bed. In the shower. With me. Naked.

Granted, the crickets are always naked, but I feel a little disadvantaged when I find myself in the same position. Vulnerable. That's why I have the box. The cricket jumps toward me. I jump out of the tub, shut off the water, and catch the critter to take it outside. Later. Like when I'm dressed. With the water running, I don't hear it clicking against the sides of the box and I do not run outside naked.

The last time it happened, I left the box by the front door. A few days ago, when I found a cricket in the shower, I picked it up with the glass that comes with the toothbrush holder [note to self: wash glass] and dumped it, the cricket, into the trashcan. I knew it would find its way out, but as long as it didn't shower or sleep with me, I didn't much care.

I turned on the water and stepped under the stream, shaking a little as the cold left my bones. Soap. Shampoo. As I moved to the back of the tub to grab the conditioner, I noticed a shadow on the curtain.

"Stupid cricket," I thought and tapped on the liner, hoping it would hop away. The shadow moved to the left. The shadow crawled to the left. More curious than anything else, I stuck my wet head out of the shower to look.

And then I screamed.

It was a spider the size of my fist. Well, maybe not the size of my fist, but it was a spider the size of a camel back cricket, which is not small.

At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to have someone react to my scream. Someone to save me. Someone to kill the spider or take it away or do something so that I wouldn't have to think about the fact that I had a spider the size of a camel back cricket in my shower.

Nobody came to save me. Nobody was there.

I tried to get the spider to go away. I poked at it through the plastic liner, through the cotton curtain. I ignored it until it fell into the shower and then I splashed it, trying to get it to climb out of the shower, my sight, my memory. When it wouldn't go away, I splashed it until it curled up into a scared little ball of spider flesh and then I smashed the heck out of it with my conditioner bottle.

Definitely not my most shining achievement, I finished the shower in peace.


Tag: Insects

If not consistent

I love movies. Old movie theaters with uncomfortable, sagging seats and dusty, worn velvet curtains. New ones with stadium-style seating, adjustable armrests, and smooth rocking. The smell of popcorn, oil and salt singing the air. Staggering under the weight of a barrel of Coke. Colorful, flavorless jelly candies pulling on fillings. Thundering surround sound. A couple of hours in another world.

I blame my mother.

She was 12 when it started, the weekly trips, the matinees. She continued through her teens, through college, even into her 20s, breaking the habit only when we were too poor to afford films for four. We could barely afford both toothpaste and shampoo but even then, we had an early VCR.

She still uses a VCR. She's also back to the weekly matinees. These days, she takes her own aging mother and my advice. We compare notes, on occasion, and she always asks my recommendations, whether or not she takes them. We have different tastes in films. She likes fantasy and romance. I like Indie films and foreign flicks. Quirkiness. The unexpected.

I also love horror flicks. In that, we differ. And my propensity to watch really bad movies. Horrible. Completely without merit. Commercials and all. Disgusted with myself and my choice in programming, I will push myself away from the TV but before I go, I'll hit record and tape the last half of a movie that I would actually come back and watch. I told myself that I couldn't leave the film unresolved, that it would play endlessly, looping, until I discovered the end.

That's a lie. I really just like bad movies.

Last night, I sat down to watch a flick I'd recorded: The 13th Floor. It scored 29 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating. About three minutes into the film, I realized I'd seen it before but that didn't stop me. I sat down and watched it. Again.

It was just as bad as the first time.


Tag: Movies

Frightening but delicious

My lunch matches my Nalgene bottle, my 32 ounce, polycarbonate loop-top bottle in pink.



That's what happens when the CSA sends beets (and I buy more to round out a recipe). Russian Beet Salad. It's magenta. And delicious.

Russian Beet Salad
by Mollie Katzen
The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest

Ingredients:

* 8 beets (2 1/2 inch diameter)
* 1/4 cup cider vinegar
* 1 medium clove garlic - minced
* 2 teaspoon honey
* 1/2 teaspoon salt

* 1/2 cup minced red onion
* 2 scallions (greens and whites) - minced
* 1 medium cucumber - peeled, seeded, and finely chopped
* 2 hardboiled eggs - chopped
* 2 tablespoons minced fresh dill
* 2 cups combination of yogurt and sour cream
* Fresh black pepper to taste

Instructions:
Trim the beets of their stems and greens, and place them in a medium-large (non reactive) saucepan. Cover them with water, bring to a boil, and cook until they are tender enough for a fork to slide in easily (20-25 minutes).

Meanwhile, combine the vinegar, garlic, honey, and salt in a medium-large bowl. Stir until well-combined.

Rinse the cooked beets under cold running water as you rub off their skins. Chop them into l/2-inch bits, and while they are still warm, add them to the vinegar mixture. Let stand 30 minutes.

Add all remaining ingredients. Mix well, and chill until very cold.


Tag: Food Cooking

Baby shower

I started reading Toddler Planet in July when the author was first diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, a rare but aggressive disease. I kept reading because she was a darn good writer and brutally honest about her experience, about the chemo and the baldness, the double mastectomy and the scars as well as about dancing in the rain. The eclipse. The first time her toddler son asked, "Why?"

Late last week, she posted an announcement of sorts: A virtual baby shower. A literal baby shower for virtual friends? Real friends with virtual ties? Real ties but... The lines were blurred. The idea came from a friend of a friend or a blog linked to a blog.

In a nutshell, there's a woman, who's having a baby girl. She's got a husband, a toddler and some hard times as well as the sweet anticipation for her daughter Alice.

I don't know her, her husband or son. I don't know the blogger who linked to her or the one who linked to that or the one who linked to that, but the most recent connection, Toddler Planet, was one I read and respected, so I clicked through the links, read the story and decided to get involved.

Of course, I don't have gently used baby gifts, much to my mother's relief and my nephew and nieces' dismay. I could go and buy something new - there are registries – but I decided to give what I would want - money. Though, it wasn't really money that I wanted to give, but freedom from worries. Maybe. Just a little. It wouldn't do much; I wish I had more.

Who couldn't use a little freedom from worry?

The (somewhat) original post:

Lizarita here. I’ll get right to it:

My good friend Liz and her family are going through some hard times (as we ALL have) and I got to thinking…"What can I do to help???" And then I read her comments and talked to her and came up with a solution: Liz’s Virtual Baby Shower. This baby shower will function in two parts: I’ll be heading up one side of the shower and Julie will take up the other side (see: below).

Since so many of you have graciously offered to pass along your gently used baby items, I was thinking that I could administrate this effort and make sure all the items are delivered safely and soundly to the house of h.

And for those of you that know me, you know that being bossy is what I do best so this is the PERFECT job for me. Ahem.

The Details:
If you have any gently used baby items that you would like to contribute, please send me an email to lizaritablogs AT gmail DOT com and I will tell you where to send your package.

In order to get the word out to as many of the good people on the Interweb as possible, there is a little contest involved. Create a post on your blog about the collection efforts and link to this post. Please let me know via email if you are participating. And feel free to grab a little blog bling while you’re at it! Please be sure to mention this contest in your post so others can join in the fun! A winner will be chosen at random.

The prize? Liz’s baby! (Kidding). I’m not sure what the prize is yet, but I can assure you that it will be FABULOUS!

Please keep in mind that Liz is having a GIRL so even though she would appreciate those navy blue corduroy overalls with the trains and planes on the front, her daughter would look kinda funny in them, so please refrain from sending them.

Thank you in advance for your kindness.

BUT WAIT!!! That’s not all! Some of you are thinking "Liz needs to get some NEW stuff, too!" and we thought the same thing…

And this is the second part of Liz’s Virtual Baby Shower:

Hi all—Julie from the calm before the stork here, and I’m helping to host the Brand New Baby Things side of Liz’s Virtual Baby Shower for those of you that want to hook a sister up with some new things.

After I read her recent post about money, or the lack thereof, I thought my awesome internet friend Liz—who so completely propped me up with her encouragement around the time of my baby boy’s birth not so long ago—could use a little mirth in advance of the birth of her daughter, Alice.

So here’s my extra little somethin’ offer as co-host of this interweb-wide giftie event. Not only will you pick up some sex-ay blog bling, but you’ll be entered to win one of my mugs. If you would like to purchase a little somethin’ somethin’, please check out her Babies R Us or Target registries, and be sure to drop by my place and leave me a comment