One by one

One by one, people excused themselves for bed. The Doberman first (it had been a long day), followed shortly by each of her owners. It was a Sunday night and we'd all have to work in the morning. Some sooner than others as I had two flights and a time zone between myself and my office.

Eventually, there were just two of us left watching basketball in high definition.

"I didn't realize it was 11," the other one said. "I thought it was closer to 10."

"I have to get up at three," I replied. "It doesn't matter any more."

And it didn't. I stayed up and watched the rest of the game before my three hours of rest, before rubbing the grit of too little sleep from my eye.

I didn't regret missing the festival until I got to the airport and, even then, just a little. A delayed flight on Thursday meant I arrived midday on Friday. The skies opened up and all of the fury of heaven poured forth in giant buckets on Saturday, turning the fairgrounds into a grand, muddy mess as rivers formed in low-lying bits.

We talked about going on Sunday, to see Elvis Costello, but the rain returned and our day melted into beer making and gelato eating, boiled crawfish and the nothing and everything of being with friends. Trivial conversations mixed with the key over mudbugs while my hands, already aching from blackberries and brambles, burned with seasoning, dirt and grit even before I stabbed myself with a hundred little claws when I cleaned the stainless steel counters.

"So, when are you coming back?" the other one asked and stuck out his tongue. "Next weekend?"

He asked when I would get an apartment and stay. I didn't have an answer. I never had an answer but my visits seemed to melt into each other, coming faster and faster. On Sunday afternoon, I wondered aloud, "When can I come back?"

I hadn't left yet.

Tired and cold in the artificial air at the airport, quiet and slow, I would check my email for work, regretting reality. Around me, girls in short summer dresses and scarves and couples with cruise ship tags shivered sleepily. Voices raw with fatigue rumbled softly.

With the airport's free WiFi, I would look at the site for the festival I had ostensibly come to see and completely missed and I would look for tickets back to New Orleans. I couldn't help it. The fever would have to run its course. I didn't know which would break first: it or me. One would give sooner or later.

The Acadian festival and tapas, blackberry pie and the dogs, drinks with friends, making beer, sanitizing everything, driving and talking. And talking. And talking.

"I don't want to leave," I said to the other one as he stood to go. The rest had gone, to home or to bed. "I really don't want to go."


Tag: Travel Friends New Orleans

Blackberry pie

We thought about walking to the back of the property, meandering through the waist-high grass on right side of the house as we'd done with the pasture on the left. In the end, though, we climbed into the SUV and drove just to see how far it went.

"Somebody could have a crystal meth lab back here, and we'd never know," my friend said of their country house as we bounced through the grass.

Neighbors cut their grass, bailed their hay and used the pasture for their horses. While I cleaned out the car, another asked in his soft, Cajun accent if he could use their yard for training his dogs; my friends didn't mind. Their country house came with seven acres or so, more than they would ever use.

It did not, however, come with a crystal meth lab, as far as we could tell as we bounce. Just blackberries, ripe and sweet, glistening in sun. We stopped to pick one or two and just kept going as the brambles tore at our skin and clothes.

"You have brambles," I said. "And a thicket."

We played with the words, blackberries, brambles and thicket, as we picked. My college friend got a cup from the car and then a bag as we filled first the one and then the other.

"We should make a pie," he said even though none of us knew anything about baking a blackberry pie. "I wish I had my Blackberry so I could see how much we need."

Blackberry, blackberries. I estimated six to eight cups and we all kept picking, dots of blood and sweat on the backs of our hands, our arms, from the prickly stalks. Twice I brushed against a plant that seemed to spit, large, glisten gobs waited on leaves for some poor passerby.

"I hope that isn't poison ivy," my college friend said.

"It doesn't look like poison ivy," I replied, but it did seem suspect. A plant that spit.

We'd all shower when we got back to the house, popping allergy pills in attempt to stave off any attacks brought about by our sudden desire to do something wholesome out in the country. As far as I know, none of us succumbed to the spitting plant or poison ivy. Though, my hands, my right hand and both forearms are covered with scratches, bumbs and welts. The same with my legs. I already had a burn on my bicep from baking the cookies; I have a matching one on the back of my wrist from the pie because we did bake a pie.

Two of them.

We had a slight issue with the oven temp as the berries bubbled from the store bought shell and the top of the lattice work burnt at the edges. Someone found a rolling pin and I made another shell from scratch, not my greatest strength, and we scooped the insides from one pie into the other.

Later, as the pie baked, the rain would crash down in a fit of thunder and lightening, watering the trees my friends had bought and planted that morning. A pear. A Celeste fig for my friend, NOLA Celeste. Jazz Fest turned into a wet, muddy mess or so we heard when we went to a post-festival party. Outside. In the rain. Most people had bailed, on the party at least. The ones that we met were diehard festivalers and drinkers, far drunker than us with our single glass of wine.

"It was serious rain," people said. "It was monsoon rain."

We'd driven through some of it. By the time we got to the party, it alternated between steady drizzle and pelting downpour. We didn't stay long.

We'd end up at a bar with another friend who'd also been at the festival. He came home with us after work, after the bar, and enjoy a slice of pie.

"We picked the berries ourselves."


Tag: Louisiana Baking

Almost perfect and definitely interesting

A plane lying crooked and broken on the runway at Baton Rouge almost made the delay and detour worthwhile. Sitting in the airport, waiting for a friend's meetings to end so that she could pick me up, I hauled out my laptop.

The business center wasn't a WiFi hotspot and cell phone reception was null. The lactation room didn't seem much better; though, the chair looked incredibly comfortable and there were electrical outlets. I ended up in a lounge just outside the security checkpoint. Or just inside, depending on one's point of view.

All around me on comfy banquettes all their own, nobody shared, people typed, heads down, fingers flying, as planes taxied, took off and landed just outside the plate glass windows. None of us noticed.

At some point, not too long after I'd forsaken the business center for a comfy banquette of my own, a crowd formed near the window, I looked up and there it was. A plane with a broken wing staring back at us. So I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures.

The man next to me laughed.

"Look at you," he said. "Camera and all."

I grinned sheepishly until a few minutes later, a man pulled out a professional camera with a telephoto lens. At that point, I didn't mind at all. I just kept snapping.

"I missed it," the man said. "I was working on my laptop and looked up, and there it was. Then, I looked around. Everybody had there heads down in their computers."

"If there'd been a kid here," I observed. "He would have been plastered to the glass."

The man laughingly agreed and we chatted awhile as I waited for my friends. I heard a maintenance man say that the wing had crumpled and the plane spun in circles before leaving the ground. Nobody was hurt.

After the broken plane, the day would be filled with books and music, food and wine, and above all time with friends. We'd find our way to the Festival International de Louisiane where we'd eat fried alligator and listen to rhythms and blues, enjoyed tapas with flamenco dancing and wander the busy streets on an Acadian festival, drinks in hand. Almost perfect and definitely interesting.


Tag: Travel

Too much time

Thursday night, 8:14 p.m.
I should be on a plane. I should be on a plane right now, heading south. Instead, I'm sitting on my couch with the scent of zucchini bread in the air and a glass of very bad wine at my feet. I bake when I'm stressed. Sometimes, I drink, too, but baking seems more productive. And I am stressed. Because I'm not on a plane heading south.

When an electronic voice told me my flight was delayed by a half hour or so and to check in on time, I headed to the airport. I was a little early, especially for National, but a delay of a half hour or so would make my connection really hard to make. Impossible, as it turns out.

I tried to check in at the kiosk and ended up with a ticket telling me to see an agent. A man in a vest asked me what I needed and walked me over to the woman in first class.

"I get a minute to breathe and you bring someone over to me," the woman said, shaking her head.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I know what the problem is."

Both the man in the vest and the tired woman looked at me.

"What?"

"I'm not going to make my connection."

The woman sighed and the vested man walked away.

"Maybe I can send you through Dallas," the woman said, and I rested my elbows on the counter, realizing the futility of the search. I let her go. A few minutes later, she looked up in surprise and said, "I can't find a flight into New Orleans. They're all booked."

"It's Jazz Fest," I explained.

She pursed her lips and continued to look. And look. And look. After a while, she walked away to find her manager, to find help. She came back, looked at her screen and said, "I can get you into Miami tonight and you can get a flight to New Orleans leaving at 11:25, arriving 12:25 tomorrow afternoon."

I shook my head.

"That won't work," I said.

"That's all I have. I asked my manager. He should not have given you to me."

"Can he come over here?" I asked.

"I asked him and that's what he said to do."

The vested man approached and asked for the problem.

"She says that won't work," the pursed woman said.

"That's all we have."

"Can you get me to Baton Rouge?" I asked. "I need to get to Baton Rouge tomorrow."

Either way, I'd miss one day of a three-day festival but I didn't much relish the thought of missing my friends. After a half hour or so, after the line swelled and ebbed with displaced passengers and tight connections, after check in and bag check, the woman behind the counter found me a ticket that didn't require sleeping in an airport one night and crashing on the couch of a boy whose girl didn't like me, the next.

And so I came home. Pulling my suitcase during rush hour, my laptop bag, the box of cookies, as I'd done across the city all day from home to the client site to my office to the airport to home again. My back hurt. My arms hurt, and I was tired.

With a day out of three cut from my trip, I tried to repack but my brain had turned to mush. I ran to the store for sugar and wine and started to make the bread, realizing halfway through I only had half of the zucchini I needed and ran to another store for more. I baked and I poured; I popped in the movie and sat on the couch.

In a handful of hours, I'll be heading south. To Texas, first class, and on to Baton Rouge to catch up with friends. With music. With a place I want to be. And all will be good.

9:27 p.m.
I should go to bed.

10:13 p.m.
I should really go to bed.

11:07 p.m.
I'm going to bed.

Friday, morning 12:52 a.m.
Why is someone calling me?

4:14 a.m.
So tired.

Tag: Travel

Taking time

"Cookies?" asked the man on the elevator, staring at the box tucked under my arm.

"White chocolate chip," I confirmed.

"Somebody's pretty lucky," he said, drooling a little on his blue silk tie. I might have offered him one but that would have been a little strange. I didn't know him, the man on the elevator, and I would rather have shared the cookies with friends.

Ostensibly, I'd baked them for friends. In hindsight, however, I wondered what possessed me.

On Tuesday, one of my nails ripped down to the quick, past the quick, to the fast and the furious. Emergency nail repair at a salon close to work led to 45 minutes of monster ballads and constant haranguing.

"You use basecoat. You paint like this. See? Good."

It also led to square orange nails, hazard orange, the color of pylons and construction barrels, the color of vests in sporting goods stores late in the fall, which, probably would have been fine if my toenails weren't bright red and I found myself heading south to Jazz Fest, to blotchy sunburns and open-toed shoes.

I planned to fit a pedicure into my packed schedule, carrying my flip flops, but the fix didn't hold, which made sense given the grand stripping of the bed, the sorting of laundry, the constant typing. I ended up Scotch taping my middle finger for the rest of the day, to remind myself to favor a nail that would cause pain, bleeding and constant embarrassment, if torn completely.

Later, I'd MacGyver it together with super glue, a teabag and pair of scissors. Later still, I'd give myself a pedicure and a manicure that matches in its own reddish and mottled way, before packing or eating, after the laundry and baking, after I'd lost my mind.

I repacked in the morning, adding my laptop and a handful of books, glasses and sunglasses and deodorant, which I'd forgotten in the first go 'round but would surely need in the land of Jazz Fest, blotchy sunburns and open-toed shoes.

I carried the box of cookies, juggling and huffing to get up a stopped escalator, sometimes moving stairs, with too much stuff, with a suitcase and laptop, with cookies and books. I knew it didn't matter. I could show up with nothing more than the clothes on my back and I'd be fine in a place that felt more and more like home.

My friends wouldn't care if I brought cookies or not. They wouldn't care if I wore the same dress for five days in a row, but the elevator man made me glad I'd taken the time.


Tag: Baking

Shattered

I should have known better, as is always the case. The last time I ordered frames with glass, one of them broke.

Actually, the last time I ordered frames with glass, they sent the wrong size. The company told me to keep the mistake as they figured the glass would break on the return shipment, but the time before that. And the one before that. And the one before that. The glass broke.

I'd stop buying frames with glass but plexi only lasts so long before getting scratched.

I'd stop buying frames online, but it's hard to find affordable gallery frames with archival quality mats and UV-blocking glass and strangely enough, I need that. Because I'm exhibiting my photographs. In Oregon. Even if I found something local, I'd have to ship it to a rainy little corner of the US almost as far as it can get and stay in the lower 48.

The boxes were marked fragile, according to the girl who opened them. Fragile, "tattered and squished and full of shards of glass," thanks to a careless delivery man or the people who loaded the trucks or those who loaded the planes. Hundreds of sparkly little dollars lay broken and useless at the girl's feet.

The photos themselves arrived intact, in a separate package, but that didn't help. They couldn't exactly tape them to the walls.

The girl called the company to facilitate an exchange. The frames were on backorder. Once she repackaged and shipped the tattered remains of my frames, they would consider refunding my card, the dollars I'd already paid, or wait for new frames, sometime mid-May, which might arrive in similar condition.

I could display fewer photos. I could find new frames or I could spend more money to replace the glass. I went with new frames, increasing my total expense on this project by hundreds more. If that glass breaks, I'll ask the girl to replace the glass, at cost to me, but I feel like a nuisance.

I hope she called to have the return shipment picked up.

It's my first photographic exhibition. Next time, I'll… I don't know what I'd do differently, but I hope there's a next time.

My photos. My thoughts. My life. Me. Hanging on a wall in black and white for all the world to see. Naked. Exposed. If only I can find glass that doesn't shatter en route.


Tag: Photography

Angola Prison Rodeo – Guts and Glory

By: NOLA Celeste
Fair Disclosure – I have met a few of Kristin's readers who remember my guest post about cockfighting in Louisiana. If that post ruffled your feathers, this one definitely will, as it involves humans.

On Sunday, my husband and I ventured about 2.5 hours north of New Orleans to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. Angola Prison, known as "The Farm," houses 5,000 of the state's most notorious criminals – murders, rapists and child molesters – in a maximum security setting situated on 18,000 acres of farmland bounded on three sides by the Mississippi River. Besides being a working farm, it is also home to Louisiana's electric chair (last used in 1991). Nearly all of its prisoners will die behind its gates, as the average sentence is 50-88 years.

It is also home to the Angola Prison Rodeo, which just like any rodeo (I guess) features barrel racing, rodeo clowns and various other forms of equine and bovine entertainment. Unlike most other rodeos, however, at the Angola Prison Rodeo, the best-behaved prisoners – the best-behaved murders, rapists and child molesters – have the opportunity to volunteer to be gored by bulls for cash prizes.

The grounds are surprisingly beautiful. As you drive up to the flower-bed surrounded front gates, passing the Angola Prison Museum (which now houses Louisiana's electric chair, after it was abandoned for lethal injections), a uniformed corrections officer hands you a photocopied set of instructions (no cell phones, ice chests or pocket knives allowed inside) and directs you down an oak-tree lined road to the parking area. After passing several acres of soybean and cotton fields, you park your car and walk up to the rodeo grounds.

The 7,500-seat arena (built by prison labor, apparently) is impressive. Surrounding the arena is a small concrete hut city where various prisoner clubs sell snacks – the "Students of Islam Funnel Cakes Stand," the "Lifer's Club Hot Dog Stand," the "AAA (Angola Alcoholics Anonymous) Lemonade Stand," and the "Incarcerated Veterans Milkshake Stand," are just a few examples.

Wow. The last one is sad.

To the right of the arena is a covered market where prisoners sell handicrafts. The goods are on numbered tables, and the prisoner craftsmen sit behind fenced-in "hallways" surrounding the market on three sides. Apparently the long arms of the United States Copyright and Trademark Laws do not reach Angola, Louisiana. Every type of handicraft possible (wooden boxes, benches, wall clocks, rocking chairs, leather belts, purses, pouches, etc.) pays homage to such well-known brands as Baby Phat and FUBU. There is no shortage of wolf art and 2Pac Shakur paintings. It is easy to forget that the grey-bearded fellow in white coveralls shellacking a picture of Dora the Explorer on a wooden wall clock is a murder, rapist or child molester.

After exploring the handicrafts market, we took our seats inside the arena to enjoy the show. The rodeo itself was comprised of alternating inmate events and professional rodeo events (including a monkey dressed in cowboy chaps and a hat riding a sheep dog). A few of the inmate events are highlighted below:

Inmate Poker – Four inmates sit at a poker table pretending to hold playing cards. A horned bull is released into the arena and is directed by the rodeo clowns to charge the table. The last inmate sitting wins.

Inmate Pinball – About ten inmates are directed to stand in hula-hoops arranged in a pattern near the bull pen. A horned bull is released into the arena and is directed by the rodeo clowns to charge the inmates. The last inmate to remain inside his hula-hoop wins.

Guts and Glory – All of the participating inmates enter the arena. A horned bull with a poker chip tied to his head (in between his horns) is released into the arena. The first inmate who can leap onto the bull and grab the poker chip wins $600.

Did I mention that the inmates are wearing striped prison uniforms and, in many cases, sneakers?

"Guts and Glory" was the last event of the day and was punctuated by a mass-exodus from the arena. As we exited the gates of Angola and rode off into the sunset down the 20-mile long winding road to the main highway, I laughed to myself as I wrote this post in my head.

Is the rodeo innocent entertainment? Prisoner exploitation? A form of inmate mind control? One commentator has argued that the rodeo "capitalizes on the public's fascination with criminality through the spectacle of animalistic inmate others subdued by a progressive penal system."

Maybe my problem is that I am trapped in a barrel, about to be hit on one side by the bull of people who, without guilt, find the rodeo to be great family fun and on the other side by the bull of social commentators who refuse to find humor in any situation involving an imbalance of power.

At least neither bull expects me to grab poker chips off of its head.



Tag: New Orleans

Automatic teller

We stopped to get cash, the munchkins, my sister and I, at an ATM not too far from my house. My sister had money but I felt naked, vulnerable, exposed without some of my own, despite the stack of credit cards in my wallet. (I operated in a primarily plastic world, but sometimes, a girl needed money. Actually money. Crisp linen and cotton printed green ink and a large, presidential head.)

As we walked, I gave instructions to my nieces and nephew, to warn them when we'd stray from the path.

"We'll turn right at this corner," I said and "We'll cross at the light."

With small, sweaty hands tucked in my own, we waited for the light to change, and watched the flashing red hand and diminishing numbers across the wrong street. When the hand stopped, I counted down for the kids, "We can cross in five, four, three, two, one."

A man appeared in the direction we wanted to go at the count of one. The kids thought it was magic and tried to time it the rest of the day. I tried to explain that we had five seconds between one hand stopping and the other starting, but they didn't quite get it. I didn't mind being considered magic.

I never mind being considered magic.

On a corner, as we waited for a light to change, I tried to make a game of the wait, an "I Spy" sort of thing. I asked if anyone could see the blue awning for my ATM, and then we crossed.

My sister held the kids back as I approached the machine, but I didn't mind. They hadn't really seen one. My brother-in-law, a barber, worked on a cash basis and they lived in a small town with buildings, drive up banking, and tellers.

"Did you put money into this bank?" my niece asked, as I punched in my code.

"I did," I replied. "Twice a month, my paycheck goes to this bank."

"Oh," she said, looking puzzled as my card, cash and receipt spewed from the machine. "I like this bank."

Later, as we walked, hand in hand toward Library of Congress, we passed another blue awning and another machine.

"Does anyone recognize this?" I asked, trying to continue the game, the learning, the conversation with the 6-, 7- and 9-year-old kids. "Does it look like my bank?"

My niece looked up at me and asked, "Did you put money in this one, too?"


Tag: Kids Banking

Walking

If I'd known how much walking we'd do, I might have cut short my early morning walk with a friend but I didn't know, so we walked. And walked. And walked. For almost two hours, a friend and I enjoyed the warming weather and the National Mall, circling from our Capitol Hill homes past Library of Congress and the Capitol, the museums, the reflecting pools, the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument and back again, walking about seven and a quarter miles.

We passed crowds on the Capitol grounds and tents for the upcoming Earth Day celebration that reminded my of an old college friend who lived in my dorm freshman year, in the room next door. Her birthday. Earth Day. All 422 or 4/22. Birthday, Earth Day and Dorm Room.

We passed a group of seemingly trouble teens, their leader bending over to pick up a discarded cigarette pack and tossing it in the garbage. His action would inspire a similar one in me as I ran across a plastic bag on the sidewalk almost two hours later as I walked with my sister, my nieces and nephew.

At Eastern Market, we'd pick up sandwiches to share in a park. We'd walk to the Library of Congress and marvel at the marble, stained glass and mosaics. With a brochure for Families and Kids, we'd find Nike and Minerva, an owl, a rabbit, a crocodile. We spun a celestial globe and found our astrological signs, much as we'd done with inlaid brass in the Great Hall.

We wandered through exhibitions on Exploring the Early Americas and Creating the United States.

"Even great men make mistakes," my sister told her son, as we looked at a draft of the Declaration of Independence. I hadn't much thought about that, how "We the People" started someplace other than that where we ended up, that it took work to word, to craft, to expand and simplify.

My nephew would stare in wonder at researchers studying at tables of the Main Reading Room, in the midst of stacks and wish, even hours later, that he might be one of them. Someday he might.

After the library, the largest library in the world, we visited my favorite bookstore where the owner gave books to each of the kids because they belonged with me.

"You do so much for us," he said as he refused my money, and we walked home where I helped the boy make a paper airplane. One of the girls colored a picture for my fridge as her sister and I baked white chocolate chip cookies – half I'd send home with the family, with my family, and the other half I'd take to the bookstore after the kids went home to make thank you notes for the man they didn't know who'd given them books.

We played in a park and we plotted our walk, two and a half miles on little legs for them and tired legs for me. Granted, there was ice cream in the middle and cookies at the end, but I might have cut that first walk of the day a little shorter if I'd had any idea where the day would lead.

Then, again, I probably wouldn't.


Tag: Family Washington DC Walking

Reading

I don't know what I expected, probably not 30-some women or so and a couple of men – two, to be precise – sitting around the library of a local elementary school on a perfect Spring day. "La biblioteca," according to a sign near the stairs. Outside, day turned into night as the sun settled into the west, dipping below the horizon. Inside, under fluorescent bulbs, we hardly noticed as we munched on cookies and fruit.

A woman in a chicken hat read aloud to the crowd from a picture book about, fittingly enough, chickens. And bedtime. Chicken Bedtime is Really Early.

Author Erica Perl had written the book and walked us through the process from an offhand statement to notebook to draft to interminable waiting and eventually a published book for kids, with a few stops in between.

She changed into a squirrel hat for the next book and kept it on as she talked, grown up to grown up. Grown up in a squirrel hat to grown up.

The hosts gave us t-shirts. Gifts of appreciation for the volunteers, with The Reading Connection on the front and "Shh… I'm Reading" on the back. It would go well with my "Reading is Sexy" pin, a button I never remembered to remove before reading to kids or visiting the children's librarian at the local library.

Words adorned the columns – dazed, chatter, ferocious – while illustrations filled the walls. Over the stacks, posters with the Peanuts gang proclaimed the Dewey Decimal System.

I wondered, with fear, if I'd find impossibly short stalls in the bathroom, tiny toilets and slight sinks, but mercifully managed to find my way to the Staff bathroom.

The day filled words as the Today show announced the 50th Anniversary of Mad Libs, as I presented to a group of executives, as I listened to books read aloud and as I read poetry for kids, a gift like the T, on the Metro platform. I almost finished another book for my book club. Almost. Not quite.

Perplexed, read a sign on a library column. Generous. Murmured.

A card with the shirt pronounced, "As a TRC Read Aloud Volunteer, you helped read to 700 children and place more than 3,000 books in their hands in 2007."

Soothing. Praise.


Tag: Books Volunteering

Embarrassment

Embarrassment, pure and simple. That's what made me do it. It wasn't anger or outrage, despair or remorse, but good, old-fashioned shame.

True to DC form, I kept my head down on the Metro, clacking away on my limited, laptop keyboard and relatively unaware of my surroundings. I almost noticed when the pilot left the car and I half remember holding for a minute at Foggy Bottom, but for the most part, I kept to myself.

I didn't say anything when teens boarded the car, yelling across the aisle to each other despite the fact that only an aisle separated them. I didn't say anything when they ate, passing food back and forth, and I didn't say anything when they exited at L'Enfant. If fact, I breathed a silent sigh of relief to know that they left before my stop and wouldn't be tempted on the dark Southeast streets to follow and harass or to take my laptop.

But then I noticed the trio of travelers near the door. The older woman looked back at the seat and loudly sighed. I looked, then I joined her, sighing myself as I saw thick white cream smeared across orange vinyl, a bag of chips, crumbled and scattered on the seat and a plastic bag tucked in the corner.

The travelers started speaking in a language I didn't recognized, shaking their heads. The man held a map of the metro system and all three looked like they'd had a long day. That's when the embarrassment hit. Shame for a group of ill-mannered teens and the reflection they cast on our nation's capital, our nation's youth, on our nation.

I clicked my laptop shut, forgetting to save or close the file on which I'd been working for the better part of nine stops. I rummaged through my bag and found the napkins I'd tucked into a pocket after lunch. (I knew when I grabbed them that I'd taken too many and felt bad about tossing them.) I stood, leaving my laptop and bag on the seat, and lurched across the car to clean up the mess.

I scooped chips and dip into the bag and scrubbed at the vinyl, trying to remove the grease and regretting that someone would surely sit in it later, ruining trousers or skirt that hadn't seen the light of day since sometime last fall. I returned to my seat, smelling of sour cream dip and trying one-handed to fit everything back into my bag. I found another napkin, wiped my hand, and dove back toward the seat for a final swipe.

On my way out the door, I picked up the teerns' discarded box of half-eaten chocolates and tucked it into the bag. The older woman looked the seat, at me, and smiled. I shrugged as my color rose.

Embarrassment, pure and simple.


Tag: DC Metro

Tick tock

The audience groaned in the first five minutes.

"83 to go?" I thought with a sigh.

Starting in 1997 with stilted lines and horribly high-waisted jeans, the movie seemed a little too low budget for an intense action thriller, for Al Pacino. Had the man who played Michael Corleone sunk so far?

Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino) is a college professor who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he must use all his skills and training to narrow down the possible suspects, who include a disgruntled student, a jilted former lover, and a serial killer who is already on death row, before his time runs out.

Fortunately, the movie picked up. Actually, the pace picked up a little too much with things happening in the course of 88 minutes that might never happen in real life as Pacino's character raced from bed to office to campus and back, trying to save his own life.

"Where did she get the stitches?" I wondered about one girl with a magically, medically-treated face who'd made it from campus to office to apartment while treating her wounds in the first half hour or so. Apparently, students in Seattle didn't spend hours in emergency rooms, waiting to be seen, waiting for triage, for treatment, for the papers that sent one home. Perhaps the folks from Grey's Anatomy treated her on the run.

A few other points in the movie pushed me down similarly tangential alleys as I wondered about the wait for an elevator or the ride to the seventh floor, about driving and parking and annoying red lights. I'd spent far more than 88 minutes on 395, trying to get into the city. Minutes, hours, and days waiting for elevators. For lights to change. To find a parking spot.

My mind wasn't in the right place to gullibly gulp the story as told.

But as I moved past it, as I pushed the damnable logic aside, I found myself enjoying the film. The twists and turns. The characters. Pacino's wild hair. Things went boom with big flashing lights and I didn't identify the baddie 'til close to the end, even if I did have my suspicions part way through. It was fun. Loud. Funny. Slightly scary, at times, and I enjoyed myself for a little less than two hours.


Tag: Movies 88 Minutes

Satisfied

As I stood in the supply room unwrapping my third bite-sized Snickers bar, I felt anything but satisfied. I probably would have been ashamed of the chowing if not for the fact that I'd eaten a breakfast/lunch/dinner of mashed potatoes and turnips sometime around three, which had long since passed.

I was the only one left in the office as day slowly turned into night and instead of just leaving, which everyone else seemed to have done, I found myself staying late to finish a presentation that wouldn't be used. Not only that, I found myself giving options.

Even if the presentation came into use, two of the three versions I provided would be set aside. I might have just written up the options and updated it in the morning, but the morning was too far away and far too short for anyone's comfort.

Thus, I found myself in the darkened supply room, surrounded by dollies and filing cabinets, flats of soda and a bowl full of candy, chowing on bite-sized Snickers bars, which were far too close to actually being bite sized and far from satisfying.

Sometime midday, after carrying myself straight-backed into work and holding myself erect (and wishing for just about any other use of the word), I wanted to cry. Sometime close to eight, by the time I made it home, the desire had long since passed even as I held onto the hunger and onto the pain.

Even as I stretched on the sofa in my limited hours between work and sleep, I held onto the belief that if only I could stretch, twist or turn, if only I could change one little thing, everything in my back would slip into place. The pain would evaporate into little more than a memory and everything would be OK. I suppose I thought the rest of the world, of my life.

Instead, I passed out on the couch, making everything just a little bit worse. I'd figure it out in the morning.


Tag: Work Hungry

Getting older

Three days later, almost four, my arms still ache from swimming around the pool in a foolish game where the girl would throw the ball, the starfish, the lobster, and I would weave my way through the crowded shallow end to retrieve it. Throw, swim, toss, swim. Back to the steps and she'd do it all again.

My back somewhat hurts from either sleeping funny or walking for too many days with too much weight in my bag, notebooks and folders, shoes and my camera. It actually hurts so bad that I can barely walk, that I wanted to stay home from work, that I spent my first hour of the day stretching, hoping that if I found the right position, everything would fall back into place.

The day after his 30th birthday, a friend pulled a muscle somewhere under his arm. He thought he might have done it sometime in sleep but days passed and it still hurt.

Chronic back pain plagues a couple of friends. One sought PT, another chiropractics and a third surgery on a herniated disk.

Knees and hips, backs and shoulders, our bodies are failing. We're growing older and falling apart.

I still remember spinning on a merry-go-round until I wanted to puke. The same with the swings. Finding inordinate joy with climbing a ladder and sliding down a sheet of metal or a fireman's pole. I remember playing with dolls and passing notes. The first time I read a Nancy Drew mystery. The first time I fell in love.

Water bills and health insurance, taxes and inspection stickers. Dental appointments twice a year. Physical once. Eyes. My hearing seems to be going from all those concerts.

When did this happen? When did I starting getting old?


Tag: Aging

In a different light

Walking out of a meeting that lasted two hours instead of one, I realized that I could either take the Metro back to my office, arriving sometime past five, or I could work from home for the rest of the day, which had really already passed. And so, I walked home. A couple of miles on a cool, sunny day.

Crossing the street, I ran into a friend, a friend of a friend, a man I knew in the restaurant industry who had Mondays off. I frantically pressed the "end call" button, hanging up on my sister, and crossed back to the corner where I started.

"Hey, hi, how are you?"

"Good, I've just been drinking," he said.

"How was that?" I asked.

"Good. Very good. I'm going home to sleep now."

It was 4:49 in the afternoon.

After a brief hug (he smelled like liquor and smoke), we each kept walking in our own directions. My shoes slapped the pavement as I had tucked my heels into my bag and slipped into flip flops for the walk. I called my sister back.

"Sorry about that," I said. "I meant to end it before you picked up."

"It's OK," she replied. "I didn't even notice."

We talked for a while as I walked. She was home late; I would be home early. She needed to go and check on her taxes, she whispered into the phone as her husband tried to wrap up the paperwork. With mine long since filed and the refund long since spent, I had almost forgotten the deadline. I wondered what would happen at the post office later that night at my favorite post office, open 'til midnight, if I would encounter people eager to get the time stamp.

I realized, as I walked, how cold it could be with bare legs on an April afternoon. I enjoyed the cherry blossoms that lingered and smiled at people with dogs and babies. I realized how many more crazies I saw at that time versus rush hour and I wondered if it were more a per capita thing than sheer numbers.

As I walked through my neighborhood, I realized how different it could look during the light of (week) day. It was lovely.


Tag:

Better

There were words I never expected to hear at our book club, a place with grownup thoughts and grownup ideas, a place filled with mature, responsible adults, intelligent contributing members of society, but I should have known better. Anything was up for discussion and the word came out, with context, with gestures, making everyone laugh.

One of these days, I'll have to tell the group of the cantaloupe f*cker, but that can wait. We have all the time in the world. At least, that's how I feel whenever I'm with them, that I've known them forever and will continue to see them once a month or every six weeks for as long as I'm willing.

I've only been a member for a couple of years, the newest until last night, of a group that's been meeting for more than 10. Once upon a time, the group had rules and roles for most of the members. El presidente seems to be in power for life, but the secretary shed her responsibilities after years of delegation. The dramaturge moved somewhere south. The treasurer lost her position when the group donated the money they'd been saving for a van to some huminatarian aid group post-9/11. Maybe. I can't remember; I wasn't a member then.

I joined in more recent years, but I have heard the stories and shared more than a few of my own. I appreciated hearing a bit of the history for the guy in our first meeting without the couple who moved to Seattle. They had hosted of my first meeting, the one when I became an official member of the group. On that night, I stayed while they voted on my membership, voting for myself even though my voice didn't count. Then, again, maybe it did. I'm still there.

Old business melded into new business with a return to structure, to author's reports and formal questions. I think I might have asked the first, even though I hadn't read the book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande, a surgeon who writes for the both The New Yorker and the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The essays in this book are knit together by Gawande's view that 'good enough' is far short of where we should be — in medicine and in life," NPR reports.

Laura Hanifan of the Houston Chronicle writes, "The cases he cites for the attention to improved performance, for the essentials of diligence, of the will to do the right thing, of ingenuity, are object lessons not only for his profession but for all professions and trades."

"I think it's really about change," el presidente observed, noting that the book spread beyond medicine. He had employed one of the principles in a meeting at work and another member planned to borrow it for a meeting later in the week.

Responsibility and accountability came up as other key words as well as the concept of taking a generalist's approach to medicine and understanding health as a whole rather than the sum of its parts. One woman mentioned an alcoholic coworker who, before her recent death, had been treated for a number of ailments related to her alcoholism but not the disease itself.

By the end of the discussion, I wished I had read the book and knew I'd add it to the never ending queue. I regretted missing the deadline, letting my life get in the way, missing a chance for discussion with such a diverse group of friends. The newest member picked it up sometime late Friday night and read the book in advance of the meeting.

(Then, again, it might have been good. I talk too much. I always talk too much. For most of the book discussion, I sat still and listened, asking more questions than offering my opinions but I managed to do both.)

Before and after, crowded around the kitchen table and noshing on baked brie, chips, guacamole and hummus, around the dining room table for homemade aloo gobi and chana masala, chicken and cakes, and in the living room for a change of venue, we laughed.

Conversation ranged from capital punishment to Cake Love, the presidential candidates' hair and past presidents' jogging, books, dates, sex, clothes and travel. We weren't exactly on the best of behavior. We didn't consider where the new member would want to return with the homebrew and smack talk, laughter resonating through the night.

So much laughter.


Tag: Books

Book club

I'm going to book club in about 20 minutes and I haven't read the book. I feel like a posuer. I always read the book. I just ran out of time with work and life and the whole credit card mishap led me astray, leaving me with limited means to buy it.

I have a number of excuses, of fairly decent reasons, and chances are that nobody will care but me, and I do.

Nevertheless, the chana masala bubbles happily on the stove and I'll take homemade Indian curry to fit the theme of the book I have not read. Half of my hair is wrapped up in curlers. My fingernails are painted and I am dressed up for a night with friends. Book club. For which I did not read the book.

Guilt is a funny thing.

Nobody will care if I read the book. We won't discuss it for more than 15 minutes, maybe 20, and I probably won't be the only one who hasn't read it. It's a social club; I won't get a black mark. It will not go down on my permanent record. Nobody will hold it against me.

I still feel bad.


Tag: Books Friends

Rush

The song makes me smile. With headphones plugged into my office speakers, I can play it as loud as I want, drowning out the voices inside my head. The stress. The self doubt. The desire to be anywhere but here because when I listen to that song, I am anywhere but here.

It reminds me of a man I used to know, a man who moved away late last year or early this year or sometime in between.

The song evokes the day after he gave me his number in front of his girlfriend. We’d known each other for years but hadn’t spent time together, not intentionally. We just happened to be in the same place at the same time. Always. His friends were mine.

The girlfriend found her way to a party and I met the guys to play pool at a bar. He gave me money for the jukebox and made me his partner. For a short window, while he had the girlfriend and again when he didn’t, we hung out. I spent time at the bar where he worked. We went out, played pool, played trivia and Photohunt, and nothing ever happened. Not once. Not even a kiss.

Twice he started the night with me and ended with someone else, disappearing to take a girl home. I had my own thing with one of our mutual friends but it wasn't the same. That man made me crazy, made my head spin and my cell phone explode.

I had to delete his number to keep myself from calling or texting. I wrote it down, just to make sure that I didn’t lose it.

Worn blue jeans and button-down shirt, black, velvet jacket, five o’clock shadow, and an accent. He smelled like whiskey and sex. Cologne. Heaven. I can still feel his warmth as he stood at my shoulder, pressed against my arm playing a game. I can feel his breath on my neck, and I have to smile.

He moved away late last year or early this year or sometime in between. I don’t expect I’ll ever see him again, but for the moments when I hear that song, in the office, waiting for a query to run, and it all comes rushing back.


Tag: Music Friends

Still working

Where did today go?

The week hasn't gotten any better, but the weather.. Ah, the weather.

I actually left work at five (due to a prior obligation) and enjoyed a bit of the day (walking to and from the Metro and eating carrots and celery in the parking lot of a local store).

I just got home. 8:22. The earliest I've been home this week by hours. Day runs into night runs into day and I would forget when I last ate and what it was if not for the carrots and celery in the parking lot of a local store. A highlight of my day.

I'd write more but I actually have to work. I have, however, enjoyed the bits of daylight, good conversation and making elephant puppets with kids I barely know. Life could be worse.


Tag: Work

Relativity

I worked something between 12 and 13 hours yesterday. It wasn't anything new, just the nature of my job where weekly emergencies sap away my evenings, my weekends, my life.

Granted, in the financial realm, emergencies take on a whole new meaning and probably require less than evenings, weekends, or a life. I just have trouble telling that to myself, especially when the requests keep coming and I love what I do.

I worked something between 12 and 13 hours yesterday, scavenging for food in the kitchen at work, making dinner of a handful of leftover Easter candy and a six-pack of Diet Coke.

I ate pasta when I got home, fat, forgotten on the stove 'til it moved past al dente pasta, because I haven't been to the grocery store in weeks, possibly months, and I haven't quite figured out what to do with my crate from the CSA.

I worked something between 12 and 13 hours yesterday and I don't feel like I accomplished anything. There's more to do today and it's all due tomorrow. Or today. Or yesterday. I can't remember which.

My stomach feels a little queasy. It could be the candy and soda or the stress or the fact that I'm just plain tired. Thing have moved a little beyond what I'd like to call "control" and into that squishy area that I like to call "complete and utter chaos." I did, however, manage to stop by a friend's to wish her happy birthday on the way to work and kept walking, choosing a two-mile walk instead of a half mile and cutting out three metro stops.

I worked something between 12 and 13 hours yesterday and when I got home, I found a package, a gift, a print T-shirt from my brother in Argentina who knows I love print T-shirts and for no reason at all.

I worked something between 12 and 13 hours yesterday and I am happy.


Tag: Work

So busy

Busy day. So very busy. Looking up at a clock at 5:47 and expecting it to read something closer to 2. Wishing it closer to 11 a.m. I have too much too do. Life moves too fast.

Across my forehead, in the mirror, I can see the faint crease from the scowl that I so often wear as I try to figure out the riddle that is my job. My life. The line only makes me scowl deeper. It doesn't fade.

I want to read for my book clubs. To plan for my volunteering gig. To figure out what pictures I'll display in an upcoming exhibition. To call my sister. To write my friends, my blog, my book. To eat something other than a stale egg salad sandwich from the canteen at my client site and a handful of flavored tootsie rolls.

I walked to work this morning. Cold and damp, my knee ached from the gray, drizzly day and my hair flew about my face, between glasses and eyes, over my ears, and I was happy.

I figured out something that nobody at the client site, none of the more than 35,000 employees and comparable number of contractors figured out. I briefed it. I did something good and right and that made me happy, too. I present it to a management team next week.

For the moment, though, I need to figure out something else, a number of somethings else, before I can go home and 5:47 melts into 5:56 and 6:17 and 7:35.

Tag: Work

Laundry night

"We've got a situation here," the laundryman said, looking toward the back of the room and a seemingly indigent man with random pieces of luggage instead of bags or baskets. He'd tried climbing into the space behind the washer, the space where people aren't supposed to go. The laundryman pulled him down, but he'd kept an eye on him.

"We've got a situation here," he said.

"Well, that's not good," I replied and he laughed.

"Well, that's not good," he repeated, shaking his head. "Well, that's not good."

From under the front table, he pulled a mail bin with a bag full of abandoned goods. He emptied the clothes into the bin and walked to the back with the bag, trying to encourage the man to leave sooner rather the later.

I stayed at the front with my book and my clothes, watching them spin 'round the front loading washer and marveling at the bubbles. I couldn't quite figure out why the second machine seemed so much sudsier than the others. Other than the crazy man at the back and his friend, other than a woman midway back with a couple of dryers, it was just the laundryman and me on midweek night. I had little better to do than watch the clothes spin.

My friend came back to the front and took the bench next to mine and we chatted a while. He'd hit his own shin with a sledgehammer at his job, his other job, at a construction site, raising a bump and shaving off skin.

"Bring tears to your eyes?" I asked.

"Tears to my eyes? No," he replied. "The things that are supposed to bring tears to my eyes, don't and the ones that shouldn't, do. Movies. Stories."

I thought of a handful of particularly touching commercials.

"Tears to my eyes," he said, shaking his head.

The man from the back moved toward the front with his odd assortment of luggage. He stopped between my washers and me and smiled.

"Hi, lady," he said.

"Hello," I replied.

"You know who you look like?" he asked, and I racked my brain, trying to figure where this was going. "I was trying to figure it out. What is his name?"

"His?" I thought. "It's going to be worse than I thought. His?"

"Jim Carrey," he beamed.

"?!?" I thought. "Jim Carrey?"

"I was trying to think of it. I saw you and yep, that's it. Jim Carrey," he seemed so proud of himself as he stood in front of me and smiled.

"Thanks?" I replied, wondering if it would be a long conversation, but he moved toward the door and struggled to pull all of his bags from his cart.

"You can take the cart outside," the laundryman said.

"You can take the cart outside," the crazy man's friend said.

"I've got it," the crazy man said and picked up the last of his bags. They walked out into the cold wet night, and I moved my clothes from the washer to dryer. A delivery man from the pizza shop next door brought over a couple of inaccurate orders and we pulled cheesy dough from an uncut pie.

Going out for a smoke, the dryer woman noted that the crazy man still stood on the sidewalk with his bags in the rain. The laundryman went out to look and I pulled at the pizza, releasing more dough, cheese and sauce. A handful of vegetables. The freshest pizza I'd ever eaten.

"It's just us tonight," the laundryman said. "Might as well have more."

He bought me a soda and sent the box home with me after I'd fluffed and folded, after I restacked my clothes in the basket I'd had since my college days. He carried my clothes out to the Jeep, asking about my brother.

"Tell him I said 'hi,' wouldya?"

"Sure," I replied, smiling at this man who was inexplicably part of my life and glancing down the street for the crazy man. "Jim Carrey?"


Tag: Neighborhood

One more time for the whee

A short visit, barely a day and a half, 36 hours, by the time my friend left the tarmac, plagued by a two-hour delay and malfunctioning equipment in air traffic control. Or so the flight crew said, always finding fault with air traffic control.

We had plans for happy hour, for massages, a trip to the bookstore, and dinner with friends. We had plans but no place to be. Not really.

She came to town for my 30th birthday, or so she told her coworkers, and we celebrated. We were 945 days late, but I'd spent my birthday preparing for another friend's wedding, a weekend with girlfriends in New York. My birthday came and went as little more than a footnote in somebody else's story.

The happy hour shifted, due to the delay, and we stayed out too late. Drinking too much. Talking too much. Crawling into bed sometime past four.

"I screwed up," I said in the morning with four hours sleep. "I missed the alarm."

She pulled the mask from her eyes and blinked up at me in the door.

"We have a half hour 'til the massage," I explained, "and it's 20 minutes away."

"Did you call them?"

"No, because in my mind, in some alternate universe, we'll make it on time."

Strangely enough, we did. Massages, pedicures, pampering. We each fell asleep on the table, sleep and a headrest creasing lines into our tired faces. I slipped into sandals, displaying my Redipus Oedipus tipped nails as we strolled through shops, buying man product for her husband from a 46-year-old sales clerk who didn't look a day over 35 and wore makeup.

Thai for lunch. Cuban for dinner. In between, we walked the streets of Capitol Hill and the Mall. We wandered through Eastern Market, picking up jewelry, and through my favorite bookstore, picking up novels, a t-shirt and conversation with some of my favorite guys. We dropped off a plate of cookies, white chocolate chip, that I'd made from scratch in my tiny kitchen after the massages and lunch, before the walking. We went back later to drop off the bags that I'd forgotten on the first trip. We talked a little more with the men who worked in the store.

As we walked in a perfect April afternoon, we passed a mother and child standing in the space between sidewalk and street, in the grassy area, and the boy toddled up to a tree, grasping his mother's hand, and ran down the slight hill of roots and mulch to the grass.

"Whee!" he cried and his mother repeated, "Whee!"

Over and over again, he toddled and ran, calling out in glee. As we passed, his mother tried to pull him away, to continue their walk to wherever they were going on that perfect April afternoon.

"One more time for the whee," she said, "and then we are going."

"One more time for the whee," my friend repeated and we laughed, relishing the phrase.

A walk, trivial pursuit over cheese and crackers and dinner at the Banana Café. After a slight Blockbuster bungle, we came home and watched a movie from my collection. James Bond. Passing out midway on couch and chair and padding to bed for too little sleep and another trip to the airport.

My 30th birthday, plus 945 days for good measure.

One more time for the whee.


Tag: Friends

Dreams of something better

I keep thinking about Martin Luther King, on this, the 40th anniversary of his death. Thoughts of his life, his death, and the world today chase each other through my mind as well as on TV screens, in newspapers and on the web. I cannot help but wonder about the juxtaposition of his dream and reality. When asked, the Magic 8 Ball responded, "CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN."

So, I concentrated.

Dr. King died, killed by a lone bullet not long after a pillow fight, most of a decade before I was born. I don't remember the first time I heard of him or his famous speech. The words "I have a dream" have always been associated it with him.

A couple of years ago, standing in the line to pay respects to another Civil Rights icon, Rosa Parks, who was lying in honor at the US Capitol, I met a man and his wife who'd been in DC for the famous speech.

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation," King opened on that day, August 28, 1963.

"I was about 100 yards from the podium," the man remembered.

They had taken a train from Dayton for the demonstration, arriving at Union Station and walking the ground were we stood shivering in line with elderly women in their best Sunday suits and hats, with sullen teens and their hopeful parents, with a line full of people snaking along the Capitol grounds. Waiting for hours, we talked.

The man and his wife recollected the trip, the leader and his words. They talked about the civil rights movement, about protests and fighting for a better world.

"You had to watch out," the man said, pausing in the deliberate way I grew to know over our six-hour conversation. "You never knew where a brick might come from, but you know, we were young and that was just something we had to do... You didn’t think about it."

The Associated Press reports "only about a third of whites and blacks think King's 'I Have a Dream' speech has been fulfilled, according to a poll by CNN/Essence Magazine/Opinion Research Corp. Most blacks but few whites said King influenced them a great deal."

I never knew a world without King or the work that he'd done. My life was influenced in ways that I will never know.

I shook my 8 Ball again, searching for an answer.

REPLY HAZY. TRY AGAIN.

Walking through New Orleans on one my trips, in April or August or December, I stumbled across spray-painted graffiti, an image of the man and a question: What the hell happened to the dream? A man walking past as I paused, feigning a message to hide fact that I wanted a picture, remarked on the same.

"It's a good question," he said.

I didn't know the answer. I tried to treat all people with respect and I probably failed. I volunteered. I tried to make life better for my neighbors, for the people of Southeast DC working with kids with disabilities, reading to kids in a domestic violence shelter, but it probably wasn't enough for a man who said "We can never be satisfied."

It's probably not enough for me, either.

I asked the 8 Ball again, one more time, fearing the answer.

ASK AGAIN LATER, the 8 Ball said, and it gave me hope. Maybe we haven't lived up to the dream but maybe we can. To borrow words from my friend in line, we are young and that is just something we have to do.

Connections

There must be something in the air. That's all I can figure. Something contagious and airborne, infecting the masses. Viral.

It started with a man I used to know. After a series of unfortunate events, he moved out of my life a half decade ago and I settled comfortably into the knowledge that he would stay there. Out of my life. Where he belonged.

Then he wrote me at work. That message bounced, due to superb filtering on the company's part, but it wasn't the end of messages to either myself or people I knew and loved. I found the filtered messages degenerating into a lengthy laying on of the guilt about my lack of response.

Seriously? Berating me for deciding not to respond? Is a guilt trip really the best route to follow?

Maybe it was. I responded briefly and hoped that would be the end of things. His messages spawned nightmares as I remembered things best left in the past.

A day or two after that, I heard from a high school friend. I'd accidentally turned on my IM, hoping to catch my brother, but hearing from an old friend instead. He sent me his number and we chatted for an hour or so on a cold Tuesday night. A warm familiar voice from sunnier times and sunnier climes.

A couple of days ago I got an email from one of our high school cheerleaders, a girl I hadn't seen since our senior year, now a woman, a wife and a mother, telling me that her (high school star athlete) husband had accepted a position as head coach of a university's men basketball program. That email led to another from a girl whose brother was one of my sister's best friends.

A message about the closing on an unpopular photo sharing site reminded me that I had an account and I found pictures of a trip to the beach ages ago with a handful of girls, none of whom I'd claim to still know but at that point, on that trip, we were friends with sunburned faces and hair by Jeep.

Friend requests. Email. Reunion plans. Even I emailed an ex, a man for whom I drove five hours (each way) for a date. He was lovely. I stumbled across my first email from him and couldn't help it. Curiosity drove me to it.

Maybe it isn't the air so much but online, this desire to reconnect with the past, to find people and stay. I'm not completely convinced it's a good thing, but it's not entirely bad. I used to really like some of those people.


Tag: Friends

Complaints

I gave up complaining for Lent. No more griping, or so I hoped and prayed and worked for 40-some days, attempting to change a lifelong habit.

Some of my friends eschewed chocolate or caffeine. Beer or wine. I think cigarettes might have made it onto the list, but most didn't give up anything at all. It wasn't their thing.

The complaining worked for a while. I thought about it, at least, and I tried. I bit both my figurative and literal tongues and wondered what I might accomplish with whining. Not much, I realized, but then Easter came. The end of Lent.

My brother moved away. Two of my friends. A third planned to move by the end of the week. I lost my phone. Somebody stole my credit card info. My neighbors called the police to ticket my car and pound on my door first thing on a Saturday morning.

Only two thirds of the bits and pieces I ordered online arrived and they sat on my doorstep for a week. Customer service returned the expedited shipping payment but didn't bother to respond about the third piece.

I never did hear back from the travel agency about the fact that I had to find my own hotel in Mumbai after six hours of shuttling back and forth through slums with a lost cab driver and without the help of a girl-crazy guide. Or the hotel room for which I paid in Delhi and had to share. Or the cost of the cab from the slums into Mumbai, a two-hour drive when we were supposed to stay in the city.

Things that had started getting bad ages ago just got worse, and I wanted, I needed to complain. The negativity erupted into a slew of nightmares, my mind fighting in sleep what I couldn't fight in real life. I couldn't do anything about the grand exodus from DC, about the phone or the credit card, the ticket or the police. I couldn't make customer service respond. I couldn't do anything.

So, I cleaned. I wrote. I walked two miles to work instead of taking the Metro. I volunteered more. I baked more. I booked trips to New Orleans, San Francisco and Argentina with plans to for Africa in the fall.

Everything would be OK.

And I'd continue to work on the complaining.


Tag: Lent Complaining

On the ceiling

How did I get red wine stains on the ceiling? And why haven't I noticed 'til now? Seriously. Red wine. On the ceiling. Fading to a lovely shade of graying purple or purpling gray spreading from the ceiling, down the wall to the floorboards.

I'm through with this whole cleaning thing. Unfortunately, it's not through with me. I need to put things back somewhere, anywhere, to be able to move through the space I call home.

I hope my lovely houseguest doesn't mind the mess into which she'll walk in a few days.

I hope the bleach I used on the walls doesn't ruin my dress. I probably should have changed first; though, the pink rubber rainboots should be just fine.

My house smells like bleach and I actually can see a difference. It's just not done and I am tired. I meant to clean out the cabinet at the end of the hall sometime tonight. It was on the list, but the ceiling beckoned.

And I needed to move the scanner. And one of the extra computers. And the mirrored tray on the ottoman no longer reflected. And my restrung necklace needed to be freed from its box and then I had to break down the box.

And maybe I'm not done with the whole cleaning thing. Maybe I've just refocused.

Once I finish the living room, not on the list until… um… not on the list, I think I need a break. The bleach is making me a little lightheaded.


Tag: Cleaning