Mom's birthday

I don't remember many of my mom's birthdays from growing up. I'm sure I was there, we were there. We were always there and her birthday came during summer vacation.

Come to think of it, though. I might have been at camp as a camper, a counselor in training, a lifeguard. I might have been a little more focused on myself than my mom. She might have wanted us out of the house and a couple of days to herself, nights to herself, in the midst of raising three kids mostly on her own in a town far from her own family. Though, I'd never ask. She'd never admit it, and I wouldn't blame her. I couldn't do it. Any of it. On my own.

Doing the math, I could think of some key years, if not her birthday. 22 - her first as a wife. 25 - as a mom. 28 with two kids. 30 with three. 34 (not much older than I am now) and raising three kids on her own. 47 with the anticipation of moving. 48 in the Caribbean. 49 in Minnesota. 50 in Colorado. 52 in Minnesota again for a whole new phase.

I remember my own birthdays. The dolls. The cakes. Slumber parties and dancing to MTV. Coed parties. The trip to Gettysburg. Labor Day weekends and the year we didn't have school because of a water main break. A road trip my freshman year. I remember birthdays in New York. Alaska. Paris. Provence. I remember my own, if not my mom's. So few of my mom's.

Pictures of our house in Florida. Kids in suits mugging at the camera. Not so much a memory as an image I've seen a few dozen times. Indelible in my mind, if not on Kodak paper in Kodachrome magic. Fading even as the false memory grows stronger.

A birthday in Minnesota a lifetime ago. The sky turned green and a tornado ripped through the region. Deck chairs found their way to neighbors' lawn. At least, that's how I remember it. A storm. Standing on the patio. Wind and rain and strange colored skies. That was my mom's birthday. That and angel food cake with cherry icing. The angel food cake and cherry icing still mean summer and Minnesota and my Mom's birthday.

For her 50th birthday, I made cake. Cake and baseball. I bought 50 tickets to the Rockies game and sold them to friends and coworkers. After brunch, champagne and omelets, chocolates with friends, strawberries, we went to the game and sat in the stands, in the sun, and cheered. For my mom. For the Rockies. For summer days. Later, much later, we shared angel food with cherry icing and I gave my mom a ring she's wanted, after weeks of letting her believe that somebody else had bought it in order to keep the surprise.

This year, we gave her a computer, a Mac. We gave her a visit with her kids and her grandkids. Better than a ring. Probably better than a baseball game with 48 friends.

I don't remember most of her birthdays. I remember summer camp and the Fourth of July. I remember summer vacations and the books I read. The house in Florida, the pool and the pictures. I just don't remember my mom's birthdays, but this year, this year we're here, wishing our mom a happy birthday and sharing the cake: angel food and cherry icing.





Tag: Family

Marlin

"Shouldn't that get smaller?" I asked, pointing at the blue marlin over the TV.

My mom cocked an eyebrow and shook her head.

"No."

"I mean, I'm bigger now. Shouldn't it seem smaller than it did when I was a kid? It's huge."

"It is what it is."

"Perception?"

She looked at me for a minute or two and shook her head. I looked at the fish, which looked back at me, and half listened to her stories of a Christmas wreath on its sword and my grandmother hauling out pictures from its long ago capture off the shores in Acapulco. My mom pulled them out of a cabinet, handing them off to my brother and me before flipping through them herself.

The fish, alive and bucking. Grandma Mavis in sunglasses and headscarf. Grandpa Dean in swim trunks.

"I've never seen him in swim trunks," my mom mused about her own father.

"Didn't you have a house on a lake?" I asked. "With a pool?"

"Never," she reiterated about the trunks. I was right about the house, the lake and the pool.

Over the TV, the fish hung serenely, just as it had for as long as I could remember. The television had changed over the years, as had the programming. The carpet. The couch. The chairs weren't the ones that I knew, the ones where my grandpa sat with his hands on my knees asking "what's new, Charlie Brown" or if I slept "the sleep of the just with nary a thought of the unjust."

I slept a lot at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

We normally drove 17 hours or so from our Ohio home to southern Minnesota, stopping somewhere around Chicago if we had money for a hotel or somewhere in Wisconsin with a tent if we didn't. Two days in a car with my brother, my sister and my mom. Car sickness. Road bingo.

My grandpa's gone now. My grandma's shrinking. The road's just as long but my vacation days shorter, so we flew. For the first part of the trip, anyway.

The drapes have changed. The sleeper sofa in the office replaced by an overstuffed couch. The dining room changed colors. The bubbly green glasses were in storage somewhere in West Virginia, on hiatus from my brother's kitchen cabinets as he was on hiatus from his kitchen cabinets, his kitchen and the country.

Over the TV, though, the blue marlin stared. Just as big as I remembered. Even though I'd grown bigger, even though I expected it to shrink in my mind or in my perception.

"It is what it is," my mom said.


Tag: Family

Slumber

Tiny little feet dug into the small of my back, kneading the space between my pajama bottoms and the hem of my t-shirt. I turned to see my 6-year-old niece lying horizontally across my bed, head at the wall, at the side, and feet in my back.

"Honey, move," I whispered and she rolled. A little. Keeping her toes in my spine.

We shared a lap blanket – too hot when we fell asleep, when my brother carried her to my bed, to crawl under the covers and too tired when we awoke in the middle of the night to bother. She had a couple of blankets of her own, but she wanted mine, pulling at it in her sleep.

The alarm sounded at 6 and she sat up straight.

"You don't have to get up now, honey. It's too early."

She fell back against the pillows, but in a half hour, 45 minutes, the sounds of cartoon violence would pull her to the living room with her brother and sister, with my brother and sister. Her uncle and mom.

"Too early," I thought, groaning and padding across the room for my computer.

Most of my body ached and I knew why for once. My shoulders from carrying, from holding, small children. My feet and legs from walking alongside them as they worked on the interactive bits at the NASA section of the Folk Life Festival. My arms from carrying an extra bottle of water, tissues, bandages, the books that they wanted but not enough to carry themselves. My body from being an aunt.

"Mom, Lodi's still asleep," echoed down the hall and I knew that I'd have to get up. Start the day. Shower and dress and head to the airport with the child who would be mine for a few days, saying goodbye to the others for a little while at least. They would join us sooner rather than later and nobody would sleep for days.


Tag: Family

Sleepy Monday

As temperatures dropped and rain fell from the heavens, I holed up in my kitchen with a knife, a slew of pans and a number of bowls.

My kitchen is not that big.

But the asparagus would turn sooner or later and I needed to try a cookie recipe before making it for general consumption. I managed to keep the two separate, braising the asparagus and sifting flour and cocoa, sugar and cherries. I sautéed the onions. Butter. Oil. Blanched asparagus. Shifting the chocolate mixture to the sink. The microwave and back to the counter.

I’d have to move the grapes before making the risotto, halfway through the risotto as I realized the steam reached the colander where they hung. Grapes to the counter. Chocolate mixture to the stove. Asparagus and onions to the rice cooker in the sink.

I’d burn myself on a pan or two, on steam, but I managed to keep from cutting myself the second time in two days or the third in a week.

The temperature rose in the apartment and I longed to open the doors but refrained. Wary of gnats and rats and other critters escaping the rain.

By the time I finished cooking, by the time I finished baking, I didn’t want to eat. I wanted nothing more than to crash on the couch and sleep until Wednesday. It was just so warm and I could hear the rain outside, pitter-pattering on the windows, lulling me to sleep.

The scent of chocolate filled the air. A bastardization of a chocolate on chocolate cookie recipe to make a vegan blend of chocolate and cherry for friends. A practice run. They were far too chewy, but I'd make them again, despite the heat, despite the texture, for the smell that filled my house.


Tag: Cooking

Coffee

Coffee. Coffee on a bench on a summer morning. The day held the promise of something brutal. Heat. Humidity.

"Hazy, hot and humid," the newscasters declared, the weathermen, but it wasn't there yet. The morning just held the promise, the threat, the weight of weather yet to come, and I sat on a bench with a hot coffee burning my tongue.

Later, as I muddled through my morning at work, I'd realize that I wasn't yet tired. The coffee. The company. The excitement of seeing my brother for the second time in several months and the first time in the States since February. My sister's visit. My nieces and nephew. Too many people in a two-bedroom apartment. Something opened my eyes and I felt better than I had in weeks. Months.

It might have been the coffee.

It warmed my hands as I walked through the airport, thinking I should be at work at nine on a Thursday morning and knowing I was exactly where I ought to be. For a minute or two, I regretted not bringing a sign, not that my brother wouldn't recognize me but signs were fun. I thought briefly of the hand-lettered sign we'd made in the car on the way to New York for a friend's bachelorette weekend. Almost three years later, she still talks about our airport sign.

I thought about the sign as I left my car in the garage, as I cleaned the passenger side and found a pen, but decided against drawing one on the college-ruled, spiral-bound paper I carried in my bag.

"We might be getting too old for that sort of thing," I thought.

I might have been wrong.

Carrying my paper cup with a cardboard sleeve, I walked through the airport and thought about going to work. The down escalator failed to escalate with signs proclaiming "Elevator Out of Service," and I couldn't quite figure out how to get to baggage claim. I wandered to through the level between ticketing and claiming, the level with security, and back to the escalators, the elevators, which were actually in service, and pushed the button for down while people with backpacks and large rolling bags crammed into the elevator for up.

"No, we want up," one girl exclaimed, hesitating by the door. "That one's going down."

The up arrow glowed brightly over the door.

"Nope, that's up," I said, waiting and watching while even more pushed into the tight space.

Eventually, an empty box opened and I sank a floor to baggage claim, holding onto my paper cup and looking for a monitor. I wandered from Terminal B to Terminal C and back again to sit, to wait, to read, thinking I should be at work and knowing I was exactly where I ought to be.

Clock. Book. Clock. Hall. Clock. Clock. Clock. Book.

He arrived just on time. My tall, grinning brother squinting to make me out from a distance. I smiled and snapped a picture. As if I didn't have enough pictures of him from the past 30-some years. As if I could ever have enough pictures of my family.

I still held onto the cup of coffee.

I wouldn't be tired for hours. Even at work. Later, as I muddled through my morning at work, I'd realize that I wasn't yet tired. The coffee. The company. The excitement of seeing my brother for the second time in several months and the first time in the States since February. My sister's visit. My nieces and nephew. Too many people in a two-bedroom apartment. Something opened my eyes and I felt better than I had in weeks. Months.


Tag: Family

On being wrong

There are reasons I don't drive to work in the mornings. The impact on the environment and the price of gas, bad traffic and crazy people all push me toward the Metro, but on Friday morning, I drove to work on the chance that I'd need to pick up a table for the bake sale.

I awoke somewhat early and hopped in the car for the commute, remembering last minute that the gas light lit the night before, on the way home from errands. I detoured, stopped at a local gas station and filled up (at $4.259 a gallon of regular). With heavy heart and light wallet, I turned toward the highway for the commute.

At the end of the street, I stopped at the sign. A car crossed in front of me and I pulled forward, turning right. A second car had followed the first and honked wildly at me. So I honked right back and pulled behind the car in a line stopped at the light.

In front of me, a child turned to stare through the back window and the driver's door opened. Inwardly, I groaned. Outwardly, I clutched the steering wheel and steeled myself for a confrontation with the owner of the strappy, stilettoed sandal that first appeared, followed by too-tight jeans and a too-short shirt. Mounds of stiff curls and makeup. Pounds of makeup.

"You had a stop sign," I said.

"What did you say?"

"You had a stop sign."

"So did you, b*tch," she replied and looked down at my lap, giving me the once over where I sat. In my car. Hands on the wheel and seething.

"And I stopped."

"So did I," she replied, with a swish of her head.

"The car in front of you went and then I went," I explained. "It's called 'right of way.'"

"No," she said as she turned on her heel and walked back to her car, three inches of back fat displayed between the band of her jeans and the bottom of her shirt. "You're wrong, b*tch."

The girl in the backseat continued to stare as the woman hefted her weight into the driver's seat and reached for the door. The street in front of her was clear as the light had long since changed and slowly, she pulled forward.

That was it. The extent of her explanation.

"You're wrong, b*tch."

Maybe I was, but I don't remember anything in driver's ed about making a stop two or three cars deep the extent of one's obligation at a stop sign.


Tag: Driving

Somewhere

"I always have a camera with me," I moaned, shaking my head in despair.

And I did. I always had a camera or two. My digital. My Blackberry. Something. But I had forgotten my camera at home after transferring bake sale pics. The day slipped away from me as I worked from my couch before my first meeting and ran to the bank to deposit the proceeds from our sale.

I hesitated at the corner, considered turning back when I realized that I'd left it behind, but I didn't. I could go a day without my camera. Nothing would happen.

I left my phone on my desk at work. I'd realized it as I stepped off the elevator but didn't think it worth the return trip. Nobody ever called my cell, and I was already late.

The office had emptied around me as I watched a storm roll across Arlington, lightning piercing the sky and jolting me out of a work-induced reverie of trying to figure out a query that seemed to query just fine but refused to print. As the storm rolled, the lightning flashed and the query confounded, the clock ticked, steadily moving from day toward night.

Once I stepped away from the desk, the last thing I wanted to do was ride 11 stories up on an elevator, wind my way through the office that had taken four attempts to leave.

I actually left the elevator after 10 stories, looked out to see rain splashing against the pavement and rode one more floor to the garage and a covered warren of tunnels to the Metro. Lately, forgetting my umbrella seemed as common as the late day storms and I preferred to wait until the walk home before I was soaked to the skin.

And so I found myself sans camera on a rainy Monday night for a slow, but dry ride through the city, under the city. I found myself changing from heels to flip flops on the escalator at Eastern Market. Comfort assured, I looked up to see sunlight and I smiled at the thought of a dry walk home.

At the top of the escalator, a dozen or so people crowded under the overhang, smiling foolishly as they held their cell phones aloft. I turned, stopped - turning the group into a baker's dozen - and stared.

A full rainbow stretched over Capitol Hill, glowing brilliantly and doubling on itself. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, from the inside out. Stretching over Barracks Row and Pennsylvania Avenue, stretching over the boulevard and the trees, the row houses and the buses. Stretching through the sun and the rain.

At the end of the queue of idiotic grins and floating cell phones, I spotted a man I knew, the homeless man who sold Street Sense in my neighborhood.

"Hey, pretty lady," he said. "Isn't this incredible?"

I smiled.

"I always have a camera with me but not today."

I shook my head, stood and stared. Together, we watched a plane fly under the outer rainbow and through the inner, changing colors before we lost it. The bands stretched over the hill, vibrant shades that made us giggle with glee. The homeless Street Sense man and myself. The other strangers at the top of the Metro escalator. All seemed awestruck.

Kermit the Frog croaked through my mind, asking why there were so many songs about rainbows and what might be on the other side only to be drowned out by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole plucking a ukulele and singing of trees of green and red roses, too.

A dozen other rainbows colored my memories: an airport parking deck with my parents when I was four. A double rainbow en route to the fairy penguins in southern Australia. Rainbows on summer days as I ran through sprinklers and summer storms. Pulling to the side of the road in Ohio. Colorado. Hawaii. The rainbows made more of an impression than any storm I could recall.

"I guess I'm just going to have to enjoy it. Remember it," I said to my Street Sense friend.

"That's the best way," he replied as we stood side by side in the sunshine and rain and watched with wonder the effect of one on the other, and I thought to myself, "What a wonderful world."




Tag: Washington DC

Log Cabin Republicans

By NOLA Celeste


Note: As always, the views expressed herein are my own, and this post may irk the sensibilities of certain readers, for which I apologize.

My husband and I are a double-lawyer family, which normally leads to trouble but for the fact that we practice two entirely different types of law. I am an in-house corporate and securities lawyer; my entire practice involves avoiding controversy, staying within the lines and filing things on time. He is a plaintiffs' securities lawyer. His practice involves suing (well, arbitrating against) crooked stock brokers.

Specifically, my husband is one of three or four lawyers in the United States who is an expert in "deficient advice to retire" cases. He represents (typically) blue-collar retirees from companies like Exxon, Kodak and Xerox who are approached by brokers offering a free steak dinner to attend a seminar on how they could make millions by retiring at age 59 ½, cashing out of their pension plans and giving him all of their retirement money. What he does not mention is that he then takes this retirement money and invests it for them in highly speculative funds with front-loaded brokerage fees. They lose all of their money; he lives in a gated community. He has a fiduciary duty to these clients. They have every right to trust him. He is committing securities fraud. He is a licensed professional.

Previously, my husband obtained a $22 million arbitration award for a group of 32 Exxon retirees who had lost all of their retirement money. He is currently representing a group of Kodak and Xerox retirees from Rochester, New York who were recent victims of a similar deficient advice to retire scam.

Last Saturday, I decided to stop by M'sER while my husband was attending the New Orleans VooDoo Football game with a friend (BTW: For those who have followed my stories of My Friend Hoss from M'sER, he is now in rehab). Two middle-aged gentlemen walked into the bar and took a seat next to me. We exchanged pleasantries. I found out that they moved to New Orleans from Rochester after retiring and now live in the Lower Garden District. I am renovating a house in the Upper Garden District. They love XYZ restaurant. So do I.

When I found out that they were from Rochester, I started telling them about my husband's case against the Rochester broker. "Wait a second!" the gaunter of the two gentlemen interrupted," I worked at Kodak! I went to one of the broker's seminars! I know friends who lost money with him."

What a small world.

He gave me his card…their card…which featured a fleur-de-lis, both of their names and e-mail addresses. We spoke about the case, and he promised to ask his former Kodak colleagues if they invested with the broker. I learned about his (now "their") children, who were spiritually adopted as marriages to persons of the opposite sex dissolved and they found and fell in love with each other. I saw pictures of grandchildren. They moved closer to each other on the bar stools. We took a picture. I gave them both hugs. And then…

"You know, speaking of retirement money, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama want to take ALL of our 401(k)s and give them to ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS," he yelled, downing what must have been his fifth glass of cheap bar white wine.

"I'm sorry?"

"Yeah…you heard me. The DEMOCRATS WANT TO GIVE OUR RETIREMENT FUNDS TO ILLEGALS."

"Um…okay. Let me just add a disclaimer here. I am an Obama supporter. So let's just move on."

"WHAT?!?" he said. "You are sick and disgusting. Is your husband an Obama supporter too? (I nod yes). You are sick. You want our country to be taken over by ARABS. Your children will speak ARABIC. I am going to tell EVERY KODAK RETIREE I KNOW to fire your husband because he is a sick, filthy DEMOCRAT trying to ban God and let in MEXICANS and destroy our heritage."

"Excuse me?"

He continued his diatribe, becoming louder with each crazier statement. Bill O'Reilly would have blushed.

As I mentioned, I am a corporate and securities lawyer. I avoid controversy. I do not like talking about politics in bars. But then:

"OK, sir. Pretend you are a HOMOPHOBE, and the one attorney that was a specialist in deficient advice to retire cases, the one attorney who could help you get your retirement money back was GAY! Wouldn't it be in your ECONOMIC SELF-INTEREST to keep him as your lawyer, realizing that one's lawyering ability has nothing to do with one's sexual orientation. Why on Earth would you want to deny your Kodak friends the opportunity to get their money back?!?"

"Whatever," he said. "By the way, I AM gay! I AM PRESIDENT OF THE LOUISIANA LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS!"

"I know," I responded. "That's why I picked that particular analogy – TO MAKE YOU MAD SO THAT YOU WOULD LISTEN TO ME."

His partner intervened and attempted to calm him down. N., the bartender, wandered over to see if everyone was okay, knowing I had only consumed two Pimms Cups and was not an angry drunk.

Cooler heads prevailed, but then my husband came in. The diatribe was repeated. My husband started making fun of him. N. threatened to kick the gentleman out if he would not calm down.

I started to feel really mean. I started to feel really angry. I could not believe he was spouting off all of these things about my husband. I could not believe that he was judging my husband on one data point.

Then, it dawned on me. This gentleman was probably constantly judged on one data point by the Republican community (that he was gay) and another data point by the gay community (that he was a Republican)…Why didn't he see it? Why didn't he, as a probable victim of stereotyping himself, understand how wrong this was?!?

"You know one thing that is actually true?" I yelled at him. "MANY PEOPLE IN YOUR POLITICAL PARTY HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE GAY. They think you are going to Hell. They do not want you around their children, even though you have children of your own. They think that you want to turn every child gay and molest them. Many Republicans hate and fear gay people. Now, that is a fact."

His partner looked at me sadly, grabbed the gentleman's arm and began dragging him out of the bar.

"Oh yeah!" he spouted off as he stumbled out of the bar. "I'm PRESIDENT of the Louisiana Log Cabin Republicans."

I just don't understand…



Tag: New Orleans Politics

Where to begin?

I don’t know where to begin. Strains from the Sound of Music keep looping through my mind.

Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read, you begin with A-B-C
When you sing, you begin with do-re-mi

When you bake, you begin with a recipe.

As for the bake sale, it began with an email, a suggestion from a friend, and spun from there as I tangled myself in lines of communication. Securing space. Organizing volunteers. Trying to estimate how much we’d need. And fretting. I set aside a good chunk of time for anxiety.

Friday night came and I baked. Eight little loaves of banana bread. Six zucchini. A few dozen oatmeal cookies and a dozen orange cupcakes – vegan options.

I stayed up too late with the baking and the cupcakes, which failed miserably and ended up in the bottom of the bin. Emailing. Watching a Doris Day/Rock Hudson flick. Far too late given that I would roll out of bed around five for no reason other than the fact that I couldn’t sleep anymore.

Bake sale day!

The day dawned cool and clear. Perfect.

I started and ended the day with the same volunteer, a girl who dropped off marshmallow treats before a full day and came back to help clean up. In the middle, more than two dozen people helped out – bringing cupcakes and cake, cookies, brownies, blondies, bread and muffins and staying to staff the tables.

Multiple tables. Two and a half in different locations because we had so much food and so many volunteers. We split the goods and the responsibility, with some people running between the two to keep each filled with sweet homemade deliciousness.

“Baked goods for Barack!” one man shouted, drawing people to our table on the corner. “Lemonade for Barack! Barack for Barack!”

We sold buttons and bumper stickers. Cups of lemonade. A dollar for everything but the buttons for two and mini loaves for three. Pairs of cookies. A muffin. A brownie. Everything for a buck and one dollar at a time, we raised funds.

A couple of people asked why we supported Obama. A couple asked about my T-shirt, and I spent my fair share of time with snot dripping from his nose and a steady trail of drool. He came back with a copy of The Onion to share a headline with me: Bush Says He Still Believes Iraq War Was The Fun Thing To Do. I talked with a woman who worked for food writer Molly O’Neill. (With a little luck, I could end up in her cookbook next year with my Madeleines. With a little luck, a few of us could.)

Sugary Obama logos topped a number of the cupcakes and two dozen petit fours. A graphic designer with a baking bent impressed almost everyone with her skills. But everything went over well. The mini loaves in their parchment paper packaging with red and blue ribbons. German Chocolate cupcakes. Chocolate banana chip cookies. Tropical muffins. Oatmeal, chocolate chip and sugar cookies. Blueberry muffins. Blackberry shortbread.

At the end of the day, I came home with less than a dozen individual pieces. Eight cupcakes. A couple of cookies. A piece of shortbread. And that was it. No blondies. No brownies. No Rice Krispies Treats®.

I could begin at the very beginning, sitting on a step outside the bookstore and waiting for the girl with the treats, the girl who helped clean up seven and a half hours later. I could write about those hours in between. My aching legs after hours in flip flops on concrete. Finding roles for everyone – sign making, picture taking and money people. The friends who stopped by, buying baked goods because I was selling them more than any other reason.

I could write about a beautiful sunny day at Eastern Market with two dozen strangers who wanted to make a difference in the world.

I could start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, but really, people only want to know one thing: How much money did we make? A dollar for everything but the buttons for two and mini loaves for three. Pairs of cookies. A muffin. A brownie. Everything for a buck and one dollar at a time, we raised $1,175.90.


Tag: MoveOn Hungry for Change Bake Sale Washington DC

Too much

“Tired. Oh, so tired,” I thought as I crawled into bed sometime between 3 and 3:30.

The birds had started chirping. The three o’clock birds. The chirping disturbed me until I realized that they always started so early.

I might have been more disturbed if I’d realized that I’d been awake and moving for almost 22 hours, but that realization escaped me between 3 and 3:30 in the morning. Everything but bed and the birds escaped me at that hour.

“I should have taken it easy,” I thought when I awoke the morning, which was still morning, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it were really early afternoon. The day before, Saturday, held so much. Too much. I wanted to stretch the hours, to tug at the corners and wrap myself up in them, to make them fit.

Bake sale. Housewarming. Baseball game.

It didn’t seem like too much at the beginning, in the planning stages, but when I awoke at 5:30, ready to start the day, I realized how much I had before me.

After six to seven hours of standing on the pavement, smiling, talking, doling out desserts and collecting cash, coordinating two dozen volunteers, I wanted nothing more than crawl into bed but I’d promised so I drove to a housewarming to see a friend I hadn’t seen for a year. Two years. Longer? I couldn’t remember. Entirely too long.

He talked me through the turns in Tysons, an area I seldom visit, and greeted me with a hug. The years seemed to melt away and when he pointed out the non-vegetarian dishes, I realized how glad I was that I went, for even a little while. A year. Two years. Longer? And he thought to tell me what was “safe” for me to eat.

All too soon, I needed to leave for the baseball game. Through the sixth inning, it seemed like everything would be all right, and then a friend left for a beer and found a very long line. Seven runs later, she returned. Not long after that the Rangers scored another and it started to rain.

We left and found a couple of stools in our old favorite bar. At first, we didn’t recognize anyone and then we did. Things got a little strange with a meteorologist we both knew. He and I scalped tickets together, to a Killers concert on the night we met. A social worker-cum-accountant. A cop who had been shot in the face. A bartending friend.

And suddenly, somehow, the night was gone and the birds were chirping as I walked home, leaving my friend in a cab and my car at the bar. Too much. Just enough. A good, long day.


Tag: Friends

Midsummer

The name always confuses me. Midsummer. The middle of summer. The height, according to some, of the season yet according to others the first official day of summer.

Generally, I approach the summer solstice with something akin to hesitancy, acknowledging the bittersweet anticipation of the longest day, the shortest night, of the year. From here 'til December, the days just get shorter.

This year, though, I don’t have time to worry. I can regret the waning days sometime in July. Maybe August. On midsummer’s day, I’m just too busy. Errands. Bake sale. Open house. Baseball game. Drinks with friends.

All with friends.

For a moment, though, before it all starts, I can sit. Ponder. Think about summer without that bittersweet twinge. I don't have time.

Rhubarb. Tall grass. Long walks. Short skirts. Coconut-scented sunscreen. Sand between my toes. In my hair. In my ears. Salt water. Waves. Summer camp. Fireworks. Thunderstorms. Action flicks. Baseball games. Driving. Driving with the top down. Windblown hair. Ice-cold lemonade. Pimms cups. White water. White wine. Wolf Trap. Music in the air. Laughter in the air.

It doesn’t feel quite like the middle of any of that. To me, it feels like it’s just beginning.


Tag: Summer

Cupcakes, cookies and muffins, oh, my

Whoever coined the term “piece of cake” never tried to bake one. Or to sell one.

Case in point: I have no idea what I’m doing. No idea. None.

On Saturday, June 21, a couple of friends, a whole bunch of strangers and I will join thousands of people nationwide in one of more than 700 “Hungry for Change” bake sales to raise funds to help put Barack Obama in the office.

Four years ago, I participated in a sale to "Bake Back the White House." I think I might have baked a batch of brownies. Some cookies. A cake… Probably not a cake. Cookies. Or brownies. Or something. And I helped (wo)man the table, making change and making small talk with people eager for change.

This year, I’m responsible for a table myself. Finding the table. Decorating it. Filling it with all sorts of savory treats. Or so I thought. MoveOn members have stepped up to donate more goods than I know what to do with and that’s almost a problem: I have more than I know what to do with.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't think I can sell loads of cookies. I don't think I could sell water in the desert. I'm not a salesperson. I want to crawl under the table and stay there until pigeons have cleared away the crumbs, but I know how to bake. I love to bake, and communication and organization are part of my job.

I worried that we wouldn’t have enough. Now, I worry that we won’t sell enough. We’ll have dozens of obamalicious treats just begging for a happy home or hungry tummy or both. Cookies, cupcakes, cake, brownies, blondies, breads and muffins. Buy them. Eat them. Take them from the table I have yet to find!

I know the candidate might not be everybody's cup of lemonade, but if you’re in the Eastern Market area on Saturday, June 21 and the slightest bit inclined to help elect Obama or have the hankering for homemade deliciousness, stop by our table.

Hungry on the Hill
Eastern Market
Saturday, June 21, 11-3

Make a difference one cookie at a time.

If you don't live in the Washington DC area, check out MoveOn's website to find a bake sale in your area.




Tag: Baking Barack

Nerves

“Are you a nervous person?” he asked, peering at me over my file.

“I... I don’t think so. Maybe a little,” I replied.

“Do things bother you?”

“I don’t think so.”

If only he’d asked the question a day later, I thought the next morning. Not that he’d have the opportunity but I’d know so much better. I’d remember so much better. An early meeting meant a sleepless night, of waking up in a panic at 11:47 and 1:23 and 3:04 and 5:17 and a dozen times in between.

“Is it time to get up?” I’d wonder as I sat up straight in bed and squinted to make out the alarm.

It wasn’t.

I didn’t feel particularly nervous but there was something distinctly not right about the fact that the best sleep I got came between the alarm and its repeat nine minutes later, after a slap of the snooze bar. There was something distinctly not right about awakening a dozen and a half times in a single night’s sleep.

The meeting wasn’t even all that early. No earlier than I normally went to work, but I had a little more flexibility on most days. A delay on the Metro. A second or third slap of the snooze. Early morning indecision about which of the 23 wrap dresses hanging in the closet. None would earn so much as a raised brow, but a meeting, an agenda, a room full of required attendees… That was a different story altogether.

A story I didn’t realize ‘til the next morning.

I might have planned better, avoided the dinner with friends, but I probably wouldn’t as we met to discuss “The World Without Us,” a book about what would happen to the planet once humans ceased to exist. A book about our lasting legacy in terms of subway systems and cave cities, the pyramids, Mount Rushmore and the Panama Canal. Plastic. Radioactive waste.

We met at Vegetate, a local organic, vegetarian restaurant, which seemed only fitting given the topic. They gave us a private room, which also seemed fitting given the topics of conversation that moved past the book as well as our decibel level. Last time, at On the Record, I could hear our group from the bathroom. The time before that, at a friend’s apartment, a neighbor knocked on the door to complain. She lived three doors down and across the hall.

The night. The wine. The conversation with friends. They didn’t belong to a nervous person, I thought, but the waking. The sleepless night. Maybe I was nervous. Anxious. Jittery.

Then, again, maybe it was just the wine.


Tag: Sleep

Growing older

"Butter," I thought, almost moaning aloud. "Sweet, creamery butter melting into nooks and crannies, sliding across the dry, sandpapery texture of toasted whole grain bread."

I sighed and reached for my steaming mug of weak yet strangely bitter office brew.

Across the street, a man stood on his balcony in shirt and tie, in crisp black slacks, and stared down at the construction between us. Light glinted on his almost bald pate.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" I wondered as I watched him watching the crews and the crane from my desk chair and munched on my dry toast. Three more hours and I could have a second piece of toast. A bowl full of undressed, lonely lettuce. Water.

I should have known better than to schedule my physical for midafternoon.

Slowly, I sipped at the coffee, a miserable cup that would have to last until well past three when I could finally eat or drink something with flavor. Three hours 'til lunch. Four hours to the appointment and at least five until food. Real food. Food with color and flavor and condiments. Oh, how I wanted condiments.

I found an urgent message on my home phone, one of two from the doctor's office at that number and a third at work. I needed to confirm my appointment and obtain the food restrictions:

Breakfast
One slice of dry toast
One cup of black coffee or tea

Lunch
One slice of dry toast
Salad/a bowl of undressed lettuce

As I listened to the receptionist, I thought of my last appointment. I arrived promptly at four. Most of the staff left at five and I saw the (wrong) doctor somewhere close to six. Almost two hours late and my insurance refused to cover the appointment because only the father, not the son, in the doctoring team was an insured provider. I wondered if I'd eat my lunch of curried chickpeas before my dinner with friends or if it would wait until tomorrow. The next day. Whenever I'd find myself back in the office.

Across the way, the man on the balcony still stood, stared, waited for his day to begin, and I drained my cup of coffee. It would stick with me, it would have to stick with me for hours. Keep me awake.

That was part of the reason I called the doctor. I hadn't had a physical in a couple of years, but I wasn't really worried until the sleeping sickness hit. The desire to curl up in a ball and sleep at approximately 10 past 9 in the a.m. By noon, I wanted to cry myself to sleep. All day. Every day. For more than two months. Something wasn't quite right.

Short term memory loss. Long term memory loss. The inability to join words and phrases into sentences. Clumsiness that really didn't need to increase.

My schedule started to slip right along with my mind and my coordination and I spent 14 hours in bed. In a row. Without feeling better. I increased my protein intake. I struggled to exercise with aching limbs and sleepy mind. And I made an appointment. I made my toast and I poured my coffee. I would try to find out what was wrong with me.

While I thought, while I wondered and worked, the man across the street turned and slipped through a sliding door into an apartment I could not see. I shook my reverie.

In the absence of any physical problem, I would have to face facts. I am getting older. My body might not keep up with me.


Tag: Tired

Be the change

A conference call? At 9 o’clock on a Monday night? I couldn’t quite believe it. I wanted nothing more than to sack out on the couch with a glass of wine and a book, to wait until the season premiere of Weeds. The series premiere of The Secret Diary of a Call Girl. To let the day melt into night. Instead, I joined hundreds of strangers in an hour-long conference call. An hour. From nine to 10 on a Monday night.

This weekend, more than 3,000 people will people will contribute cookies, brownies and time to more than 600 events in an attempt to make the largest bake sale ever for MoveOn.org. To raise funds to help put Obama in the White House. More than 3,000 and the numbers are growing.

I’m not sure how it happened, how I ended up agreeing to host a table, but I did. This weekend, on Saturday, I’ll be peddling my wares, or my baked goods, in any event, at Eastern Market. Trying to raise a buck or $2,000, as a man from Olympia, Washington, challenged on the call.

It might have been timing. I was wearing one of my favorite T-shirts when the email arrived. Speckled brown and stretchy, on the front it reads: Be the Change. Gandhi’s words to encourage people to do something, to be the change they want to see in the world. Don’t wait for someone else to do it.

On the “Be the Change” website there are suggestions on how to do that. Do something. Create something. Do an act of kindness. Buy from rural artisans. Raise money for a cause.

Raise money for a cause.

It might have been the email from a friend saying, “We should do this” and “It looks like fun.” She was right. We should do this. A bake sale looks like fun.

Whatever it was, I signed up. Agreed to host and found myself on a nationwide, hour-long phone call at 9 o’clock on a Monday night planning to do something at a grassroots level.

People called in from all parts of the country, from all walks of life. Cities and towns. Young and old. One organizer said that 8 and 9 year olds had signed up as hosts and another organizer's mother planned to man, to woman, a table in New York over the weekend.

It was heartening.

People need to agree with me or think like I do. They don’t need to host a table. They don’t need to bake, buy or eat to raise funds to put Barack Obama in the White House. They don’t need to want him there. But I hope that whatever people believe, they work to make it happen. Do something. Create something. Be the change.

If you do think like me, though, I hope you come out to Eastern Market on Saturday, June 21 (or find a bake sale in your own neighborhood) and buy a cookie or two.



Tag: Volunteering

Five more minutes

As the weekend melted into hazy Monday morning light, I argued with the alarm, having fallen back asleep for just five more minutes. And five more. And five more.

I might have gotten up to swim laps. Or to pack my lunch. Or to check my email. I might have gotten up and gone into the office for an early start to the week and the chance to come home early, but I craved more sleep. Just five more minutes.

I didn't know where the weekend went. A muddle of cleaning and cooking, shopping and chatting. A movie or two. Drinks with a friend. Laundry at seven after only five hours sleep. Errands. Nesting.

At some point late Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning, I realized I'd only be home for four more weekends between now and September. For two of them, I already had plans. It was really too early to say about that one weekend in July or the other in August - anything could happen. It was summer, and for five more minutes, 10, 15, I slumbered. I dreamt.

In college, I seldom left town. Not to go home, which really wasn't there anymore. Not to visit friends at other schools. I worked full time. Evenings. Weekends. Full-time classes and full-time responsibilities. Papers and tests, reading and studying. I needed to stay, or so I told myself. I didn't want to miss a thing.

I cannot begin to fathom how many things I missed by just staying still.

This summer, I won't have a choice. This weekend, my cousin graduated from college; I'd tentatively planned the trip to Seattle for the past four years, since his high school commencement.

Life got in the way. I got in the way, but I caught a last volunteering session before summer break. A movie or two. Drinks with a friend. Cleaning and cooking, shopping and chatting. Laundry at seven after only five hours sleep. Errands. Nesting.

As my weekends wane and my schedule takes a life of its own, I relish the opportunity to make food for the week. To clean. To read. To sleep, just five more minutes, in my own bed.

A lifetime ago, I would have stayed home in fear. A few years back, I would have gone for the same reason. This year, this weekend, I chose home. I picked it. I stayed the weekend because that was exactly where I wanted to be.

I don't feel like I've missed anything.


Tag: Travel

Too early

“Too early,” I moaned as an alarm pulled me from the arms of sleep. Slowly, I realized that it was the alarm on my phone somewhere in the living room. I didn’t remember setting it and hadn’t recalled hearing it in over a week. The dehumidifier pulling water out of the air drowned out the sound.

The alarm stopped and I drifted until it started again. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and made my dizzy way down the hall, groping blindly along the walls. Squinting, I made out the time on the phone.

It was too early.

I turned off the alarm and went back to bed to await the next two alarms. One to tell me that I needed to rise and one to back up the first so I wouldn’t be late.

“Too early,” I moaned an hour and a half later when the alarms started clanging on either side of my head. “Too early.”

I pulled myself from bed, yawned and blinked my way to the guestroom where I’d last seen my swimsuit. Dress. Dress. T-shirt. Sweater. Suit. I made my way toward the bathroom, to brush my teeth, wash my face, and put in my eyes. At the door, I hesitated. I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed. To sleep. To dream.

Nobody would care if I didn’t show. I wouldn’t be penalized or punished or even thought of poorly. It wouldn’t go down on my permanent record, but I had promised.

“Hot,” I thought as I made my way into the morning and I panicked briefly, wondering if I’d remembered underwear, even though I’d already checked twice. How many times had I forgotten my underwear growing up? It seemed often as I remembered but maybe I just remembered discomfort more than status quo. All of those Saturday lessons, Saturday morning lessons.

“Good morning,” I called through the open door as I approached the pool. I was the second one there and I panicked briefly as kids appeared more quickly, more anxiously than volunteers. I distracted myself with the pump and the inflatable toys.

“We will have enough,” I thought. “We have to have enough.”

They paired me with a smiling full of grins. Four years old, five. Downs Syndrome. He couldn’t wait to get in the pool, almost rushing in before I was ready and scaring his mom into thinking she’d have to jump in fully dressed to retrieve him. When it was time, though, he balked. He sat at the edge and splashed. For an hour or so, we played catch. He threw a ball, he threw a handful of balls, and I chased them around the shallow end of the pool.

When the music started, he cocked his head and listened. scowling slightly before breaking into a grin. He flapped his arms as I tried to do the electric slide in the water. He tossed a ball and I chased it. Arm over arm, keeping my eye on the edge of the pool and the smiling boy. I tossed him the ball and swam right to the next. Back and forth. Catch. Toss. Swim. Chase.

He ended up as wet as he’d be if he’d made it into the pool, legs draped over the edge, splashed by the return, splashed by his own eager kicking and reaching.

Toward the end, he placed three of the floating balls in the gutter of the pool and splashed them back and forth. To the left. To the right. He moaned if they went too far and I brought them back.

“Five more minutes!” someone called from the deck.

Around us, kids splashed. A dozen or so with as many adults playing in the shallow end of the pool. Downs Syndrome. Autism. Developmental disabilities from being born just too early. Kickboards. Basketballs. Noodles and Frisbees.

The Cha Cha Slide came over the speakers and my little friend cocked his head again. I followed the steps as best I could in the pool as he wiggled on deck, grinning and flapping, shaking and clapping. Everybody clap your hands. I laughed and joined my sweet little friend; I wasn’t the only one.

We finished with the hokey pokey. Showered and dressed and got ready to face a day that looked like rain but didn’t quite make it. Breakfast with friends. A nap on the couch. I caught up on sleep, at least a little. The rest of the weekend awaited.


Tag: Weekends

Faith

Some people swear by sports. By basketball or football or the other football, depending on where one was born. Basketball. Rugby. Cricket. Some people swear by college teams or professional teams. Intramural sports. High school teams.

There are those who believe in books and ideas. In God and gods. One or three in one or hundreds of deities. Or maybe something in between.

Some hold faith in one nation. Under God. Indivisible. And some people just don't believe in anything at all.

For some of my friends, Meet the Press has served as Sunday services with high priest of 16 years Tim Russert.

I’m not sure what they’re going to do. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ve seen him more often than most of my friends. I’ve invited him into my home, on television at least, and taken his opinions to heart. I listened to him and I trusted him.

I worked on Friday, my time spent with data and queries, forms and reports. I didn’t know. Until a friend sent an email, I lived in blissful ignorance of the newsman’s death.

He was only 58 and had just returned from a family trip to Italy, or so I read. Fifty-eight year olds don’t have heart attacks and die after trips to Italy. They drink wine and bore their friends with stories and pictures. They laugh over inside jokes about the cab driver who fill the blank and getting lost on the streets of another blank. They don’t just die.

Attraction - roadside attraction

“You know the geographical center of North America is in Rugby,” she said as we chatted about vacation plans.

“I know!” I replied. “I think I’ve thrown up there.”

She looked at me in abject horror as I realized what I’d said. Stopped. Shrugged.

“It was either there or the World's Largest Paul Bunyan Statue. I used to get carsick as a kid.”

I didn’t know if roadside attractions appealed to kids or if adults chose them because they thought they appealed, if they were one of the horrors to which parents subjected their children. All I remembered from the trip was too much time in a Volkswagon van and not opening the door fast enough.

The conversation meandered to the mighty Mississippi and the headwaters I’d find as my brother, my nephew and I headed west for my mother’s birthday. Then, we’d go even farther, driving from Minnesota to North Dakota for a family reunion.

My brother didn’t really want to drive and my almost-10-year-old nephew felt the same way, but carsick or not, I looked forward to the trip. I wanted to stop and see every roadside attraction along the way.

The world’s largest ball of twine? Bring it on!

A turtle made of wheel rims. The world’s largest buffalo. America’s longest straight road. Sitting Bull’s bones or an empty grave. Ronald Reagan Peace through Strength Missile Silo Historic Site.

En route, we could find a smiley face water tower and a tiny church. The world’s largest ox cart. Sig Jagielski's Jugville USA.

Fargo offered the Space Alien’s Bar and Grill and the Roger Maris Museum. Ted Nugent’s footprints cast in concrete. The Road Cheese Graveyard, with “some kind of yellow submarine thing with a buffalo chained to it.”

In Moorhead, we’d find a Viking ship replica and Fort Ransom a hilltop Viking statue, hearkening back to our heritage of raping and pillaging. Or wandering. Wandering seemed to be in our blood more than raping and pillaging, but the summer was young.

In Rugby, we’d find my aunt Peg and the World’s Tallest Salesman Exhibit.

Over the course of the trip, we’d see the farm where my great grandmother, a single 21-year-old woman homesteaded. We’d see the one-room schoolhouse where my grandmother taught and my father started his education. We’d see people we didn’t even know we knew, much less shared our blood, and we’d see the land that tied us together.

I didn’t quite not if brothers and nephews, if 31-year-old men and almost 10-year-old boys liked roadside attractions or if they just wanted to get where they were going. I didn’t really know if I enjoyed roadside attractions, but it seemed worth a risk.


Tag: Travel

Take me out

Nobody wanted to go to the game. It was too hot. Too, too hot and the train was backed up and nobody wanted to go to the game.

But I already had the tickets.

I tried giving them away, the pair of them but nobody bit and I thought about going alone. Eventually, though, a friend of a friend said she’d join me. She needed to be in Ballston at 7 and trains were backed up but she said that she’d meet me at the park.

I drove. Too hot to think about walking, too tired to deal with the Metro after the derailment, I drove and parked in the neighborhood. I had a Zone 6 sticker. I was legal and I walked a few blocks to the park to wait at the gate.

“I’m just leaving now,” she said when she answered and I sighed. Joined the girl in the green dress who tried half-heartedly to scalp tickets. Beyond the gates, the game played. The crowd cheered. I watched the JumboTron through blue bars emblazoned with the Nationals “W,” and I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It was a day for waiting with my hour and a half commute from Arlington into the city, my 45 minute wait outside the game.

“I should have just gone in,” I thought as I scuffed my feet on the sidewalk and watched the girl in the green dress.

She must have been cheap or broke or intent on arresting someone interested in scalping as she stood near the box office through the end of the third. The fourth. The beginning of the fifth. As I stood and watched.

I caught the Presidents’ Race on the JumboTron, missing who won, missing one of my favorite parts of the game.

And I waited.

Eventually, sometime in the middle of the fifth, she arrived, full of apologies and we entered Nationals Park for the first time.

We forgot to wear green and we forgot to wear red or blue but we didn’t wear the colors for the Giants.

“That’s a nice dress,” said a woman in yellow, the usher at the head of the stairs. “Cool and breezy.”

A second later, she followed with “You should get something before you go to your seat.”

“I’ve got a bottle of water.”

She shook her head.

“Water? No beer or anything?”

Cold beer on a hot night. Hot dogs. Peanuts. Cracker Jacks. The Presidents’ Race and the seventh inning stretch. Clapping out rhythms that I couldn’t remember learning and singing along to songs cut short.

“Sweet Caroline, bum, bum, bum. Good times never felt so good. So good! So good! So good!”

Scorebooks and scoreboards. The JumboTron. The mascot: Screech.

The Nationals lost.

I didn’t get a beer and my friend didn’t get a hot dog. We missed the first half of the game and we missed the presidents. (Though, she scowled at Thomas Jefferson from afar.) Hot. Tired. Sticky and sweaty. It was a Monday night at the ballpark and it was perfect.


Tag: Washington Nationals Baseball

Bad timing

I have fantastically bad timing. Horrible. Notoriously bad.

I book trips out of town, just about anywhere, approximately three seconds before receiving news of my mom’s impending visit. I write about exboyfriends – all of my exboyfriends – on the day before a last-minute, first date. I leave town the week that my new neighbors move in and the heavens break open, guaranteeing flooding from outside or in. Hell or high water, it might happen without me, but I clear the path.

Fortunately, generally, I’m the only one affected. For the most part. My mom might prefer that I not leave town the morning before she arrives and return 13 minutes after her flight home and first dates might not want to know exactly what happened in every one of my doomed relationships. For the most part, though, they're fine. I just shoot myself in the foot. I can’t help it: I have bad timing.

I brush my teeth about 30 seconds before getting orange juice. I eat onions on the night of a first kiss. I’ll watch a movie the night before a date only to discover that it’s exactly the movie that serves at as the pièce de résistance of a night that required six weeks of planning.

I get drunk the night before big parties. Reunions. Weddings. I give everything I've got to something less than the events I want so much to enjoy.

I succumbed to a spinach kick days before the last big scare, while restaurants stopped serving greens that I tried to order everywhere I went because, by that point, I wanted nothing more than a big, green salad.

In college, a roommate gave me the Friends’ soundtrack, which I loved even though it had songs I didn’t know. Because it had songs I didn’t know. At times in my life, in the dozen or so years since the she gave me the CD, in the decade or so since I lost it, I’ve thought of Lou Reed’s song You'll Know You Were Loved.

people say things are ruined after his touch
It's like a tar was dripping from his brush

I’ve been there.

About 30 minutes before discovering the “Red Scare,” the salmonella poisoning associated with tomatoes, I chopped up a half dozen of the confused fruit and made myself a choban salad. Shepherd’s delight. Tomatoes, cucumbers and onions. Oil. Vinegar. A little salt and pepper. If I had basil, I would have included it but I didn’t.

I think I ate a third of the bowl before hearing of the scare. And then I ate half of what remained. If I was going to get sick, I would, but I’d already come so far. And it was good. A little bit of heaven (albeit potentially poisonous) on a hot summer’s day.

Before the night would end, I’d make more food. Less dangerous food. Dishes filled with protein in an unintentional attempt to feel less tired. I’d make black beans and rice. Chickpea curry. Quinoa salad. But I’d crave the salad. The tomatoes and cucumbers. The box of mixed greens that would, with any luck, be deemed inedible within the week.

I ordered the Friends’ soundtrack before I went to bed, and I prayed that my stomach would make it through the night.


Tag: Timing Tomatoes

Derailed

Realizing the time, I decided to be responsible. To eat lunch. To eat something other than the popcorn and Twizzlers, cashews and Twix I could find in the kitchen and so I grabbed my bag and left for a very late lunch or a very early dinner.

In the lobby, I hesitated, deliberating between the Metro market across the courtyard, close and cheap, or Cosi for salad. I changed my mind and turned on my heel twice. I was hot, and the salad won.

Outside the front door of my office, I saw a fire truck with hoses hooked up to the hydrant. Strange, but not entirely alien. I crossed the street and another street and walked toward the restaurant.

Suddenly, I saw a dozen or so emergency vehicles. Firemen in full regalia, despite the heat. Camera crews. The entrance to the station was cordoned off with bright yellow "Do Not Cross" tape.



I went in for my salad and came back to work without finding out what had happened. As soon as I sat down, though, I got a Metro alert. Disruption at Courthouse. Apparently, a train derailed.

Over the course of the next hour or so, I received 21 more. Alert after alert carried the news of delays, disruptions, the derailed train that sat underground for an hour or so with more than 412 passengers in the dark. Without air.

After my officemate left, hoping to make it from Orange line to Red line to commuter train sometime before midnight, and a manager sent a message about the delays, I decided to pack up and leave. I thought about walking, but at 98 degrees, I worried about a five-mile walk. I worried about a two-mile walk to the closest “fully functioning” metro stop. I thought about taking a bus or two, but the same drawback applied. I didn’t want to stand and wait for the pair of buses that would take me home.

In the distance, I heard the whistles of police directing traffic. I could still see the lights of emergency vehicles as I sank down into the station, wondering if I’d made the best decision in my morning commute.

Police tape divided the station in half and officers lined the platform. Metro workers in their bright green vests.

I sat on the wrong side of one of the benches, my legs crossing into “Do Not Cross” territory, and I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Three orange line trains came and went, traveling in the wrong direction, arriving on the wrong side of the station. With the second - or was it the third - a commotion ensued with Metro employees and police clearing the crowd.

“Sick passenger. Sick passenger!”

They brought the woman to my bench and the seated scattered. She lay back on the cold concrete and everyone winced in sympathy.

“She really must be sick to put her head there,” I thought.

A young blond woman with a Slavic accent asked, “Is that the train to Rosslyn?”

I wanted to tell her to walk. To take a bus. A cab. Anything but the train as she smiled and waited until one arrived going in the right direction.


It wasn’t too crowded, not at first, even with one car out, limiting the six-car train to a five-car train during a single-tracked rush hour.

“Don’t push me!” a woman shouted after the first stop. “Don’t you shove me!”

“Don’t you touch me again!” a second voice replied.

“You pushed me!” the first screamed. “Don’t push me!”

“Shut up!” called a voice from the end of the car. “Shut up and enjoy the ride.”

“I want to know whose arm that is on my back.”

For the most part, though, the voices that emerged from the dull murmur asked questions like “Is this your stop?” and “Do you want to sit down?”

“No, thanks. I’m getting off soon,” came the reply or just a “no thanks.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.”

Tension grew between Farragut West and McPherson Square as people mentally prepared to leave. Between McPherson and Metro Center, the mental preparations turned physical as people stood, shifted, slipped back into seats to clear the aisles. Passengers chatted nervously.


“I hope I can get off at Metro Center.”

“I’d rather be on this train than the one that derailed.”

“At least the air on this car is working.”

At the station, the tension erupted into nervous laughter as a man’s voice rang out.

“On your mark. Get set. Go!”

We waited at Federal Triangle for five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. An announcement echoed through the station outside the train.

“What’s he saying?” someone asked but nobody knew the answer.

More people boarded. And more. And more. And the crowd didn’t thin at L’Enfant. It didn’t thin anywhere and I prepped for two stops before my own. Waking my seatmate. Standing and shuffling toward the doors. Apologizing for the toes upon which I stepped no matter how carefully I placed my feet, they were just so many toes, and then I burst on the platform. An hour and a half after I left the office, I left the train.

Hours later, at Nationals Park, at the top of the 9th sometime around 10, the big screen showed a warning. The Orange line was still delayed from the derailment seven hours earlier.


Tag: Metro

On the ground

"Get on the ground! Get on the f*cking ground!"

I had heard shouting on the platform and assumed that it was someone drunk, someone homeless, someone a little crazy, shouting at the station in general, the world at large and the weather that made us all a little restless.

As I slapped my way through the station in flip flops and dress, moving slowly with the weight of the day ahead of me and shouts reverberating in the dimly lit hall, I said a little prayer of thanks that the tracks lay between the shouter and me. It was just too hot to deal with crazy. Too early. Too everything.

The shouts died as I made my way to the escalator but restarted as I made my way to the gate. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a man in an Uncle Sam hat. Stars and stripes forever. He rode the escalator opposite me and we crossed paths. Me on my way out. Uncle Sam on his way down to the opposite track. Yellow or Green Line.

He didn't seem to be shouting, though. He didn't seem to be… anything. A bit strange in the hat but quiet.

I made my way toward the station manager's box, toward the turnstiles, toward the hot, hot day and the shouts started again, filtering from noise into sense and I turned to look.

"Get on the ground! Get on the f*cking ground!"

A man in blue, a man with a gun. An officer shouting. Shouting at the man in the Uncle Sam hat and running. A man in blue running with his gun outstretched. Behind me. Near me.

I couldn't understand.

The station manager shouted at me, waved me to the turnstiles and I ran.

Glancing back, I saw Uncle Sam on the floor, his arms bent behind him, handcuffs, his hat rolling at the feet of a policeman.

Was it one officer? Were there two?

"Get on the ground! Get on the f*cking ground!" echoed through my mind as the station manager yelled at me, as I emerged into day, into heat, the sound of sirens and flashing lights. I left the station for Monday and work, meetings and calls and worrying about the format of forms.

Behind me, I saw Uncle Sam on the floor, his arms bent behind him, handcuffs, his hat rolling at the feet of a policeman.


Tag: Metro

Accommodation

The last paragraph threw me and I reread the message a couple of times before clicking through to the attachment. I wondered, briefly, if we were talking about the same thing.

I'm going to send you the reunion invitation I made. I'm sure they will get them out eventually, but I've been doing the design, so you can have a prelim version! I liked my original design better, but I had to add accommodation info (which she has changed on me FOUR times already). Anyway, let me know what you think. Miss you much!

“She has to be talking about our high school reunion,” I thought. “What other reunion could there be?”

With side businesses that included invitation designs, caricatures and managing art exhibits in her parents’ restaurant and a graphic designer husband, she was well suited to design the reunion invitations. More so than anybody else in our class of less that 200. But the message still threw me.

“Accommodation info?” I wondered. “For our high school reunion?”

Granted, I would need a place to stay as my parents had long since moved out of town, but I’d already made plans to stay with friends. Even without the plan, my hometown, our hometown, population 11,500, didn’t exactly have a lot of options.

There were the hotels close to the interstate. The Holiday Inn where we swam in the summer. The lodge at the State Park that seemed a world apart with a 20-minute drive. The Bed and Breakfast close to the old high school. The shady little motel in the middle of town and the even shadier one out along Route 40, by the truck stop. The Best Western with J&K on the Hill, although J&K moved downtown a few years back so really it was just the Best Western on the Hill with dusty postcards and grass growing through the cracks in the cement, the sidewalks, the parking lot.

My people had long since gone, but not my memory. I still knew my locker combination from freshman year. I knew the story about the baker, food stamp fraud and attempted arson. I knew where to find butter at three in the morning and where to find the best pizza. The worst. The cheapest. Churches and shortcuts. Where to park and one way streets. The route for cruising. And where to stay.

It was my hometown.

I didn't need accommodation info.

Tag: Home

Helping people pants

Rolling out of bed, my feet on the cool tile and my head somewhere between sleep and reality, I squinted toward the closet.

“Comfy pants,” I thought. “I need comfy pants.”

I yawned and made my way to the living room, forgetting about the comfy pants for a minute to greet a houseguest.

“We’ll go and get your car in a minute,” I promised. “I just need to…”

Wander aimlessly about my apartment apparently, dancing on the rug in the guestroom to see if it had dried, brushing my teeth and staring forlornly at the mountain of recycling that threatened to spill from the kitchen into the living room, endangering plants, pets and small children.

“I’m getting dressed now,” I said on my pass through the living room as my friend on the couch flipped through a book.

“I have a stupid question,” she called down the hall. “Is ‘On the Road’ fiction or nonfiction?”

I thought for a second.

“That’s not a stupid question,” I hollered back as I dug through my closet, returning to the search for comfy pants. “It’s technically fiction but it’s not.”

“Oh.”

I returned to the living room in yoga pants and t-shirt and my friend looked up doubtfully.

“There’s a reason I look like I’m still wearing pajamas.”

“Really? And what is that?”

“I’m helping someone move.”

“Right…”

Out in the heat, in the sweltering morning haze, she stared at me and laughed.

“Have fun.”

I didn’t quite know how it would turn out with the stairs and the heat, the boxes and bed, the cat and the plants and the artwork, but I was prepared. I was wearing my “helping people pants.” They’d made several moves, including two in one day. They’ve painted and gardened and traveled, and they’ve stretched beyond previously defined limits for yoga pants.

Truth be told, they were horrible - distended and paint splattered, torn and sagging – but they were comfortable and perfect for dirty tasks. Perfect for helping friends. Even on a hot DC summer day. Especially on a hot DC summer day.


Tag: Moving Friends

Snuff

Questions and answers. Blowup dolls and autograph hounds. Books. Gut-wrenching laughter and turning of the stomach. On Tuesday night, Chuck Palahniuk entertained DC fans with events that included a reading, games and an interview.

Given the reaction to his readings in the past, the author moved from big box stores to more independent* venues in promoting his newest book: Snuff, a novel about, well, snuff – sex, death, movies – in as much as any Chuck Palahniuk book is about anything so easily defined.

"Stop!" an audience member shouted as the author told the story of the book so many of us had just received for the first time. "We want to read it!"

He did stop with the recap and moved into a story he'd written for the tour. Apparently, he'd offended the delicate sensibilities of some of those who just happened by the speakers at chains in the past. Those who stopped for a second while perusing their cookbooks, Christian lit, travel books to listen to the man with a mic, someone they didn't recognize as the creator of Fight Club. Of Choke. The Left Behind series had nothing on Guts, a short story with a reputation of making listeners faint.

Chuck said he stopped counting at 71, a prime number that he'd remember. He figured it was something closer to 200 by now. Familiarity with the short story featured in Haunted didn't seem to make a difference, and it stuck with me a year and a half after reading it. Knowing it was mostly true made it worse, and I could only imagine the story in Palahniuk's gentle voice.

He read a new story on Tuesday, though, a piece entitled "Loser." He said he'd written it for the tour and while it didn't make anyone faint, it certainly earned a reaction in the form of frequent, spontaneous bouts of laughter.

"Did you notice that my nose was running the whole time?" he asked when he'd finished and wiped his nose on his sleeve, a boyish gesture, that seemed to fit with his enthusiasm, the wholesome and clean-cut appearance that belied a man capable of making people faint with his thoughts and his words.

"It's not just Guts," he said after telling the Sea-Tac story, another tale that made the audience squirm. "I've got a half dozen of those."

Before squirming, though, before and after and sometimes during, laughter marked the event, which started with a contest to see who might inflate a blowup doll fastest.

"Ready... Set... Blow."

Around the theater, as moviegoers watched Sex and the City on the screen next door, hundreds of Palahniuk fans watched and a handful blew through the tiny little stems into plastic bodies with Palahniuk's autograph strategically scrawled across their plastic privates. The first boy doll and the first girl earned their owners, the blowers, a book. Knockemstiff.

"If you don't get a book, at least you get a blow up doll," Palahniuk called into the audience, and then he read. He talked. An hour and a half, two hours later, we were still laughing, cringing, thinking, because that's what the man did best. He made us think. Fight Club. Diary. Choke. He presented characters that seemed, at once, so alien and so familiar, stories that illustrated "the lengths to which people will go to preserve our loneliness."

"When you were in high school and there weren't authors like you..." a teenager asked in the Q&A session. "How did you survive high school?"

I almost wondered for a second why I identified so closely with his characters, why I would go out of my way and spend $30 for a ticket, spend $60 for a pair of tickets, for an autographed copy of a book and a chance to sit and listen to the man speak, but later, driving down the street and seeing people walk past with blowup dolls and giant grins, I realized that it didn't matter.

* Local booksellers Olsson's Books and Records sponsored this stop on Palahniuk's tour.

Tag: Books Chuck Palahniuk

Alone at the Argonaut

I planned to leave. I would have left when I realized my friends weren't coming but the TVs flickered and the satellite dropped. Outside, an angry god laid waste to pollen, pedestrians and mobile homes as storms ripped through the region, bringing more than a couple of tornadoes. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed. I stayed.

"Do you need a beer?" asked my bartending friend.

"Need?" I thought and replied, "Yes. Yes, I do."

I drank it. I still didn't plan to play, but my bartending friend wouldn't let me sit and listen, scribbling answers on a receipt just to see what, if anything, I knew. He encouraged me, harangued me, went over and grabbed a stack of answer sheets and a pen. So I played.

And I sucked. And I drank. It didn't make me feel any better about myself, knowing just how much I didn't know, knowing I had nobody with whom to debate. Nobody upon whom to rely, to blame, to anything. It was just me. Me and my bartending friend. He gave me an answer, just one, having to do with alcohol. It seemed somewhat fitting.

I didn't feel any better about myself but I didn't feel worse. It was a rainy Wednesday and I was alone in a bar. I'd been to the girly doc, poked with sticks and swabs, poked with needles. My apartment flooded while I played and in the morning, I would discover that someone broke into my car. Again. Which was also filled with water. It wasn't my best night ever.

"At least, I'm not out in the rain," I thought, and the rain, it just kept pouring. And pouring. And pouring.

And I wrote down wrong answer after wrong answer. Architecture. Booty. Chefs and their restaurants. I felt alright about not knowing a Bubba Sparks song but I knew chefs. I knew restaurants. My mind went blank. Anthony Bourdain. Gordon Ramsay. Bobby Flay.

"Bobby Flay – for f*ck's sake," I thought. "What is wrong with me?"

I slipped my answers under another answer sheet as if hiding it would make the humiliation go away. Would make it better. Would make it less worse.

Even The Princess Bride threw me off.

"I thought I wouldn't get an answer," I moaned to my bartending friend. "I would have to, like, stop being a girl."

He knew more of the category than I, and I missed a question, talking to him about the weather, the weekend, getting stuck in elevators, which had absolutely nothing to do with the game at hand, but it didn't make a difference.

The cups had pirates, I noticed. Skulls and crossbones.

A very drunk man stood beside me, trying to order another drink, trying to focus on my face.

"You… you are very attractive," he said as the manager cut him off. They wrestled a bit and the man lurched back to my side.

"You are very attractive and I think I'm getting escorted out," he slurred.

I kept losing.

And then I wasn't.

I mean, I was. I came in last but only by one point and I was alone. If I'd been paying attention instead of talking to my bartending friend, I would have tied. I knew the answer to a question I missed in the midst of our elevator conversation. About elevators.

And I felt better. Good, even. I lost but it didn't matter. I played.

My apartment flooded while I played and in the morning, I would discover that someone broke into my car. Again. Which was also filled with water, but I had fun.


Tag: Trivia Bar

Meaning

I read my horoscope every day. Sometimes two or three times a day. 10. 50. It's on my homepage. Most of the time I scan it without thinking, without registering what it says, but at some point, I go back and read it. I always go back and read it. As if it's going to tell me (and one in 12 of the rest of the people in the world) something about myself that I don't know.

Most of the time, they're deliberately, deliciously vague and I can read whatever I want into a couple of lines on the page, my present, my future, my past.

Although the airy Gemini New Moon can disperse my energy, it falls in my 10th House of Responsibility, making this a great time to start a project at work, which is fantastic because I've been reassigned and I don't have much choice in whether or not I start a new project at work. I push aside the fact that there's never been a time when I didn't have new projects at work. Never a time when I didn’t work.

Yesterday, I was not incapable of manifesting what I dreamed but I could have been afraid to take a chance.

Yesterday, I thought it meant moving to New Orleans, to Argentina, out of my basement apartment with the spongy walls to someplace superterranean with windows and sunlight and a humidity factor of less than 90 percent. Today, I read it as something more personal and who knows what I'll think tomorrow?

As I read my horoscope and fit the shape of ambiguous words into the square holes in my life, I realize that I do the same thing with everything else in my life.

"There must be a reason I missed the train," I think, almost daily, as I watch the Metro leave the platform from my position on the escalator, trapped behind a pair of tourists. I count the number of steps, the length of time for a wait, the number of people with red umbrellas waiting for a light to change. I count the cabs. The buses. The police cars. I try to make a pattern of the universe and find my place in it.

Am I wearing the right coat? Will it rain today? Can I wear the black shoes with the burgundy trim with this dress, and will anyone at work see my feet? How much money do I need to go to North Dakota and South Africa? What will I need to pack?

Day in and day out, I listen to music at work. Hundreds of songs. Thousands. With my headphones on and my mind on the federal government's money and the federal government's money on my mind, I drift through worlds that aren’t my own.

I pulled and I stretched. I forced it to fit my life, covering me completely. Almost. Just never my toes and my nose at the same time.

Had a messy bedroom on the edge of town. I ain't ever been good enough to ever keep around

"Had I... Would I... Could I?" I wondered. "Did I even hear them right?"

Probably not, but I craved a little Ryan Adams with my morning caffeine. I didn’t love an English girl. Not even approximately, but I hummed the tune and when my officemate left, I sang along.

It didn’t mean any more to me this morning than it did last week, last month or last year. They didn't mean any more than a horoscope that applied to 8.3 percent of the population, but every morning, I listened and stretched. I read and applied. I found new meaning in the old meanings of words written by somebody else.

Sometimes, that makes more sense than anything I’d say for myself.

Apparently, though, today my path is clear, even if I don't take a direct approach. I should allow myself to be guided by intuition, even if it doesn't make logical sense. Instead of following a well thought out plan, I'll do great now by simply making it up as I go along.

Tag: Music Horoscope

A Message from NOLA Celeste – Demand the 8/29 Commission

In the recent aftermath of Scott McClellan's memoir, setting aside the controversy, renewed attention has been focused on the Federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. For the past two years, Louisiana politicians and their allies in other states have been calling for the establishment of an 8/29 Commission (similar to the 9/11 Commission).

Disasters and the government's response to them affect all Americans, whether the disaster is a hurricane in the Gulf South, an earthquake in California, tornadoes in the Midwest, floods along the length of an unusually high Mississippi River or terrorist attacks on New York and the District of Columbia.

Please take a look at the website, which contains information about the proposed 8/29 Commission. The Commission would aid in an increased understanding of what went wrong after Katrina and how the government can prepare for large disasters – no matter where they occur.

There is also a link where you can sign a petition supporting the Commission.

Thank you in advance for your interest.


NOLA Celeste


P.S. An interesting story from the October 2005 edition of New Yorker – "High Water" by David Remnick – regarding President Johnson's response to Hurricane Betsy (which hit Louisiana in September 1965):

In the Ninth Ward, Johnson visited the George Washington Elementary School, on St. Claude Avenue, which was being used as a shelter. "At first, they did not believe that it was actually the President."

Johnson entered the crowded shelter in near-total darkness; there were only a couple of flashlights to lead the way. "This is your President!" Johnson announced. "I'm here to help you!"

[A colleague's diary] describes the shelter as a "mass of human suffering," with people calling out for help "in terribly emotional wails from voices of all ages. . . . It was a most pitiful sight of human and material destruction." According to an article by the historian Edward F. Haas, published fifteen years ago in the Gulf Coast Historical Review, Johnson was deeply moved as people approached and asked him for food and water; one woman asked Johnson for a boat so that she could look for her two sons, who had been lost in the flood.

"Little Mayor, this is horrible," Johnson said to Schiro. "I've never seen anything like this in my life." Johnson assured Schiro that the resources of the federal government were at his disposal and that "all red tape [will] be cut."

The President flew back to Washington and the next day sent Schiro a sixteen-page telegram outlining plans for aid and the revival of New Orleans. "Please know," Johnson wrote, "that my thoughts and prayers are with you and the thousands of Louisiana citizens who have suffered so heavily."

"This is your President! I'm here to help you." If only we could hear those words again...


Tag: New Orleans

First impressions

Jet lag kept me from worrying. After a red-eye flight and a full day at work, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. To nap. To sleep. To recover a bit of my ever-diminishing sanity. I unlocked the gate and pressed on the inside door. Locked. I slipped the second key into the deadbolt and walked into the apartment.

"Home," I thought with a sigh of relief. "Mine."

I didn't much notice that the wet dog smell had dissipated into the smell of candle cupcakes, into bath products that weren't my own. Crumbs on the counter. A pair of shoes by the couch. Plastic bags on the counter. The same but different. Only slightly different.

"Nice," I thought and pulled my bags toward the back, wondering if I'd sleep in my room, the guest room or the couch. I didn't much care. I had told my houseguests, my brother's friend, that she could stay as long as she wanted; I just wanted a bed when I got home.

I repeated the offer when we finally met and again, later that night. My houseguests were nice. Conscientious. Fun. They could stay as long as they wanted. In the meantime, though, before we met, I curled up on my bed, under a blanket, and slipped into a deep, disorienting sleep.

When I awoke, before I met the beautiful blond stranger with the bright blue eyes, before I met the slim, laughing girl who worked with my brother in Argentina, I started to regain my bearings. For the first time in a day or so, I thought about my situation. The shared house. The friends of friends.

I wondered what they'd be like and I wondered what they'd think of me. They had spent several days in my apartment, surrounded by my things.

"Did they notice the bleach spots on the rug?" I wondered. I'd dribbled the cleaner in my fourth and final scrub of the tub in as many days, making sure that the apartment was as clean as possible for the people I didn't know. Had I emptied the dishwasher? The trash? The baseboards might have used another attack with cleaner. And there might have been cobwebs on the ceiling. In the corner. Under the cabinet at the end of the hall.

The porcelain ballerina with the faint line of a crack around her neck – a gift from my dad at my first communion. The woodcut "Kristy" from my grandfather even though I'd never gone by "Kristy" but "Kristi" and not since the days before I could spell either. My own photographs. The Roman Holiday poster I bought from a street vendor just past the Trevi Fountain. Original woodcuts. Watercolors. Linoleum prints. Chalk drawings. Marker and crayon and pen on the fridge. Schoolhouse Rocks magnets. Beans and grains and cottage cheese. Bags of chocolate chips in the freezer. Bags of candy. Dozens of spices and a cup of rhubarb on the door of the fridge. More in the freezer. Empty frames. Photos of friends. Of family. In frames and out. Two shelves full of binders with photos and negatives. Dozens of albums. Hundreds of books. 600 count sheets. Seven pillows on the queen and three on the twin. A Homeland Security pillow on couch.

What would they think of me? Surrounded by my things, my pictures, my life?

On some level I knew I was more than the sum of my parts, different, whole. I wasn't defined by the plant slowing dying in the guestroom. Not completely. I didn't even buy it, but it was mine and I wondered what, exactly, it said about me. If it said any less than the boîte à bobos which I'd sought for years, in many trips to France, and eventually found online. They didn't know that, the houseguests, the people I hadn't met.

I wasn't exactly worried, but I wondered.

Later, I'd hear more about the maps that I'd left. The Metro cards. The cookies and the miniature cupcakes. I'd hear thanks for sharing my house and amusement at the 26-page document detailing the neighborhood from coffee shops and grocery stores to concert venues and a current list of shows.

The day after my return, we'd walk through a cool May night to a local bar with a friend. We'd play trivia, failing miserably. We'd eat and we'd drink, all the while laughing and I'd repeat my offer of hospitality to these people I barely knew. I'd never quite know what they thought of me based on the house or the self that they met, but it much matter. In a few days, they'd leave and I'd return to my life alone.


Tag: Friends Houseguests