Monday, April 30, 2007

As boring as SNL's Weekend Update, but all about me.

Wow. You know how I wanted to write here all the time? Wanted to have a place to plop my writing and have a place where I wouldn't have to argue over the choice of verbs?

Well, let's just say my days have been more than hectic. The last 14 days, in fact. Only before that, there was a funeral. And before that, 14 days of the same.

So Sunday, Pat and I finally crawled out of bed at 9:30 a.m., which NEVER happens around here. I'm lucky if I make it to 7 a.m. (and stop laughing, all you 5 a.m. risers). I hope you'll take it more as a sign of just how tired I was than just how lazy I was. Really. I spent most of the day Saturday sanding and painting sheet after sheet of bead board that will be the ceilings of the covered porches on the new houses. Then Sunday we went to the (take-your-pick) big box home improvement store which was hell (this cannot be understated) because we didn't get there until noon and then had to pick through all the crap (what's with all the dinged, items with missing parts, broken, crooked, dented or a combination of all of the above things out there for sale? for hundreds of dollars? it. drives. me. crazy.) to find two OK doors to put in the houses and to rent a chipper for all the brush piling up in the back yards.

Then back to the houses! To clean up! Except the chipper DIDN'T work! Vigorous cussing ensued! As did multiple calls to big box store! More cussing! Wow, what a weekend!

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

I heard of what happened at Virginia Tech Monday as I drove up the entrance ramp to Interstate 40 in East Asheville. An announcer on the classic rock station alluded to about 20 people dead. That's what they knew then. I had no idea what had happened, and now I can't remember where I was even going, to be honest.

It was one of those moments, one of those events that shape the timeline of your life. Pre-Columbia, post-Columbia. Pre-Sept. 11. Post-Sept. 11. One of those moments seared in your mind, one you'll talk about later, remembering with friends or family where you were when you heard. And the number? It kept going up, even though I wished, wished the news announcers would say it was over.

I'm far away and far removed from the actual experience and the aftermath. But as soon as I got home, I searched for information. I read the Web, watched the evening news and listened to part of the memorial service yesterday. It was overwhelming, wasn't it? Tragedy, the word, seems overused. But what other word describes it? What other words could describe it? It is that word in every way, every letter sounded out slowly, settling on your tongue, rolling before you, the air filled with it -- the looks of anguish and confusion and tragedy. Tragedy. Tragedy.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Spring Break at Daytona? Bring it!

I remember when Spring Break meant driving from Florida to Michigan to sit in my friend Julie's parents' house watching TV and eating baklava. I remember when Spring Break meant going to New York City for the first time, living off popovers from a coffee shop, sleeping on the floor of a friend of friend's dorm room at Juilliard, seeing Gregory Hines in Jelly's Last Jam from the top row of Broadway's Virginia Theatre.

Wow. Those were the days.

This break -- which I'd like to say was intentional but was really more akin to sloth and sickness taking hold like a snapping turtle whose head you have to pop to release, but hey, isn't that cute? A snapping turtle attached to my hand? And why not just lie here on the coach in a fever-induced delirium and watch that turtle eat away at my fingers? Sounds great! -- was not that fun. It was more like having all four of your wisdom teeth cracked out by your dentist and suffering from mind-numbing pain. Oh, yeah, I remember a spring/summer break taken up by that, too.

So, I'm back. Here, at least, with nothing much exciting to report except these paltry discoveries:
1: Acupuncture? It freaking hurts. And the (my special formulas) herbs taste like ass. And make my house smell like ass.
2: Martha? The TV show? Just an excuse in cross-platform advertising akin to those techniques Carter Duryea thought up when high on Starbucks and desperate to pretend that he knew what the hell he was doing. So THAT's where Carter was jogging to! Not down a lovely beach! But the pathway to Martha Stewart World!
3: The only people at Charter Communications to answer your technical questions who are actually friendly are A) incompetent and B) really, friendly enough to make me want to invite them over for tea and not the stinky ass-smelling Chinese herb kind either.
4: HBO needs some new freaking movies to show because though I love The 40-Year-Old Virgin almost pathologically ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!
5: No amount of lotion smeared on the tips of your nose will prevent horrible nostril chapping fallout from multiple sneezing attacks and endless hours of nose wiping. I'm sure the moms and daycare providers and dads (OK) and others in the company of small children for multiple sicknesses probably have a solution tucked away, but they weren't at my house even though I yelled for them to come over. Didn't you hear me?
6: This Spring Break? About as fun as a snapping turtle clamped on your hand (see above).