Clothing store or medieval torture device. It could swing either way.
One of the jobs I had before I do what I do was for a fashion designer. I kept tabs on which factory was producing what garment in what country, when it would ship and to where.
When a job opened that would have been a promotion, I thought maybe by virtue of proximity I would have gleaned enough information about the fashion industry to be a candidate. It’s not like I would have been designing clothing, so maybe they’d overlook the fact I had no degree or experience in fashion. Or any interest in fashion. Or that I dressed like an unpaid college student who got lost in Casual Corner.
When I was twelve years old, I snuck a copy of The Amityville Horror to my room and read the whole thing in a day. Then I couldn’t sleep.
I love ghost stories. And then I hate them. That night I woke up and left my room with the intention of going upstairs to sleep on the couch, where I would… I don’t know … get a heads up earlier if something supernatural was going on.
The reason is simple: I don’t like how it feels to avoid eye contact when I pass someone asking for help. I decided if I can hand over a buck without fumbling through my purse, if I feel safe, and am not enticing anyone to cross traffic, I’m going to give away money when asked.
I’m totally nearsighted, so clever signs don’t sway me. If the person isn’t too scary – not brandishing a machete, in other words – his appearance doesn’t matter, whether he’s sitting in a wheelchair, or dressed in a suit with a Maserati parked around the corner.
Finishing up the 16 mile Aldape Challenge in 2013. An earlier me would have had a problem continuing after realizing my shorts were on backwards.
Thank you, thighs.
Sixteen year-old me would have never dreamed I’d one day appreciate you. I’ve always thought of you as a tad oversized. Thirty or so years ago, I was consistently pissed that you wouldn’t fit well into a reasonably sized pair of Levi’s 501s. Today, it was your muscle and sinew and bone that carried me across the finish line of my latest half marathon.
While we’re at it, I’d like to say thanks to you heart and lungs. I don’t know why you’ve stuck it out all these years, and done so well, but I appreciate it. I would like to apologize for my lack of attention to nutrition and fitness earlier in life and any effect it may have had on you.
There aren’t any words to explain the smoking thing, guys. I apologize profusely for that and promise to let a good long time pass before you ever have to deal with that nonsense ever again. I would say ‘you’ll never have to deal with it again,’ but I made a deal with frontal cortex: if we all last another four and a half decades, we give ourselves permission to pick the habit back up (between you and me, lungs, it’s likely that frontal cortex will be slowing down by then. She’ll probably forget our promise in favor of taking up puzzles with cats on them or something. I wouldn’t worry).
Bob says this is their cow’s self-portrait. No kidding. They had a pet cow.
I lived in the dorms for a semester in college. My roommate and I acquired a mottled rust and orange colored shag carpet remnant to cover the tile. The cinder block walls had been painted aquamarine. Somebody made light of the color by taping a paper puffer fish to the door – one of those cheap decorations they might hang at a grocery store to herald a Hawaiian days promotion. The fish was stolen within a week.
The room was probably the most depressingly hideous space on the planet, which didn’t bother my roommate as much as my inability to properly decorate my side.
“There’s no theme over there. Nothing matches,” she said.
This was true, but in my defense, throughout most of the rest of my life there had been a distinct lack of burnt umber and turquoise hues with which to work. I was out of my element.
And there was the fact that I hadn’t realized one was supposed to decorate a dorm room.
My boyfriend snapped to with one of his brilliant comebacks.
“Of course everything matches over here,” he said. “It has to. There’s at least one item of every color. Anything that comes in here is bound to match something else.”
It was totally MIke’s idea to invite my Grandma to move in, and it wasn’t until she did that I realized I hadn’t ever been able to spend any time with her while I was growing up. In fact, I didn’t know her at all. As we helped her unpack her stuff, I came across one of those little ceramic spoon rests someone had placed on the stove. It said “Betty’s Kitchen,” and I thought: “the hell it is.” This could go wrong really fast.
I didn’t know what to expect from our arrangement. Would she try to assume the position of supreme matriarch of the household? Be overbearing and bossy? That’s my job.
I didn’t have to worry. Grandma could be assertive, but more often she was playful. She and the boys were co-conspirators in slipping table scraps to the dog, something they resorted to practically every evening after ruining their dinner. She always had a private stash of chocolate and popsicles she was happy to share with the boys.
I’m never sure when I pass someone running in an event if I should say “good job,” or “keep it up” or something like other runners say to me when they pass – which is a far more likely scenario. I always credit their encouragement to the fact that I look like I’m about to fall over dead and they probably want to see if I’ll respond, just to make sure they don’t have to flag down someone with a defibulator.
I do pass other runners on occassion. The difference is that the person passing me could be anyone from a lithe, 20-something college track star to a senior citizen, but the person I’m likely to pass – my “road kill” in running vernacular – is someone who looks to be further along on the spectrum of risk for myocardial infarction than I. I worry about coming across as a condescending jerk; panting “keep going, you can make it,” as I pass slowly enough for there to be an awkward pause if the person doesn’t respond.
“False Chinch” better known as GET OUTTA MY FREAKING HOUSE, image courtesy of Colorado State University Extension
So, it’s a hundred and freakin’ who knows how many degrees outside, and inside we’re starting to make each other crazy. I think part of the problem is my kids only unplug from the matrix long enough to make demands, eat all our food, or yell at each other. The other part of the problem is bugs.
Little, smelly, flying bugs infested my house last weekend and whether they hatched in here or they’re crawling in some minuscule hole somewhere to evade the heat, I don’t know, but I think they’re going to cost me my sanity.
We came home last weekend on one of those overfull flights in a teeny airplane that underscore how someone missed the memo about the hoards more people commuting between Boise and Seattle than can be comfortably accommodated. We stopped downtown on our way home for a late lunch.
No matter how big he gets, I’ll have this proof that at one point he thought of me as the taller one. And probably the louder one too.
The place was new, and trendy, with lots of blond wood and brushed metal, cement floors, heavy, metal barstools and tall tables. We’d been unable to get a table the first few times we’d come. Now, months after it opened, at 3 pm on a Sunday, sans kids, we didn’t have to wait for lunch. I climbed onto my barstool and realized after a moment that a. my feet weren’t actually resting on anything, and b. this made me feel like a third grader.
Some two or three decades ago my freckled skin and I became good friends with Hawaiian Tropic, SPF 4 in my pursuit of the teen ideal of beauty. Despite my determination to transform my natural skin tone from its normal translucent hue that would have been coveted in Victorian-era England, I never really tanned. In the years since I have learned to balance my grudge against the lotion industry and its failure to deliver on promises of bronze perfection, with my disdain for my inherited pallor.
Sometime several months ago, I absent-mindedly picked at patch of dry skin on the left side of my nose, creating a small sore that stayed for weeks. A scab would form, which would wash off in the shower, or slough off when I ran and rubbed the sweat off my face with my sleeve.
