Gosh, when I take a hiatus, even a brief one, things pile up and I forget to tell you everything I wanted to tell you. Where to begin…
- Esteban is on a business trip this week. I miss him already. He’s in Atlanta and I couldn’t rightfully demand to go along because it’s during the week and I’m involved in tons of new job stuff and I’m also gallavanting to San Francisco without him in a few weeks to attend JournalCon, which is undoubtedly a bad wife thing to do, but it’s for the best really because the diary thing squicks him out, he doesn’t like to travel, and honestly, he tends to seriously slow me down. He needs all this kind of nesting time in the hotel and I really don’t have any patience for that. So he doesn’t get to come. He must stay home and pine away for me instead.
- On a positive note: He did the dishes before he left. That’s apparently the trick. He hasn’t done them since he left for Dork Con in early August. Apparently the Leaving Guilt makes him kick ass in the kitchen. Or possibly it ensures that he gets some Weetabix Booty when he returns.
- The weekend was lovely. I got up extremely early and went to the Farmer’s Market where my haul included a loaf of white bread, some shitake mushrooms, some olives stuffed with bleu cheese (for Esteban), an oatmeal cookie (for me… hey.. it’s whole grain!), some green beans, some zucchini, and a lovely sense of accomplishment. Also, I was there so incredibly early that I hit that perfect moment when all of the churches downtown begin their Saturday morning services and chime in sequence, a lovely dense ten minutes of century antique church bells making me feel alive and in love with my town. It was marvelous.
Then I hopped in the car and went to the snooty deli where I got Esteban two bagels and ordered myself some freshly squeezed orange juice and a high maintenence Veggie sandwich. Normally, the Veggie sandwiches are all premade (roasted red pepper, fresh mozzarella, cucumber, tomato, spring greens and pesto mayonnaise on sourdough bread) but they were going to have to make one for me, so I asked for them to hold off on the mayonnaise. Apparently, that led to a whole new level of confusion, taking no less than fifteen minutes to assemble one minute sandwich.
As much as I am bothered by the fact that the deli is managed very stupidly, the staff is slow and sometimes snippy, and they did have vermin in the bread, I do feel very right about going to this place. It is in the same old historical neighborhood I grew up in, the only area of Green Bay that I truly feel connected to. It is owned by one of the pseudohippies from the Hippy Circle that my mother used to be a part of in the mid-80’s. They all live in that same neighborhood. It’s not so much Little SoHo but rather Little Key West. Sure, those aging hippies had hitchhiked to Woodstock but now they’re driving Volvos and Beemers, talking about sustainable growth and grounds root action plans. And they all eat at the snooty deli. The whole place is a bit like the Hippy Mafia. Everytime I go in there, I recognize the former hippy children that I used to hang out with when I was a kid, only now grown and dropped out of college or marriages or life in general. I see my college professors, other poets and writers, the whole green earth crew in general.
Strangely enough, a tallish older man walked into the shop while I was waiting for my sandwich and I immediately recognized him, even though I haven’t seen him in 17 years, and remembered his name was Hermie. I knew that his wife, whom I absolutely adored, had died of ovarian cancer last year and he was with a woman that morning. That made me so happy for him. He is such a great guy. Making bagels that day was a kid I used to babysit. Even though I didn’t immediately place him, I knew that I had seen him before. Actually, he now looks exactly like his mother, but in kind of a gross, googly-eyed freakish way. The owner walked over to Hermie and said “You’ll never believe who’s making bagels. Look. It’s Casey.” and that’s when he fell into place. I watched him a bit. He was very studiously and deliberately working hard, in the manner that perpetual goof-offs have to think about what they are doing and are specifically trying to make damn sure that they don’t get fired from THIS job too. He was the kid whose mother didn’t shave her legs or armpits and still nursed him when he was four years old. That’s Casey. He makes the bagels now. For some reason, that seems so very wrong, but I don’t know why.
I never identify myself on these visits. I had two good friends who used to work there and they would recognize me and say hi. I adored them and still do, actually. One is now a lawyer turned into a housewife and the other perfectly lovely girl is now a welder or something else very Flashdance. That’s how these hippy children go, honestly. All of our ambition just got sucked out of us by the time we were 14. Maybe it was so tiring to be dragged along to all those marches, all of those fund raisers and action committees when they never really accomplished anything. Maybe it was the fact that our parents preached concepts beyond that of the corpreal and our heads are still swimming in “What Ifs” rather than “We will”. Maybe it was all the whole wheat pasta and eggplant. I dunno. But we’re all a little strange. I’m probably the most normal of all that I’ve met, actually, but then, we were never really full members of that hippy clique. We were just along for the ride with my mother’s boyfriend. Probably the reason that Richard never hired me when I was in high school and looking for a job at the deli. I wasn’t a member of the inner circle any longer.
- I then drove home to find that Esteban had woken and gone to help someone rip the shingles off their garage. Gah. I then brought him his Casey-made bagels and then scurried off to Appleton. You see, that $65 pair of trendy jeans has been gnawing away at my psyche. I now had to have those jeans and had resigned myself to pay $65 for an article of clothing that will undoubtedly be out of style in four days and will be lauded as Big Mistake by next year.
I went to The Avenue and grabbed the jeans. I ended up going down a size because they ran large. That was a super feeling for whatever the reason. Sadly, the four year old jeans (which are the same size as my Slip-Off-The-Ass Jeans, and the “Medium” Jeans) still do not fit. Although technically I haven’t tried them on recently but then, I don’t feel like kicking my own ass for not riding my new bike very much.
- Oh, by the way… the Lincoln LS is still at the car lot and the price is down two grand. I was just… um, you know… checking.
- I always used to think that Freud was full of crap. I mean, take dream analysis… a vase is a vulva? WTF? So he’s saying that we put flowers where? And what about thorns? And does that make Martha Stewart some kind of latent lesbian, with all that flower arranging that she does? And that whole concept that all women really want their own penis and that’s why they want to have little boy babies, so they will get to posess the secret penis joy… WTF? And then apparently if a woman dreams about driving a car, it means they want to have a penis or something. I mean, I’ve always suspected that my subconscious is just not that subtle and apparently I’m right. I dreamt that I had a penis. A nicely average, hairless penis. Why hairless, I do not know. Maybe my subconscious found it less scary that way. Maybe my subconscious really wants me to investigate waxing something other than my eyebrows. I dunno. But there it was. My penis. I think I sat there on the sofa, feeling how strange the whole deal was, and hey, it felt pretty good. Ward was in my dream and we were sitting there, discussing whatever, when he gave me this look like “Hey, would you mind not openly stroking your Girl Penis while I’m trying to talk to you?” and I said “Hey! Leave me alone! I’ve never had a penis before!” and I just kept stroking. Thus, I have proven Freud wrong about the dream analysis but probably right about the wanting a penis. It’s strange how life works sometimes.
- I spent like five hours in the pool on Sunday, trying to soak up as much carefree sun and fun before the snow starts to fly. I’m envisioning that it will be zero degrees in, say, two weeks. I’m a fatalist sometimes, particularly about the weather. It was 95 degrees and sunny. I didn’t wear sun screen. My legs are golden. My face is burnt to a crisp. That’s my curse. Even after a summer of haphazard sun exposure and a glowing tan, I still manage to fry the crap out of my tender flesh. I look exactly like W.C. Fields with breasts.
- But no penis.
- I had a business trip yesterday, so I hopped in my car at 7, planning on hitting Fond Du Lac around 8:30 so that I wouldn’t have to spend the entire day down there. I threw in my “Busted Stuff” cd and then proceeded to chill out for the lovely ride. And then I hit traffic. Nasty traffic. Nasty coming to a stand still traffic. It was so very odd. It was quarter to eight… should have been well past the rush hour and, I mean, this IS Wisconsin. We don’t really have traffic jams here. Even our Post-Packer Game traffic isn’t as bad as some of the jams I’ve been in for now reason in other parts of the country. So I proceeded to call my dentist and make an appointment for a checkup. Then I did my hair. Then I turned on the radio after listening to the full CD three times.
Cows. Ladies and Gentlemen, we had cows. Apparently a freaking cattle truck had overturned on its way to the packing plant and now the cows were wandering around the highway, thumbing for rides, yelling WOOT BAYBAY! at the passing girls in convertibles, and general causing a bovine ruckus. The official word was that they “refused to come out of the field”. I suppose it’s hard to compromise with cows who know that they’re making their last lonely mile, that they were essentially Dead Cows Walking. I mean, what could you really bargain with? Come on… back in the truck and we’ll turn you into fine filet mignon… not a Double Whopper With Cheese.
So I called into my meeting and told them I’d be late. On account of cows.
Sometimes, I’m so professional, it actually makes me tingle.
- Needless to say, I didn’t update yesterday. On account of cows.
- I wrote to my PA, Chauffi, and asked him how to make bulleted lists. And he showed me. He’s the best free PA a girl could ever ask for.
- No American Idol tonight. Sniff
- Someone left a mysterious note on my desk. It’s a picture of Donnie Osmond, with a little word bubble enticing me to come and see him sing when he comes to our local performing arts center next year. I’m seriously torn. He keeps looking at me with those smouldering Mormon eyes. The thing is… I know that I’m far too much of a wild girl for Donnie. He wouldn’t abide by my Diet Coke addiction. Or my love of hardcore bondage.
- I bet I so made you go back and reread that last sentence. I’m a bad bad girl. See. Right there. Even without the bondage.
