I screwed up my geekly wife duties. I preordered the Star Wars DVDs from Amazon but chose free shipping, and therefore while all of Esteban’s friends were furtively stroking their Star Wards DVDs in darkened rooms, ours was in a warehouse somewhere in Kentucky. Each day, Esteban would ask ‘Maybe we’re getting the DVDs today. Can you check?’ and I’d remind him that they hadn’t even shipped yet because his wife felt compelled to break his heart while saving FOUR DOLLARS.
To make up for it, I’ve been making stupid Star Wars jokes all week to try to assuage him with geek humor. This usually cheers him up, evidence that he is slowly working his dorky lifestyle into my head, much the way the ‘aubergine’ incident made me giddy. And the best one, so far, has been when Esteban announced that he was going to make a seltzer run, and I piped up ‘Can you make the seltzer run in under 12 parsecs?’ Which was totally funny and should have scored me major geek points with Esteban however he only looked to our DVD player mournfully and wondered where are our DVDs? In a warehouse somewhere in Kentucky and not churning happily in our player while Luke struggles with his fear and a puppet on Dagobah. So yeah, I suck, as does Amazon’s free shipping (because it doesn’t make sense! I preordered it months ago! Why make me wait another 6 days!? Why?)
They’ve finally arrived, so hopefully we can put the Star Wars Shipping Crisis behind us and concentrate on rebuilding our relationship wherein I attempt to make geek jokes and Esteban laughs and then gets a proud look on his face.
It’s getting darker earlier. I know that isn’t surprising and I know that is what it’s supposed to do because the calendar and the meteorologists tell us that in the fall it gets darker earlier until they fuck with the clocks and then everything is all screwed up and dark until at least March. But even still, it’s getting dark earlier. When I started this class on Tuesdays, I needed to wear my sunglasses until I was at least to Sheboygan on my way home. Now I don’t even need them when I leave the building. Now I watch from our classroom window as the sun hits the pretty old copper-turned-blue eaves on the historical building across from ours (which is not historical at all and looks a bit like a county jail, so I’m glad that I’m inside it and get to look out at the pretty buildings rather than the other way around) and watch the darkness creep up the side of the building as the sun drops beneath the trees. And I couldn’t even see those eaves three weeks ago because there were too many leaves.
My favorite time is leaving class, my head filled with words and narrative devices. The air was chilly as I exited the county jail/building and then I walk between the library and what must be the music building. There are invariably people playing instruments in deserted classrooms, their notes vibrating the windows, looking for all the world like a film in which the sound and picture aren’t quite in sync. Tonight, there was a guy who looked like Paul Rudd, wearing a light blue oxford shirt with the tails untucked, playing about three measures of something over and over and over. I knew the song, but couldn’t figure it out and then it hit’ it was the base line for Ravel’s ‘Bolero’. I smirked to myself for figuring it out and he must have noticed that I was watching him, as he paused between repetitions, smirked back and gave me a little wave, then proceeded to try again, his notes spanking against the stone of the library and I imagined that I was a belly dancer, bells on my hips and cymbals betwixt my fingers. I skipped down the stairs to the underground parking, which was dark and at least twenty degrees warmer, like entering a rabbit’s warren or maybe a hive, and unlocked my car with a happy little chirp, thinking of the ways I wanted to revise one of my stories and how I couldn’t be more happy and certain that this is the exactly where I belong.
Some pictures from the last few days’.
