That's My Bix!

Yay! Esteban is home! Poor boy, though. I’m completely fried from my new job. I made him go out and get me some peanut butter Twix ice cream last night because I was uber stressed. I’ve made claims to my team members about jumping in with both feet, but apparently the thing I’m jumping into is teaming with sharks. And maybe acid. Sharks that have somehow adapted to swim in acid. Something. I don’t know.

It’s a strange thing, leaving my old job and going to a new one. I’m still in the same department, working with the same people but there’s all these sharks and acid and stuff. I dreamt about it all last night. You should get overtime for dream work. I’d even take extra dreams as compensation. What a waste of a perfectly good dream, thinking about product definitions and retail measurements. Gah.

On the plus side, I haven’t told anyone to reboot even once in the last two days.

Oddly enough, I didn’t really start writing in this diary until I was fully ensconced into my previous position doing Tech Support. I hope that wasn’t the key, because now I feel so fried that I don’t want to give anything of myself, don’t want to expand or think, I just want to stare out the window at the pretty birds.

On another plus side, my new cubicle is about three times the size of the old one. Oh, technically it’s the same size, but my ass isn’t sticking out into the department and this one is in a corner, sharing a spot with another work station, so I essentially have this realllllly long desk at my disposal. I’ve already annexed one of the shelves to house my binders that I never open. I don’t know why I cling to these binders. Job security perhaps. Before I moved to this department, I wouldn’t have even been able to estimate how many binders I had and they were all the big three inch jobbies, too. I think the more important you are, the fewer binders you require. My boss has no binders. I technically only need one or two, but I still keep them around for some reason.

I also have this enormous walking area. It’s bigger than my living room at home. Thus, if I wanted to stretch out, it would be all good. It’s very private back here. My keystrokes seem like little mallets being clicked onto a metal drum.

I’m getting a laptop at some point. Right now I’m on my two old pc’s. Apparently, I will be trading my dog pc for the laptop and then my fast sleek pc will by default be considered the dog pc. That’s funny how things like that work. When I was first dating Esteban, he gave me some kind of computer. I don’t remember the brand but I remember that I had a color monitor. Well…It had two colors. Black and amber. It didn’t have a hard drive, just two disk drives. There was no way you could have a modem. Then for my birthday the next year, he gave me a 286 Laser Pal with a 16 color monitor (Imagine! 14 more colors!), 2 mb RAM, a 40 meg harddrive and a 2400 baud modem. I believe the setup cost him $1600. I thought I was pretty slick. I’ve got PCs in my garage that I can’t GIVE AWAY which would smoke that PC. Funny. Technology is creating mini-generation gaps. When I was your age, I had a 2400 baud modem and I LIKED IT, Missy! I was happy! I couldn’t imagine what I would do to fill up 40 megs of hard drive space. Now my Frankenstein PC can’t even play WarCraft III and life sucks entirely too much.

June called me last night, distraught. It seemed that she had been shopping and saw the $7 shirts on clearance. For $2.78. She didn’t know what size or which colors, so she guessed and got me four white ones and four red ones. I have the best mother-in-law in the world. Seriously. She rocks. And she’s going to bead my renaissance dress for Esteban’s cousin’s Renaissance wedding next year. She’ll do it by hand. Yes. She’s anal retentive sometimes but I adore her.

The girls and I are going to see Sheryl Crow and Michelle Branch tomorrow at the local casino. They’re having the concert in a tent. A TENT! It will be just like the circus, only with gambling and old people blowing their social security checks. Then, Carissa is insisting that we go to the Bad Bar. Penny suspects that Buzz the Swishypants bartender will be working. Supposedly he’s not swishy, but again, I must bring up People’s Exhibit A: Red Velvet Pants. Those are not the pants of a straight man. I’m just saying.

My friend Heidi accosted me in the parking lot the other day and demanded that I never slack from updating for four whole days again. “Four Days?!?!” I was puzzled, because I had just updated like twice. Apparently, over the weekend, I posted on Saturday and then didn’t again until Tuesday. And this is four days in skewed Heidi logic.

I keep licking my lips and making them chapped. I wish I had some Blistex Ultimate Moisture right now. Have you tried that stuff? It’s not like nasty minty Hotlips Houlihan Blistex, this is orangey and lovely and smells like Fruit Loops. I’m addicted. I’ve started stockpiling, much like the Body Butter.

I’m wearing my low rider $65 jeans today. I feel like some overweight sixteen year old whose parents are threatening to send her to fat camp. Actually, when I was fourteen, I kind of wanted to go to fat camp, because I thought it would be exactly like the movie Meatballs, only with all fat kids who magically shrink before your eyes over the summer and come back home and get boyfriends and then make the cheerleading squad. And I figured that if you didn’t lose weight, the camp had an insurance policy which would pay for your liposuction, because they had a GUARANTEE.

But then, I also thought that X-ray glasses from the back of Archie & Jughead Digests would allow you to see through a boy’s parachute pants.

Oh! The comments section on yesterday’s entry was screwed up and I got like 9 emails letting me know that people had commented but only 7 comments actually showed up, so if you left me a comment on yesterday’s entry that you want me to see, maybe go back and check if it’s still there? And if not, maybe leave it again?

Have a super weekend!

(You know what? “Haper Saver Weeker” apparently doesn’t mean anything, but I sure thought it did when I typed it. Gah. I’m done now.)

I should be moving the items from my desk to my new desk right now.

I should. But I’m not. No. Instead, I’m sitting here nursing a wounded palate, still trembling from some rogue Arby’s Chicken Tenders and writing an entry. For you. Just for you. Because I like you best of all, especially the way your eyes crinkle around the corners when you smile.

I had a somewhat productive lunch today. Only 50% was spent driving around aimlessly, listening to music and zoning out, the other 50% was spent browsing a very well-stocked newsstand (comfort food for the mind: Rosebud literary magazine, promising something by the elusiveW.D. Snodgrass, a New Yorker (which I should really just buy a subscription to, along with Utne Reader but I’m afraid that they’ll gang up on my Taste Of Home and send it crying in a fetal position in the corner of the mailbox. And maybe they’ll tease Jane magazine for only using models which make heroin junkies look well rounded and flush with health… not that it’s necessarily a bad thing), and what is possibly the most depressing of all purchases, a Memory Maker’s magazine, which is a magazine devoted to scrapbooking. Yes. There are entire magazines, reams and reams of paper and gallons of ink, devoted to showing women who haven’t got enough things to do how to make the perfect scrapbook page to memorialize their toddler’s first poo. I am so damn cool sometimes. Seriously. You could only hope to be as cool as I am.

The scrapbooking is something I know that my 16-year-old self would have mocked in disdain. My 31-year-old self barely stands it either. My 18-year-old self would have been cool with it, because she gave up trying to impress anyone, but my 27-year-old self started to feel too old and would side with the 16-year-old.

It’s much like golf for me though. My mind is constantly cooking with all burners on high. I’ve usually got about four thought patterns going at once as well as a song stuck in my head. When I am golfing or scrapbooking, I’m not thinking about anything else. I’m just thinking about getting the damn little ball in the little hole or trying to figure out which colors are pretty on the page. It’s a nice thing, really, and what is more, much like golf, it allows me to collect high end accessories. I think that’s really what it is. It’s the accessories. I adore my circle cutter, which allows me to make the perfect circles. I have specific plans for my black leather bound $60 scrapbook (that one will be for my nice “photography” type pictures) and that pleases me in a way that makes me feel a bit dirty, as though I’ve been given an enema by Kitty Bartholomew or some such.

And I know that I’ve said this before, but it’s all because the fall nesting instinct is kicking into high gear. I have absolutely no interest in scrapbooking when I’m in slacker mindset, but that mindset starts to slip away as soon as the temperature drops below 60. Last night, I slept wonderful autumnal sleep in my big empty bed. Both windows were open and I actually needed the warmth of the down comforter. It was lovely. Those buzzsaw cicadas are now silent, perhaps flying to warmer climes. This morning, when I left for my morning Operation Hottie constitutional, I could see my breath and I actually cut my walk short because my short-sleeved t-shirt was inadequate protection from the morning nip in the air.

It occurred to me last night while I watched the season finale double rerun of Buffy last night that next week must start the new season. And that just makes me absolutely giddy. It’s entirely wrong the way that I obsess about that show. I’m thinking of cross-stitching a Buffy sampler, complete with little stakes and puffs of vampire dust. I’m certain that DMC Floss makes an appropriate crypt color and I will fully be able to convey the magic of the Leather Pants of Ass Kicking on aida cloth. This is not your Grandmother’s hobby, people. It’s like knitting, only not as cool. Also, Tilly likes to steal my thread and then makes colorful little vomits in inappropriate places.

My nose and chin are peeling from Sunday’s Poolapalooza Blowout. That’s very attractive. It’s like my face has been replaced by a nice crispy croissant. I suppose it’s better than a raspberry scone.

Crap. Now I’m craving pastry.

I actually had to have this conversation at work today.

Them: I’m thinking that with Snack Nuts category, you wouldn’t consider nuts in the shell to be a snack because… it’s more work.

Weetabix: So it’s not a snack because it’s a … commitment?

Them: Right. It’s messy. You wouldn’t just snack on that.

Weetabix: Uh… ok.

That went on like that for like ten minutes.

Pity me. Seriously.

I was planning my business trip with my boss the other day. We were plotting the best schedule for my absence from the office.

‘Well, I want you to attend the training on Tuesday, Sept 10,’ he said, poised over my Franklin planner, looking at the calendar as I scribbled in the appointments. ‘So you could travel on Thursday, Sept 12th, or Wednesday, Septem– on Wednesday.’ He said with just a slight hint of pause. I don’t know that he noticed but then I realized that I too have been avoiding saying that date as well.

Wednesday. September 11th.

During one of my psychology classes in college, we learned a little psychoanalysis game. It was basic word association but the real test wasn’t really the word that the subject chose (rarely does the analyst give a word like ‘mother’ and get the response ‘kill’ or something similar) but the non-verbal reactions to the words. Invariably, a word like ‘crypt’ will cause a slight stammer or pause in the respondent, as their unconscious throws up a little hurdle for them to leap. It’s uncomfortable, those words. They have mental weight, like stones dropped into a deep well.

I’m not sure what I expect on Wednesday. I’m not sure if I expect something else to happen. I don’t think that’s what it is.

What will likely happen: loads of diaries will post entries similar to this one, full of memories or pictures of loved ones now a year gone. There will lovely church memorials. At work, we’re having some kind of minute of silence at 9:29 and they’re handing out free flag lapel pins (oh, no freaking comment on that). The television will haul out the old footage of the towers burning, the towers collapsing like some Hollywood special effect. I don’t want to see it all again. I don’t want to get numb to it. I think I keep thinking that the buildings must be empty, foam and paint props built for the sole reason of collapsing for the camera so that Keanu Reeves can run and do a dramatic leap to safety in the foreground of the scene. I have to keep reminding myself that there were people in there, that there were vending machines and cubicles and desks with loose change in the drawers and pictures of people’s children and their last vacation to the Caribbean. There were papers and folders and goofy pens and bulletin boards advertising charity raffles and drinking fountains and fathers and sisters and sons and the guy who tried to grope someone at the last Christmas party and the lady who always started talking to you in the elevator but you didn’t like to talk to her because she had bad coffee breath and there was also that girl who always smiled at you when you saw her in the hall and even though you didn’t actually know her name, you knew that she’d be someone you could be friends with. She was in that collapsing building too, trying not to breathe smoke, trying to get out somehow. Somehow.

I keep thinking about my drive to work that morning a year ago. I remember that the sun was shining and it was an incredible day. I was in a great mood, especially for a Tuesday. I remember singing along to the radio, although I don’t remember the song, and thinking to myself ‘I have a pretty good life. I’m very happy with it. I love living my life.’ The world seemed such a simple wonderful place and everything snapped together with a click.

And then getting to work and talking to people in the New York office, roughly three blocks away from 5 WTC Plaza and with a splendid view of the harbor, describe how someone in the office watched as a plane flew into the tower. And I remember thinking that it was one of those five seater prop planes, maybe some lunatic with a crop duster like on Independence Day only it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

A few people over the year have sent me emails commending me on my handling of the tragedy on this page. That’s boggling. I hadn’t given it much thought, how I handled it, how I reported it to the world. I don’t think I handled it well at all. I think I wrote a poem a half hour after, which seems so writerly and artsy that I’m embarrassed that I did it, but that’s just how I am. I wanted to get in the car and drive to New York, but I couldn’t, so I wrote a damn poem. Yeah. Nice. Even now as I write this entry, pouring words into a hole in an electronic piece of paper, it’s not enough. It never will be enough.

Grief is a strange thing. I’ll never know if I handle it the best way but I handle it the only way I know how. Esteban handles his grief completely differently, reacting immediately with all of the classic signs. I don’t. People have even commented that when Chelsea died, I had one large entry about it on this page, a thank you for the lovely words of sympathy and then didn’t mention it again. Outwardly, I think it seems like I bottle things up, disassociate from everything, withdraw, but in actuality, I’m trying mentally to get a grasp on things. I take sorrow in levels. I look at the thing as a whole, then tackle the first layer, scraping it away, whittling it down to reveal the next one. But with this’ with this, I haven’t even begun. I keep wandering around the thing, trying to understand its scope, its breadth. I just keep walking around it, trying to circumnavigate the horror, the unbelievable emptiness that was created. And every now and then, I’ll grab a handhold of something and chip away at it, perhaps thinking about how a male and female held hands as they jumped from Tower 1, holding hands as they fell down, or how people went to work that day wearing the clothes that they were buried in but the whole is so large I may never completely understand exactly what to think. I don’t think I’ve even come to the other side yet. I just keep walking.

I did not personally lose anyone in the attacks. In some ways, I barely tolerate my grief. What right do I have to claim to be sad when all over the country there are empty places in people’s lives, holes where people used to be? Nature abhors a vacuum and I seem to remember from some high school science class that a vacuum will cause a little pop to occur as air rushes to fill the empty space. I keep imagining thousands of little pops echoing throughout the country, not just on September 11, 2001 but every day, every day of every life. When someone dies, it’s not as though you lose them all at once but through a series of little events’ their pillows lose their smell, their names fall off the incoming mail, you forget what their voices sound like but for in lovely wonderful dreams where you forget that they’ve died and you awaken expecting to find them still breathing, still walking around, still laughing beside you. The only thing that I lost was that I no longer feel as though I understand my place in the world. I never think to myself ‘I love my life’ anymore because I’m too frightened of my own hubris.

Maybe someday, we’ll have September 11th back as just any other day, a day that falls into normalcy and quizzical looks on faces at cash registers while writing a check ‘What day is it?’ and someone will be able to respond without a lump in their throat. But probably not.

Until then, we just keep walking around it, struggling with it the best we can, hoping to come out on the other side intact.

So today.

I took a later lunch than normal for the worst reason possible. I’m ashamed to even admit this.

You see, this morning, when I pulled in at quarter to eight, I achieved my morning goal. I got rock star parking. There is an infinitesimally small number of parking spots RIGHT BY THE DOOR to our building, the other 95% of parking is down this path wrapped around the building. The rock star parking usually fills up by 6:00 a.m. in the morning, by people whose sole purpose is apparently to leave work at 2:00 in the afternoon, so that they can eat dinner by 4:00 and get to bed by 6:30 or something insane like that. But one spot… one glorious spot… in Rock Star Row is usually taken by someone on the overnight shift in the computer room. And they leave at sometime around 7:45ish. Every day, I take this complicated route to the parking lot to check for a good spot. Nearly every day I am denied. But some days… some glorious days… I get lucky and score some sweet assed parking. Then I squeal and do my little Happy Parking Dance. Well, usually while still seated in my car because, hey, I work with those people who are walking up from Peasant Parking, but there is definitely squealing involved.

So I declared that I would be taking lunch at 1:00 to the rest of my team, because, criminal mastermind that I am, I figured that the 5:30 a.m. people would be leaving around 2:00 p.m. giving me ample opportunities for the Happy Parking Dance. However, I neglected to realize that if I left for lunch at 1:00, then I would have to be BACK by 2:00 p.m., seated in my mostly empty cubicle (I’ve started moving to my new home for my new position now), listening to the boisterous exit noises of the 5:30 a.m. crew as they left for the day. No. For that to have been the perfect plan, I would have had to schedule my lunch for 1:15, but that throws everything all wacky. Because I work on a hotline, my team coordinates their lunch times with each other. There’s a 11:00 person, a nooner, a 1:00 and the late person gets 2:00. Whenever anyone isn’t “straight up” (ie. 11:30), everything is all willy nilly and discombobulated for the rest of the afternoon. And we all think surly thoughts about the person who had to go and mess with the whole lunch system. Except that normally I’m the lunch anarchist.

When I left for lunch, I was a bit reluctant. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to give up my primo spot. My parking spot was royalty. It was the Princess Ann of parking spots. Grudgingly I pulled out of my spot and out into my lunch cruise. During the summer, I haven’t been really doing anything over lunch, just cruising around the western portion of the city, sometimes talking on my cell phone, sometimes just singing along with whichever CD I have in the player. I love to drive. It’s just one of my quirks. It started as soon as I learned how and I’ve never really lost that love of driving. I’m not crazy about highway driving, simply because it’s boring. A mile on Vermont’s interstate looks pretty much the same as a mile on Tennessee’s interstate. I like going through the towns and rolling their names on my tongue. I like seeing misspelled signs that make me laugh (“Your in Packer Country” at a sign shop… gosh, I’m totally going to buy a sign from that sign maker!). I like looking at the clusters of trees, searching for eagles on the telephone poles. I like looking at the lawn decorations, even if they’re tacky and usually consist of a flat board painted like an old woman bending over in her garden or even worse, a flat board painted like an old man groping the flat board painted like an old woman.

So I went out and drove around, chatting on my cell phone like some kind of uber executive, only I was just being goofy with my friend in Boston, talking about how good Dave Matthews was in concert and how the guy in the minivan totally checked me out and then cut me off. Yes. I know. I shouldn’t talk on my phone and drive. It’s dangerous. I’m going to invest in a handsfree unit soon.

Then, it was nearing 2:00 so I ran through a Wendy’s and got a nutritious Frostie for lunch. In my mind, I had decided that the entire medium Frostie, since it has nary a whisper of dairy in it, must only have, oh, maybe 150 calories. Sure, it’s chock full of chemicals, but I’m not allergic to them so it’s all good. But I was trembling when I returned to work, edging around the corner and passing the full row of close parking spots. But SUCCESS! Sitting there as if God Himself had decided that I was too good for plebian parking, was a lovely parking spot, nary 30 feet from the door. This one was the Queen Elizabeth of parking spots. It had fat little Welsh Corgi dogs and liked to wear funny hats. I did my little Happy Parking Dance outside of the car, that’s just how good it was. Of course, that gave the smokers something to stare at and then they all gave their approval. By coughing but it was approval nonetheless.

I got back to my desk and my coworker commented that there were 10 Weight Watchers Points in a medium Frostie. 10?!?! That could not be. There wasn’t any dairy in the thing! I think maybe they waved a gallon of milk over the Frostie vat in benediction. And everyone knows that chemicals have no calories! I looked up the Points myself. Sure enough. 10 points. I threw it out. I don’t believe in consuming like a third of your daily caloric allowance with something you can’t even chew.

And then I got an ice cream headache. Mofo Frostie.

The Feverish Fall Fixation continues. Esteban made spaghetti last night and it was so incredibly good and meaty. Screw pasta. I just wanted to eat the sauce with a fork. That’s my winter meat craving coming full force. No longer can I go days if not weeks without eating some kind of meat. I had a crumpet this morning for breakfast and by 9 I was thinking tenderloin. I’m aghast by my cravings sometimes, really I am, but at the same time I don’t know exactly how I maintained my sanity as a vegetarian during winter. It just makes no sense.

The Cleaning Nazi is beckoning. Esteban made his yearly contribution to bathroom maintenance last week. He put a toilet paper roll on the dispenser. Backwards. I’m a Paper Coming From Below kind of girl and the entire Esteban Clan seems to prefer theirs Coming From Above. That drives me insane. If it Comes From Above, then you can’t use the physics of the roll to rip the sheet. You end up using far more toilet paper than you need, stressing an already overburdened environment with your waste. Yes. I know. Too much Utne Reader, but still. I refused to actually go through the anal-retentive compulsion to flip the roll around but every time I went in the bathroom, that roll mocked me. And I had to go and buy those Triple Rolls and make the torment last three times longer than it could have. Gah. But it’s another sign. I wouldn’t have cared less about which direction the toilet paper was facing in June. As long as there was paper, I was happy. But this…. insanity. Absolute insanity.

Is it possible to be affected by cabin fever in the first week of September?

So my weekend.

Hmmm. Where to start. I had Friday off but basically tanked the entire day by sleeping too late and then apparently I had some kind of cocaine binge or something because I don’t remember even a snit of the day after I woke up. I remember waking up. I sent email. And then it’s all a blur. I’m blaming it on the acid that my mother undoubtedly took while she was pregnant with me.

Oh, my mother. I forgot to ever say Happy Birthday to her and her birthday was like, oh, weeks ago. I’m blaming the acid for that too. That way it’s all her fault and she can’t really make me feel guilty. Ah, passive-aggressive personalities are so grand!

Saturday morning, I woke up quite early, took a shower, checked my email, and then woke Esteban. The plan for the day: go to Madison. Why? No reason. I really had a jones to visit Whole Foods and the closest one is in Madison. That was about it, really. It was a good reason for an adventure. But then, there was various mucking around town. Had to go to the bank, then Esteban completely skipped over my bank and we had to back track, making me grumpy at him.

(Oh! I just remembered what I did on Friday, partially. We went swimming at Ward and June’s house. Phew. I feel better now, knowing that it wasn’t spent in a crack fog or something.)

We had our pissy little snit early in the trip, me grumping that he was driving without purpose and didn’t really want to go and he because I am a control freak sometimes and want everything in the Weetabix ordained proper way. Both things were entirely true, we apologized and it cleared the way for a lovely day. We stopped at the snooty deli and I went in to get one of my lovely veggie sandwiches (yes, yes, this is the same deli with the Eeeuw! in the bread. Yes, I know. I just can’t help myself. Those sandwiches are just too good. As a testament to how good they are, let me tell you this. They have mayonnaise on them. MAYONNAISE! The most disgusting substance known to man! A thing made of raw eggs and oil and somehow becomes something which is neither raw eggs nor oil! It’s not enough that it’s a sneaky and distrustful food, but it also tastes like snotty slime. So I brave mayonnaise for these sandwiches. Scary condiments and the possibility of vermin in the bread. That tells you just how good these sandwiches are. But I digress.) but the number on the ‘Take a Number’ thing was 40 and they were currently on 28. The deli workers at the snooty deli work at glacial speed, taking time to learn other languages and wax poetic about the proper grind of their imported Peruvian coffee beans, harvested only by rehabilitated coke barons, so I gave up and went back outside to break the news to Esteban that no, he would not be sipping upon any lovely Peruvian coke dealer mocha that morning, as I had neither the patience nor the stamina to wait five days for my roasted red pepper, cucumber, and fresh mozzarella sandwich.

Thus, we hit the Machine Shed restaurant on the way down, where we had the most dreadful service imaginable. We had been given a lunch menu, which surprised me as it was quarter to 11 in the morning and they had a breakfast buffet going on until 2, but so it goes. We ordered and then proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. Folks who came in AFTER US were served their food (and I noticed that they had meals consisting of eggs, bacon, hash and other breakfast type things). At 11:30, our waiter stopped by and told us that our food was coming but it would be after the kitchen got all the breakfast orders done. WHAT? Esteban wanted to walk, so I did the three minute rule. If he didn’t come with our food in three minutes, we were leaving. I try to be very fair about my pissy snits. And I wouldn’t have just walked out, I would have spoken to a manager about it and hopefully chewed someone’s countrified ass. But I didn’t have to because our food came at the two and a half minute mark. By that time, we were full of bread and cottage cheese anyway. It made us a little more grumpy but by that time, we had a common enemy and could be grumped about the food service industry rather than anything else.

The ride down to Madison was lovely. We sang along to the various CDs in my car. Esteban determined that my car seat was not in fact broken so that it could not move backward, but rather the kids at the full service car wash had moved the seat in such a manner that it seemed as though it was really close to the wheel but in reality it was just really high and really tilted weird. Phew. Because I had already penciled ‘Chew Ass of Auto Mechanic’ into my Franklin planner for Tuesday, because they had just fixed that damn seat two months ago. Gah.

We had no idea where we were going once we hit Madison. Unlike Milwaukee, I have no idea where anything is in Madison. Mostly because it’s a very confusing city. Everything is crammed around the capital building and two very irregularly-shaped lakes. Also, many roads were closed due to some outdoor festival smack in the middle of that. I called Whole Foods and got directions, so we headed out that way. There, we found the Madison dealer of my favorite spices in the world and went on a spice binge (which totaled $24.86′ got to love those inexpensive spice binges).

Coincidentally, we realized that Whole Foods was right across the street, so Esteban hung out and sipped coffee at the Atlanta Bread Company and I went shopping at Whole Foods, where my inner hippy child is at peace and feeling right in the world. I couldn’t buy any perishables because we stupidly did not bring a cooler, but I got many pasta sauces, a crystal deodorant (I just spent entirely too long looking for a link to an entry where I talked about crystal deodorant but I can’t find it. Trust me. It’s out there. Really. Oh wait, here it is.), a bunch of Luna bars in new cool flavors (Peanut Butter and Jelly? Ohh yeah.), and some other stuff I’ve since forgotten. It was so weird to walk in Whole Foods because they carry a lot of the brands we used to use when I was a kid. There is this short and squat bottle of shampoo that we always used. I almost bought some to give to Mo, just to freak her out and now I wish I would have.

We then wandered around Borders. I picked up some short story collections by Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro and Ethan Canin. Esteban scored some science fiction stuff. Then we endeavored back to downtown, where I browsed around a poorly-lit used book store while Esteban sat in the car and read.

We started to drive around after that, searching for a place to get lunch, but then found ourselves heading south out of Madison.

‘What do you want to do now? Go home and maybe see a movie?’

‘We could do that,’ I answered. ‘Or we could head down to East Troy (which was about an hour southeast of where we were) and go to the Dave Matthews Band concert.’

Esteban looked at the clock. It was quarter to five.

‘I thought you didn’t get tickets.’

‘I didn’t. But we could go to an ATM, withdraw like $300, go to the concert and see if someone is selling any.’

He furrowed his brow. He’s not big with the spontaneous. He needs to mentally gauge any new situations, plan for them and commit himself to it before he can enjoy things. He’s a planner, a leader, not a go-with-the-flow guy.

‘Get that map. If you can get us to East Troy without going back through Madison, we’ll do it.’ He sighed.

SCORE!!!!!!! I quickly devised a complicated and yet more or less direct path from our location on the southwest side of Madison to the concert venue in East Bumblefu’I mean East Troy, Wisconsin. And when I say ‘more or less direct’ I mean on these tiny winding roads that pathed through every ounce of picturesque rolling meadowy acre in southern Wisconsin.

It was truly breathtaking but we were nervous about getting there too late to get good tickets. And we would have to find an ATM at some point between here and there. The ride was lovely, however. I kept singing the ‘Leetle Baybay!’ line from ‘So Much’. There was a proliferation of horse farms, which I love, having spent ages 6-9 on a horse farm, and yellow butterfly habitats. I don’t know what was up with the yellow butterflies, but it was incredible. The fields would just literally be swimming in these little yellow specks of sunlight. They looked as though flower petals were dancing on the wind. They would also gather on the gravel along the sides of the road in these little fluttering colonies, a hundred maybe in a six inch circle, all fluttering and milling about. Esteban theorized that they might be mating. I thought maybe they were gossiping. Butterflies are very social creatures, you see.

We made a pitstop in Fort Atkinson to grab some munchies and get some cash. By that time, it was after 6:30. Esteban was very tense, which is what happens when he is late. We’re very symmetrical that way, as I too get crazy if I am slightly late for anything, however I was fully aware of the fact that there would be an opening band. Or at least I hoped that there would be an opening band. I finally said that I wasn’t certain if it really did start at 7:00 or possibly it was 7:30 and that seemed to relax him somewhat. We finally got to our destination at exactly 7:00. Esteban was lulled by the fact that thousands of people were still parking, which meant that we weren’t terribly late.

We parked and hopped out of the car, figuring that we’d start to walk up to the gate and look for the scalpers. I heard the people in the car next to us say that they ‘didn’t need any’ and a very nice gentleman started to walk away. ‘Do you have tickets?’ ‘Yeah, do you need tickets?’ He answered. ‘Yes, we do. What have you got?’ I asked, cringing because they had run anywhere from $130 upwards for reserved seating. His tickets were reserved in the 30th row. ‘How much?’ $150 for the pair.’ ‘Sold!’ And all within three feet of our car. Got to love our ticket karma.

We then had an enormously huge walk from the parking lot to the gate. Alpine Valley is actually a ski resort and thus even though it was likely only half a mile, it was through enormous hills. I think we may have at one point actually been walking vertically. It was unreal. Someone with a golf cart was charging $20 a ride to the gate and the cart was loaded down with no fewer than 8 people when they went by us, if that gives you an idea of how much the walk sucked.

The entire time we walked, Esteban kept exclaiming that our seats would be restricted viewing or something because it was just too easy to get good tickets for such a low price. But I had a whole ticket karma thing going on. We have very good luck with scalpers, it seems and I think it is due to the fact that we once went down to see a Sting concert at Summerfest and got caught out in the rain and utterly soaked to our skin and frozen. We then decided that we would have rather gone home, so I gave my tickets to two young girls who were going into the festival. Ever since then, we’ve purchased tickets for Sting (18th row, below face value) and REM (20th row, $20 above face value, but we then sold our nosebleed tickets for $25). Incidentally, the folks we were sitting next to had scored their tickets from a broker out of Chicago, after doing a bunch of research. They paid $100 a piece. It’s good ticket karma. I’m digging it.

The concert’.. well, I’m still smiling more than 24 hours later, it was that incredible. Dave was like a man possessed. The guy next to me thought he was Dave Matthews, doing this weird wiggy jiggy dance with arms flailing. It reminded me of that Fat Boy Slim video with Christopher Walken. And yes, the curse of the gigantic people in front of me continues. I kept swapping with Esteban and the tall guy in front of me would move with me. Mofo curse. Gah.

Then we had to walk back through the Alpine Valley Death March’. Now with Added Drunk People. People. Gah. Kids. They were kids. I am so old. I just kept thinking ‘You cannot be LEGAL! There is no way that you are 21.’ I swear, I saw eight year old kids with bottles of Citroen. And did I mention that it was still 90 degrees out? I was so parched that I contemplated drinking from a bottle of Budweiser I saw abandoned in the parking field which still had a good three inches of liquid in it. Gah.

We miraculously located our car amidst the thousands and then dove into the backseat where we guzzled a half a bottle of piss warm Dasani and some warm, limp grapes. We then proceeded to attempt to get out of the parking field but after waiting in the line for more than twenty minutes without moving, Esteban got creative and began to drive through the empty spots of the actual parking area, figuring that he’d go as far as he could and then break into the line. It was like a video game or something, searching for openings, avoiding drunk little girls wearing slip-type hippy dresses and vacant expressions. I started to channel someone whenever Esteban would hesitate ‘No, Dooood, you’ve just gotta keep DRIVIN’ to the road, man, you just gotta get us to the ROAD!’ no no no, what are you doing man, what’are’you’doing? You’re messing with the plan, man’ you’re messing’with’the’PLAN!!’ and then I broke into a peal of giggles because I just crack myself up sometimes. I think it was the dehydration. Esteban looked at me and said ‘You know, you’re not as funny as you think you are.’ But I was. Oh yes. I was so very funny. It still makes me laugh thinking about it.

But we did manage to skank our way out of the parking area with not too much hassle. We had a slight moment of guilt for all of the people behind us, still stuck waiting in lines that hadn’t moved in half an hour, but then we got over it. And that’s when I decided that my life has been led down the wrong path. All of this time, I’ve been doing things the right way, the MORAL way, preparing for stuff, making sure things happened in an orderly fashion. But here we had just waltzed in, LATE, had awesome tickets literally dropped into our lap, and then we broke the rules and baha’d it over the field to squeeze out of the queue in record time. Screw order. Anarchy is the way to go. I gave Esteban my new code of living and poignant moment was had by all, during which he wryly stated that he was glad I had taken away a valuable lesson from this. And then I passed out from dehydration. Never negate proper fluid consumption, people. Dehydration is probably at the source of most major felonies.

We then had to drive home. We stopped at the wee little town of Big Bend to get Taco Bell because we hadn’t officially eaten anything substantive in thirteen hours, if you didn’t count a Luna bar for me and a Skor bar for Esteban. I then sacked out, with my jacket over my face.

Esteban, hyped up on Red Bull, proceeded to jam out’ LOUDLY’ to one of the mix CDs. The later it got, the more strange his singing became. At one point’and I am not making this up either’he was singing ‘Voodoo’ like Donald Duck. People, you have not heard Godsmack until you’ve heard it in the vocal stylings of the residents of the Magic Kingdom. It brings an entire new depth to the music.

We got home at 3:00 a.m. Tilly sulked because she’d been alone for sixteen hours. I don’t even remember going to bed.

We’re getting to old for this shit.

Dear Allison,

Your boyfriend Scott wanted me to wish you a Happy Anniversary, and he’s got a lovely letter written for you as well as many other things planned, you lucky chica. So Happy Anniversary!

Best wishes,
Weetabix

Dear Dave Matthews,

Great concert. No seriously. Great concert. And I don’t mean that the same way that you meant it when you said that Alpine Valley was your favorite place to play in the world. Because I know you were just saying that because 40 thousand kids had to trek over hill and dale and big fucking hill again just to see you. But seriously, though’. I could have understood it when you didn’t do ‘Satellite’. I might have even understood it that you decided that you didn’t want to sing ‘Crash’ which is my favorite song ever. But no ‘Ants Marching’? Seriously, Leetle Baybay. WTF?

Oh, and Dave? ‘There’s blood in the water’? Dude. Maybe it’s time to cut back on the drugs now, ok? You’re scaring me.

Sincerely,
Weetabix
(the sweaty old looking curvy girl in the 30th row)