It's Been Real Lee Hall, Room 740

Mom ....really?

Thing One is home after his freshman year at college. I remember last summer when it finally hit me that he was leaving, I spent four days in a depressed fog feeling devastated and crushed at the prospect of life without him.  Ridiculous considering that theoretically I'd known he was "leaving" for months.  But the instinct to parent is a "gathering-in" instinct, not a "pushing-away" instinct.  I  privately prepared for the worst when we left him at school in August.

It turned out that my big melt-down was those four days in the summer.  Saying our final good-byes was a breeze because it was a long, tedious, very hot day moving him in and we were all rather sick of each other by the end of it.  Here's to exhaustion usurping emotion!

I will say that Ex played a very large role in the tedium of that day, so when it came time this week to cross the state to bring Thing One home for the summer, I expertly appealed to Ex's workaholic-ness which worked like a charm.  He stayed home and I went to Blacksburg.

Moving Thing One out was still exhausting, but without Ex's anxiety and controlling nature, it was a calm exhaustion--one that makes room for emotion.  I had a moment to contemplate what a difference 9 months makes: Thing One has lots of friends. Thing One is happy here. Thing One is looking forward to returning in the fall. Thing One has grown-up a little bit.

I say out loud, "I wish I'd known last summer what I know now".  I think inwardly that the knowledge would have saved me a lot of grief. 

But then I realize, maybe not?  The kind of knowledge that saves grief is an earned thing.  I think about my own journey this past 9 months: Thing Two and I have created a nice routine sans Thing One. I started this blog. I am officially seeking a writing job. I have grown-up a little bit too.

Then I laugh when I suddenly focus on the checklist taped to Thing One's dorm-room door which I'm leaning on in my reverie ......it's the official checking-out checklist for Lee Hall which includes all the standard items:

                              1. Remove all personal belongings

                              2. Sweep and mop floor

                              3. Clean sink area

                              4. Close windows and blinds

                              5. Turn in key to R.A.

                                  and written in blue highlighter at the bottom ...

                              6. Take a shit!

Thing One says it wasn't him that wrote it.   

*****

Don't EVEN ask how we got this picture!

The List Version

Ok I know I've been vague about my blog-absence.  As a writer I cringe at this vagueness.  So the stickler soon-to-be-a-professional-writer-hopefully part of me has made a "list version" of yesterday's I'm Back post to assuage my writer's-guilt because there's almost no writer's-crime worse than vagueness. 

But this is a BLOG and "I Blog With Integrity"! (see below, right)  And most of my excuses reasons! for not blogging involves other people/things who/which ........maybe I shouldn't write about?  Herein lies the vagueness.

My solution is a list with special notations where details would not be integrity-less. 

Here goes.  "So I know.  I have been absent." (beginning of yesterday's post) because:

1) I began doubting my focus on You Must Take Your Chance--if you ask me, recipes and cleaning tips don't fit well into the taking-chances department.  I became disappointed in myself.  But friend MEC (hi MEC!) recently pointed out that she likes following blogs in which one day is profound and the next day is a pronounced un-profound.  Which is a very freeing notion for me because, seriously folks, I am a Gemini and a truer-Gemini than moi cannot exist.  I am all over the place in the emotion and intelligence (What? Star signs don't dictate intelligence .........? Are you sure??) departments.  You've probably noticed this if you've been following this blog--some posts are hilarious (in my not-humble opinion) and some are so friggin' deadly serious you all are afraid to comment in case the deadliness is contagious through comment-leaving.

PS--btw that is a distinct trend I've noticed.  Serious posts beget far fewer comments than lighthearted posts.  Which is completely ok.  For me too, it's easier to comment on silly stuff.

So my focus may seem out-of-focus at times.  But I promise I will never forget that I'm writing about taking chances, ok?

2) I think I got quite literally depressed about the earthquake that struck Haiti.  However one of my best posts came out of that tragedy (omg, did I just write that?  Please re-read, fighting off all messages from your brain screaming "INSENSITIVE!" "CRASS!!" SMALL MINDED!!!" SELF-ABSORBED!!!!" I don't mean to sound like I benefited from Haiti's anguish at all), and/but it's one of my favorite posts. 

Haiti-to-90999

3) My friend died.

dear kathleen
Heartbroken Cartoon Saturday

4) I broke-up with boyfriend Steve.  Who I still love.  There!  I said it!!

Dumb Blogger keeps removing this post due to copyright infringement issue.  I have to guess at what they're offended by--then I fix--then they keep having cow over said "issue".  If they would only tell me exactly what they're having a coronary over I would gladly oblige.  Look for link to this post in the future if Blogger & I can ever get on the same page. (darn it! ....it's a good post too)

5) Ex and I continue to be co-dependent and dysfunctional (Alisa--notice how I include myself in this diagnosis?).  So I am in the process of re-defining relationship with Ex because we do have Thing One & Thing Two together and we were married twenty years and (as I've told many of my friends) even though I'm nauseous over how many roses are coming up in his life, I don't exactly wish him death either.  But it's difficult to change your relationship with someone.  The "someone" usually doesn't like it. (The Dance of Anger, anyone? great book on this subject. should read if you have any relationships)

He's loves to "confide" in me occasionally, certain aspects of his love-life.  Which is simultaneously gross and front-row-seat-at-a-train-wreck--ish.  I can't help but be rapt over the second aspect.  The first aspect I could live without.  But therapist has convinced me that neither aspect is good for me.  Ohhh .....if only I didn't Blog With Integrity .......the stories I could tell ........

6) Certain extremely close family members (as in parents)(as in both) have been diagnosed with several, separate, serious medical conditions and have undergone serious procedures these past few months.  Despite this, they are strong and independent and have not needed any help from me.  And despite this, I am sad.

7) The number one you-must-take-your-chance item facing me is .........finding myself a full-time job that is (hopefully) rewarding and gives me a regular stream of wheelbarrows full of self-respect.  Oh and a "giving back to the world somehow" quality would be cool too.  This item scares the living merde out of me. (thanks Delana! you made me think about merde today!!)(oh and sorry, all, for grossness of next-to-last statement)  Yep this one is my super scary monster you must take your chance challenge.  I'm making it sound funny, but I'm not laughing at all .....

My current part-time job at an accounting firm (in which I am simply an administrative assistant but which has gotten me through the past 3 years beautifully) is a great job.  But there is no full-time position available and plus a writer in an accounting firm is rather a square peg ........I need to get seriously job searching.  Now.  And I need this blog to blog about it.  And my boss reads my blog (well he knows about it anyway ....).  If you haven't added 2+2 yet, let me break it down another way: Me looking for another job + Boss reading about said job search=Uncomfortable atmosphere at work.  Or =Me-no-even-part-time-job-anymore.

All is well though.  I've recently spoken to fabulous boss (hi Pat!) about my need to find a full-time position that is both professionally and financially rewarding.  And he completely understands.  So now I can agonize about it here all I want!  I'll bet you can't wait .....

8)  I've gained twenty pounds over the past four years.  Am particularly noticing this "difference" the closer I get to almost-19 & 17-years-ago-pregnancy weight.  WTF!!!!!!!!!!

Don't ask me how this affected my blog writing.  But it did.

9) Experienced Thing-One's first heartbreak with him.  I never realized how heartbreaking it is when your child is heartbroken.

Honestly, this seriously set me back.  Of course I won't blog about it (any more than this).  Thing One is my most loyal reader. (hi Thing One!)  Btw, isn't that dear of him?

10) Did I mention I lost faith in myself?  I just ......did.  Despite my frequent ditzi-ness, I'm also kinda anal and perfectionistic and decidedly not ditzi.  And .....I AM A WRITER.  As such this blog is that seed I'm nurturing.  My standards for my craft are high yet I'm the first to say I'm not "there" yet in the craft.  I've got much to learn and skills to hone.

So please forgive the occasional "dumb", "less than inspiring", "huh?" post.  And forgive my occasional "absences".  I know my Gemini-self well--both will happen occasionally.  Please have faith in me when I've apparently lost faith.  I will eventually find it again.  I will always come back.

Oh duh!  11) I work in an ACCOUNTING FIRM and it was TAX SEASON!

Thank-you! my dear reader-friends for hanging with me.

I'm Back

Hi y'all!  (ummm, no, I haven't acquired a southern accent in my absence ......I'm just trying to set a friendly tone and nothing like a happy 'hi y'all!' for that)

Plus in an email I wrote earlier today, I threw-in a "y'all" and it made me feel good. (Perhaps I should acquire a southern accent?)

So I know.  I have been absent.  I had lunch with a close friend today (hi Patricia!) and when the subject rolled around to my blog, or more precisely the lack of it, Patricia announced that the the last post I'd written was March 7th.  Which shocked me that she knew the date so precisely off the top of her head. 

I'll bet you're also thinking I was shocked to realize it's been nearly two months since my last post.  But I'm not.  You can't write a blog and then not write a blog and be shocked by it's absence.  It's a bit like losing a baby .......and then wondering two months later ........where's the baby?

So I have 5,000 excuses reasons why I have bailed on You Must Take Your Chance but for simplicity's sake let's just distill it down to one--I've been in no shape to take a chance for awhile.  Not to worry.  Nothing earth-shattering has happened to me the likes of which haven't been happening to you either.  Just life.  And my need--as I mentioned in my last post on March 7th, to hiberate (which was a great analogy in March when it was still bitterly cold, but on this balmy day in May isn't working for me) so let's just say my need--to be quiet for awhile. 

My dictionary defines chrysalis as "2. A protected stage of development" (after "1. A pupa, esp. of a butterfly, enclosed in a firm case or cocoon." which is not where I'm going here, although the butterfly metaphor is a lovely one .....perhaps one day?) 

No, I'm not assuming I'm emerging as a butterfly, but this post is assuming that I am emerging, evolved somehow.  I feel the words (wings?) waking up inside me, ready to stretch and feel the sun. 

It feels good to be back ya'll ...... I've missed you.
 

The Weary Kind

Oh my poor bloggy blog!  And readers, let me first fling open the door and sweep away the cobwebs before you come in ......

For reasons, some of them I understand and some of them I don't, I haven't blogged for over two weeks.  I liken it most to hibernation.  My soul is a bit battered I have to admit.  But frankly, who's soul isn't a bit battered?

And double-frankly, what would life be like if everything went smoothly and graced us with only happiness all of the time?  Ick.  Boring.  Vanilla.  Please pinch me and wake me up from this wonderful dream!

I tend to allude to it only occasionally, but really, the reason and focus of this blog is to help me find my way through this period of my life.  If we live long enough (like more than one minute) we are all faced with our changing lives and having to adapt to them.  But certain phases are particularly difficult.  And these days if you're so inclined, there is this opportunity to blog about it.  My sincere hope for anyone who chooses to read this blog is that you find a comaraderie and the occasional inspiration to help you through whatever phase in life you are facing, whether you are finding it particularly difficult or not. 

In other words this is not an online diary but hopefully a living, breathing dialogue that benefits me and you. 

That said, I'm sorry I've bailed on you for the past two weeks.  But honestly it will probably happen again now & then.  It is my way.  Sometimes I need to retreat.  Sometimes I need to hibernate.  I need to rest and lick my wounds.  I need to be alone and to be introspective and to be quiet.  I need to grow and to get stronger.  And I need to wait for my compass to realign and point the way.

*****

Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart

I've seen Crazy Heart twice in so many days--the Jeff Bridges movie in which he's up for best actor tonight?  Ok so it's crazy good.  I will cry my eyeballs out if he doesn't win the Oscar.  Go see it in the theater if you can.  I don't want to spoil it by giving any of it away but let me say this .....I am the biggest fan of music but definitely not a big country music fan.  As a point of illustration I went out of my way a few weeks ago to track down the only non-country music bar in all of Nashville, which I now regret.  If you don't already know Crazy Heart is about a washed-up country-music man ....

(OMG and the literal thousands of parallels to ex-boyfriend musician Steve are literally hysterical starting with when he stumbles out of his beat-up thirty year-old Suburban after a long drive between gigs, with his pants and belt buckle undone .....and ending with when I ask him from my nice little suburban house in Virginia which hotel he's in while he's on the road and he answers he has no idea what f***ing hotel he's in, "Hell I don't even know what f***ing town I'm in!")

.....so after watching Crazy Heart, I realize I should have totally soaked up every bit of country music in Nashville while I had the opportunity.  Nothing like being country music serenaded while staring down hard times.  I should have totally been there.

Country music is perfect for this movie.  And this is a near perfect movie.  Go see it.

I want to leave you with the theme song from Crazy Heart which is also up for Best Original Song tonight and which also could be the theme song for today's post: The Weary Kind, Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

The Weary Kind

(Theme from Crazy Heart)

Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Your Heart's on the loose

You rolled those sevens with

Nothin' to lose

This ain't no place for

The weary kind

You called all your shots

Shootin' eight balls at the corner

Truck stop

Somehow this don't feel like home

Anymore

This ain't no place

For the weary kind

This ain't no place

To lose your mind

This ain't no place to fall behind

Pick up your crazy heart and give it one

More try

Your body aches

From playing your guitar and sweatin'

out the hate

The days and the nights all feel

The same

The whiskey has been

The thorn in your side that

Doesn't forgive

The highway that calls for your

Heart inside

This ain't no place for

The weary kind

This ain't no place to lose your mind

This ain't no place to fall behind

Pick up your crazy heart and give

It one more try

Your lover's warm kiss

Is too damn far from your fingertips

You are the man that ruined the world

Your heart's on the loose

You rolled them sevens with

Nothin' to lose

This ain't no place for

The weary kind

Crazy Heart Official Website

Dear Kathleen

                                   It is fitting after a fitful
                                   few hours
                                   to wake to a crow’s caw
                                   through a slightly open window.

                                   Wet snow muffles everything else.

                                   Goose down keeps me
                                   but cold air
                                   heedless and unknowing greets my exposed foot.
                                   The tang of warm
                                   grapey alcohol—
                                   undrunk wineglass on the nightstand—
                                   you, an odd comfort.

                                   Everything I see
                                   I haven’t seen
                                   since I heard you died.
                                   I’m so sorry.
                                           
                                   Now you know too.
                                                            --lgw

Heartbroken Cartoon Saturday

Dearest Readers,

I have so many things I can't wait to write about but for one reason or another, lately, I keep running into (the proverbial) roadblocks.  Not writer's block mind you .......yikes!  Now that I've written that, I probably will get writer's block! (us writers are a superstitious lot--the baseball players of artists--now I'm gonna have to keep a cherry lifesaver under the arch of my foot in my right shoe every time I sit down to write)

So I was thrown, horribly, late yesterday to learn that my voice teacher and dear friend died unexpectedly at home last night, a presumed heart attack.  Her 50th birthday is today.  She leaves behind her husband and her fourteen year-old son, her extended family, and thousands of friends. 

It's shocking to me .......you know ......I truly loved her for many, many reasons ..........I thought she'd be around for my whole life (and that her whole life and my whole life would be "the same"--who can imagine otherwise?).

Kathleen, you possessed the most unfailing kindness and the most beautiful voice of anyone I've ever known.

My post yesterday didn't happen because I was bawling and beside myself.  Now, of all things, here I am faced with Cartoon Saturday which I haven't had for awhile and it's due.  Plus my favorite political cartoonist was on a real streak this week and I've been looking forward to highlighting him today.

So the show must go on.  Thank-you Mr. Toles for making me smile through tears.  And thank-you all for your patience.  I know "life" happens to you too.

*****

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, January 27, 2010

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 4, 2010

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 5, 2010

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 7, 2010

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 8, 2010

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 9, 2010

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 10, 2010

PS--I was in the same hotel (actually I think I was eating the best southern food in the farthest West Nashville you can imagine--still close by) when the hand-crib-notes incident happened last weekend! 

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 11, 2010

Tom Toles, The Washington Post, February 12, 2010

*****

Note to self: tell people you love them.  Even when it's not almost Valentine's Day. Especially when it's not almost Valentine's Day .... 

No Flowers For You J.D. Salinger

"Who wants flowers when you're dead?  Nobody."

But we will mourn you and be grateful that you wrote your words and be glad they are etched on our lives~

This is how I feel exactly--this second, this afternoon--when we are expecting up to a foot of snow tonight:

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road. --Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye

Poetry Girl Sunday--Dear God

Today for Poetry Girl Sunday, I am featuring one of my favorite bloggers jenx67.  You can find her in my Golden Blogroll--down, down--in the right sidebar.  Her blog is dedicated to celebrating & commenting on all things Generation X; the generation loosely defined as those people born between 1961-1981 (the generation on the heels of the Baby Boomers).  One of the things that distinctifies Generation X is that we are aging.  Much to our surprise.

(btw, I was born in May 1961 so I am barely a Generation X-er--well me and George Clooney who was born 18 days before me--charming company although he appears to like years-younger women not days-younger women .....sigh)

Aging.  Not a new human experience.  If life is a mountain, it is as if I have reached a clearing near the top.  I've stopped here for awhile and am resting.  I look all around me--I can see the path I have taken to get here.  I can see others behind me, on their way up.  I can see those ahead of me on the path making their way down the mountain. I can see the path in front of me leading into the future.  It is, at once, magnificent and daunting. It is empowering and heartbreaking. Frightening and exciting.  Mysterious and certain. Validating and invalidating.

Dear God, why must life be so impervious, relentless, and unforgiving?

Two concepts of aging have quietly introduced themselves to me in my mountaintop clearing that go beyond the expected aging concepts in which you become less attractive and more frail : 1) other people in my life are aging too!  Oh no!! and 2) I feel the same as I always have ...only perhaps ...(only slightly) wiser.

jenx's poem "leaving you just when i needed to most" will possibly leave you perplexed.  But please read it not worrying about what jenx meant ....think about what it might mean to you.  The best poets want to leave you with an insight into your own life, not theirs.  After I read "leaving you just when i needed to most" this past week, without consciously bidding it, her strong images of loss and grief kept coming back to me. 

Who wants that you might ask? 

But from my mountain-top perspective, I know you can't live long enough to reach the clearing without experiencing loss.  And I realize I need to reconcile my own feelings of loss before I can move on.  I can't head into the future without a sense of peace about ALL aspects of life including the impervious, relentless, unforgiving, and yes, grief-filled aspects.

Ironically (or not--connections are everywhere if you look for them), the same day I read jenx's poem, I opened my new Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) CD, Get Lucky.  The second track is called "Hard Shoulder".

Read jenx's poem and let the images speak to you.  Listen to Mark Knopfler's "Hard Shoulder" too.  For me, perhaps inexplicably, they call out to one another and they are both calling out to me.  Think about the feelings they invoke.  Feel at one with each because you've experienced loss and disappointment and failure too.  Feel unburdened by kindred spirits.  Feel a connection to another human being.  Feel, no matter where you are on the mountain, a sort of transcendence beyond your moment by moment, minute by minute life--dare to feel it all; dare to feel the very most alive.

*****

leaving you just when i needed to most

Let me just tell the world:
I left you today
And I’m certain when I did,
I chipped a tile
From the Mosaic
The fractured Bride of God.

It seems I had no choice
For 25 some-odd years I’ve watched
The same man
Silver hair and a gold horn
He played it like me
But, safer
And, you know,

I didn’t.

I fancied myself bombastic
Like James the Less
And, now here I am
No more casseroles to supplant our superficial conversations
You left
Just when you needed me most.

And, so this is what I choose for myself
This fractured daughter of God.

I stuff the change in my cold Armani pocket
And, I hold the door behind me
For you, a stranger
Four gallons of water looped around your fingers
They sway you in the Oklahoma wind
You smile with heartbroken
Ghastly yellow teeth
And, say with Broadway exuberance
My radiator is overheating and
I have to have all this water just to get home!

You twirl oddly in the wind
Talking to the sky
And, I leave you.
Just like everyone else
And I carry myself, all privilege gone
To a business appointment
Which I want to abandon
To sit with you in the Oklahoma wind
Cradle you on this prairie
And tell you

Why do we answer questions
No one is asking?
Did you think your sorrow would escape me?
It did not

Tonight, you’ll cook your crank in a bath tub
But, only after we find a new radiator
Together at a junkyard
Just like my dad had to do a dozen times.
And, I’ll hold you in a rusted automobile
And beat my chest and say
We are having church!

My God, we are having church
All you effing sonsofbitches.

But, I am dreaming.
I have missed another opportunity
And, I was missed a dozen times
1,500 lonely days
We beat crickets off us while we watched Kimmy eat a bug.
Survivors. It was so long ago.

The radiator hisses
like the last summer of childhood
Lizard juice and burned rubber
The wishes boiled and smoked
And, I was too proud.
I wanted everyone to read my mind.

But, I would not change it
I am halfway to the skeleton frame
Where I belong.

I am leaving you.
I know.
You were innocent like me.
Keeping appointments
God never intended you to make to begin with.
                                                  --jenx67


Mark Knopfler, Hard Shoulder

Hard Shoulder

I've got latches for windows, handles for doors
Grinders and scrapers and sanders for floors
Rake for the gravel, chains for the snow
Always got the shovel - you never know
I never thought you'd go

Man's broken down
Man's broken down on the slip road
Got a slipped load
And it's a hard shoulder to cry on

Hacksaws and hammers, brushes and mop
Then I've got the ladders up on the top
If something needs doing, I always say
You want it done the proper way
I need you to stay

Man's broken down
Man's broken down on the slip road
Got a slipped load
And it's a hard shoulder to cry on

Give me a minute we'll be going again
Sound as a pound, right as rain
- right as rain
And it's a hard shoulder to cry on
- to cry on
                                                  --Mark Knopfler


PS--be sure to check-out jenx67--are you there God? it's me generation X

Sad? Lonely?? Go Pick Up A DROID

Yesterday I took Thing One to Verizon because his cell phone’s space-key doesn’t work anymore and the connection between his charger & phone has completely fizzled.  He’s going back to school soon and his phone has become essentially worthless.

Remember Thing One goes to Virginia Tech? He’s enrolled in the School of Engineering, majoring in Computer Science, and has a 4.0 so far. Naturally I’m quite proud, even more relieved, and completely bamboozled as to where he gets his good sense from ……..

In any case, into the cell phone store yesterday, he & I traipse. I know that in some sly fashion, or else in a blatantly un-sly fashion (they don’t care!), I always get “had” at Verizon every time I cross its threshold. So I’m not nearly as enthused as Thing One is on this errand.

It’s been a rough week for me as many of you who have kindly sent your kind regards my way (I am so very appreciative, please know) are aware. I’m rather “just going through the motions” which is completely normal after a >four-year relationship comes to an end so let’s not indulge me too much. As a matter of fact, in the “things could be much worse” department, the morning after my sad-sack-last-post, I was off to work when I saw that a home in my neighborhood had gone up in flames!!!!!!!!! There’s crime scene tape everywhere and blackened, broken windows that have been wide open this whole 20 degree weather weekend, replete with singed draperies flapping in and out of the frigid breeze. Awful. From what I gather, no one was hurt and the stove had been left on. But seriously, in that light, I was humbled.

Still …..I’m sad.

But at Verizon I am cheerfully informed that my contract is up for renewal which means that I can buy a new phone at an insanely inflated price, but wait!! It’s a good deal because without the new contract the new phone costs $10 million dollars! So it’s a STEAL!!!!!!???

Now I’ve been happy with my nifty phone—it’s only two years old. It’s working fine and only shows signs of wear where the salt water literally “burned off” the pretty chrome parts when me & my book club girlfriends (Hi you guys!) were caught out in a hurricane-style, sudden thunderstorm one, initially, lovely summer evening at the beach this past August. Suffice to say it became a rather dripping wet keystone cops affair and we were quite lucky that we weren’t struck by lightening, and that in the end, it was only my pretty phone that gave away the rather insane aspects of the ordeal. (read: my phone spent the evening swimming around in the tidal pool created in my beach bag along with my sunscreen and sunglasses that naturally had been rendered completely useless by the current state of affairs—i.e. a hurricane). And naturally, as these brushes with danger go, we laughed ourselves silly when it was all over and broke open countless bottles of wine to celebrate our aliveness.

The salesman at Verizon began taking Thing One & I around the store on a tour of every inflated-priced phone they are currently offering (read: all of them). Now I have been mildly flirting with the idea of my next phone being a Smartphone; particularly since I started blogging in October and even more particularly since everyone else seems to be having so much fun Tweeting and me & my pretty phone just look at each other and say “Tweet” …what?

So I say to the salesman, what about this phone?

Long story short-ish, not only did I end up with the world’s currently most spectacular cell phone—YEP!!!! The Motorola DROID! But so did Thing One! (he used his own money) And he & I have been out of our minds obsessed with our new phones now for the past 32 hours!

Me & Thing One

I was playing with it in bed at 4:30 this morning and I got only approximately four hours of sleep last night.

I’ve had to fully charge it three times already—its only drawback-so far.

Thing One and I keep running through the house to tell each other about something new & amazing we just discovered our new phones do, or some ridiculous cool App we found. We’re texting & tweeting & emailing each other constantly. Did you know that all the smiley emoticons (there are like fifty different one’s right on the keyboard!) are smiley’s, but they’re little smiley DROIDS??????? Cute! (turns out you only see them as droids if you have a DROID, but who cares?!)

And the Apps!!!!!! OMG!!!!!!!! There’s an App to make your phone a vibrator!!! (no! I did not download that …) There’s an App, in case you don’t have a coin handy, for flipping a coin—it puts a virtual coin on your screen and with a flick of your wrist, it’s heads or tails!! There is a Fartdroid App that makes numerous different fart noises with names like “poot”, “ker-plop!”, “sqeeky”, and (ick) “rim shot”. I know this because I did download Fartdroid. The icon is the cutest little droid farting and I couldn’t resist it.

Oh there are really practical Apps too. How about the Google Places App, Thing One found? Which for any attraction, bank, bar, coffee shop, gas station, hotel, hospital, movie theater, parking lot, restaurant, shopping mall, & taxi stand, will alert you to it’s nearby existence and literally point the way! As if you would, in Frankenstein-with-a-divining-rod fashion, stumble your way there! But seriously, how cool!

I may have to write just a few more posts on the subject because I haven’t even touched on how hilarious the chasm is between the speed at which Thing One had his DROID up & humming along, already running fifty Apps, while I’m still quizzically turning my DROID over & over trying to find the “on” switch.

Needless to say, Thing One has been more helpful to me than I have been to him. (I did tell him about the Fartdroid App though)

And can you imagine poor Thing Two—who managed to lose his phone a year ago and then, quite fortunately under the circumstances, received a new one because it was such a pain in his mother’s a** that he didn’t have a phone anymore. Now his “new” phone is a year old and he is not eligible for a “new-new” phone. The shenanigans between Thing One & I this past day are about to make him, I’m guessing, puke. He now has to cope with merely owning a plain phone that was once the envy of Thing One’s eye (who couldn’t believe his brother lost a phone and then promptly gets it replaced with a new, cooler phone)(but I explained that already), but sadly one year later pales in comparison to our DROIDS. He's coping by playing non-stop Grand Theft Auto IV which I allowed him to use his own money to buy yesterday while I was in my “looky my new phone!” haze. I can hear it downstairs right now honking and crashing into guardrails and spewing out lots of bad words that I would normally not tolerate except I’m so in love with my new phone that I’m walking into walls instead of making sure my child is playing a more suitable game.

Overview:

Nothing soothes a broken heart better than a new cell phone.

Thing One and I have bonded over said phones and he’s a genius in the “technology" department to my “dunce-cap” level of knowledge in said department.

Thing Two has been spoiled in the past but is now paying the price by not having the coolest phone on the planet (anymore) and having to witness Thing One’s and my googly-eyed obsessions with our new phones. At least he has the consolation prize of being left alone with his violent, potty-mouthed X-Box game.

I’ll try not to write ad-nauseum too much more about DROID ….but it’s hard because there is so much more to tell and I admit, I focused too much today on the silliness and not enough on the many seriously respectable qualities of my new boyfriend.

And finally, definitely on a serious note, let’s pray for the nice people in the burned-out house and remind ourselves not to accidentally leave the stove on.

Best Post Script Ever!

Herein amends a good story to
........ahem .......
the best story ever!!!

(quite possibly) 

Best post script

(at least)

ever!!!!

(surely)

And I shall make it a game!

To begin you must read (or re-read) this, one of my first blog posts from waaaay back in October:

Why "You Must Take Your Chance"?

*****

Ok now, see if you can unravel yesterday's turn-of-events, shown here in pictures:

Yesterday

duh

My doorbell!!

What's this??

It's from Jeanine Payer ....?

Umm ......???

Oh ....... 

(tears in eyes)

******

Can't speak.  Can't write. 

Except to say, this came as a gift yesterday,

from Jeanine .....after she read my October post. 

Happy New Year everyone! 

(be kind to one another)

Thank-you Jeanine ....for being kind to me

Jeanine Payer

&

Jeanine's blog "Glimpse"

Santa I see you

The Polar Express, the first gift of Christmas

It's not even a full memory; it's just a vague knowledge that I never liked to sit on Santa's lap. I don't remember crying but my mom figured it out early on, and consequently, there's not one picture of me sitting on Santa's lap in all the boxes of photographs my parents took of us growing up.

I was uncomfortable because I knew Santa, the one we saw in the department stores and on the streets, was not the real Santa.

There was the Santa with black eyebrows at Sears & Roebucks.  So, what about the Santa at Neiman Marcus ......who had white eyebrows? What about the Santa ringing the bell--with the real beard??? And how could Santa go from wrinkly to smooth to wrinkly?? And from tall to short? And fat to thin? In the same day?

There was one time when I saw the real Santa ......and it is a story that I will never forget.

It was Christmas Eve and we lived in Kingsville, Texas at the time. My bed was next to the window and Lisa was asleep in her bed next to mine. I was five and a half. Lisa was four and a half. Of course it was winter, but even the winters in Texas can get cold. I remember the windowpane, not ice-cold as in C. C. Moore's 'Twas The Night Before Christmas, but cold, and after awhile it made my fingers and my nose too cold to stay pressed there. I had to settle for hovering as close to the window as I could without fogging the pane. And I guarantee, if you go back and look it up, on December 24th, 1966; it was either a full moon or quite close because the moonlight over Texas that night lit everything in a blue-white glow.

And then I heard the bells. I saw the moon glinting off of them way up in the sky! I saw Santa's reindeer pulling the sleigh with their legs swimming gracefully. Swimming.  Gracefully.  I distinctly remember that. Graceful, but with purpose. And then I saw Santa's red coat! He was too far away to see anything other than that bright red speck in the sleigh. But he was coming and he was in the sky above my house!! I quickly laid down and pulled up the covers ........and waited.

Before too long, I heard reindeer hooves on the roof!! And then I thought I heard some rustling and a creak of the door, because in that house we didn't have a fireplace. Lisa and I were very concerned about not having a chimney, but mom & dad assured us that Santa knew how to get to children's stockings who live in houses without chimneys. And then, after more rustling, a long period of nothing.

I woke Lisa up and we tip-toed out to the living room where all four stockings, now fat and lumpy, were hanging off corners of various chairs. We couldn't believe how loud the slightest noise made! Lisa pulled the string on the doll that Santa had left her "MY MOMMY SAYS I TALK TOO MUCH!" Sssshhhhhhhh .........we looked at each other panic-stricken! We didn't want to wake up mom & dad. They wouldn't be happy if they knew we saw everything Santa had left us, before Christmas morning. But we had! Our hearts were pounding in our chests. Santa had just been here!

*****

I've never gotten over the sureness that I saw Santa through the window that night. I was recently reminded of this one evening while making dinner. The Polar Express was on TV. With my back to the TV, chopping carrots, I heard Tom Hanks the conductor of The Polar Express tell the boy in the story:

"Sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can't see ...”

My wish to you tonight is for a full surrender of adult reasoning, and for a child's innate embrace of what is really real even if you can't see it ...........remember?

Merry Christmas Eve!  And Lisa?  I love you. 

Happy Birthday Thing Two!!

Today is Thing Two's 16th birthday!  Happy birthday honey. I love you!  Oh, to be sixteen again ..........

not a kid--not an adult, driver's license! (fun ...but scary), bad skin, parents not understanding you, YOU not understanding you, teachers not as "nice" as they used to be, curfews, self-conscious--about everything, everyone bugging you about college--already, life in a fishbowl, bad grades? no concerts!, heartbreak (multiple) ......

Note to self: be nice to Thing Two this year.

Not Really Bah! Hum-bug!!

(Jim Carrey, as the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, in this year's

reincarnation of A Christmas Carol)

And so begins what will likely be a very unpopular post but it's been nagging at me and I simply must write about it.  Note Scrooge .....put here 1) to beat you to the punch and 2) to indicate that I am aware I'm about to come across as Scrooge's modern day great-great-scroogy-grand-child.

George F. Will's recent column in The Washington Post called "The gift of not giving - Solid proof that Uncle Ralph wasted his money" was the first impetus in my thought-process for this post.  And a conversation I had with a respected friend yesterday was my second. 

No,  I take that back .........for some years now I've been struck ........  as I'm scrounging around store after store, after battling tedious traffic, after valiantly scoring a parking space ten miles from the mall--that while my mission is to find the perfect second, third, fourth, & even more (don't forget stocking stuffers!) presents for the same person (like you do for your children & your spouse & other close family & friends?  I totally know you do it too!!), that our Christmastime gift-giving tradition has become insanely stressful, not to mention ridiculous.  Whatever happened to ONE nice thoughtful gift at Christmas?  And Hanukkah for that matter.  Although, and I speak here from experience, at least Hanukkah has maintained a modicum of rationality in the gift-giving department and a primary allegiance to the religious reason it exists.

So that was my first impetus, Mr. Will's column my second, and the conversation with respected friend, third.  Three compelling impetuses (that is a word--I looked it up) equals one potentially controversial, may turn you off, not usually done in the nice little blogosphere I wander around in, post.  But try to retain an open mind as I postulate  .......

I've explained my first revelation about buying sackfuls of presents for each person on your list.  Now for Mr. Will's column:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/25/AR2009112502653.html . 

The gist is "...the crux of Yuletide economics which common sense suggests and research confirms, is: Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched to the recipients' preferences.  What the recipients would willingly pay for the gifts is usually less than the givers paid."

Eminent professor at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton business school, Joel Waldfogel, author of  "Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays" is cited in Will's column as saying that in his "conservative estimate (sic) in 2007, Americans spent $66 billion on gifts and produced $12 billion less satisfaction than would have been produced if the recipients had spent the $66 billion on themselves."  In other words, a well respected study found that we wasted approximately $12 billion in 2007 on homely sweaters and hideous ties.

And we all know the feeling, don't we? When you receive that gift where your first thought is OMG! What were you thinking? Don't you know me?? Don't you love me???  Replaced hopefully asap with, well I know they meant well ...smile nice so they know that I hate it like it!!  Add all these collective experiences up, and according to Mr. Waldfogel, it equals $12 billion. I'm surprised it's not more actually.  Although honestly once I get to a paltry $1 billion, I begin to lose perspective on that amount of money. So times that by twelve.

Oh, reading further, George says it much more hilariously than me: "Christmas etiquette involves composing one's face to feign pleasure when unwrapping an unwelcome windfall--say a sweater of an applling color and a style that went out in the 1940s--and murmering "Oh, you shouldn't have" without revealing that you mean exactly that.  Price of the sweater: $50.  Value to recipient: $0.  Actually, less than zero, considering the psychological cost of the forced smile."

Now, on to revelatory conversation with friend yesterday who commented that, really, he just loves having all his loved one's gathered together to "laugh & scratch" (I added that--one of my dad's best expressions) for awhile, have a great meal together, and tell everyone how much you love them.

(Not in a weird embarrassing way--in a lovely memorable way)  (Do we even know how to do that?) 

Now reread that and think about it for a minute.  It might seem lame upon the first run-through, and you might wonder how is that any different than Thanksgiving?  But if you keep thinking about it, at least for me, it becomes much, much more appealing.  It's so real & genuine.  And think how much less stress is involved?!  And as far as Thanksgiving goes, we gather then to be thankful, yes .....it is a uniquely American holiday .......and surely it's implied that we all love each other in November, but the big push seems to be thankfulness and Yay for America! unity.  And eating of course.

So I'm not advocating a new, total hardcore no-presents-sit-around-the-tree-and-stare-at-each-other Christmas tradition.  But this I know: the current economy is hard on everyone, everywhere, and we've learned our gift-buying habits at Christmastime are largely a mind-boggling waste of money; we all know that almost everything we really want we can't ask for (unless someone out there is willing to buy me a new laptop with a nice big hard drive and a giant screen?); and this most especially .......we simply don't tell each other we love them enough.  In my opinion, I think we use gifts too much to do that job. 

Like all the wine & cheese I sent every single Christmas to my uncle and my aunt, both of whom passed away this year, probably was not as meaningful as if I had sincerely told them, even one time, 'I really love you and you've been an important part of my life'.

I know!  I know!  You're thinking, I tell certain people that I love them all the time!  But, speaking for myself, of all the people who currently people and in the past have-peopled my life, who I really and truly love and loved--I've not told the vast majority of them that simple fact.  And I don't think I'm alone in that regard.

Despite the profoundly religious reason we celebrate Christmas, whether we like it or not, Christmas has morphed into a lot more.  Some good.  But a lot bad.  I'm just thinking ......I'm going cut down on the bad parts and focus more on the good parts.  (Thing One and Thing Two must be having a fit right now!)(Don't worry T1 & T2) 

So dear friends in my life and dear family and dear anybody else, when I tell you how much I love you this Christmas, don't feel uncomfortable, just feel good and remember it for the rest of your life.  You'll get a gift too, but according to the experts, it will probably make you feel bad and you'll be hopefully forgetting about it as soon as I walk out the door and you toss it in the trash!

Poetry Girl Sunday #4

I have lost two dear family members this year.   I am 48.  Although it is not the sole domain of my age group--it is a fact of life that the older we get the more people who have mattered in our lives will die.

We humans have a hard time completely grasping death.  In my uncle's case, I hadn't seen him for years.  Yet his death affected me greatly.  I found myself wondering if he had any idea what he really meant to me?  He was an engineer who helped develop the tiles that kept the Apollo capsules from becoming fireballs as they reentered the Earth's atmosphere.  He was a curious-minded inventor.  He was a fun uncle.  He always got down on our level, literally.  There's a picture of my sister & I, we look like we're four & five at the time, on the floor with Omar.  He's showing us something--one of us is pointing excitedly.  We're all three enraptured by the excitment of it all. 

When my boys were approximately the same ages as Lisa & I had been, Mil & Omar came for a visit.  At one point I couldn't find anyone.  Finally I heard noises in the downstairs coat closet.  Omar had the boys in there showing them something you could see only in the dark.  Now, I ask you, if you heard a story about a woman's uncle who had her two little boys in the closet with him, what would you think?  But now that you know Omar, you know.  The piece of titanium alloy that he brought all the way from Los Angeles, just to show the boys, still sits in a place of honor on Thing One's dresser.

Omar was married to my mom's sister.  We all knew that Omar was the most brilliant member of the family--the family he married in to.  In a cruel twist, Omar spent the last ten years of his life losing his mind to something like Alzheimer's.  I never knew exactly what it was.  It didn't matter.  When he died in June on Father's Day, I hadn't seen him for nearly six years.  My every day existence was not going to miss him.  But did he know how much I loved him?  Why didn't I just tell him that, emphatically if necessary, before the end?

Death is so strange.  One second you're there like you've always been.  The next you're not. 

Speaking for myself, I'm not very good at remembering this as I'm caught up in the throes of regular day-to-day living.  I take for granted that you are always going to be a breathing, heart-beating influence in my life. Plus I tend to dwell, stew, on the things and the people and the things about the people that bother me--and often, I have no doubt, I am quite right to be bothered by them.  But when you're gone and it's all over, what is left has little to do with those things I spent so much time stewing on.

I'm going to leave you with two poems today that may seem a little disparate, but if you give them time to simmer together perhaps they will become good food for thought as we gather with our loved ones for Thanksgiving this week.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze.  No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
                                  --Robert Hayden


from To Lou Andreas-Salome

.....For I don't think back; all that I am
stirs me because of you.  I don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation.  Longing leads out too often
into vagueness.  Why should I cast myself,
when, for all I know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.
                                   Duino, late autumn 1911
                                   --Rainier Maria Rilke

Golden Blogroll

Yay!  I've been blogging a month now (almost).  Day after tomorrow. 

I think this is gonna stick!  I'm not always the best at sticking with things .....but some things I stick to like super-glue!  I think blogging might be super-glue for me!! 

I never read a blog before I started writing a blog so I was clueless about blogging when I started.  In the meantime I've come across lots & lots of blogs.  Let me say this: there are an incredible number of extremely talented people out there in Blog Land.  It's intimidating.

The business at hand: for the one-month anniversary of this blog, I'm launching my Golden Blogroll.  It's gonna reside in the Right Side-Bar (it's there now ....go check it out!) and it's going to showcase my, so far, all-time super-favorite blogs.  These are the blogs that intimidate me the most.  That said, if you're on my Golden Blogroll, don't get a big head because that's something else I love about each and every one of you--your total humbleness.

Dear readers, I encourage you to check these blogs out .....and when you do ......please leave them a comment that I love them.  Maybe, then, they will be my friend??  hee hee I'm really not that pathetic.  Yes she is.  No I'm not!!  Yes you are .........

Poetry Girl Sunday #3

Heavy surf from the nor'easter makes its way up the beach access steps late in the afternoon in Sandbridge, Nov. 12, 2009. (L. Todd Spencer|The Virginian-Pilot)

O it has been a week--yesterday's paper screamed "NOR'BEASTER", today it bleats "It's Intense".  As I write this morning, it is sunny ...the not-proverbial "calm after the storm".  My little southeastern corner of Virginia has been battered by a sneak-attack Nor'easter now dubbed by our dazed commentators as The November Nor'easter.  "...Of ALL Time!" it seems like they want to add but they don't in case it comes off as too dramatic.  Even though it was dramatic.

I drove north to Washington D.C. in the midst of it.  A three to four hour drive. 

This part of Virginia is home to the cities/towns of Chesapeake/Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Portsmouth/Suffolk--all crowded together into an area we commonly refer to as "Tidewater" or "Hampton Roads".  Some of us know the origins of these two toponyms, most of us don't.  In fact ever since I've lived here for the past twenty-five years, a slow-burning controversy that flares up now & then simmers about what to call this place.

The point is that this part of Virginia was getting clobbered by the storm and, as life goes, something else was going on too--my aunt was being laid to rest in Washington D.C.  Despite the storm, I had to get myself and Thing 2 up there.  So we went.  We drove on through slanting rain and wind gusts up to 60 mph.  There was debris flying through the air, littering the road, battering my poor, but stalwart Honda Odyssey.  Mostly by pure luck, partly by good reflexes I narrowly missed a large tree that suddenly appeared out of the chaos, lying across the interstate.

Odyssey n., pl. -seys 1. A long adventurous voyage or trip. 2. An intellectual or spiritual quest. [After the ODYSSEY.]

How appropriate.

I had relatives flying and driving to DC for Meme's service and my mom & dad drove the same path I did from Williamsburg, Virginia (an hour NW of Tidewater).  But it was that hour that made all the difference.  The whole eastern seaboard had rain and wind but it was Tidewater that got the Nor'easter's particular wrath and I had to get out of Tidewater.  Hence they all looked at me rather flabbergasted when I arrived, appearing wide-eyed and announcing that my "odyssey" had been "brutal".  (I didn't really use the word "odyssey" but I did use the word "brutal")  Even Thing 2 looked at me askance because despite the buffeting rage of that first hour, he had slept through most of it.

I realized I had to put my white-knuckled, heart-hammering trip behind me and get down to the business of grieving for my dear aunt, and comforting, and being comforted by, dear relatives and friends.  It may in fact happen in the brain but this shift of emotions feels like it happens in the heart.  It is the heart that is confused and it is the brain telling the heart to get on with it.  It is now.  And now I find myself in the quiet bowels of an appropriately somber administrative building at Arlington National Cemetery refereeing this internal wrestling match as we gather and prepare to say good-bye to a life that has been a part of our lives.

It occurs to me that whether we care to admit it or not, life is dramatic and can be likened certainly to a long, adventurous voyage or trip that is certainly an intellectual, spiritual quest.

And my heart is saying, "Back off brain!  Leave me alone and let me feel for a little while".  Just let me feel it all ....

The Lives Of The Heart

Are ligneous, muscular, chemical.
Wear birch-colored feathers,
green tunnels of horse-tail reed.
Wear calcified spirals, Fibonaccian spheres.
Are edible; are glassy; are clay; blue schist.
Can be burned as tallow, as coal,
can be skinned for garnets, for shoes.
Cast shadows or light;
shuffle; snort; cry out in passion.
Are salt, are bitter,
tear sweet grass with their teeth.
Step silently into blue needle-fall at dawn.
Thrash in the net until hit.
Rise up as cities, as serpentined magma, as maples,
hiss lava-red into the sea.
Leave the strange kiss of their bodies
in Burgess Shale.  Can be found, can be lost,
can be carried, broken, sung.
Lie dormant until they are opened by ice,
by drought.  Go blind in the service of lace.
Are starving, are sated, indifferent, curious, mad.
Are stamped out in plastic, in tin.
Are stubborn, are careful, are slipshod,
are strung on the blue backs of flies
on the black backs of cows.
Wander the vacant whale-roads, the white thickets
heavy with slaughter.
Wander the fragrant carpets of alpine flowers.
Not one is not held in the arms of the rest, to blossom.
Not one is not given to ecstasy's lions.
Not one does not grieve.
Each of them opens and closes, closes and opens
the heavy gate--violent, serene, consenting, suffering it all.
                                                                 --Jane Hirshfield

Meme's Hollywood Rain

It's a furious day on the eastern seaboard.  Nor'easters usually barrel through mid-winter, not mid-November.  Today, if you must venture out, you physically wince and utter an oath when you open the front door.  I had to pay for this morning's appointment even if I didn't go, so quickly I decided to go before I changed my mind.  I threw on my coat and winced and oathed into the driving rain.

My umbrella turned inside-out five seconds after I stepped outside and three more times before I gave up and just allowed myself to get drenched.  On a day like this, getting from point A to point B requires you to lean forward at a 45 degree angle while, if you forgot to button up, your coat snaps behind you at a 90 degree angle flapping insanely like a flag in a hurricane.  This, I thought in the maelstrom, is Meme's "Hollywood rain". 

Meme (say Me-Me) is my mom's oldest sister.  And Meme has lived only twenty-five minutes away from me for the past twenty-five years.  Meme was also the first relative (besides my parents) on the scene when I was born.  I was born in Hawaii and my New England maternal grandparents sent Meme out as the Hendry family embassador, and helper, for Mom & Dad.  This of course I don't remember but I've seen pictures and heard the stories. 

Our relationship is as comfortable as an old chair.  Sometimes it's easier to get along with your aunt than with your own mom simply because it's a less complicated relationship.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad I got my mom.  Meme's demons made life difficult for her own children.  But Meme has mellowed with age and I'm her niece.  All she has to worry about with me is to save her old People magazines, meet me occasionally to hand over the pile of People's over a pleasant chit-chat lunch, and wait patiently for me since I'm almost always late to pick her up.  Meme is always patient with me.

Meme's Hollywood rain is any sort of drenching downpour that lasts for hours and hours that almost never happens in real life but always happens when it rains in the movies.  Think about it.  It never rains lightly or "sprinkles" in Hollywood productions.  In Hollywood, it's either a mean, mad rain, or an unrelenting, unsympathetic dousing.  Meme casually commented on this phenomenon once a number of years ago and it rang so true the minute she said it, I've never forgotten.

I found the perfect video on YouTube to illustrate (hope you like Ronnie Milsap): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0yIVZFv0aM

Oh, this too from Son of Flubber--it's too cute to pass up:
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index.jsp?cid=216570

I suppose then, it's appropriate that a Nor'easter will be wailing around us on Friday when we gather to say good-bye to Meme at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C.

Today, after being splashed relentlessly by passing cars while I struggled with my umbrella at the curb, I ducked, finally, into my car and happened to catch my reflection in the rearview mirror--my hair is plastered to my dripping face, the car is fogging up, and I'm smiling.  This almost never happens in real life.