banana clips

My timing is always off. Mrs. Vitt. my piano teacher in middle school made me play along to one of those awful metronomes so that I could improve my timing. The obnoxious ticking just frustrated me and I got worse. She said I had no concept of rhythm, that I just made up my own rhythm and it was never congruent with anything but the voices in my head. She didn't understand that there was a logic to my rhythm or lack thereof and it made perfect sense. I played every song as fast as I could so I could get the hell out of my piano lesson and go play outside. But of course I couldn't play everything super fast becuase some songs had more sharps than others (sharps were my nemesis) and I was forced to slow down. To make a long story short, I quit piano as soon as my mom gave up and realized she was wasting her money. She didn't let me quit without the "you're going to regret this when you're older" lecture. And of course, I do.

The piano was the first thing in my life to hint that there might be something wrong with my timing. Since then I've found other clues. You know, for instance, my hair looks really good in a banana clip. But unfortunately for me, I was born about a decade too late to sport banana clips while in my prime. I can't help it if I have this thick wavy hair, just coarse enough to hold a banana clip with no slippage for an entire day. And soft enough to resemble a serene yet stunning waterfall cascading down the back of my head when gathered with a banana clip.

And another thing, I'm always hitting or running the yellow light. It's the shortest of all three lights. If I were any good at calculating probability I could tell you how unlikely it is that someone who drives about 50 minutes a day would hit all yellow lights. Good thing I'm a pro at running them, or else I'd spend the majority of the day in my car running late and the rest of the day getting in trouble for being late.

I'm always getting all the good advice at the wrong times. My mom called the other day to tell me that she met a guy who registered for an Ironman Triathlon and then got injured or deployed or something and he asked for a rollover entry to the next year's race and it was granted because he took the time to call and ask a favor of a human being rather than reading the refund information on the website and concluding that he was screwed and had wasted lots of money. Why didn't anyone tell me this when I needed a refund from Ironman Couer d' Alene? And why did my mom bother telling me this story now that it's too late? Just so I could kick myself a little more? Who knows...

I meet the right people under the wrong circumstances and I encounter all the wrong circumstances when the timing is right. Does that make sense? I'll never be one of those people who miraculously evades a tragic plane crash because they missed their flight for one reason or another (traffic, family emergency, whatever...) and the plane they were supposed to be on blows up or is hijacked and they praise God thanking him for sparing thier perfect lives and count their lucky stars again. No, I'll be the girl who thinks she has come into a bit of good luck when she win's a all-expense paid trip that she doesn't need to go on but says "ah, what the hell," packs her bags and sets off for a vacation cut short by a plane crash....

protecting my fruit snacks

Brian has a jar of change in the bedroom that he says we will someday use to go to Alaska. I have a Mastercard that I say we will someday use to go to Alaska. There is a rapidly growing bulge inside my sweater that says none of us will be going to Alaska. I already know that Brian, ever the optimist will leave me a comment something to the tune of "we're going to Alaska, if it's the last thing we do. Fuck yeah."

Sometimes I wonder what Paris Hilton is doing at a particular moment. Buying really expensive shoes? Dropping in on a friend in Venice? Hooking up with a male model who won't know how to spell her name but will buy her anything she wants? I've been trying to figure luck out. How is it distributed? The good and the bad, among all seven billion people in the world?

Sometimes I still think about Red Feather. An old homeless man who lived in Alamosa, of all the miserable places one could be homeless. We gave him plenty of free coffee, and a few times I would sneak him some of the apple turnovers that couldn't be sold after four o'clock anyway. Then he got his foot in the door and started asking for more. Begging like a dog everyday. So grateful when we would oblige, so cruel when we did not. But always finding the nerve, even after condemning me to hell several times over, to come back and ask for more. One night he crashed a party at my friend's house. we were outside drinking beer on the porch when he wondered up in his familiar red hoodie and black backpack.
He wanted to know what we were laughing about. He wanted to join in with his own made-up anecdotes about his own made-up friends and family. He wanted to stand in the middle. He wanted to put his arm around us like old friends. He wanted to pretend he would be going home later like the rest of us. And when the hosts tried to wrap up the party, he wanted a place to stay. And when the hosts didn't want a creepy old man on their couch, free to steal whatever he wanted from them and put it in his backpack, he threatened to cut them up with his knife.

The desparation in that man's eyes, in his voice and shaking hands, has never left me. I remember it when my bank account dips too low and when my car insurance skyrockets due to the untimely unveiling of a one year old 16-20 over speeding ticket. I feel little tremors of that same desperation when Brian steals a fruit snack from me. It's that human instinct to get what is yours, and protect what is yours. And now that I am to be a mother that need to protect has amplified to a sometimes unreasonable degree. Now every bill in my mailbox is no longer something that I owe someone. It is someone trying to take things away fom my baby. It is someone who's after us, trying to ruin our lives.

Then there's Brian's jar of change in the bedroom. keeping me and the baby a little bit safer each time we add to it. And there's my hidden stash of fruit snacks, safely tucked away in a place Brian would never think to look. Not to be eaten, just to be there for comfort's sake...

goodbye summer grove

Someone left a note under my windshield wiper shortly after I moved in. LEARN HOW TO PARK! I got it. Since then my parking jobs have been nothing short of perfect.
That parking lot had the perfect speed bumps for practicing bunny hops. I once spent a whole Saturday practicing. I remember the feel of adrenaline pumping through my veins as I would approach my favorite series of speed bumps, the ones on the east side of the building by the dumpsters. "This is it. It's all or nothing. Go for the kill"And I would pop smoothly over the bump at record breaking speed. I was well on my way to hopping up a curb, but I would try that another day.
Then there was the day the police came banging on my door, disrupting a quiet evening of reading. "Pamela Greenfield?"
"Uh, no, you have the wrong apartment"
"Is Pamela Greenfield here?"
"No. You have the wrong apartment"
"Mind if we look around?"
"Go for it"
Apparently Pamela Greenfield was threatening suicide and my apartment was her last known address. Whatever.
When Teresa and Erin visited we drank wine and rum and went on a food hunt in the middle of the night. All we could find were Donettes at Walgreens. Which, according to Erin, aren't even real donuts. They're like donuts with vaginas.
I never did have the smoke alarm hooked up. Two days after I moved in the battery started dying which made a loud beep every eight minutes. I took the thing down and never bothered to buy a new battery. Oh well, the next renter can deal with it.
Goodbye grueling staircase, where it never mattered how good of shape you were in, you would always be panting and clutching your chest at the top...
Goodbye tiny bathroom where i locked myself for two days after learning I was pregnant...
Goodbye laundry machines that you had to have a laundry card to use, and you could only put money on it during office hours, which never happened to include times you suddenly remembered you desperately needed to do laundry...
Goodbye old lady with walker who has made me late to work on several occasions by clogging up the hallway with slowness...
Goodbye little gym where i got to watch VH1 while running on the treadmill, unless that one guy already had it on BET...
Goodbye cheerful ladies in the office who always remembered that my mom is the one who sends packages in shoe boxes covered in duct tape....
Goodbye family of eight with the mother of eighteen down the hall...
Goodbye mother of eighteen knocking on my door trying to sell me makeup in Spanish...
Goodbye going down the stairs to get to the main floor and then going up to get to my floor...
Goodbye couple who walks their cats on leashes outside...
Goodbye same couple who drive a motortricycle with a Minnesota Viking on one side and "Not Fragile" on the other...
Goodbye deceiving name of "Summer Grove" where it was rarely summer and hardly a grove...
Goodbye.

running on the treadmill at the Y

running on the treadmill at the Y

It is cold and snowless today. I ran on the treadmill at the Y to avoid nature's ornery climate. Like a hamster on its excercise wheel, I ran and ran until I finally got to where I was going. Nowhere. I finished in the same spot I started. And I, being the overanalytical philosophizer that I am; equated this concept to life. You're born. You die. You run around a lot inbetween. Ultimately you achieve the very status you claimed before you entered the world. Nonexistance. Christians might argue that you've always had a soul. Hindus might say you were something else, and something else you will become. But how do you know? You were not aware of yourself until roughly the age of four and you're probably even less self-aware by the time you hit seventy. That leaves adolescence, young adulthood and middle ages. Please tell me I am not the first image I noticed of myself. The wishy washy pimply fat girl with braces that saw the world so blurrily because she refused to wear glasses. Please tell me I am not who I am now, because I am someone that I should have figured out by now but am still utterly clueless about. Please tell me I am not who I think I will be in 20 years. Crazy mom in the returns line at Target wearing sweatpants and a fanny pack. Glowing with the leftover post-exercise high as I run my errands after another provocative workout on the treadmill at the Y.

ashes to ashes

dust to dust

oops i got knocked up

it's true. yes. yes it is. Fat is inevitable. Sleeplessness is a given. Individuality is packing it's things. Youth is loading the van, Freedom is driving off into the sunset. I am barefoot on the porch, waving goodbye. Devastation pulls me inside. Dread lulls me to sleep. Hope persistently wakes me each morning.

is that a burrito in your speedo or are you just happy to see me?

happy voting day. here's something that should have been on the ballots: old men in speedos. i was swimming at the Y last night, just minding my own business, swimming along when i stopped between sets for my 30 second break at the wall. as i removed my foggy goggles and reached for my waterbottle i saw something that made me do a double-take, ok a triple -take, ok so i couldn't stop staring!. this old man's speedo was completely worn and see through! he was walking across the deck to the hot tub, with his long veiny legs (partially tan with age spots), big bloated belly, and blue speedo thin as a fly's wing and loose with years and years of overuse. it was pulled up to his ribcage. i have to admit i let my gaze shamelessly follow his exposed crack and swinging ballsack all the way out of sight.

am i a pervert? no! it's not like it turned me on. it was more like a brutal car wreck that you just have to slow down for. the morbidly obese woman at the beach slathering sunscreen over waves of rippling flesh. the awkward gothic teenage boy with (is that a skirt?! or wide leg pants?) black lipstick and eyeliner and spikes and chains all over, glaring at you because he's insecure and you are blatantly staring at him but you know he must want to be seen or else he would wear what all the other kids are wearing... point being , I just couldn't tear my eyes off this speedo! i was shocked, i was appalled, i was fascinated, intrigued, disgusted! what should i have done? should i have told this old man that his speedo had seen it's last day thirty years ago and that it was time to let go for the sake of all YMCA patrons? i couldn't do it. i knew, judging by the obtrusive hearing aid protruding from his ear, i would ultimately end up repeating the already uncomfortable confrontation several times. no, there was nothing i could do.

as someone who swam competitively since the 6th grade, i am accustomed to many bodies in many speedos. i used to claim that i was immune to this obscene but functional garmet. at the Ft. Leavenworth pool, where we would frequently gather to tan and swoon as teenagers, my friends would giggle and point at the grape-smuggling foreign officers. but i would always roll my eyes as though i were the only mature one, and that seeing a speedo was no big deal and i saw them all the time at swim meets. but look at me now, image of an old man's buttcrack burned in my brain, unable to shake the swinging sack from my memory. i have grown younger. years younger.

killing time

yesterday was beautiful and i killed it. each passing minute i spent in my stuffy apartment shoved the guilt deeper and deeper down my throat until it was lodged in a most uncomfortable spot somewhere along my esophogus (i like that word). i couldn't smile. i couldn't cry. i couldn't go outside, though that is what i needed most. i settled on sleeping becuase it was easiest. it was an escape. a cop-out. i wussed out, i pussed out on Life.

i don't have an excuse or even an explanation. for some unkown reason i just felt that Life was too big for me yesterday. i coudn't face it. yes, i could have. i didn't want to. i slept, i sulked, i mourned the sun as it sunk lower and lower outside my window. Then suddenly lept up, unwilling to surrender completely. i had to get out and savor the last hour of a dying day. i felt as though i had done something horrible. something that would equate betraying a lover or wasting my life savings on a pool table. i had to get out there and redeem myself. i hiked in garden of the gods. i saw the moon shine full and bright between the kissing camels. pregnant with promise for new days.