Momomama
I was in the Adirondacks this weekend and yesterday morning, I went and took a walk in the Glen. The Glen is ten minute drive from the Bunkhouse. Three roads make a three mile triangle though woods, along Styles Brook and through some meadows. Right now the meadows are filled with wildflowers- Queen Anne's Lace, daisies, black eyed susans, nettles and dozens of others. With wildflowers come butterflies. Hundreds of them. As Mo and I walked down the dirt road,
White Admirals would fly up and swirl around us. Three times, an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail followed Mo, hovering just over his head.
I have never seen so many butterflies and moths as in the Adirondacks. At night and in the moring at the Camp, you will see dozens of them clinging to the screen over the old garage doors. One morning last summer Bill showed me a moth that was as big as the palm of my hand. We took out the butterfly book and spent an hour trying to identify species. Late that day we drove over to the Visitor's Center in Paul Smith's to go to the Butterfly house. There's a garden in the screen house, along with terrariums filled with larvae and caterpillars. It took me a minute to spot my first butterfly in the house, but once i saw one I realized that they wre everywhere. On the flowers, on the ground, on the walls, on the ceiling, resting on the chair of the volunteer. The volunteer told Bill that he could bring by any moth for identification and that they would add it to the collection in the butterfly house. This spring, when we were cleaning out the camp, I found a tupperware container that help three sphinx moths. They lay on the bottom of the bowl, red dust settled underneath their crumbing wings.
I am a post-it note person. My computer monitor is surrounded by little flags of paper with message scribbled on them, and even more little squares litter the desk under my monitor. (Once I post a post-it, I never unpost, I just wait it the oldest ones flutter down to my desk like so many dead leaves.) All of my little notes make sense except this one: "Lunch 320." I eat around one, so it can't be a time. It might be a date, but I don't have any lunch on my calendar for March 20th. It's a mystery.
Is it or isn't it?
My mom thought it was poison ivy, but all my coworkers disagree.
Here are the symptoms, itchy bumps on my legs. Tiny little bumps, shiny (like blisters). But spread out. No oozing. At night, the bumps are much bigger, like bug bites. Itchy. Did I mention itchy?
Could it be...heat rash?
Care to weigh in? And just know there are some really gross pictures of poison ivy rashes to be seen on the web.
For a native Texan, Mo sure does not like the heat. Last night he did all of his cute hot weather things. We went for a long walk, and after about ten minutes he had completely changed his pulling on the leash behavior from the normal all the time mode to only in a sunny spot mode. He runs from shade to shade and then lollygags in the cool. After twenty minutes he was taking rest breaks, finding the lushest, shadiest lawn on the block and lying the grass. My mom calls this his sit-down strike. It's cute. At first. By the time we got within a block of home he was getting sloppy with his tongue, letting it hang out the side of his mouth, fully extended. Then, once we were inside he ran to the bathroom. And hopped in the tub. he stood right by the faucet and just looked up at me until I turned it on. Once the water was running, he started splashing his front paws in it and throwing it onto his belly. Once an inch of water was in the tub, he just lay down and smiled. While all I could do to cool of was drink a glass of seltzer and stand in front of the fan. Lucky dog.
Last night I dreamed that I made a model of the house that Bill and I are building. The model was small enough to sit on my lap, but I could go inside and slide the glass doors back and forth and I could slip from room to room on the wooden floor in my socks. Now that I am awake I decided that this will be the plan for our house. But when you are awake you need a kitchen.
This morning I have been reading the Fametracker forum on
Duran Duran. When we were in the sixth grade, my best friend Robin Watson and I were obsessed with the Duran. I used to sit in the back row of reading class, copying the cover art from the Rio album onto page after page of filler paper. I remember once Robin was giving a book report in the front on the class and I kept showing her different versions of the picture, holding them up over my head when Mr. Snyder was not looking. She would nod yes for the ones she though were the best, like it was a pop culture eye test. The album was not actually mine, but the fact that it was Jon's did not stop me from putting it into my bookbag nearly every morning. When I was in Ms. Dallas' room, I never copied the cover art (that was strictly a reading class activity) but I would look down into my bag, where I could see Rio herself looking out at me. I was in love with her and her pointy purple earrings. Robin and I would spend Friday nights in her basement, dancing around to Rio and Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Sometime Shay would come over and put on something slightly more current, like Cyndi Lauper's
True Colors or Madonna's
True Blue. But mostly it was Duran Duran. Because even back then we were old school, and I had the fedora to prove it.
Oooooooohhhh...the HR guy at UVM "took the liberty of adding my name to both recruitments" (Both being the TWO positions open there...) This is the best news ever in my job search. And being the only news ever that was not a rejection, I like it!
I have two new possessions after the wonderful Meeting of the Mothers weekend. Poison Ivy and a Waffle Iron. But, the poison ivy is disappearing and I will make the waffles this weekend, if not sooner.
Well, I tried and failed. It took me two years to even attempt it, and I have failed. That's right, I will be returning
The Corrections to the library tomorrow. Unfinished. I got halfway through but the dancing turd did the book in for me. No matter, it's time for Zoe and I to start our summer reading program anyway. This year our theme is banned books. (In the past we have done "Sweating to the Oldies" - classics - and the Great American Novel.) Our first book is
Bless Me, Ultima and our last will be the classic
Flowers in the Attic. Screw you, Franzen - at least VC Andrews LIKED the characters on to which she heaped indignities.
I have two major frustrations in life right now (three, if you count the rain...). There are as follows:
Major Frustration #1
I feel like I am getting nowhere on my job search. I never get called for interviews. The perfect job at UVM is no longer posted and no word from my contact there on what the story is. No jobs in the Adirondacks pay enough (and I am willing to take a $12,000 salary cut.) Bill keeps asking, "Did you get a job yet?" Today he suggested I just go in places and ask. I got ticked off because it's not like non-profits hang a "Help wanted" sign on the door. I get so defensive about him saying "Do you have a job yet?" because I really could be working harder at it. I could make more calls, I guess. And set un meetings. But without any positive feedback on anything I have done so far (like sent my resume to twenty places...), it's not seeming like such a fun thing to do.
Major Frustration #2
The only things on tv reality dating shows and talent shows. I don't watch sitcoms, and the reruns of most dramas are replaced by Fame, America's Most Talented Kid (or Senior), Paradise Hotel, For Love or Money, 30 Seconds to Fame, and The Last Comic Standing. Everyone knows that the only good reality shows are The Amazing Race and America's Next Top Model (the worst part of that show is its name) so why can't those shows be on everyday? Why oh why? And also, can PBS stop showing Pavarotti sing and Patti Labelle in concert and start giving me all Nova, this Old House, POV and Antiques Roadshow all the time? pleeeeeeeeeeease.
And here endeth the whining. For now.
My closest friend at work is leaving the College after 14 years so that she can concentrate on being a mother and a grandmother. My friend, B, is a little bit older than my parents and has four children, three girls and a boy. B. has this genteel Southern way about her, so when she phones you, it's like she's calling to ask you over for some sweet tea instead of to find out if so and so from the class of such and such has gotten their gift in yet. Back when I was a smoker, she would sometimes saunter into my office and very casually grab my purse and take it outside. No one knew she smoked, so we would stand in the back of the parking lot, or sit on the deck of the Pub. When someone would pass by, B. would hide her cigarette behind her back. On these smoke breaks she would talk about growing up an army brat and about her wild days just after College. B. has this fabulous way of bitching about people in her soft Virginia accent that makes you feel like you are privy to top secret information, but we all know she can't keep a secret to save her life. We went to lunch today and spent two hours drinking wine and then coffee and talking about her kids and Bill and babies and life in a small town and virginity and quitting your job. I have never seen B. so happy as she is this week. It's really giving me a kick in the pants about getting out of here and starting to do what I really want to do....
My 80 year old co-worker is walking around the office with an article that an alum wrote for the New York Press. The Illustration for the article is a drawing of a dildo. The article is the tale of one man's on night stand with a Chelsea boy. The article is very graphic, and in my opinion, pointless and annoying. How do I know? Because she is insisting we all read it.
I am so incredibly grumpy today that I am annoying MYSELF. I've been doing that a lot, lately, annoying myself. Especially with these big melt-downs I keep having. The last two went like this:
1. Friday. I am trying to get out of town to go to Bill's but have to pick up a perscription. CVS doesn't have it ready so I wait for twenty minutes, only to find out it is out of stock and they need to call it over to another store. It's now ten minutes after the time I wanted to leave. I get the dog, load the car and drive to the other CVS. It takes them another twenty minutes to find the filled perscription. (It's on the counter the whole time.) I get gas and am on the road an hour later than I wanted so I call Bill and tell him I will be late. Somehow I make up most of the time and arrive just half an hour later that the original planned time. But Bill is nowhere to be seen. I wait for an hour, drive around town looking for him once, and then start to get very worked up. By the time I decide to go to dinner without him, steam is practically pouring out of my ears. I am in the car, backing up when he pulls into the driveway. I get out of my car and into his truck and start bawling. BAWLING. Turns out he was guiding, and though he had told me. I got over it pretty fast.
2. We are fishing. I am downstream, get bored, head upstream. I try and cross the river and narrowly escape death by drowning. I am in a panic, of course. Bill comes downstream to find me and I cry hysterically and he is annoyed as he told me to stay where I was. I am, at this point, heaving sobs. I argue he needed to be nicer with me in my time of harrowing drama. He tells me he told me to stay put for a reason. (So I wouldn't, you know, nearly die crossing the really high and fast river.) I know he's right but I can not stop crying for twenty minutes.
Anyone who knows me really well knows that the following things contribute to me having a meltdown. Frustration. Hunger. Tiredness. So why can't I figure these things out for myself: why don't I just have a snack, sit down and rest, do something else? Because I never learn, that's why. Add this to my general anxiety about finding a new job up North, planning a wedding, and making some huge changes and you have an eruption. Or two. Poor me. Poor Bill. Poor blog.
Until yesterday, I had never seen a bear in the wild in the state in which I live. Really! I've seen the grizzlies and the black bears out west and I may have seen one black bear in Maine, once. But yesterday I saw a real live New York bear AND one of her cubs. Bill and I were fishing in what he calls the bush country (as opposed to the Busch Country, which is his neighbor's house.) It's not that remote really, just a ten minute hike in from the road. The last time we were up there, he told me that he had seen a bear the year before. He was guiding a father and son trip and he was instructing the dad on casting. He looked upstream to check on the pre-teen son and saw a big momma bear splash through the water just above the kid. The kid didn't even notice. For the rest of our trip that day, I spun around at any rusting in the grass, at any twig snapping. But yesterday I wasn't even thinking about bears. Bill left me fishing at the end of one of the islands in the river and he walked upstream to look around. I had just finished casting when I heard him whistle. I turned around to see him hurrying down river, motioning for me to reel in the line. "Bear cubs upstream!" He had seen two cubs about 100 yards upriver, one swimming uncertainly. We decided to walk back up and see if we could watch them cross. We walked about 50 yards and stopped to watch. Not thirty seconds later, we saw the momma bear on the opposite bank, right across from where Bill had seen the cubs. She shook a tree, and ran up and down the bank. She stopped and posed on a rock. Then I saw one raccoon sized cub scramble up the bank and she led her baby away, back into the woods. We waited a few more minutes, talking loudly. Bill smoked a cigarette and occasionally yelled out "hey bear" mid-sentence as if he had "Nature" inspired case of Tourette's. Then we moved up stream about twenty more yards. That's when we heard the other cub crying, very close to us, on the island. I have never waded so fast...we were back up to the road in five minutes.
This weekend, Bill and I went to
Rochester, Vermont, the place my parents lived when I was born, for my beautiful and talented cousin Hannah's high school graduation. Rochester is 98 miles from
Wilmington, but crossing Champlain makes it seem much, much farther (well that, and the fact that there is no fast way to get from the one place to the other...) We drove over the Champlain Bridge, through the Green Mountain National Forest, and down into White River Valley. As we drove South into Rochester, Bill was going into fits over the White River. "Look at the river, Martha!" "Why is no one fishing, Martha?" "Why didn't I bring my rod, Martha?" and on and on. He gets frustrated with the crowds in the Adirondacks, and to see no one fishing a gorgeous stretch of rover was enough to make him wail - "Why dont we live over heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeee." Which then led to a day of compare and contrast...Rochester versus Wilmington, Green Mountains versus Adirondacks. Later, at Hannah's party, Bill came up to me and whispered, "Everyone is so well dressed! And look, it's a party and people are mingling and being civilized - in Wilmington, people would just be standing around the beer and picking their teeth." The civility must have infected Bill himself, as he did not pick his own teeth until we were in the car heading back to New York.
The cell phone of the guy fixing our copy machine has a ringtone like a howdown or Deliverance or the soundtrack to hog rasslin'. I want that ringtone.
I am applying for a job at the University of Vermont. If I got it, it would involved a cross lake commute. On a ferry. How fun is that?
In other news, I have no phone in my office right now. (Well, I physically have a phone but it has no dial tone and does not ring.) So whenever anyone calls me, Keystone Kops-esque hi-jinx transpire. There's lots of running and diving, and tossing of receivers and getting tangled up in phone cords. Then I have to stand at a co-worker's desk and do things like spell last names and describe office equipment. (Thank god I have not had more demanding calls yet today!) It's totally slapstick. Especially the part when I run to get my line at someone else's desk and slam my leg into the corner of the table next to her cubicle. Comedy Gold, that.
This just in!
I won the Essex County ASPCA Raffle! I am now the proud owner of the birdfeeder made by Terry, the bartender at
Steinhoff's. Go me, Supporter of the Animals!
Alana's blog today got me think about that summer on Leon Street. It was so hot all the time and they sky was brown all summer from the fires in Mexico. I was subletting Ronda's room, and Julie was my roommate, and though by a year later we were very close friends, I was kind of intimidated by her. I was living in her space, after all and it did not feel like mine. That apartment had giant cockroaches and one night, when I was lying there reading, I watched one crawl up the wall aboe my bed. I tried to kill it, but it ran away, two inches of roachy body slithering behind the mattress. All night I waited for that fucker to come out. (yes, Brair, I relate to your cockroach violation!) He never showed.
I had no money for anything and was just waiting until my Dad and I were on vacation or until I was in mexico. Julie was in summer classes for her MBA and also worked long hours. When she got home, though, she would buy us both beer, and we would sit on back patio and smoke and drink heifeweisen and look up at the grey brown sky and hope for clouds to come and rain on us. Like that cockroach, they never showed.
One afternoon I ran into Romero (or was it Rodrigo?) on the Campus Shuttle. I had met him at the party for Student Conference my program ran each February. He approached me at the bar and said that he knew he had to dance with the moment he saw me on the stage moderated in the Q and A with the mayor of Mexico City. Romero (or was it Rodrigo) was Mexican and an undergrad and rich. So when I ran into him on the shuttle that summer, I knew I could get dinner and drinks out of an evening with him. He looked like Leonardo DeCaprio. He picked me up for dinner in the Lexus his parents leased for him for the his time in the States. He took me to Miguel's for Ceviche and margaritas. We ended up at the Gingerman for beers. He told me to be careful in Mexico. When he dropped me off, he kissed my cheek. He never called me back, but the roses he brought me stay fresh for a long, long time. Two years later, he met into a friend of mine and told her that he had always regretted not calling. He told her that he was frightened of me and my sexuality. She had no idea who he was.
The other day I was in line at the ATM behind a man who had Romero's (or was it Rodrigo?) hair. And suddenly all I could smell was humidity and cigarettes and Mexican smoke.
Now that the monter that is Reunion is over, I feel like I have absolutely nothing to do at work. This is, in fact, not at all true. I have plenty I could do, but after a weekend of insanity preceded by a sleepless week preceded by months of building tension, none of it feels all that important or, really, worth doing at all. The boss said to me, "I don't mean to discourage you, but this is what it feels like once you get back from the honeymoon." Is that true? After I get married, will I spend my days surfing the web and watching the clock? Will I start taking two hour lunches everyday, and skipping out early? Will it take me three days to write eight thank you notes, as is happening now? Will I spend the rest of my life trying to look busy?
A few minutes later, the boss stuck her head back into my office. "That's why people have children, for excitement after the post-honeymoon letdown." Now I understand.
Last night I sat down with a glass of wine, a pen and paper and
America's IQ Test. I am not as smart as I used to be. I scored a full 14 points less than my formerly genius status. Really. I was once a genius. I know that to be tru because I was tested twice, and each time got the same score. I know this because the first test was administered by my at the time step-mother who, at the time, was studying for her Master's in Counseling and was looking into a future of testing and practiced on us kiddies. I would have discounted this test (all four of us were at or near genius level) but for the fact that I scored the same genius level IQ later when I was tested in school. I know this because my seventh grade history teacher, Mr. Bates, announced that I had the highest IQ his honors class (He also announced what that number was...and made it clear, without saying his name who had the LOWEST IQ. This is actually still a debated topic between my best friend from elementary school, Vicky, and me...she thinks he meant to imply she was lacking in the intellect department. I thought he was referring to the girl in FRONT of Vicky.) Teacher friends? That would be an example of what not to do. So anyway. I used to be a 132 and now I am a 118. Somehow, after 20 years and a graduate degree, I have gotten dumber. Then again, maybe I should not put so much trust in the ONE test that gave me the different score. Last night's test was, afterall, administered by Leeza Gibbons and the host of Temptation Island.
It must be springtime, because the Mormons are out! All last week I was getting home later than usual, at 6:30 or so. Each day last week as I was parking my car, two men in their late teens or early twenties would ride their bikes past me. They wore helmets and sporty backpacks, which just looked incongruous with their suits and ties and button down shirts and shiny loafers. One of the boys had not yet mastered the uphill gears yet and lagged a block or so behind the other, zig zagging unsteadily up the sidewalk, his nametag bouncing against his chest.
Last night I saw a car with a paper towel stuck to its tire. The automotive equivalent of toilet paper on the shoe.
If you see my mom today, don't forget to wish her a Happy Birthday!
(or you can do it here, she reads this, you know!)
Day of panic. So many things to panic over. Only cure for panic: wasabi green peas.
Surprise, surprise. Guess who skipped volleyball?
This afternoon is the first Faculty/Staff Volleyball game of the season. I use the term loosely, because we don't really have a season per se, that I know about anyway. I think we just play against each other when we can and that's that. I intend to go, but I doubt I'll make it. Between my neck pain and the fact that Reunion starts on Friday, I am not really enthusiastic. Plus it's supposed to rain. But nevermind all that. I am just wondering how much like Sarah Lawrence Students playing volleyball will faculty and staff playing volleyball be? Will Dan from the Math department serve with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth? Will Pauline from History argue that our teams are not properly representative of the socieo-economic and racial diversity of the players? Will Kris from Visual Arts sit out on the actual game in favor of sketching the players? Will the game be completely silly and unorganized? Or will it be taken too seriously? My bet is all of the above.
