MY ACHING BACK

At 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night, I am ready to get into my pajamas.  There's only one problem.  I am still wearing last night's pajamas.

That's right, you read that correctly.  Still.  In.  My.  Jammies.

When I woke up, my intention was to go to the beach, but the weather didn't cooperate until well after noontime, so I started working on the spare room again.  I've mentioned it before because I have been working on it, slowly but surely, for the entire summer.  It started with the closet and morphed into a horror show.

Recently I spent all day long reorganizing the desk and office supplies and folders and paper, etc.  Before that (but after the closet) I organized all of the books (there are hundreds).  I still have miles to go before I (sleep --- strangely enough I am not a fan of Robert Frost, but that set-up was blatant) can consider it a finished product.

In the meantime, I have company coming to stay with me in a few days.  The place needs to be presentable and safe.  But finished?  Done?  Completely organized?  If that ever happened, my company would think they'd walked into the wrong place.

Today in addition to working in the spare room, I also moved a piece of furniture, organized my shoes, worked with the contents of a very small closet, broke down the recycling into manageable chunks, and sorted more stuff for work.

I am now sitting down, twisting my spine around and trying to get comfortable.  I just sucked down two naproxen tablets because my back is screaming at me.  I don't even care; it can scream and howl and rage and cause as much misery as it wants because I got stuff off my To-Do List today.  Not completely, but mostly.

It's time to get into my pajamas… wait.  Isn't this where I started?  I'm already in my jammies.  Last night's jammies.  A light gray little top and some Patriot's flannel pants (yes, flannel -- the air conditioning was blasting all night).

I have worked on this place for fourteen hours, and the most I did to get dressed today is toss a bra on under my camisole in case the mailman rang the bell.  Between my pajama-clad cleaning mode and the strapless bathing suit I usually wear when reading outside in the sun, the poor man has gotten more near-miss boob shots than he might at a strip club. 

Time for fresh p.j.'s.  As soon as I wake up tomorrow, I am getting into my bathing suit and heading to the beach.  I don't even care if it's raining; I need a break from this sudden purging mode.  I'll lie down as soon as my bed's cleared off and my back calms down.  Or when I decide that the couch is an easier option.  Whichever happens first.

DRIVING THE INVISIBLE CAR

Today I am driving the invisible car.

#1.  I am driving along at 35 mph, a few yards behind the car in front of me with no one behind me.  A guy in an SUV pulls out of Brechin Terrace directly in front of me, thinks better of it, and stops halfway out.  I slam on my brakes, swear my head off at him, honk my horn, and park in front of him for about five seconds while throwing him the bird.  Asshole.

#2.  A car waits until I get up to its road (where there is a stop sign for that car) while I drive along North Street at 45 mph.  I slam on the brakes again, and said car proceeds at a whopping 28 mph.  I am driving on its bumper, speaking in tongues and reviewing every foul word I've ever learned plus a few I haven't.

#3.  Pulling into the car dealer for an oil change, there is a huge 18-wheeler blocking the service lot.  I attempt to get around the truck, but the driver blocks my maneuver by unloading the back of the truck using a huge wire contraption and he leaves said contraption across what's left of the driveway.  I back up and leave my car out front, parking it like a jerk and tossing my keys at (not to) the clerk.

#4.  Pulling out of the car dealer there is a statie parked at the on ramp for I-93 south at Pelham Street, and everyone is driving at 55 mph.  Everyone.  All three lanes.  I only have to travel a couple of exits, so I crawl home.

#5.  Exiting the highway, a blue SUV with an old fart driving it careens across lanes of traffic to get in front of me (there's no one behind me), then proceeds to drive at 20 mph in a 30 mph speed zone, a 40 mph speed zone, and stops dead to turn into a wide street because god forbid he actually be able to make a simple turn without having a stroke.

#6 & #7.  Driving to BJ's in Haverhill to stock up son for college, not one but two cars pull out directly in front of me while I am tooling along at 47 mph.  The first one is a stupid bitch on her cell phone, pulling across three lanes of traffic because she decides it isn't necessary to stop when exiting Butcher Boy Market and pulling onto route 125.  The second car does the same thing pulling out of the flower shop, apparently pre-ordering flowers for the driver's funeral because I nearly hit the car and send it into oncoming traffic.  Son is with me and probably needs his shorts changed at this point.

Honestly, people, it's not a small car that I drive.  It's a big white blob of a car cruising along at a decent speed.  Open your frigging eyes and pay attention.  And for the love of all things holy, get the fuck OFF your cell phone while maneuvering a dangerous road entry.

TRIVIA VS. FRAT-BOY ... OR HOW TO PISS OFF AN ENTIRE PUB FULL OF LOACALS

Is there anything in the world worse than college kids in a bar that isn't located on a college campus?

Ohmigawd, really.

I am sitting at a local watering hole, and by local I mean totally Townie-dominated, "cannot believe anyone from out of town would dare walk in here" kind of place.  I am here to play some trivia, to see if it's remotely as good as the trivia in another town on Sundays.  (It's okay - standard fare, same rules, etc.) 

The entire pub is distracted from answering questions as we watch these young urbanites attempt to play pool.  Now, by "attempt," I mean they cannot even find the rack (triangle) to set the balls to break, so they are all leaning over with their arms, attempting to settle the balls into place.  Mind you, the rack is on its regular shelf right above where the balls come out to be loaded  … um … into the triangle.  Hence the term "Rack 'em up," and hence why the rack is located where the balls are that need to be racked.

Finally someone takes mercy on the bumbling out-of-towners, none of whom has ever played a moment's worth of billiards, and shows them where the rack is located.  Oh ho ho ho, don't they feel like idiots.

Well, almost.  Not quite yet.

One of them scratches, meaning the cue ball sails into a pocket.  The clearly clueless boy, and I do mean boy as he looks like he isn't even shaving yet, reaches his hand into the pocket and tries to worm his wrist around until his fingers might be able to grab the ball.  One of his pals asks the trivia lady to please announce if there is anyone who knows how to retrieve the white ball once it's gone. 

That's not even the saddest part.  The saddest part happens when Trivia Girl actually asks over the loudspeaker, "Is there anyone who knows how to retrieve the white ball once it has fallen into a pocket?"

The entire bar falls deadly silent.  Surely this question has not just been asked, let alone repeated via the sound system.

Dude!  Seriously!  Look at the end of the table.  No really.  Look.  Take a glimpse.  I dare ya to.  Oh, lookie.  Lookie what we see.  It's the white ball, rolling into the bin at the end of the table where you can easily reach in and grab it back out.

Uh-DUH.

Please, please go back to the college.  Please maybe even go home to wherever you've come from because clearly you shouldn't be out in public, at least not after your bedtime and especially not without your Pull-Ups securely taped.

To add insult to injury, this clown and his equally retarded (and I do mean this word in its purest denotation) friends stand with their backs to the game being played after theirs, in a huge group, leaning on the outer siderail of the table, unmoving when anyone tries to take a shot from that side of the table.  They do not even have the decency nor common sense to move away so the area is clear for the paying players.

Look, kiddos.  If you want to drink in public and play with the adults, you might want to at least try and walk the walk.  Practice your game on the school pool tables that litter every common room in every dorm from here to every far reach of the United States.  As a matter of fact, practice your drinking and your goddamn manners before you come out in public, too.  It's a good thing I have tiny hands because I want to wrap my hands around your throat and choke you until snot presses out of your ear canals.

No matter how poorly I do at trivia, I can be secure in the knowledge that I will not be snaking my arms down the rabbit hole of the billiard table like Alice chasing after the White Rabbit.  I'm heading home. 

Someone tell College Frat-Boy it's about time he does likewise.

GOING TO MAINE AND MISBEHAVING

I need my sister's help with a dress. 

I have the tailor do the heavy lifting with seams and chiffon and all that, but there's a little something extra the dress needs that only my sister can do well.  After leaving the tailor shop, I drive directly to Maine.  I do not pass Go; I do not collect $200.

Whenever I go there, it's the same routine -- We chat, we munch on mostly-healthy food, we play some cards or other twisted game, and we laugh our asses off.  I don't think I've ever had a bad time at my sister's house.  Ever. 

We revert right back to being kids. 

If we're in the pool, we stay in for hours, first pretending to behave then creating a huge whirlpool until the youngsters are sucked around in circles and cannot escape from the drag.  When that gets old, we grab inner tubes and have dunk-wars in the middle of the pool.  In short, we act like juveniles, and it's even better (meaning we all behave worse) if we throw our brothers into the mix.

Today we are perfecting the dress I brought up with me.  My sister is adding her magic touch to it to make it perfect.  First thing she does, though, is throw me a decent strapless bra and instructs me to put the thing on under my dress.  Good thing because it would look pretty stupid on the outside of my dress.  After some pinning and primping (of the dress, not the bra nor its contents), we need a break.  After all, we've been serious for an entire fifteen minutes; that's probably a record.

We decide to play dress-up.  I'm not even remotely kidding.  We are two grown women battling middle-age like valiant warriors, and we are giggling like little kids raiding her closet.  We pose and make silly faces at the cell phone camera then take a picture of ourselves together in the mirror.  The mirror picture, though, comes out blurry because we are both laughing too hard.

After dress-up, we get back to business with the dress machinations that I came for in the first place.  About halfway through this process, we take a break to play cards and eat beige food.  No really, it's all beige:  Triscuits, Wheat Thins, banana slices, and smoky cheddar cheese (the smell of which sends me to Nirvana, and I keep inhaling the scent of the cheese slices before I eat them, which totally grosses out my sister, giving me more reason to keep doing it).  After she beats me two games to one and after we've eaten the beige food, we head back to the workroom to finish the dress task.

We decide to do a quick work-out in her basement mini-gym.  I arrive prepared and change into black yoga pants and a pink work-out shirt.  My sister, who has been changing in another part of the house, joins me in the hallway, and she is wearing … black work-out shorts and a pink work-out shirt.  The fact that we have accidentally dressed like twins is kind of creepy because the dress I brought up to her house for some alterations is the exact same color as the dress she is wearing to the same event in a week.

We do our sweat-circuit and then return to the kitchen where we are Skyping with my niece (my sister's daughter) while she is stationed with the Marines in New Orleans.  The first thing my niece notices?  Her mother and I are dressed alike, which is really ironic and slightly creepy since the Marine is a twin and my sister and I are not.  While chatting via the Internet, we notice that the Marine is making dinner.  Mac & cheese -- the Spongebob Squarepants kind. 

This makes us hungry, so we split some chicken parmesan and pasta.  Dinner time conversation now includes her husband, who is trying to be serious.  We talk politics and religion and all the gray areas people claim one should avoid in conversation.  Finally the talk goes exactly where we know it has to because it's inevitable when we're together.  The talk goes off topic.  Big time.  Over 100 pounds worth of big time.  Somehow we get onto the topic of the television special about the man with the 132-pound scrotum. 

Yes, this is all very normal for us … the conversation not the scrotum.

I'm on my way by about 8:20 and home by 9:40.  It's a good day, and my sides hurt but not from working out.  They hurt because we laughed so hard.  Again.  Like always.  All because I need her help, and she is willing to give it. 

I suppose that means I should forgive her for dragging me face-first down the street with a rope attached to a bicycle when my roller skates gave out beneath me all those decades ago.

Naaaaaah.  Where's the fun in that?

STEEL JUNGLE

Vacation is waning.  It's what makes August so sad, not so much because I'm going back to work.  I actually like my job for all the bitchin' and moanin' I do about it.  I'm sad because I'm leaving the beach behind.  Booooo.

Today I listen to the weather forecasters (I mean, really -- how many blogs have I written to complain about their inaccurate forecasts?!?!) who claim it is going to be cool and rainy all day long.  I decide to blow off the beach and my errands and spend three hours setting up my classroom.

And the forecast is accurate … for the time being.  At 8:00 a.m. it is a little misty, chilly, and overcast.  By 9:00 a.m., I am deeply entrenched in dragging boxes of books off the high windowsills without killing myself in the process.  By 10:30, I have most of the heavy lifting done.  By 11:45, I am completely done for the day even though there's more to do.  I'm done because I have to go for a dental x-ray and because my classroom is getting extremely hot and muggy all of a sudden.

Hmmmm.  I wonder what the weather is like out there. 

I crane my neck around and try to get a glimpse of sky beyond the edges of one of my three windows, and it almost looks like blue skies out there.  Almost.  You see, I cannot be certain what it's like at all outside anymore because the outside no longer exists from my classroom. 

I am wall to wall with the new school construction (not my school but the one they're connecting to my school).  My view from all three windows is endless steel girders and lots of hanging utility lights.  The fresh air I get comes in via the construction site, swirling through dirt and dust and grime and metal.  Today the arc welding is going on, and sparks are sailing all over the place.  The sour smell of acetylene wafts in through the windows.  Now don't be giving me the bullshit that acetylene doesn't smell.  I've been around construction guys -- I was married to one -- and I know damn well that commercial buildings use acetylene that isn't pure, and it has a smell to it, maybe so they can tell if they've left the valve open before it blows everyone to smithereens.

My friend is also at school for a bit.  Someone else is attempting to make copies (but the machine is already jamming and the new year doesn’t start for a week).  My favorite tech guy is back after a health scare.  The vice principal unsuccessfully tries to hide when he sees me.  And I whistle at the janitorial staff because really we do have the best looking group of guys gathered in one spot, so we are very, very lucky to be drooling women in this building. 

I have to leave for some appointments and errands, so I close my windows (for all the good they do) and wave goodbye to the Steel Jungle.

I walk upstairs to meet my friend who works in a classroom facing the opposite side of the building.  From her vantage point, there is no construction.  Everything still looks exactly the same.  I get my first good look outside since 8:30 that morning and realize --

It's sunny out.  Goddamnit.  Wasted another perfectly acceptable beach day inside my sci-fi room.  Honestly, the landscape outside my windows is like being in the bowels of a starship, and starships are probably fun but they aren't the beach.

 Stupid weather forecasters.  Stupid news stations.  Stupid weather channel.  Stupid me for being gullible yet again.

Tomorrow I have to run errands then, if all goes well, I'm going to scoot up to Maine for a few hours.  If the weather holds, I'll be hitting the pool.  Thursday I have an appointment to have the car serviced, but I made the appointment late enough in the afternoon that I can drive to the beach if it's decent out and early enough to avoid commuter traffic.  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all look like possible beach days.  Monday the kiddo goes back to college. 

After all that, it'll be Steel Jungle all day, every day, day in and day out.  This means I get the first glimpses of the new school in perpetuum.  I get to watch progress happen every single day this school year.  That's pretty awesome, too.

Besides, if it's a nice enough day, all I have to do is hop in my car after work and drive forty minutes to the coast or head to the university early and walk down the street to the ocean.  I get the best of both worlds.  I get the Sandy Steel Jungle.  Sounds like a story character, a hero: Sandy Steele.  Sandy Steel Jungle, though, sounds more like a hooker. 

Hey, I might be onto something here.  I think the smell of acetylene is being replaced by the smell of a new story idea.

Enjoy the waning days of summer, people, because it won't be coming around for another ten long months.  Cheers.

RED BULL STRIKES AGAIN

Red Bull Cliff Diving returned to Boston this past weekend.  My friends and I attended the first Boston event two years ago but missed it last year, so we really wanted to return this year and get back into it.

Imagine our surprise and disappointment upon discovering that free tickets were needed to enter any of the three reserved viewing areas. 

At first I was irritated about this restriction.  It's a free event.  It's a public event.  Boats all over the water will be able to watch the event.  It's smack in the midst of Harbor Walk.  Seriously.  What the hell already. 

It wasn't until one of my friends told me why tickets, regardless of the fact that they were free, would be required and why the crowds would have to be controlled:  Tsarnaev.  Those two asshole foreign radical zealot extremist fuckers.  The Boston Marathon Bombers. 

It turns out the security was sufficient to allow general public admission to controlled areas, but there was an awful lot of "move along" areas, and we ultimately could only see a few yards of the free falls of each diver.  Red Bull had smartly set up a Jumbotron, though, and by the fifth diver we had it down to a science:  Watch the giant plasma as the divers lifted off, count to three as they twisted and contorted, quickly turn to the left and watch one second of the free fall, then turn back to the Jumbotron to see the landing, the scores, and the replay. 

Even though it prevented us from taking pictures since we really didn't have an ideal vantage point, we got to see two rounds of dives, the preliminary required dives and the round of spectacular dives of varying degrees of difficulty.  When we retreated to the outdoor patio of Atlantic Beer Garden next door, we were thrilled to discover that we could see the divers walking the platform and taking off into the air, then we could watch the complete dive on a five-second delay via closed-circuit television.

The day ended with Michal Navratil, dressed in his Speedo and wearing a red cape secured around his neck, impersonating Superman flying through the air.  You can Google it if the link fails to work here.  I "borrowed" it from the Internet:  http://www.empowernetwork.com/justiniskandar/blog/superman-dive-from-27m-high-platform/

I thanked some of the event security staff and some of the Boston police for being diligent and providing a safe event for all of us even though their attempts to protect us also prevented us from seeing parts of the competition.  They were all reasonably upbeat.  A uniformed duo from the Boston Bomb Squad even let us approach and per their dog. 

There were moments that made us wonder, like when the guy in front of me in the security check line had a backpack on so I moved to the next line, as if being four feet away were going to make one iota of difference should he decide to detonate himself.  Or the guy who planted himself right next to us on the wall in front of the grassy knoll then proceeded to read a book rather than watch the divers while a black backpack sat at his feet.

Then there were moments of hilarity like when we were told by the officers and the posted signs that we were in an area where we must keep moving, so even when we stopped for a moment due to crowd bottlenecks or to watch a practice dive, we continued to shimmy and shake.  We told the perplexed officers, "We're still moving!"

Or when we spread our feet out from the grass onto the stone seating area so no one would sit in front of us but refused to actually sit on the stone seating area ourselves because the sun had made it hot enough to fry an ass cheek.

Or when we played Musical Chairs at the Atlantic Beer Garden with me giving up my coveted seat with the full view of the diving platform only to discover I had actually scored the primo seat to watch the closed circuit television broadcast.  The manager started to get nervous because we kept shifting chairs around on the restaurant patio and were doing so without the proper Musical Chairs musical accompaniment.

Or when we distracted the bomb-sniffing dog only to have him jump up to greet my friend because she had the scent of her own dog all over her clothing.  The pooch was so friendly and adorable that I had to wonder if he defused bombs by charming them into submission as he had us.

Or when we got into the wrong exit lane at the parking lot because apparently we cannot read "Charge cards only" and were distracted by the man on foot trying to pay the parking meter before he had gone to his car.  It was like watching the scene in Blazing Saddles when they have to go get a shitload of dimes for the makeshift desert toll.

Or when we were all forced to go use the ladies room upstairs because the band was blocking the one downstairs, and a young man walked by while I was waiting for everyone to clear out from the potty line, and he did the elbow bump ... with me … on purpose … that he initiated. 

All in all, it is another fantastic day of misadventures in Boston, we get to see some incredible dives, we meet some interesting people while milling about on the lawn, and we get to cut the ridiculously long line to get into Atlantic Beer Garden because, much to the chagrin and surprise of the twenty-somethings standing there complaining as we cut the line to a primo spot on the deck, we have connections.

What we saw today in addition to some fantastic diving is quite simple:  We saw the new era ushered in with the paranoid overkill of police and security, we saw some great audience behavior throughout the toasty, sunny afternoon, and we saw what Boston does that only this city can do best --  We saw Boston Strong today, and it almost felt like those old times before April 2013.  Almost.  And those little fuckers are not taking that away from us ever.

IC FARREN BINNAN AND I'M DOING SO WITH WINE

How do you know when a writer has too many pens and pencils?  How do you know when a writer is stockpiling folders and dividers?  How do you know when a writer has bought one or two or fifteen too many packs of notebook paper when they're on sale at Staples?

You visit my house, that's when.

Today I took on the daunting task that I have been putting off for about three years -- Tackling my office. 

I live in a townhouse, and it's relatively small.  Because it's an old house and used to be a barn ("carriage house"), its configuration is wacky.  There are few closets, and the ones that I have are narrow and shallow.  If I threw all four closets together, they would total one side-by-side closet usually found in a kid's room or in a front hall to use for coats.  Storage is at a minimum.  How three kids and I managed to survive here without living like complete hoarders is an amazing trick even Houdini couldn't pull off.

Several years ago I traded my long, skinny bedroom with one window and slanted ceilings for my daughter's old room after she moved out.  Her room is small, as are all the rooms, but it's square, has normal heights for ceilings, and has two windows.  I took my old room and turned it into junk room.  Boxes of pictures got dumped in there, fabric pieces were dumped in there, books were dumped in there, and various office supplies got dumped in there.

(Ones that got  thrown away.)

In short, it became the default closet.

In an effort to start ridding myself of junk and to encourage the two-thirds of my children who have actually moved away to please finish removing their belongings as well as their bodies, I have started a Shedding Program.  Unlike my diet, this program is actually showing some promise.  This house is now rid of several pieces of furniture, dozens of books, years and years worth or paperwork from my job and from old college and graduate classes, and clothes into which these hips will never again fit.  There's still lots to go (hundreds upon hundreds of old family photographs and antique family documents to sort and scan, etc.), but I can actually walk into the spare room now, even sit on the day bed, find a book, or watch TV. 

I thought organizing the books was going to be the piece de resistance, but it turns out the desk is actually the winner, winner, chicken dinner.  You see, I have been taking graduate classes for two years now, including summer classes, and that often means I grab supplies and eventually leave them hanging around in various places and piles until I have a break from the university, only I haven’t had a break from the university since I started taking classes.  Add this in with the supplies my youngest brought back from college and never unpacked plus the ones I've left around the downstairs to have handy when needed (as if walking up the stairs in this humble abode would take more than twenty-five steps), and there is mayhem.

I spend all day today going through every single pen, pencil, piece of paper, notebook, and office supply.  It takes all day long and well into the night.  I do break for forty minutes to sit outside and sip wine while reading a magazine, and I do allow myself to be distracted by Facebook.  Other than putting on a bra, though, I pretty much stay in my pajamas all damn day long while working on the desk and office space.  I just finished a grad class last week, and I start another one the week after next, after which is a year of writing my capstone/thesis.  This truly is my one and only window of opportunity for the next year and a half to do this.  If I should need to move to a new place in that time, it's just going to be an even bigger shit-show than it is right now.  Never you mind that it may well be the last decent weather day of my summer vacation.  With a battle cry akin to Beowulf, "Ic farren binnan."  (Loosely: "I'm going in.")

Hours and multiple back spasms later, the desk is done.  This is after I have tested every single pen and marker I have collected from around the house in addition to the dozens already in the drawers.  I have tossed out more than one hundred pens that have either dried up or run out of ink.  I have put aside eraser-less pencils to bring to school and use with the sign-out sheet for the classroom hall pass.  I have reworked the entire system so my meager sketching supplies find their own space because once upon a time when I was forced to take a drawing class during my undergrad work, I managed to get attached to several charcoal pencils and a flask of India ink, the remnants of which I still have.

What I am left with is an old desk that I've had since I was about seven years old, filled to its maximum capacity with well-organized supplies.  The top drawer is loaded with pencils and paperclips and ballpoint pens and erasers and sharpeners.  The right top drawer is full of permanent markers and highlighters and the art stuff and elastics and clips of various sizes.  The middle drawer is loaded up with staplers (I have three apparently) and tape and glue and small pads of paper and stickers and cards and rulers and hole punches.  The bottom drawer is loaded to its maximum weight capacity with paper and multiple-sized index cards.

I also have two stackable desktop filing boxes that house photo paper and a ream of construction paper and some of the three reams of printer paper I keep handy and an embarrassing amount of folders and dividers.  Sitting on the floor in well organized piles are the empty binders, blank journals and single-subject spiral notebooks, and an entire box overflowing with about 150 manila folders.  

All this, and I haven't even touched the hundreds of colored pencils I have stashed away.

In short, I have enough office supplies (that I did not pilfer from work -- teachers steal from home and bring in, not the other way around) to open my own business.  It could be because when I was a kid, my father did open his own businesses several times.  Maybe I'm bred and trained to have too many office supplies.  Who knows for sure.  All I know is that if there is a sale on index cards, pens, or three-ring notebook paper, I need to walk away.

In the meantime, I now know where everything is.  I am totally organized (desk-wise) now to be able to find whatever I need.  Do I still have too much stuff?  Probably.  I have I jettisoned a huge percentage of the excess?  Absolutely.

Now if my friends will kindly tie me to the office chair until the sales are over at Staples and wherever pens, pencils, and paper are sold, I would be forever in your debt.  Heck, I'll even give you a fancy pencil for your efforts.  I mean, I still have dozens of them.  Really.  It's not a big deal, and it's all part of my Shedding Program.

HAPPY ONE-YEAR BLOG-IVERSARY ... A GLIMPSE BACKWARD

Today this blog officially turns one.  It has been exactly 365 days, 365 total blog posts, since I started doing this on a dare. Here's a repeat of Day #1, the post that started it all, with some new pics added just for fun:  ADVENTURES IN LAWRENCE ... AND OTHER DISASTERS

I am thinking about running to the grocery store for sour cream when I have a random thought.  I suddenly remember that I might have had to renew my license this year.  I check and discover that my license expired seven weeks ago, and the registry never notified me.  Apparently I have been careening around everywhere on an expired license.  So I drive (illegally) to the registry, and, shockingly enough, the woman at the counter has a twisted sense of humor (and some killer shoes).  She and I have a grand ole time filling out paperwork, looking at little numbers, and posing for hideous pictures.  Well, I do all the work, she just clicks the buttons and takes the money.  I am in and out of there in less than thirty minutes, which has to be some kind of Bureaucratic Land Speed Record.  Yay for the Lawrence Registry!  (Never thought those words would come out of my mouth.)

After that positive experience, I decide to run the gauntlet north up route 28 through the crime-riddled, politically corrupt city.  I am now officially more legal than three-quarters of the Lawrence population, so I figure it's safe to take to their roads again.  I head to the Teacher Store, which is in the dregs of Methuen ... cough cough North Lawrence cough cough... (I can say that because I lived in that neighborhood on Center Street), and the store wants three times the price for bulletin board paper than advertised on their online website.  It will cost me around $60 to cover my classroom bulletin boards.  I say as much to a lady buying some rolls of paper, and she screeches, "Really?!"  (Nah, I'm  flippin' lying to ya - I spend my days going from store to store to piss people off for shits and giggles.)  So I leave without buying anything.  (And no, I do NOT make a scene.  Imagine THAT!)

Then I drive back down route 28 to the North Andover (really Lawrence, people, let's just call it what it is) Staples hoping they have rolls of paper.  I saw two rolls of yellow paper at Staples in Salem, NH the other day and didn't buy them (tax free) -- kick kick kick.  But, of course, this Staples doesn't have any rolls of paper nor any place to stock it.  I need highlighters, so I stand at the sale bin for about thirty seconds then lean over and grab the last two sets of colored highlighters.  Without any warning nor reverse backup signal beeping noises, a lady with two young snot-nosed kids comes out of nowhere and starts yelling at me because her five-year-old daughter (who must truly NEED highlighters being in advanced preparatory kindergarten and all) wants the pink and purple ones I have in my hand.  I pretend to be deaf (no disrespect to the truly hearing impaired) and walk away holding the highlighters where the tiny terrorista can see them ... but not have them.  I refrain from sticking my tongue out at the indignant child, because I think this might be overkill.  (I chuck her the bird in my mind, instead.)

Welcome to the Jungle (Lawrence, MA)

I drive home, back into my driveway in the most perfect of angles, and suddenly realize I have forgotten to buy sour cream, which is why I left the house in the first place.  I grab my prized highlighters, lock the car behind me, and make nachos for lunch instead.  I'm thinking I probably shouldn't push my luck any more than I already have today.

 

 

 

 

VISITING THE GREAT PEBBLE WALL OF ROCKPORT

Anyone who reads this blog with any kind of regularity (your reading habits, not your bathroom habits) knows about my friend with Cat TV (bird feeders in her backyard), the friend who edges her garden with large beach rocks.  We usually scour the boulder formations that jut out of the water in North Hampton, but today … today I discover Beach Rock Nirvana.  (Insert transcendental musical tone here, purely for dramatic effect, of course.)

 

I also meet some new friends along the way, which is an added bonus when you have the social life I do.  (You people do understand that I can hear you snickering all the way through the Internet, right?)

My good pal Sal invites me to crash a beach date with her and her long-time friend Patty.  I try numerous times to talk Sal out of inviting me because I don't want to hone in on anyone's plans.  Sal is a very popular person for many reasons but mostly because she's wicked smart and wicked funny, but she keeps inviting me places which means either she likes my company or she lost a bet.  Whichever it is, I arrive at her house by 8:30 a.m., ready to go make my usual bizarre first impression on Sal's unsuspecting friend.

We arrive in Rockport, and as soon as I meet Patty, I am silently (I hope) in my head (I double-hope) chanting the words from one of my favorite old movies, Freaks:  "We accept you, we accept you.  One of us, one of us…"  Yup.  Sal was right.  We're going to all get along just fine.  We pile into the van and head to the resident parking area for Pebble and Long Beaches. 

As soon as we pull in to park, I am taken aback by the giant mountains of beach rocks.  The rocks, most of which are the size of softballs, some larger and some smaller, form what looks like the Great Wall of China along the lot and disappearing around a corner.  On the other side of this formation is Pebble Beach.  To the right and over a small bridge is the sandy and inviting Long Beach.  The area is beautiful, the beach nearly deserted, and the tide is coming in.  We opt for Long Beach, but not before I take a picture of part of this giamundo collection of perfectly shaped garden rocks.  I need to show this to Cat TV friend; she might not believe it without the proof.

The tide is coming in, but the ocean is unusually calm today, even for this wide-mouthed bay.  The three of us set up our chairs on the relatively deserted beach.  About thirty minutes later, as if on cue, our Flypaper For Freaks radar kicks in automatically.  Three women, dragging chairs and paraphernalia behind them, set up almost directly in front of us.  Seriously.  This entire section of Long Beach is wide open, and they plant themselves not ten feet from where we are sitting.

I admit this must be all my fault.  Weird people with no sense of boundaries seem to attach themselves to my orbit all the time like moons or parasites or really painful hemorrhoids (as if there might be any other kind).  Patty and Sal assure me that this happens to them, too, like when they go to empty movie theaters and one person will come and sit right next to or behind or in front of them.  Ah, something else we have in common this whole Flypaper For Freaks curse.

These women are not like us.  They do not contain their conversation to normal air space boundaries with an occasional guffaw for effect.  When Hurricane Sandy obliterated parts of the Jersey coast, a lot of people who usually vacation there made reservations along the New England coast, instead.  These women are clearly from that crowd.  They are loud, they are boisterous, and they speak with enough nasal inflection to keep an ENT clinic in business for decades.  They rapidly become annoying not just because they are perched too close, not just because they are abrasive and coarse. 

These women are annoying because they are yelling over each other about a note.  A stupid note.  A motherfucking dumbass note.  They are arguing over some note that someone sent that somebody else received that was never answered and the fallout from the note and the way the note was written and the note the note the note blah blah blah.  One woman, clearly the queen of the Jersey mouths, has raised her voice to such decibels that the Atlantic is rising in response to the shock waves she is creating in the atmosphere.  She is so loud that I cannot hear Sal next to me nor Patty on the other side of her. 

Finally the Jersey woman farthest away from Mouthzilla manages to scream for the eighteenth or maybe it's the hundredth time, "But she nevah GOHT the note!"

"Oh."  Mouthzilla takes a long breath.  The tide calms.  The universe shifts back to equilibrium.  "Oh."  She breathes again.  "She nevah gooooooooht the note.  Ahhhhhhhhhooooooh."

Eventually the two minions with Mouthzilla pretend to be sleeping, and silence is restored to the beach.  We can hear the light surf sounds again, and the sky is no longer cracking open allowing the verbal vibrations to escape into outer space.  If Carl Sagan is right, some aliens will be intercepting our earthly transmission in a few light years, and all they'll hear is, "She nevah gooooooooht the note…"  Then their little alien ear buds will explode and the universe will be saved from invasion.

We dip in the water a few times after Sal's initial hesitation.  She broke her little toe and it has a cut on it.  She knows the salt water is going to sting, but we assure her if she can count to ten, she'll be fine.  We convince her that "it will only hurt for fifteen seconds."  We decide to make that our new work mantra, and into the water she goes.  (Okay, Patty and I have one hand each on her back, our other hands are firmly gripped on Sal's forearms, and we are dragging her into the water with us.)  Sal is either an incredibly good sport or she recovers quickly because she claims the open cut and salt water do not make her toe sting.  Success!

We float around a bit.  A lone boy of about eight is dunking himself in the water, and he decides he is going to instruct me on how to hold my nose and just fall backward into the ocean.  "It's easy," he tells me, "you can do it!  Try it!"  He chats with me for about three minutes. I turn my back for a second, and when I turn back again, he is gone. 

Holy crap, the child has drowned.  I instantly panic and start searching through the water, which is crystal clear today.  Where was he last?  Where did he go?  How did he go under so fast? 

It takes me several long moments to realize the little shit abandoned me when he realized I wasn't going to do any nose holding, and he is far up the beach by the embankment building sand castles with a child his own age.  Damn, I've been dumped again. 

It's okay.  As soon as I leave the water and get back to my chair, where Sal and Patty are already waiting because I'm a nut and stay in the chilly water longer than what might be considered normal, I encounter the Smoking Woman (probably married to the Smoking Man from the X-Files).  She is directly downwind from me, so every time she blows out a puff of smoke, I inhale it.  My friends offer to move, but I figure she'll have one smoke and then tan or swim or something that normal people do at the beach.  Three cigarettes later, we move forward to the damp sand, leaving Smoking Woman behind us a few yards. 

After polluting her lungs chain-sucking for twenty straight minutes, Smoking Woman decides to go for a dip.  She asks us to watch her stuff for her.  She is polite enough, but really.  No one is going to take anything -- her stuff is set up several yards from the waterline.  But then she makes the fatal mistake of listing the things she does not want stolen, things we never would've known were there had she not opened her mouth: cell phone, Kindle, wallet…  While she is putting her legs in the water, we seriously consider moving her stuff around on her blanket just to psych her out.  After she returns and we tease her that we fought off Ninjas who tried to get her belongings, we all become old friends chatting away for a few minutes.

This move on our part, this small talk noisy stuff, has disastrous consequences.  We have awoken the sleeping New Jersey contingency.  Damn.  Mouthzilla sees her prey stirring and like a NASCAR green flag she is off to the races once more, spreading her opinion and carbon dioxide like the Great Plague of Europe.

About this time the tide starts receding at a rapid pace, and the estuary feeding into the ocean becomes a small river of rapids flowing under the footbridge.  Children flock to this with body boards, sailing under the onlookers and shooting out into the bay where we are swimming.  They are having a blast.  Sal and Patty and I look at each other and start wondering if the kids will let us try it for an offering of a few bucks each.  We know, though, that it isn't cool anymore if old fogies are participating, so we watch until the river is too low for them to body surf any longer then step into the water near their route.  The undercurrent is still strong, and we float a little bit to get a tiny gist of the fun the kids have been enjoying. 

We pack it in after five-plus hours of fun in the sun and head back to Patty's for a glass or two of sauvignon blanc.  Patty is moving from the Rockport house, and it's one of those sentimental afternoons where the right things are falling into place and something better is in store for her, but still it is a wistful moment.  Even though I just met her, I feel for her, for this quaint house with its charming rooms and its calming seaside colors and its quirky chalet addition and its old New England personality.  How lucky she is to have put her stamp on this house the same way it has put its stamp on her.

It is a good day.  I meet some new friends, one of whom I hope to see again (Patty), one that I'm glad I saw again (the nose-holder) when I thought he drowned, one it would be funny to see again (Smoking Woman), and one I hope to never see again (Mouthzilla).  I am thankful for Sal my already-pal, for Patty my new-found pal, and for friends I still have who are crazy enough to still be speaking to me after all these years.

On the way home, I text a picture message to my Cat TV friend showing her the baseball-sized rock I have gotten for her garden, pilfered from the Great Pebble Wall of Rockport.  After all, there's an old Girl Scout song that goes, "Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other …. likes beach rocks."

Or something catchy like that.