INSERT EVIL LAUGHTER HERE

My friend and I decide to take a spontaneous trip into Boston for lunch.  Her daughter works at one of the restaurants in Seaport and we haven't been on an adventure in a while, so we combine the elements of bored minds with empty stomachs.  It takes us a while to secure seats because the restaurant is both trendy and a tourist destination, but once we settle in, we treat ourselves to a pleasant lunch and some time bantering with my friend's daughter and fellow employees.

Once we leave the restaurant, we wander around the waterfront for a short while.  A woman stops us and asks us for directions to the Home Show.  She can't seem to find it, and she is standing on the sidewalk while absently overlooking the harbor.  We point her to the World Trade Center and decide to follow her inside.  After all, my friend just remodeled her entire kitchen, so she is in construction withdrawal.

There are all types of vendors inside the Trade Center at the Home Show.  In addition to the usual window, bath, kitchen, and hot tub booths, there are booths for jewelry, chocolate, pain gels, and things that just don't seem like they belong at a home trade show.  My friend engages in conversation with one of the vendors when suddenly something bounces and rolls toward my feet.  I look down at it when the random item stops after hitting my right sneaker.

It is a brain.  Yes, a brain. 

Sitting up against my foot is a miniature purple foam brain.  A saleswoman scurries over as I lean down to pick up the brain.  "I'm so sorry," she says, watching me examine the object.  She hesitates and then adds, "Uh, you can have it if you want.  We're giving them away.  It's a stress ball."

This.  Is.  Everything. 

I have students who are allowed to carry and play with stress balls during classes and at assemblies.  Their stress balls are usually the standard ones: red, foamy, and slightly bloated like a drunken clown's nose.  My newly acquired stress ball is so very much cooler.  It is an honest-to-god purple brain. 

I am currently on the tail end of a week-long winter break.  I go back to school tomorrow, and, under normal circumstances, the thought of returning to work would be a cause for slight agida.  Not this time, though.  I cannot wait to get back to school and perch my new purple foam stress ball brain on my desk.  I also cannot wait until I get an opportunity to use it. 

I can see it now: "You call THAT a stress ball?  Look at THIS!  It's a brain.  A BRAIN!  A PURPLE SQUISHY BRAIN!"  I'll squeeze the brain in my hand until the purple veins ooze from between my fingers, then I'll let it retract and do it again and again.  I'll hold my brain-oozing fist in the air and shake it while laughing maniacally like I'm Dr. Frankenstein.  "It's ALIVE!!!!  ALIIIIIIIVE!!!!!"

Then, if I haven't been fired already, I'll convince all of my students to bombard their guidance counselors with requests for purple squishy foam stress brains.  It will be awesome.  It will be like Alice's Restaurant only for middle schoolers.  It will be like a movement, a cause, a celebration.

All it takes, apparently, is a decent lunch in the city and attendance at a home show to keep me entertained.  Don't you dare pre-warn my students.  I'm anxious to see who will be first to notice the purple stress brain when school starts up again.  (Insert evil laughter here.)

YOGA MAT DASH

At 6:30 a.m. on a brisk New England morning in February, the strange aura just before sunrise can play tricks on the senses. It's not light, yet it's not dark.  It's invigorating leaving the house in the dark then arriving at work in the light just eighteen minutes later as the colored sky slowly fades into blue.  I am almost disappointed that the clocks move ahead in a few weeks because then I'll be back to the glare-in-my-eyes commute.

For now, this quiet pre-dawn drive takes me the back way down silent side streets.  Occasionally I will pass a jogger wearing bright colors or a walker with a headlamp, athletes trying as diligently to avoid being hit as I am trying to avoid hitting them.  Once in a great while I might even see an early morning dog walker (sometimes still in his or her pajamas), but, generally speaking, my morning commute is tame and serene.

Until today.

This particular back road runs parallel to the two main highways: routes 28 and 125.  It's a peaceful alternative to the traffic crawl on one highway and the break-neck drag races on the other.  As I near my turn, a road so deep in the woods that it was blocked one recent morning by an errant fallen tree, I am surprised by the sight of a woman running full tilt through the darkness.

She is not dressed in jogging attire nor is she rushing to keep up with a dog.  Nope, she is racing around the snow-banked lane in a mid-length puffy coat, complete with fur-lined hood.  Under one arm is her pocketbook; under her other arm is a yoga mat.

And this isn't even the strange part.

As I prepare to turn down the same small street as is she, a pack of women similarly dressed comes careening out of the darkness and races down the road after her.  Twelve or so women, all dressed in street clothes, all wearing puffy winter coats, all carrying bags and yoga mats, running as fast as they can, like their yoga pants are on fire.

This is the strange part.

I stop mid-turn, completely flabbergasted.  These women are all wearing dark clothing and dark coats, and they're running to somewhere. Stranger, though, is the realization that this means they are also running FROM somewhere.  Where did they come from?  I mean, I can surmise that they're running to someone's house for a private yoga class.  This is that type of a hoity-toity town.  But ... a dozen of them?  With the same coats?  Flying along at the ass-crack of dawn?

I start wondering if maybe they're escaping from some maniac.  Should I stop my car and inquire after their safety?  I don't know -- seems like if they're dressed in puffy coats, there couldn't have been such a dire emergency that they'd take the time to dress or grab yoga mats.  It can't be a PTO event or a mothers' breakfast.  It's too early for the first buses to have even come by yet.  How do I know?  I know because I take this route as a way to avoid school bus traffic.

Slowly the car and I both recover, pass the gaggle of women (who appear cheerful), and continue on the way to work, the car on autopilot and me shaking my head and quietly whispering, "What.  The.  Fuck.  What the serious fuck did I just see?"

In the few years that I have driven to work this way, I have never seen anything like the gauntlet-running housewives.  But, if there's anyone out there in the vicinity of Holt and Prospect Roads who would like to explain this to me, I'm not going to lie to you: I'm curious as all hell to know the reason for the spectacle that I witnessed.

Unless, of course, they were running to meet Rosemary's baby.  In that case, forget I asked.  Forget I even wrote about it.  Forget it all.  So help me, if Minnie Castevet comes knocking on my door, I'll hunt you all down faster than those women in the puffy coats and wrap your bodies in yoga mats (which is quite possibly what those women were doing in the first place...).

TRIMMING THE WRITING FAT

Finally.  I am finally getting to four years' worth of writing magazines. 

Oh, sure, I've looked through them, but I kept telling myself to pull out an article here or there then never did.  I could say (truthfully) that I kept the magazines to use as resources for my MA in English (citations), but the whole truth is that I was too overwhelmed to go through them post-degree.  After having to change my capstone project at the last minute, I was too utterly pissed off to go through the magazine pile for any reason.

For more than four damn years.

Finally, this weekend I decide it's time to rid myself of these magazines.  I am ready to exorcise my demons.  I start with 2014 and slowly work my way forward in time.  Obviously there are articles I am not bothering to save, like which literary agencies are searching for writers circa August 2015.   But other articles (like business expenses and tax credits for writers) are worth saving.

So, I sit with my scissors and stapler and start attacking the pile.  It takes me three days.

I still have 2017 and 2018 to shuffle through, but I am fresh from a grand wine tasting, where five tables of multiple bottles of wine each have primed me for just about anything, including tearing out and stapling professional writers' articles.  It's not too horrible when I get home and immediately open prosecco to help me along.  Homemade nachos are just the bonus to this whole scenario.

I must persevere.  Tuesday is recycling day, and I am damned determined to get these magazines out of my house.  It's all about trimming the fat at this point, and these magazines, though helpful, are ultimately the fat of my existence right now. 

Besides, once I clear off the pile of magazines, I can honestly start zeroing in on clearing off the top of my desk for its intended purpose: Writer's Heaven.

I'll post pictures when it's done.

WINE STATE OF MIND

I'm in a wine state of mind.

I have spent the last four weekends refusing to leave my house.  Part of this is because of the weather; leaving the house meant risking immediate and severe frostbite.  Part of this is because I have been in a sucky mood, and I have preferred reading books and scrubbing my toilet to being around people.  I am also willing to bet that a good portion of my need to stay home is tied directly to finally having my house back to near-normal following the Great Merrimack Valley Gas Disaster of 2018.

No matter the reasons, I decide today to finally venture out on a Saturday.

I hit my usual haunt for the weekly wine tasting and am greeted with, "Wow, we haven't seen you in a while!"  Truth.  Four weeks, to be exact.  Good thing I had some wine already stock-piled.  After tasting some great Superbowl-themed wines then buying prosecco (not one of the themed selections), I hit up CVS to spend $8 in extra-bucks (on toe and hand warmer packets).  I even take the time to drive my daughter and her pal to the T-station several towns away so they can attend a country music concert in Boston.

Apparently, I have decided to make up for all my recent weekends all in one day: Go, go, go!

When I finally do get home, I turn on the television to have noise in the background while I do some work.  Oh, look -- The Hallmark channel.  What a surprise ... not.  I am about to turn the channel to something far more original, like Say Yes to the Dress, but I notice that there's a movie on Hallmark about a winery. 

This makes me thirsty.

After the movie ends, on comes another Hallmark movie also set at a winery.  The last time I chatted with my landlords, we got on the subject of wine.  They have a wine cellar in their home (in front of mine), and they handed me a bottle of Montepuciano d'Abruzzo. So, here I am on a Saturday night in a wine state of mind, when work just doesn't seem so important anymore.  I open the red wine, let it breathe a little (because I am impatient and do not have an aerator ... I know ... a sacrilege), open some sharp cheddar cheese, then pour a glass of wine.

Sure, it has been lovely getting out of my house (other than going back and forth to work), but it's even lovelier to be home, watching winery-themed Hallmark movies, eating cheese, and sipping Italian red wine.  Life is good, and we're halfway through winter (officially) here in the frozen tundra of New England, so that in and of itself is a celebration. 

Besides, I don't believe it counts as drinking alone if the bottle is a gift. After all, wine truly is a state of mind, and, since I'm home and sipping along with wine-themed movies, I must be doing Saturday right, so I don't mind; I don't mind at all.

DRIVE-THROUGH-LESS BANKING OF THE FUTURE IS NOW

When I think of jobs being lost to automation, the drive-through industry doesn't come readily to mind.  Seriously, though, who doesn't love driving right through life without having to stop (except for an occasional potty break)?

In addition to the obvious drive-through industry (fast food and coffee), there is also the drive-through wild-life sanctuary industry.  Between those extremes, I hear that some places have drive-through liquor stores, drive-through registries, even drive-through funeral homes (which is probably one of the most fabulous ideas of all time for those of us who despise the smell of lilies and who tend to giggle at death).  I kind of see the drive-through industry as one of those necessities that probably should be expanding.   

Apparently, though, my bank does not.  With the onslaught on online banking and cyber bill-paying, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  Even the juggernauts like Bank of America and Toronto-Dominion Bank are starting to close branches.  But, really.  Wouldn't banks like to keep their drive-through service going?  I mean, if they're worried about customer service and volume, forcing people out of their cars to become foot traffic is not the way to go.

And yet ... my bank is closing the drive-through lanes.  Permanently closing.  Everything is going digital.

Honestly, this idea fucking sucks.

Oh, sure, the ATM's will still be working.  Let's really tempt bandits, thieves, and other malcontents now that anyone using the former-drive-through-now-only-money-dispensing-machine will be out there in the wild, wild west of tarred parking lots just waiting to be robbed.  Well, everyone, that is, except for me.

About two years ago my debit card got hacked.  This is not a tragedy as I am poor, which means that the culprit probably took one look at my bank account and tried to start a Go-Fund-Me page in my honor.  But the hassle of cutting everything up and contacting creditors and getting the bank to clean up the mess became one giant clusterfuck fiasco.  So, when the bank issued me a new debit card, I cancelled it and put it through the shredder.

After all, I have checks.  I can write myself checks, go cash them at the drive-through, and then I pay cash for everything except bills.  This is a win-win because the card will not get hacked again, I won't be a sitting duck at an ATM, and the government cannot possibly trace my spending (unless I use a discount coupon or card linked to my name). 

I am at the bank drive-through waiting to cash a check when I see The Sign.  The Sign says life will be almost exclusively digital starting in February.  My cash, it seems, will no longer be acceptable tender without a pound of flesh and a few ounces of plasma.  My new options will be the ATM (nope, no debit card), a mobile app (nope, nothing that important goes into my phone), or online banking (to see my balances, fine, but to put money in and take it out ... no).  Of course, there's always face-to-face, until, of course, that goes by the wayside. 

I suddenly have a flashback to the one and only time I shopped at Ikea.  I waited in a very long line to pay for some toys and a salad spinner, and was told Ikea doesn't accept cash.  Oh, one line does, but I wasn't in it.  There was no sign declaring it so, but still. 

Who the hell doesn't accept real cash anymore?

Then I encountered store cashiers who had not been trained to handle ... wait for it ... cash.  It was like a major event as cashiers and managers bustled around at crisis levels.  "Quick, for the love of god," they screamed over the loudspeaker, "someone find an employee, anyone at all, even the cleaning crew scrubbing the toilets, please, find someone who knows what to do with a ten dollar bill!  Wait, one-zero is ten ... right?????"

I guess starting in February I will have to get out of my car and actually interact with humans face to face, at least until those clerks are replaced by automation and the entire bank vaporizes and goes digital.  Until then, I can still enjoy driving through to get a Dunks coffee to take with me to the drive-through safari after I pick up my drive-through beer, which is next door to my drive-through pharmacy that's next to the drive-through funeral home so I can also pay my respects to my dead bank. 

Pray for me.  I'm willing to bet you can do it at a drive-through church, so it's all good.

BUTT ON FIRE

Usually when my butt is on fire it's because I ate something that disagrees with my stomach.  Occasionally (once every five years) my butt might be on fire from colonoscopy prep.  However, generally speaking, my butt is reasonable and usually behaves itself when it comes to things like matches and fireplaces and other catastrophic, flammable situations.

Perhaps these life experiences add to the confusion of my recent ride to work.

Let me give some background.  The first time I ever encountered heated car seats was in my sister's old Volvo station wagon en route to my grandmother's house.  Between us we were traveling from Maine to Rhode Island at night, with me dragging my kids along, to go to my grandmother's house after she had died.  It was late in the evening, and I was fairly certain that I didn't have to pee, but suddenly my bottom was warm and slightly uncomfortable.

Since I have zero filter (and since I'd have to get kids out of a dangerous situation), I said to my sister, "Is your car on fire?"

This comment almost caused a massive accident on I-95 as she started checking her side and rear mirrors searching for errant flames shooting from the undercarriage.

"No, no," I explained to her.  "My butt's warm." 

Heated seats. 

Now, though, I am totally used to heated seats.  My car even has a driver's side heated lower back portion to the seat.  Once in a while while driving along with my butt cheeks completely and totally toasty, I flash back to that initial moment when I first thought that seat heaters in cars felt like peeing on a closed toilet seat.  Now, I consider them gifts from the mechanical gods.

(Smokeless seat heater is ON.)

The weather here in New England has been a bit like a seesaw this winter.  Sometimes it is icy cold in the morning then forty degrees by the afternoon; sometimes the wind cuts through like icy death.  I alternate between a fuzzy jacket zipped to my nose on my way to work, to a sweater and the windows open for the ride home. 

Every morning, though, I heat up the driver's seat before I head out.  If not for my butt then at least my lower back will be comfortable.  On this particular morning, it's cold, single digits, but the air is still and calm.  It's frigid but not unbearable, so I leave the seat heater on all the way to work rather than shutting it off halfway there when the temperature in the car becomes tolerable. 

I am driving along, radio cranking, seat heater cranking, when I smell smoke.  "Ahhhhhhhhh," I say to myself, "the sweet smell of someone's fireplace."

Except that the smell doesn't go away.  I know that once an aroma enters a car, it takes a short while for the smell to dissipate.  It seems to linger a little too long, though.  I open the window a little bit to discover if the smoky smell is coming from something bigger and more serious that a passing chimney.  Nope, no smell in the outside air, but, as I close the window, I can still smell the smoke as strongly as I did a minute or so earlier.

I start to panic.  Is my car on fire?  I check the side and rear mirrors.  Nope, no tell-tale orange glow anywhere.  I concentrate on the hood to see if maybe I might have an engine fire.  Everything looks good.  I check the dashboard for any signs, signals, or messages that indicate a problem, but I find nothing amiss other than the incessant smoky stench wafting around the car.  This is when I remember that my seat heater is on. 

Good gawd, I must've set my butt on fire!

This thought consumes me for about ten seconds before I realize that maybe, just maybe, my mind is playing tricks on me and maybe I really don't smell the fire any longer.  Perhaps it was just an exceptionally smoky fire that made its way through the air and into the vents of my car on this crisp morning.  Indeed, though my butt is comfy warm, it is not, I repeat, NOT on fire.

This is a relief for many reasons.  First of all, no one wants to have a car fire, especially if the driver is still in the car.  Second, I won't have to explain errant burn marks on my butt cheeks to anyone, least of all a local firefighter who is probably a parent of a student in my class.  Third, I won't have to openly admit what an idiot I am thinking that I set my butt on fire on the way to work (except, of course, that I am doing so right this moment).

BRING ON THAT SNOW

It's January 13th, and still we are snow-less. 

Oh, sure, we had some snow that caused us to push the shovel along the driveway to get to our cars without having to actually put on boots, but it was pretty much melted by the end of the day, as if it had never snowed at all.  Twice this week it snowed lightly on the way to work, and both times the snow was totally gone by the afternoon, never once sticking to the road for longer than an hour. 

Meanwhile, my snowshoes are hanging in the basement, waiting for somewhere to go.

I know what will happen; I know how this will end. 

I am planning a trip on a plane in a few weeks.  I haven't bought the tickets yet, but I will very soon.  I am going to give myself one day lead time, which means an extra day of hotel and car rental, just in case a major storm moves in.  This way I'll either beat the storm, or, with any luck at all, give myself enough hours to book another flight and still make it to my destination.

Yup, I am giving myself the lead time because (since I am cursing the lack of snow here) I am quite certain that a major blizzard will affect my one and only major travel plans this season.  It's my luck and it's my destiny as I sit here cursing the icy wind outside that is so very cold it ices the nose and ears the moment I step outside.  "Snot freezing weather," we always called it as kids (and still call it now) because even the runniest of noses freezes solid when it's zero or below either by temperature or by wind chill (or, even worse, both).

So, if in a few weeks we get the world's worst blizzard that lasts for days and days and days and grounds all air traffic for hundreds of miles and as many hours, YOU MAY ALL BLAME ME.  Yes, you certainly may, because:

I WANT SNOW, AND I WANT IT RIGHT NOW. 

Honestly, it's January and it's New England and the ground is brown and boring.  Bring it, Ma Nature.  I'm waiting and waiting and waiting, but my patience truly is running thin.