On Saturday…

On Saturday night (which is alright for fighting)
I drove to a place where mosquitos were biting
my ankles. The itching! For all that is holy!
Thank God for Dos Equis and fresh guacamole.

(I’m not thanking God for Dos Equis at all.
Drinking ONE made me consider finding a pall
bearer for carrying me dressed up and boxed up and dead.
Cause of demise? A beer-induced pain in the head.)

But back to the story! Mexican food with friends!
I’ve known them for decades! I’ve used a few pens
to write stories about them in my old high school journal.
My core group. My favorites. Dare I say my diurnal?

(Please forgive my rhyming. I don’t try it often.
Evidence? Line seven. Reference to my coffin.)

Hacienda in Rock Hill. A table for six.
We’re so different now, but we know how to mix.
Speak of kids, not of politics. Mention food from your kitchen!
And if you can help it, please avoid religion.

(A shout out to Linda, for my beer she did pay,
She helped me find the bathroom when I lost my way.)
I learned many things that night before offering Goodbyes.
Did you know someone’s job is to blow horses’ eyes?!

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I’ll allow myself two more breaks before I’m done.

The morning temperatures have been amazing lately, so I’ve been looking up towards the right and picturing myself running again.

(Quick recap: My legs break when I run. Four stress fractures in less than a year. Vitamin D deficiency. Squishy knee condition. Physical therapy. Wearing of the big boot. Sports medicine doc planning a hedonistic (wifeless) trip to Florida with a colleague instead of looking at my x-ray. Doctor switch. I haven’t REALLY run since October, when I broke my right heel during a 5K with Meredith, but I *did* do a lot of spinning (the stationary bike kind) as well as Pilates over the winter and spring. Sadly, I’ve done nothing since April when I had the flu. This is not really a quick recap, is it? Are you still with me? I’m wearing a skirt right now, but I think it might actually be a tube top dress, and that’s sort of funny because it’s not really socially acceptable to pull your tube top dress down around your waist before dinner, is it?)

This morning I woke up and thought, “Yes. This is the day.”

I then remembered that I had plans to eat pie with friends at 10:30.

I then thought, “Well, good. Today is NOT the day.”

(Pie is always a good excuse to NOT run. Put that in your toolbox.)

In a few more weeks, I’ll have no more excuses. This both excites and spooks me, and that’s a fun road to be on. (A fun road on which to be.) And then I’ll hopefully be back on THIS road. (It’s less than five miles from my house, and I share it with deer.)

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It’s my favorite place to be, unless airplanes are falling from the sky or the mom with the triple-wide running stroller shows up. (She straps a laptop to the stroller so her kids can watch movies while she runs. Movies over deer. Honestly.) ((I run faster than her, which really isn’t a thing when you remember that she’s running while pushing the stroller equivalent to a Cutlass Supreme. Regardless: I run faster than her.)) ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

What’s that smell?

This morning I took Meredith to the pediatric ophthalmologist, and that’s a really difficult word to spell. Since we were able to stop patching back in 2011, we see the ophthalmologist only once each year, and every visit is a bit of an adventure—mainly because he shares his office with six other doctors, none of whom are ophthalmologists. This morning the office was full of adults and tiny people and we didn’t have many chair choices. I went with the fabric chair next to the sweaty man and his cranky wife so that my kids could sit next to each other by the television.

I won’t go into Sweaty Man’s family details because I signed a HIPAA form many years ago, and the last thing I need right now is a police car hauling me off to God knows where simply because I’m not following a rule that appeared somewhere in the fine print of that form. (I was pulled over two weeks ago today because although my license plate sticker is on the license plate, it’s actually in the wrong place. I hate the fact that I’m driving around potentially creating work for police officers, but with that said, it really *did* seem that this particular university officer didn’t have much else going on. (I freaked out a little when he turned his lights on, and to get off the road I chose to pull the wrong way onto a one way street—giving him a bonus ticketing opportunity. Thank God I didn’t have beer in the car, or I probably would have cracked one open before telling him about the dead guy in my trunk who I just prostituted and murdered (in that order, obviously), if “prostituted” can be considered a verb. I’m breaking Every Single Rule over here.))

Anyway. The sweaty man was sweaty (as they say), and as the perspiration dripped from his face, I noticed that he began smelling more and more like cigarettes. It was the most disgusting yet fascinating thing I’ve smelled/seen in years. This guy has smoked so many cigarettes that he has actually BECOME a cigarette. Because the doctor was running late, I was given the opportunity to sit and wonder what has gone into my mouth more than anything else in the past few years. The answer? Delhi’s Chaat! Have I eaten so much of it that it drips from my temples after a run? Sadly, no. My sweaty self smells more like salty lavender disappointment, thanks to Tom’s of Maine.

(The guy running behind me in this photo actually caught up with me five seconds after the photo was taken. He begged me to lower my arms because although my scent was oddly soothing, he found that it was also leaving him feeling very disappointed. I just nodded and whispered, “What you are smelling is my truth.”)

No time for losers.

What do I smell like right now? Bath and Body Works Sensual Body Wash and Lotion. (The Jasmine Vanilla scent. Don’t even try to talk me into the Black Currant Vanilla scent. I Will Not Have It.)

Talk to me about your smell. (I hope I’m not weirding you out right now. Wait. Do you hear that siren?!) I once told a friend of mine that without any lotion or deodorant, I sort of smell like toast. She smelled my arm and agreed. Jeff recently told me that people don’t really know themselves as well as they think and that it’s too easy to make your world smaller just because you believe you know your own limitations, when in actuality, you should be challenging yourself to break down those perceived walls. All I know is this:  A not-sweaty me smells like toast, but after a shower? Sensual Toast.

All of this to say, if I ever need a stage name? Sensual Toast it is. Enjoy your weekend. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

The Reminiscence Bump

It is Monday, July 14 and I did NOT go to my high school reunion on Saturday evening and because so many photos have been posted of the people with whom I shared a big cubical building a quarter of a century ago, today I’m feeling a hint of what I normally feel the weekend after BlogHer—comfort knowing that I lived in my nearly dead jeans all weekend sprinkled with a tiny bit of “Because of my own goofiness, I’ll now have to wait five more years (or a lifetime, because who’s the boss?) to speak with a horse whisperer.” Actually, to my knowledge, there has never been a horse whisperer at BlogHer. Such a long sentence, such a weak comparison. (One of my favorite people in high school later spent some time horse whispering. Isn’t it crap that life is so short? If only there was more time to do All Things. I’m 43 years old, and if I try to do a cartwheel, both of my legs will shatter. So many missed opportunities.)

weak jean pool

Do I wear the jeans in public? I do. Because I’m David Lee Roth in a yellow floral tunic and Panama-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw.

Earlier this morning I read a Brain Pickings article about the passage of time and why it seems to get screwy during vacations and faster in old age yet slower when one is waiting for a train. Apparently, Nabokov was into the proportionality theory which says something like, “When judged in the context of your life, time seems faster when you’re an adult because a year is 1/43rd of your life rather than 1/6th of your life, and you can eat 1/43rd of a pie in two bites but I’m sure you would rather have 1/6th of the pie, unless it is a mincemeat pie, unless you are my grandpa who loved mincemeat pie.” (I’ve elaborated a bit with the pie thing, as I do.)

Some people believe that the proportionality theory is complete crap. Other people (so many people!), who refer to themselves as nostalgia psychologists, mention the reminiscence bump (a time during the late teens and early twenties) during which memories are so much clearer because it’s a time of milestones. (Streaking around an apartment building in the middle of the night! Eating a turkey on the roof of a house in the dead of winter! Line dancing during a snowstorm in the middle of a street on Groundhog Day! My reminiscence bump goes on for miles!) I can’t really remember when East Timor became a nation, but I can spout out every word of Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys. I can remember certain outfits that people wore in high school, yet I have no idea when I received my most recent tetanus shot. (I once met a man who had polio because he accidentally received two polio vaccinations. This information haunts me.)

I’m going to start referring to myself as a nostalgia psychologist Right Now.

Today will find us at a doctor appointment and at piano lessons. I’m also going to clean a bathroom and bake strawberry bread and practice writing some words—knowing that I won’t remember this day in 2018. (Or next week if we’re really being honest over here.) I hope your Monday is a good one.

I mean what I say,
Angela D.
Nostalgia Psychologist

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You can’t spell reunion without Urine On.

Do you remember five years back when you helped me choose an outfit for my twenty year high school reunion? And then I actually WENT to the reunion and experienced Sweet Victory when I found that the girl who didn’t like me in high school is now a horribly mundane Poison lyric dancer?

My 25th high school reunion is coming up on Saturday. (Tupac Shakur died when he was 25. It’s really weird to think that I graduated from high school an entire Tupac Shakur ago!)

Will I be attending my reunion on Saturday? I will not. (I just spent nearly twenty minutes trying to type out WHY I won’t be attending, but an explanation that includes phrases like “pitiable purple sequins” and “me with my terrible eye contact” and “the drunks just get drunkier” isn’t really a nice explanation, and if you don’t have something nice to say, well, Pitiable Purple Sequins it is, and Pitiable Purple Sequins it goes, Bambi.)

Let’s get sidetracked! The Tour de Fleece is happening right now, which means spinners from around the world are making yarn as bicyclists are racing around France.

Do you want to see what I’ve completed so far? Do you? If you stick around, I’ll reward you with my 1988 senior photo! I will!

Here goes.

264 yards of fingering weight (also known as sock weight) BFL/silk along with a mini-skein made while I practiced chain plying.

Tour De Fleece, Day Five

Also, 610 yards of lace weight (or maybe light fingering) Polwarth. This is the best yarn I’ve made, and I need to once again give a shout out to Tempe for explaining fractal spinning to me.

Greenwood Fiberworks Polwarth

What’s currently on the wheel, you ask? Sock weight Cormo!

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I’ve gathered you here today to talk about how it’s time to heal our women, be real to our women, and if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies. Keep ya head up, Tupac.

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We spray painted a shower curtain in this apartment. That probably wasn’t healthy.

Stewart Road Apartment

I moved into this Stewart Road apartment at the beginning of my second senior year. I was 22 years old and had recently met with my advisor to tell her that I STILL didn’t know what I wanted to study in school. (I had already changed my major six times—piano performance, communications, elementary education, industrial psychology, nutrition, and nursing. Sometimes these were official changes in an office. Sometimes they were done in my head just because I was so embarrassed about my desultoriness. So many interests! Impossible to choose just one!) She studied my class history and grades, sighed, and said, “I can get you out of here in a year with a degree in Psychology and an area of concentration in Religion. Anything else will take more time.” Psychology it was and psychology it is! With an area of concentration in religion!

This apartment was my Final Year apartment. This was the place where studying was KEY, because one mistake could bump me back another year, and that was unacceptable.

On my first night in the apartment, the manager (whose uniform consisted of Hobie shirts and puka bead necklaces) came over with a wine cooler and told me that I was the only American girl in the place. “It’s you, a couple of American guys, and a bunch of Asians.” (The manager was a bit of a tool, although I do believe he meant well when he visited from time to time to “check in” on me.)

A few months into the semester, he knocked on the door (with a wine cooler) and asked, “Well, are you ready for the story about your apartment?”

Of course I was.

Four years before I moved in, an American girl lived in Apartment 306. She had a boyfriend and their relationship was pretty rocky. One night, the boyfriend came over for a visit. He was drunk, they got into a fight, and he swung an ax at her. Sadly, he had ax skills. The neighbors were freaking out and calling the police and eventually the guy was hauled off and the girl was dead.

Hobie with a Wine Cooler (HWC): You look like you don’t believe me.

Me: I’m not sure I do.

HWC: Then let me show you something.

He lifted up the framed emergency stairwell plan and removed it from the wall. AND, there was the tip of what looked like an ax still embedded in the brick. (Was it really brick? It may have been concrete. I can’t quite remember. Anyway: YIKES.)

HWC: It gets better! TWO years ago, an American girl lived in this apartment, and she went missing. We don’t know if she was kidnapped or what, but the door was wide open and she’s still registered as a missing person. I had to help her parents clear out her stuff so we could rent the place out again! SO, four years ago, and two years ago with zero incidents in any other apartment. I wonder if this will be another crazy year in Apartment 306!

(Edited to add: Both stories were verified by the ROTC guy who lived a few doors down, and I trusted him for three reasons. One, he often wore military fatigues, two, he had lived in his apartment for five years, and three, he wrote really bad poetry and was always willing to read it out loud, which resulted in many awkward “That’s a great poem! Well, I need to get going!” moments.)

((Edited AGAIN to add: His poetry may have actually been very good. I have no idea. Similarly, I sometimes can’t distinguish between Good Jazz and Bad Jazz. Onward!))

And it WAS a crazy year in Apartment 306. It was the year that I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for some friends and was able to cook a 36-inch turkey in a 27-inch oven, all while stomping the roaches that had traveled over from my neighbor’s apartment. (When I reported the roaches to HWC, he came up and we walked over to the next apartment. When he unlocked the door, roaches scattered away from what was probably 38 unwrapped and half eaten snack cakes that Tan (the neighbor) had left on the floor. (I’ll never know why he couldn’t finish a Little Debbie treat. I can eat a Star Crunch in three bites.)

About a week before my graduation ceremony, my best friend and another friend came over to watch movies. At around two in the morning, it suddenly struck me that I had never streaked and there is no time like the present and no present like time! I went into the bathroom and changed into my robe. The plan? Stand in the back doorway (pictured above) to make sure no one is coming. Hand the robe to Best Friend (who promised to keep her eyes closed and to stay at the back door), RUN LIKE THE WIND to the front door and actually enter the front door if anyone was out but if no one was out? KEEP RUNNING all the way around to the back door.

I’ll never forget that run. Not because it was amazing and freeing and TO LIFE! TO LIFE! L’CHAIM!, but because I could hear my heart beating in my head and I was no runner and what if my heart explodes and HEADLIGHTS! DAMNIT!!! sprinkled with a hefty dose of What In The HELL Am I Doing?! I am a BAPTIST!!!

When I returned to the back door, Best Friend handed the robe to me and if I remember correctly, I got dressed and we headed out for Swiss Mushroom Burgers or Ham and Cheese Melts, as we often did.

I was definitely changed after my year in 306, and I’m pleased to report that I made it out alive with a diploma and although a little lost, very much Not Missing. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>