Category Archive

I wore my Dickinson sweatshirt while I was working car line yesterday. I got several “Oh did you go there? My husband/brother/niece goes/went there.” Never anyone I overlapped with. Today, a woman I’m friendly with came up and said, “I saw you in that Dickinson sweatshirt, did you go there?” I said yes. “When did you graduate?” 89. “OMG! Me too!” I told her that she’s always looked kinda vaguely familiar to me, but I’ve re-encountered so many people from Julianna’s baby years ad then there are just some people who look like lots of people. “What was your major?” Psych and American Studies. “I was Psych!” I kind of apologetically told her that I was a drama person, not “greek” and thus didn’t know everyone. “I was a Delta Nu.” Okay, the one sorority I actually knew a lot of people in. “I used to hang out at Phi Ep” The one fraternity I actually went into. Her kids were there, I wanted to say, “Did you loan me a lighter?” or “Did I barf on you?” We determined that our areas of focus in psych didn’t overlap, so while we may have had intro classes together, we likely didn’t after that. She was probably one of the people in the Abnormal Psych class that thought we must be having a test on the rare days that I showed up…What was I thinking scheduling an 8 am class? I mean, really. I asked Stacey (a Delta Nu) if she remembered her, and she said she thinks she had “big brown hair.” I wanted to look her up, but my yearbook is in hiding, apparently. Steve’s yearbook photo is on the 1988 Alumni Reunion page though…Find him? Hint: he’s not the small, stuffed one, but you’re close.

Dinner was a tasty stew from Belize and a nasty soup from Columbia.

I’ve been trying to gather up old sewing machines at good prices so that I can keep them at the school for our 4-H meetings, rather than having the kids (and me) schlepp their machines in every time. Creating sort of a home ec room that I can store in a closet. I’ve avoided the ones in cabinets, even though they come out, b/c I dont want to deal with the furniture, but on Craigslist, I came across one with a really CUTE desk and the machine looked like my old school machines from the late 60s (I did NOT go to school in the late 60s, thank you very much, but I’m pretty sure that’s when the machines showed up) and I recall them as good and solid. So, I made the contact, made arrangements to pick it up (which the weather stymied twice), and got Mapquest directions.

I’m happily listening to Ricky Gervais podcasts , laughing my head off, and tooling out into the wilds of West Virginia. I start making lots of little turns, it gets very dark as I leave the land of buisnesses and highway lights. The road becomes much less paved. The homes become much more mobile. I arrive at my destination (after passing roads named “Riproarin ave” and “Slanty Ln”) and park. The trailer has a little enclosed porch thing that I knock at. The seller comes to the door, wearing bright printed scrubs and looking pretty normal and in her 30s. Not at all the 300 lb shambling mess I was beginning to expect. In an email, she’d asked if I was “handy with carpentry” b/c the sewing machine was hiding a hole in the wall she was going to have to fix before moving. I’d gotten kind of a needy vibe and pretended I didn’t know a Dewalt from a Dewers.

She lets me in and leads me into the kitchen where I am faced with about 20 snakes, stacked in plastic storage bins. Like pasta, or out of season clothing. I make nice with the snakes, chit chat about a reptile show I’d gone to and marvel at the colors boas come in. And think, “So, this is where it ends. In a smelly trailer full of snakes in West Virginia.” She shows me the machine, cute as pictured, and the hole in the drywall, about which I can do nothing. “I can’t help you much,” she tells me, “because I have a heart condition and bad knees.” I joke that I guess I can’t plead “arthritic hip” and ask her to do the hauling. The blasted thing is heavy, but even worse, has no easy way to carry it. The back is perfectly flat, so I kind of “walk” it out, wiggling it side to side. When it comes time to wrestle it out to the van, though, she picks up the end and helps me get it in. We go back in to get the bench. She’s been chattering the whole time, and has kind of a reedy voice. But now it is flat-out wheezy. And her lips are BLUE. Dude, you have congestive heart failure! What in the HELL are you doing?!? Oy. I start chattering so she’ll shut the hell up long enough to breathe. The color returns to her lips. phew. So. out.of.there. I get out, while everyone is still alive. And you know what? I think I have enough machines now. Thanks.

18

Okay, I can’t make the stupid score box work. click the number. See how you fare.

Just now with Lily:

Lily: Mommy, what does what mean?

Me, not sure I’d heard correctly: What?

Lily: yes.

Me: yes what?

Lily: yes. what.

Me:

Lily: What does what mean?

Me: the word “what?”

Lily: yes.

Me: It means “sorry, I didn’t hear that” when you use it that way.

Lily dances off, happy. I think, “I’m headed for the blog with this one.”

I was lying in bed with Lily last night, way too late for her to be awake, but there it is. We were in my inlaws bed (they went to a hotel, bless ‘em) and there’s a digital clock on the dresser at the end of the bed. Lily said, “Hey, it’s 10:10!” And I said, “Make a wish!” She said, “I wish I had a pony.” of course. Time passed. She said, “It’s 10:11! Is that a wish time?” I told her sure, any time the numbers match on either side of the two dots or if they make a counting up, you can wish. “I wish Aiden was my boyfriend.”

“What would it mean if Aiden was your boyfriend?”

“MOM, you KNOW what a boyfriend is.”

“What does it mean to you?”

“We’d…um…hang out together?”

“What would you do together?”

“We’d ask our moms to buy us video games. Hey, it’s 10:12. That’s going to be a wish time too. I’ve decided.”

“okay. What do you wish?”

“I wish Aiden loved me back.”

Caroline? Keep your boy away from my child. She’s trouble.