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| Really? |
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| For realsies. |
About to observe yet another effing birthday. Can't really prognosticate much about it, because, honestly, I haven't given it much thought aside from wondering if the GITB will come through and deliver the new Sprinsgteen CD.
First Night
"I first saw Harold across a crowded room, but it was lunchtime, not some enchanted evening, and we did not speak. I was having lunch in the Etoile restaurant in Charlotte Street; my companion pointed to a trio of men lunching opposite us. They were in fact Robert Shaw, Donald Pleasance and Harold; they were discussing Robert’s play, The Man in the Glass Booth, in which Harold would direct Donald. My companion admired Robert Shaw intensely: the handsome red-headed star who was said to do his own stuntwork and embodied machismo. Apparently I said thoughtfully: ‘I’ll take the dark one.’"
Other than that, I'm fine, how are you?
Here's what's new: I find that getting rid of stuff turns me on more than acquiring anything ever has. I feel lighter and lighter with each "release" and somehow smarter as I let go of things. My daughter's best friend is moving into her own apartment -- not going away to college as she has an absentee father and a drug-addicted mother so there's no money for college other than the community type and just enough dysfunction the past ten years to keep her from excelling in school so there is no hope of scholarship money either -- but anyway. I have delighted in passing along to her things that I have been hanging onto for reasons I don't know. So she gets the diaphanous sheer curtains and the set of coffee mugs I never drank from and the set of plates my husband bought for reasons I could never figure out and likewise never used because they were too large to fit in the dishwasher and too heavy to not hurt my wimpy old lady wrists. So they squatted, a glaring pile of green ceramic squares, taking up space on a shelf and annoying me every time I looked at them. Now gone! Yay!
Lately I just want to purge, purge, purge and spend my money on experiences. So I have been packing in a lot of travel lately, business and pleasure, but spending money and going first class, taking in the sights, eating in stupidly expensive places, drinking lots of wine or drinks with fancy names, flirting with my colleagues -- New York for Thanksgiving, then off to the Keys for New Year's, in Seattle last week, to Scottsdale next month, Charlotte a few weeks after that. The kid and I are also planning a trip to Italy this summer to celebrate her high school graduation. I find myself feeling at home in airports, wallowing in the metaphor, inhaling the Cinnabon and judging people by the size of the luggage they consider to be appropriate carry-on baggage.
My favorite airports this month so far: Denver because I so enjoyed all the guys strutting around in cowboy hats as well as the number of people galumping around their gate areas on crutches (ski novices?) and Charlotte because they have fabulous white rocking chairs in which to plop and rock away while waiting for your connection back to steamy, green Tampa.
There's a 1,000 year-old Indian Mound in my neighborhood that historians say the Tocabaga Indians spent a few hundred years building from discarded clam and oyster shells. The mound is 20-feet high and rests on the waterfront. It's shaded by sighing oaks whose arms are draped with showers of Spanish moss festooned with tiny air plants. From a distance the plants look like bows decorating a girl's long hair.
We loaded up a minivan’s worth of nieces this past Saturday and trucked it up to Weekie Wacheee to hang out with the mermaids. Much to my delight, it was “Mermaids of Yesteryear” weekend, so we were treated to an extra special matinee show of mermaids who swam the springs back in the 1940s and up through the decades of the last century(!) – the youngest of the bunch hung up her tail (temporarily) in the late 1970s.
The three coolest parts about the show were these: (1) one of the mermaids reminisced about the day she swam for Elvis back in the 1950s and she still blushed when she talked about how dreamy he was as a soft-spoken 22-year-old. She is 70, by the way. (2) the turtles who live in the spring seemed to be totally into the music because whenever the mermaids “danced,” turtles splashed down into the lagoon and merrily dove and dipped and paddled with the mermaids who were forced to give them gentle nudges and send them back the opposite direction when the little guys interfered with their choreography. (3) The senior citizen mermaids were vivacious and sure of themselves and this made their performances more enjoyable than that of the firm, nubile 20-something cast of “The Little Mermaid” whom we saw earlier in the day.
this astronomer hottie, Cassini. After ogling him for a bit I wandered beyond the grounds of the Louvre and visited the carousel, had some coffee and a croissant, and sat in the grass with a statue of Venus for a while as I breathed in the quiet and the smell of the blossoming trees mixed with the soft, misty rain. I eventually strolled all the way up to the Arch de Triomphe and back and realized I needed to head back to the apartment to meet Grace for dinner. I planned to go back to the Louvre the next day and actually go inside this time. But first, an evening in Paris awaited.
I opened every closet door in the apartment with increasing panic and finally, there it was, the most beautiful toilet ever in its own little peach-colored closet with triangular walls and ceiling. I have no idea what the deal is with the French locating their toilets in a separate room and often on the opposite side of the house from the rest of the plumbing, but it’s a little weird and annoying, especially since I really do like to wash my hands after using the toilet. I felt like Frankenstein walking around the apartment with my arms out in front of me as I hurried back to the other side to wash my hands since using the kitchen sink would be gross.
Afterwards I drank a beer and collapsed on the bed and when I woke a few hours later, Mystic was settled in next to me, his body curled around my arm, his tail on my cheek.
Grace burst through the door about an hour later and after screams and hugs and a lot of laughing she said she had just gotten a call on her cell from her doctor whose office is right around the comer, offering to reschedule Grace’s earlier appointment which she had canceled. We flew around the apartment and grabbed jackets and wallets then down the stairs and out onto the street, my first evening in Paris. Grace’s doctor’s office was indeed just a short walk from the apartment and I was happy to tag along, curious to see what French medicine looks like. The fact that her doctor would see her at 6:30 in the evening impressed me. The office was tiny and very utilitarian but decorated in warm, sunny melon tones with lots of stainless steel. There was no receptionist or nurse, just the doctor, who greeted Grace warmly and went right to working on the fitting of the orthotics she made for Grace’s shoes.
