It feels like fall today. The heat wave broke and lying underneath it in wait was autumn. Now I’m blinking and looking around town wondering how I overlooked it this long. Tomato trucks are bouncing along the highway; the whole town smells like ketchup. The kids are back in school, and back in the Starbucks down the road at 3 p.m. everyday in a big pack. You can smell it in the morning, that crisp edge of change.
Recently, while out on an IT call, my client begins to tease me for talking to myself.
“I’m not talking to myself; I’m talking to your computer.”
He laughs. “And is it talking back?”
“We’re effectively communicating, thank you.” Privately, I’m thinking, It’s you the computer’s got issues with, not me. We’re cool.
There is now an Indian restaurant in Woodland, and I’m holding you all personally responsible if this place goes out of business. So far as I know this is the only good cup of chai in a 10 mile radius of my house. Don’t blow this for me.
While checking my messages on a yarn crafter site that I frequent (read: am obsessed with), I found myself irked, and probably unjustly so, by another user. I got a message from a moderator asking to use a picture of an afghan I crocheted for the pattern’s description page. Fine. But the moderator's avatar that appears big and bold in my message screen? A big picture of McCain with "McCain for President 2008."
Yuck.
This week my ballet teacher busted out some Cherry Poppin’ Daddies for a petite allegro combination in class. I probably would have hit the beats better to Vivaldi, but boy was I having fun.
Back when I was in Beginning Ballet I, I was also taking an intermediate swing class at the college. I had one teacher nagging me to pull up and tuck down my tail bone in my plié while another instructor was shouting, “Shannon, sit into your swing outs. Shame on you. You haven’t done that in long time.”
The joys of cross training.
I would like you to meet my lunch. Leftover tortellini, fresh figs from my garden, a chunk of feta cheese, for no other reason than because I wanted it, and iced tea just the way I like it: half mint, half black, no sugar.
Some days life is hard. Some times are frustrating. Maybe most times.
But some days there are roses in the kitchen. Some days there is a cold coke in a glass bottle in fridge and a good episode of Star Trek in the DVD player. Sometimes, when you’re driving to the grocery store, a Stray Cats song comes on the radio.
Exhausted though we were when we arrived home from a 5 day vacation on Sunday, there was still more fun to be had. After a few hours of unloading the car, reloading the refrigerator, and lying comatose on the couch, we got up again and headed out to the county fair.
Yolo County is not remarkably grand or influential. We include four cities, in the technical sense, and sport a total population of 168,000. Aside from the university in Davis, the only thing that brings folks here is corn, rice, and tomatoes.
My family’s laughter drifts down the stairwell to my room, sometimes in a single, identifiably-loved voice and sometimes in unison, in the voice that is my family. Downstairs it is quiet and dim. I’m in a rented house on Donner Lake and my young son is lying beside me on a mammoth bed, his eyes heavy with sleep but too stubborn to close.
Let’s say I’m taking an alien visitor on a tour of Earth. Maybe I’ve shown him San Francisco. We’ve been to the redwood forests. Now we land in Vegas in the middle of the strip amid the lights and the people, the facades and flashing screens. Trucks parade up and down the street with billboards for every kind of entertainment from circus shows to strippers. It’s 100ºF at 9:00 p.m. on America’s playground.
Three Dog Night is famous for having never been to Spain. I've never been to Vegas. (I've never been to Spain either, but if I were to do a blog purely listing the places I've never been, we'd be in for a long haul.)
