Thursday night I didn't go to bookclub to discuss Lynne Withey's Dear Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams, partly because I had whatever to do before leaving today and partly because in anticipation of its being the evening before leaving I hadn't made the effort to finish the book. It would have been a good companion to the first volume of David McCullough's biography of John Adams that I recently finished listening to, if the first 100 pages had said more than that she missed her husband and if it hadn't had three glaring grammatical errors, just that I noticed.
I had made a list so packing went well. I would have mailed my dangerous make-up (a lot more dangerous to me than to anyone else) had my mother been in town, but she and her husband were away. I was indulging in expensive nostalgia and girliness, so Fedexing a small box of items vital to my vanity like contact lenses and Burt's Beeswax wasn't that much worse. To me, an eyelash curler is much scarier than lotion, but I don't make the rules.
The flights went well, but I reserve the right to be grumpy about nondirect flights within the contiguous states. I had a long enough wait in Cincinnati to eat, and I chose Outback Outpost as the one sit-down place. It's an airport restaurant: people do not dine there but only fuel, and therefore having to wait 30' before even ordering narrowed my eyes. Don't tell my sister but I asked for the bill when the server deigned to bring me my meal and tipped far less than 20%.
I landed at 8:45 and was zooming away from Bradley by 9:35. With a stop at my mother's house to pee and brush my beak and of course add contact lenses, I arrived at the Hideaway, previously the Elephant Walk, by 10:15. Since I would never speed, clearly I discovered a tesseract.
Everyone looked great! I recognized almost everyone immediately, the exception being the woman who was new in eleventh grade, whom I got on the second try. I made a circuit of the room, because that's what I do, and talked to everyone. My late arrival meant I missed two people I hoped to see the next night. One of the five intraclass couples, who've been together since freshling year of college and comprise a girl who was particularly friendly to me and my first kiss (ninth grade), sat at the bar side by side so cozily I had to ask them if they had seen each other since graduation. Another conversation that lasted longer than a chat was with my ninth grade crush, who was trying to figure out how to fold sailor hats out of paper, 25 of them for his son's fourth birthday on the morrow.
We all closed the bar at 1 and because the weather was bad, the planned "hike" at Devil's Hopyard was scratched. This felt a tiny bit like high school, when a select few made the decision for the masses who might not know about that decision. Being one of the select few who was told, even if I didn't vote to cancel--what's a little rain?--didn't make me feel any better about the ones who didn't know. However, now, unlike in high school (when I wouldn't've known anyway), I protested, questioning whether everyone knew who ought to.
So Friday was successful.
Instead of a hike in the nearly nonexistent rain, there was breakfast. When CLH called to say hi and good morning, I told her we were in Pat's Kountry Kitchen in Saybrook, selected as a nearby spot that could seat us all, but yeah. Kountry. Amy, Kim, Shaye and I were there for about an hour before another four people showed up, and in that time we had coffee and stories. Also they waved to the phone and yelled hi to my sister.
Surprisingly to me, Kim and Shaye didn't remember one of my favorite stories--a funny one that also was a mother thing. So for all three of them and not just Amy, I told the story. In ninth grade, one Tuesday or Thursday when classes ran 4-3-2-1-7-6-5 and we therefore had Ancient & Medieval History first period, before Latin, they were dreading a test and not wanting to take it and therefore invented National Latin Teacher's Day. They left that particular teacher's room--easily, I'm sure--to use the payphones, and actually got their mothers to go to the store and buy cake and soda and decorations and bring them to school before 8:57 a.m. The Latin teacher bought it, and we had a party that day instead of the test. Shaye didn't remember that but she did remember the "Who Died?" incident, sympathetically for my gaffe as well as for the others' bereavement.
Relating this to my sister on Monday, I said that of course the thing that strikes me most about this is not that the teacher bought it or went along with it but that these people got their mothers to go along with a scheme that involved their children's evading a test and their own running unplanned errands with unplanned money at the drop of a hat and quick-like.
I asked if anyone had got in touch with Ken, who left after eighth grade to attend a private high school but still lives in town. Yes indeed, many had. I told how I had invited him to junior prom (we didn't have a senior prom) because maybe, unlike every boy actually in my class, he didn't hate me, and because maybe he'd like to see people and I would be an acceptable means even if he did. Most of my best stories are told against myself, and so I told these three women that I wouldn't tell them how many boys I asked to prom before finally giving up and going stag (four), and that when Ken said no I heard only rejection but that the conversation--burned with shame into my memory--probably indicated something else. The way I recall it, anyway, was that I looked up his number and called him and asked him, and far from saying no immediately, he went to ask permission; and when he came back to the phone what he said was no and "I guess I've had too much fun this year." At the time, I heard only "no," but the fact that he had to ask his parents or father and returned with that line eventually--over years--suggested to me that his father, not he, was the one saying no. My three companions agreed that that was likely--and that was reassuring even after 20 years and I don't care.
The classmates who joined us eventually happened to be four of the several boys who participated, in twelfth grade, in a Spirit Week talent show, and their talent was a beauty pageant in pathetic drag with tennis ball boobs. Indicating just what sort of popularity contest the school was, they won, rather than the 10th-grader who did a traditional Cambodian dance that took actual talent; or Bruce, Erin, and Anne's rendition of "They Are Naked and They Do Dance," which was actually funny; or--someone else remembered this--Lynn accompanying herself on guitar singing the Eagles' "Desperado," which took both talent and bravery. But I chortled, "No, that wasn't Lynn who sang 'Desperado.' That was me, describing my attempt to get a date to prom!" and I cracked up. Everyone else laughed--thank goodness--with Shaye saying she loved how I laughed at my own jokes.
After breakfast, which lasted three hours, I went to the lake. Despite its being the Saturday of a holiday weekend, no one was there, perhaps because of the weather. The Forest Service has built a retaining wall to keep the bare little stretch of not-beach from eroding into the lake, which makes nudey-dipping much easier: you can grab your towel, and suit if need be, without leaving the water, though two inches of water doesn't disguise much. But no one was there! So I swam happily for a while.
I stopped at Kenny's market to add my voice to the throng inviting him, encountered a closed Phoebe since it was after 1:00 on a summer Saturday, walked along the boardwalk at the DEP (and no one rents kayaks at Ferry Landing that I saw), drove to the beach and wrote for a while, and finally bought a sandwich and brought it home to eat. I ate on the deck in the now-heavier rain because I find the house so oppressive even without other people in it. Besides, I like rain and trees and wind, which the house didn't provide from the outside.
The most frustrating aspect of my preparations late that afternoon was locating the iron. I remembered my mother recently ironing in what she now refers to as her sewing room, so I looked there first. This is the only reason I looked in closets, but not the only reason I noticed that boxes in many closets were labeled "Store in [whichever] closet next to [whichever other] box" but not labeled with, say, their contents. Whatever, it's not my house. Unless her wardrobe really requires no ironing such that the appliance is tucked away in one of the unhelpfully labeled but neatly arranged boxes, my mother's iron was not in the main living quarters--should I call the Kim who lives within a half mile?—and then I remembered laundry. A miracle worker did do some damn thing or other in the cellar which has rendered it nearly dry in the five years since, and that's a good thing even at the cost of the floor being a foot higher than previously. (Before that, the laundry machines were on a platform three feet up and you stood in the stairwell with the washer door opening nearly into the ceiling, often surrounded by two feet of water.) The improvement is not quite so good a thing, nor is the room's height quite sufficient, to justify the iron and the ironing board being set up for use there, with a towel on the cement floor to cushion the feet a bit. But a cement cellar is tough to torch, I grant, and the clothes are right there out of the dryer. At any rate I ironed my dress.
After that my luck was good, beautifying-wise. The one thing I hadn't had was a haircut, because I knew I'd wear it up anyway. A cut would only delay its getting long enough to put up easily, and I have missed that since June. But I got it arranged, back if not up, and not even in April's updo that was more pins than hair. The Egypt Game I put in a small braid at one side, rolled the two sides back and secured them with clips, and used a plain faux tortoiseshell barrette to make a flat ponytail, hiding the clips. Plus I'd got a manicure and, heaven forgive me, a pedicure. Yes, I wore makeup on my feet, a pink so pale it was barely other than nail color, but shiny. The eyelash curler didn't pinch my lid. The eyeliner went on neatly. The mascara didn't clump. It was decidedly weird. So off I went.
The other best current story (I really liked my "Desperado" line) happened Saturday evening. My ninth grade crush, I decided, had not signed my yearbook, and I wanted him to do so now. We swapped books and, pen in hand, I flipped his open to my picture, and there in my likes and dislikes I saw that he had underlined the initials JPS. I wish I could cock a single eyebrow--and Saturday night I discovered that one of my classmates can do that, though now I forget who, Laura?--and asked him why he underlined that bit.
"Jon-Paul," he replied. "He was always saying you had a crush on him and here you confessed. He underlined it."
"Tom, that's my dog."
He and I and people overhearing laughed, and we discussed how I was going to have to go break Jon-Paul's heart. So I found Jon-Paul elsewhere in the room and showed him the initials and told him I'd have to douse the torch he'd long been carrying, because that was my dog. So my 20-years-on signature in Tom's book spells out Jessiman Pachaug Shadow, so there will not be further confusion.
But when the time came for a group shot, and I was among the last to join the group because I had been using the mic to herd everyone toward the bar, I was therefore at the front, and got to sit right next to Jon-Paul. I cooed at him and my luck.
I didn't have a crush on Jon-Paul in high school, no. I did have a crush on Tom, when he was new, a short-lived one and possibly memorable only because he broke my little 14-year-old heart. I asked him if he remembered what he called me, and yes he did. Ha! And where the name came from, and he said it was a television show.
So I am not the only one with Poppin' Fresh Memory. But I think that I remember so much school stuff because I don't have a lot of more fun, more meaningful, off-campus personal interactions to remember instead.
It was a lovely time. I would have been glad of more people, and the two people I missed on Friday night didn't come to Saturday night. Plus there was a weird thing by which the manager of the restaurant was one of our classmates, I think trying to remain incognito, successfully until a classmate's spouse told the organizer who'd been arranging the event for months with this woman, who she was. I think she didn't appreciate being outed. Or perhaps she felt she'd been slighted by the organizer, who in my opinion was in no way obligated to know that Generic Name X was Generic Name Different LastName. Whatever.
Shaye told me that Saturday afternoon when they went shopping and dishing after breakfast, they were talking about me--about how cool I was, and had I been this cool in high school? Answer: not really. I am glad I spent my high school years alone. Less peer pressure. A proving ground: could I think for myself, and what thoughts would I come up with?
The bit of current peer pressure I enjoyed succumbing to concerned shoes. I searched Zappos.com for the first time. Red was out for certain, Scarf's best efforts notwithstanding, but I filtered the site for green sandals, slingback mule or slide, and found a fetching pair of celery-colored slides, tooled leather with a stacked kitten heel. The footbed was outlined in what looked like pinking, a last pretty detail. This pair of shoes was waiting for me at work when we returned from Aspen, and they fit comfortably out of the box. It was at this point I scheduled a pedicure.
Gretchen and her husband are both gorgeous. And they could dance! When it came time for the group picture, I stopped midway across the room realizing my plan to go to everyone individually was not efficient and asked the deejay to use his mic. I started calling everyone by name, classmates and companions (a feat of name-remembering that apparently impressed people). I called him, who had been politely reluctant to join a class group picture, and a Kim corrected me. So I called him again, using the moniker by which he was better known: "Hot guy who can dance, get in the picture."
A Kim and I could remember the third girl who shared a room on the eighth grade trip to D.C. but not the fourth. I'll have to look through the 1982 yearbook. She and I danced swing together, while another Kim and I did salsa. I led the swing and followed for salsa. Later: it was yet another Kim (a tenth of the girls in the class were named Kim), who actually graduated with us, unlike the girl we could remember, who did not.
The only other couple who danced, until right at the end, was Laura and her husband. They maybe weren't hot but they were enjoyable to watch, actually knowing some steps, and he was my favorite non-classmate spouse. Her smile is the same and her manner, and my particular anticipation to see her again paid off.
The deejay asked what we wanted the last song to be, and after rapid discussion we asked for "Tainted Love." The entire evening had been '80s music, of course, but we hadn't had Soft Cell yet. Jodi and I blared at each other "and that's not nearly all" like we'd been dancing together all along and not last (and first) together at the AFS Cruise to Nowhere after twelfth grade.
Confusingly, two songs followed the announced last song. I don't remember the penultimate but the deejay, announcing that his time was now thoroughly up, said he'd chosen a special last song, "from 1987!" to groans that evidently did not change his mind. He played that hideous and anachronistic and absolutely dreadful song from the hideous and dreadful movie "Dirty Dancing." Mass exodus from the dance floor.
I joined Ken, a Kim, and Connie's conversation, and Kim admired my shoes (which are, in fact, super). Connie said she could never wear shoes without backs, and Ken admired how I could dance in them too. I said something or other about how I was never a girl about shoes until I discovered mules and slides, and I'm still not much of a girl. Kim said in a tone that nearly pat me on the head, "Thirty-eight years old and finally a girl. All grown up." I grinned. Ken said my ungirlishness seemed like me, that I was always kind of a bohème. Now, this is interesting, because however true that statement is, and I like to think very, I cannot think that I could express it before the end of eighth grade, when our acquaintance stalled. But his correct impression of me goes along with his immediately recognizing me that afternoon. He also asked what sports I do, because I looked like I do something. Possibly he said this after seeing the racerback tanline on my back, but his saying that was an opening to mention the triathlon. He also said something about the success of my anti-aging campaign. Wasn't he delightful?
When I walked into the market Saturday afternoon, his aunt was at the register as ever and I asked her if Kenny was in--the Ken my age, 38. He was. I walked to the deli counter and in a few moments he emerged. "Hi Kenny," I said, and he, not to be outcooled, immediately returned, "Hey Lisa." Just like Zaphod and Ford (did I just uncool myself?) Now, granted, he probably had heard from Amy and maybe others that I was due in town, but still. So there was that. Also Saturday night, Chris told me that when I walked into the bar the previous evening he would never have known me. I leaned to kiss his cheek. "I'm serious!" he protested. "So was the kiss!" I hadn't suck out his tongue by the root, for heaven's sake, but affectionately kissed his cheek. Whatever.
Both Ken's immediate recognition and Chris's non-recognition made me tremendously happy. I've known Kenny since infancy, and though I forget whether he went to Mrs. McGovren's nursery school, we were together certainly from kindergarten through eighth grade. Chris was either new or new to me when the elementary schools combined in middle school. I like that Kenny recognized me from when I was a cute little kid and that Chris didn't recognize me from my awkward teens. Besides, that weekend I was prepared to be tremendously happy with everyone.
A Kim said something flirtatious or something to Ken and I continued the flirt when she'd turned away, asking why he hadn't responded. He said he made a living reading body language and unspoken cues and would not have, and I understood he meant Bruce's reaction to Kim's remark. I mention this only because it has bearing on something otherwise unrelated that followed:
Another reason I could have spent a few more hours in Ken's company was another form of validation. I mentioned staying at my mother's house, and how with her away it was easier. He nodded, "I can see that," whereupon I apologized, because no one wants to spend an evening listening to me complain about my mother. "No, it wasn't that," he assured. It's just that my mother comes into the store occasionally and he tries to engage her and joke with her, as he does with most people usually successfully, and he has never been able to connect with her. "So I figure she might have been hard for someone like you to grow up with. I can imagine the fun quotient just wasn't there."
Good lord. Of course none of my friends can meet my mother without prejudice, because even if I don't bitch about her incessantly anymore I do still stress about her plenty. So for someone who knew me from infancy, who perceived a few other true things about me from an hour of company after 24 years of no communication (aside from the botched invitation, which I successfully resisted mentioning), and who has had his own independent experience of my mother even after her second husband ameliorated her somewhat, to observe that simple truth, was tremendously gratifying. It's not all in my head! Just like that, he jettisoned a piece of emotional baggage. Sweet man.
This later conversation happened at the bar we retreated to when the restaurant kicked us out between 11 and 11:30, and there we stayed until closing at 2. As we left the bar, I crowed that I was turning over a new leaf: closing two bars in two days! Bruce wondered if that was a good leaf to be turning, and a Kim asked if I was okay to drive. I cracked up: "I've had nothing but club soda all night!" and she cracked up, because she was not okay to drive (but Bruce was).
Thus Saturday went well too.
Sunday morning I managed to get to the coffee shop for coffee, even though Kim and I wondered why we weren't going to Kenny's for coffee. I stumbled in, and Shaye observed that I looked like I had just rolled out of bed. Her teasing comment was absolutely fine, both because in fact I had and because she had observed equally accurately the evening before that I looked fantastic.
I bought coffee and a doughnut for $2.12. Two dollars and twelve cents, people! Small towns, sheesh.
Also I got to meet some offspring. RDC and I have opposite impressions of Denver, him that it's blonder than Connecticut and me that it's not. He grew up in a town predominately Italian and Jewish, and I grew up in Old Lyme, and this morning I met five blindingly blond children. Iseult of the White Eyebrows blonde. Whew.
Afterward I called my math teacher to see if I could invite myself over. I could and I did. RCS and Ms. RCS, whom I struggle to call by their first names as I have been further invited to do, and I had a lovely visit. I was proud to find myself (and RDC and Blake, in a recent Yule card) on their fridge.
And that was the end of the reunion and Old Lymeing, and presto, the rain had cleared into perfect blue. I returned to the lake and had a proper swim (Saturday I'd forgotten my goggles) before driving up to visit RPR and our little girl. SFR tells fascinating stories, compellingly listenable-to-able, wholly nonsensical, impossible to follow, and charming. We sat by the outdoor firepit and talked, and MPR did all baby-wrangling and cooking so RPR and I could talk for five hours. And we did.
A long talk at night made up for leaving early in the morning so I could spend a full Monday with my sister.
We did some yardwork and I performed some camel duties by carrying bags of mulch thither and yon. I think I should give her a wheelbarrow. Her various gardens look great, all full of flowers, even cuttable ones. We shopped so I could be the one to tote the 50-pound sack of birdseed (she still doesn't like birds but the feeder is for Kitty's amusement, of course).
In the dingy, scary, throwback store (Ocean State Job Lot, not that we were in Rhode Island), she pointed out a thing I haven't seen for nigh on 30 years but that nonetheless immediately made my entire skin tense. I might even have turned my head away as I closed my eyes to scurry past, and I know I didn't go back later and look at the product more carefully. My sister told me it took tremendous ovaries to invite Ken to prom after not seeing him for three years, and maybe it did, which means I was braver at 16 than I am at 38. What she pointed out was a basket of sticks of cocoa butter.
The summer before third grade, I jumped into a pool backward off its deck, but not far enough backward, and I slammed my chin into the edge with a noise my father remembers sounding like a rifle shot. I got three stitches that day, and to keep the laceration supple and facilitate healing, I was given--is this how backward 1976 was?--a stick of cocoa butter. Not a lotion, not an oil, but a solid less spreadable than butter, Play-Doh, or putty. To apply, by rubbing, onto a wound that had taken stitches to close. I had nightmares for months about an ogre who would turn me upside down and apply salt and pepper to the site and eat the contents of my skull from chin to crown.
Anyhow, that's how backward this store was, that it still stocked that. But I bought from it a nail buffer, because I admit with shame that I like how the manicure looks.
We had lunch at Norwich Marina, right against the water, and that was pretty. Norwich does have potential, having been poor long enough that not much was built in the soulless modern style. It has great fin-de-siècle brick commercial buildings, and Colonial, Federal, Victorian, and Craftsman houses, and not a few that look like the Four-Story Mistake.
At lunch CLH told me about a movie she'd recently seen called "In Her Shoes," a chick flick for sisters, and when we got home it was on so we watched it and got all teary together. That's so fun. In the evening there were brownies and ice cream for dinner, and she slept on the couch and I on the floor (with Benedict Kitty further deserving her name by sleeping with me instead of with her mother) until an alarm rang at 3:30.
Thus ended a lovely little getaway vacation, with a 6 a.m. flight.
I got to work shortly after noon by airport bus most of the way and taxi the last little bit, found almost everyone left for the meeting, and just the one task I'd come in to do yet to be done. I was done by 2 and ÜberBoss, who agrees that sleeping on planes doesn't really count, let me go. I have the best bosses.
Some of RDC's colleagues were in town today. I missed the one visiting family in town who came over for lunch (though RDC relayed to me her admiration of house and bird) but not the two for dinner. One I hadn't met before but the other is a long-standing favorite. I got caught in the rain on the way home from work, and after greetings called through the front door and then another through the side window--"I'll wait to hug you until you're dry"--he went back on that good plan and squeezed me as I passed through the kitchen.
I dressed more up for dinner than the weather or occasion called for, but I wanted RDC to see me all gussied up as I was last Saturday night. This huggingest colleague, always ready with a compliment, also appreciated it.
I like other huggers and am so glad RDC understands the difference between affection and flirting. Kenny had said that, if he was counting, the goodbye hug might have been the fourth one I'd adminstered to him that evening. I don't think he minded. I hope he didn't mind. Anyway, we four had a lovely dinner and conversation at Parallel 17. When Chat asked about my bike commute, he mentioned he was trying to sell his motorcycle because he was weary of attending funerals; and I was able to produce some statistics gleaned while proofreading the magazine about fatality rates and helmet use. I felt like Shelley in The Luckiest Girl when she realized she actually was using the biology she'd struggled to learn (for cooking, of course; the book's from the '50s).
When the colleagues dropped us off, I walked over to show the final ensemble to the What Not to Wear collective, and RDC came with me. I found Maven and Soccer at AEK's house--I hadn't seen AEK's invitation from earlier today for pizza and beer in the evening. AEK had seen the shoes but not the whole shebang, and the other two hadn't even seen the shoes. But they approved retroactively, so that was fun. They were watching "Princess Bride," and RDC asked after a bit, "Isn't this that movie you like?" I told him, just because it fit at the time, that he had six fingers on his right hand, and someone was looking for him.
I have to get more Mary Renault, stat. This was wonderful. The writing is absorbing, the love Bagoas bears for Alexander is beautiful to read, and an insider's perspective on Alexander's conquest of the known world is a joy to read.
London and Wolfman finally had their '80s party on Saturday. It was an absolute blast. Everyone's costume was great or at least funny.
RDC wore what he wore in the '80s--jeans (though current), a tie-dye t-shirt (from 1993), and his Levi jacket from 1985 ("Do you know where I bought this?" "Bob's Surplus?" Where else?) with the back panel painted black with a mushroom and Steal Your Face painted on that, and a bandana to cover his non-'80s hair. Thank goodness he donated his '80s tinted aviator glasses years ago and didn't grow the caterpillar.
In a last-minute shopping expedition with Soccer last night, I found a three-layer crinoline-and-lace skirt, à la "Like a Virgin," a black (of course) Ramones t-shirt, and--this was a great find--a pair of Converse High-tops, not in black or my own white but in preppy pale green lined with pale pink. I saw them first and since I had resolved not to be preppy or prep/New Wave ("Totally different head--totally"), I decided to do "casual punk" the way "casual black tie" means you can facetiously wear a flashing bow tie or white socks. I had to be, since the Ramones shirt was actually a "Rock and Roll High School" movie shirt and I doubt any self-respecting punk dressed like Madonna. Black tights that I cut off, because I thought they were footless but they weren't, and white socks. My high school class ring (which I didn't even think to consider for the reunion) and my earrings were my only actually '80s relics. The earrings were faux bronze Greek dramatic masks, smile on the right and frown on the left, that I have barely ever worn for fear of ripping my earlobes. I'm not sure that they scream '80s but they do date from 1985. I considered wearing the t-shirt from the 1987 Peter Gabriel concert at Meadowlands, but it wouldn't've worked: I still listen to So, and not just from nostalgia. Ideally, I would have been either Claire Standish or Alison Reynolds from "Breakfast Club," but it wasn't to be.
The hosts were Cyndi Lauper and Axl Rose, and also in attendance were Joel from "Risky Business" complete with candlestick microphone, Alex from "Flashdance," Maverick from "Top Gun" (and I pretended to be weirded out whenever Maverick and Joel stood next to each other), Indiana Jones (whom we made dance with us girls during "Whip It," because of course), a Robert Palmer girl, and a few Valley Girls and punks. Also, my ideal man in college--faded jeans rolled to a peg, black loafers, oversized thick white Oxford, and oversized houndstooth blazer. Him I called Flock of Seagulls, because he looked like the one on the couch in "Pulp Fiction."
The best punk was Maven, because of her makeup. I tried to put a lot of black shit around my eyes, like Alison Reynolds in "Breakfast Club" (speaking of black hightops), but I don't actually possess any such makeup. I knew I should have gone over to someone's house for dress-up. She had a plaid miniskirt and kick-ass boots and black tights with glowy skulls printed on them and a Kiss t-shirt. Kiss! on a punk! That killed me. Soccer wore a black velour pantsuit and a gold zebra print jacket she bought at a flea market on the way up to the cabin last year, and animal print shoes and belt, with a sideways ponytail. I think she's the one who left three lines of blow on a mirror on the back of the toilet.
London and Wolfman had found a gizmo at Target for twenty bucks that had Pac-Man and some other games on it, and they had a poster for blacklighting (is that '70s? did that carry over?) and Rubik's Cubes and an exceedingly fine playlist.
When Maven and I started slow-dancing to "Sister Christian"--which last weekend's bad deejay didn't play but which was audible at the coffeeshop the next morning, yeesh--a male voice piped up that finally this party was getting good. We--the women, rarely a man except Wolfman--danced. After "Addicted to Love" for the Robert Palmer girl, Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" for Joel, and "Man-Eater" for Alex, the dance floor was open. Gary Numan's "Cars," of course, the sine qua non of '80s pop. Bow-wow-wow's "I Want Candy" and Toni Basil's "Hey Mickey" and Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl" and Tommy Tutone's 867-5309" and John Parr's "St. Elmo's Fire" (those two "artists" I had to look up) and Prince's "I Would Die 4 U" and the Pet Shop Boys' "It's a Sin" and the Romantics' "Talking in Your Sleep" (which I always thought was Hall & Oates) and Animotion's "Obsession" and A-ha's "Take On Me" and and Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" and Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" and Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and of course Simple Minds' "(Don't You) Forget about Me" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller," and Salt-n-Peppa's "Push It" and I am very proud of RDC for sticking it out and not running away screaming.
When Big Country's "In a Big Country" came on, I hadn't expected it--the playlist was so sugargum pop that the closest thing to alternative previous had been R.E.M's "It's the End of the World as We Know It"--so I shrieked with glee and proceeded to jump around happily for the next 3.5 minutes yelling lyrics. But then someone put on Van Halen's "Jump!" and I had to jump around again (though not "sing") and I decided I have lost significant aerobic capacity since the triathlon, which is the last time I ran.
But I had enough left in me for the Clash's "Train in Vain," though London Calling is 1979 and, unlike "Cars," does firmly belong to its decade.
After that someone started streaming from a Rhapsody account and there was harder stuff. Journey probably doesn't count as hard but it was for me in high school, and the Robert Palmer girl and I heartbrokenly emoted during "Separate Ways." After that came some Motley Crue and Def Leppard that I sat out, and Foreigner's "Jukebox Hero" which is one song I probably really hadn't heard in 20 years, and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine," which I did not sit out--because here was my chance to dance with Axl Rose!
Then it was 1:30 and we left, but that was the third time in eight days I had been out partying past my bedtime.
This kind of thing is best enjoyed only rarely, and I could not have such a party myself unless RDC and Blake both got lobotomies (both of them hate '80s music, with RDC saying even Eric Clapton wrote shit in the '80s and Blake just not finding a lot that is bob- or chatter-worthy), but if I did I would also have played Violet Femmes, both "Blister in the Sun" and "Kiss Off," and Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and Modern English's "Melt with You." I listen to Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel and the Waterboys not even from nostalgia, but those feware definitive '80s songs everyone should know and sing. Which reminds me, there wasn't any Echo or the Bunnymen either.
But it was a lot of fun.
Today I finally saw someone about my knees and learned to no one's surprise that inadequate muscle means running stresses my knees and hips. Also, I have very bendy joints (this I knew) which I mention because the physician actually used the phrase "loosey-goosey," which cracked me up.
But I probably would have swum after work instead of jog if I had remembered my swimsuit. Instead I had sneakers. Goal: a 10K, so more than 6.24 miles at a time, with more incline than I have used previously. Frankly, the idea of running for more than an hour at a time sounds like the worst bore in the world, so I am looking at >10 mph for the whole 60 minutes. Shyeah.
I liked American Pastoral fine. I liked The Human Stain quite a bit. I plan to like The Plot Against America next month.
I didn't like this. The first third was okay and the rest wasn't.
An excellent recovery book to cleanse my mind after Portnoy's Complaint, which I had had from the library for three months and umpteen renewals.
I've been thinking of words I associate with my mother. Umpteen is one. What is that from? Also, "jot" instead of "write" and "yea" as a modifier ("about yea high").
From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
And "iddy" served the same for "dot."
"Jot" is from "iota" and "yea" is an Americanism of only a few decades' standing. She's also fond of "a little dab'll do ya," which I thought for many years was her own thing, but it turns out Brylcreem's slogan is just a good fit for her frugality. Oh! My sister likes Anne Taintor and must have given our mother a magnet I saw last week on the latter's fridge: "Frugal is such an ugly word." She kept it! keeps it out in the open! Is this the germ of a glint of a possibility of her having a sense of humor about herself?
/tangent
This was a great quick read. I got over the thing on the first page and zipped right along. The Speed of Dark unsurprisingly lost more ground in comparison, because for all that book's protagonist Lou's work being pattern recognition, Mark Haddon actually showed Christopher's ability in maths and pattern recognition. And when Christopher said he wanted to be an astronaut, I recoiled, not wanting him to have anything in common with Lou, but in fact I liked Moon's character if not her book overall.
I was pleased that I immediately understood the Monty Hall problem but disappointed that I approved Siobhan's suggestion that the geometry proof be in an appendix and that I kind of glazed right over it.
Mm, maybe because a movie is only two hours of my life and a 300-page book takes longer, but I thought the movie did a much better job with the author's concept than the author (Jennifer Weiner) did. Also I could write the same sort of thing about UConn that she did about Princeton, and it would read the same: like someone whose college reminiscences don't make for fine literature.
An early Hallowe'en party last night. I stole an idea from last weekend's '80s party: I was a Robert Palmer chick, since I had the dress, stockings, and heels; and because it was a Hallowe'en party, I was a dead one. A Robert Palmer chick already has the deathly pallor, so in addition to the thick red lipstick and nailpolish I added three drops of blood down my chin. I bought press-ons because my actual nails are not stupidly long and I painted them and walked away: this is how I am applying nailpolish from now on, when my nails are off my fingers. Also I wore false eyelashes. That's three nights of makeup in three weeks, though costume makeup isn't so bad.
RDC wavered about whether he was going to go such that by Saturday noon he didn't have a lot of costume options. I reminded him of the Cat-in-the-Hat hat we bought at a Dead show circa 1993. He considered this, and decided to add tire tracks so he could be Roadkill Cat-in-the-Hat. I drew whiskers on his face and blackened the tip of his nose, and pinned to his black turtleneck and pants the red velvet bow-tie and black velvet tail I made for the hat's first year.
This morning I went to Stick's second birthday party, at the gorilla playground in the park. We had bagels and fruit salad and breakfast burritos and cake and dug with toy trucks in the wood-chip surface of the playground. I think only the adults swung on the swings, though. Today is beautiful, all blue and green with autumnal touches of yellow. A perfect day for a party in the park.
I went to two parties this weekend, only half the number I was invited to. I don't even recognize myself, and not just because of make-up. It's a good change.
A satisfying library excursion. Kal needed to pick up some books she'd reserved and I went along for the walk. I borrowed a few books I knew about--two Philip Roths, Operation Shylock and The Plot Against America for next month's bookclub; Julian Barnes's Arthur and George; Douglas Coupland's Eleanor Rigby but not J-Pod--and one whose title suddenly surfaced in my head after not even being on my lifelist, Michael Frayn's Headlong, and two I hadn't heard of, Peter Ackroyd's The Clerkenwell Tales (I'll read anything by him and if it's faux Chaucer, all the better) and Margaret George's Helen of Troy (I loved the last's Autobiography of Henry VIII and another Tudor gossip novel about Mary, Queen of Scots). Helen of Troy fits in well with my Iliad guilt and Mary Renault love.
All these great books have a return date, though, so despite the Mary Renault love, I must interrupt paperback The Friendly Young Ladies, which I began yesterday. In case I forget later, it reminds me I Capture the Castle for its dank, frigid setting, and Death of the Heart, for foiled love in late adolescence.
And tonight I plan to go to the Tattered Cover to hear an old DU pal read from a newly published book of poetry, and while there I almost certainly will pick up Lemony Snicket's Beatrice Letters, and so we see that library books do not always precede owned books in the bedside stack.
I got my wrist fixed a few weeks ago. Almost seven years ago, when I bought a new cuff whose plain design meant that no silver knot would bite RDC in his sleep, I decided to retire the 1987 bangle before it snapped. Having been on my wrist for a dozen years, it was badly beaten up, bent, hammered, and creased; since the Santa Fe trip it has lived in honorable retirment in my jewelry box. The cuff I bought on that trip was seven years in the finding: I'd been wearing the previous one since 1991 but as of 1992, RDC would occasionally complain of it. I didn't think a new bangle would be another seven years in the finding, but it was.
Bangles have been either delicate (to survive on me, jewelry must be substantial, and especially not hollow) or fussy (for every day I prefer perfect simplicity) or financially unfeasible or, most commonly, too small to fit over my broad right hand. The search, continual and haphazard, was fruitless.
The Monday we returned from Aspen I attended a friendly little talk on Jane Eyre at the downtown library. I left the house early, intending to look at some cows and bring a pair of earrings to Gusterman's before.
I bought these earrings in March from one of the shoppees on Old South Gaylord. Amethysts and some sort of blue stone and a pearl and I liked them very much, as did others. Some friends from the nabe complimented them and HEBD admired them when I was home in April. I should have given them to her then, I thought at the time, but didn't; so I thought it appropriate punishment just a few days later when the post snapped off the back of one. If I hadn't been selfish, it wouldn't've snapped.
I haven't been to a silversmith since. I asked one in Aspen about re-affixing a post to an earring and he said it was very tricky and expensive. Mostly I think the job would be beneath him. I wondered if some of the plumbing solder we have would do the trick, or be too blobby or turn my ear green or not set the post perpendicularly enough. And this evening when I went downtown, did I remember the earrings? I did not. But I asked a smith at Gusterman's and he said it was a minor operation and no problem. Now I just have to get downtown again.
The success of the evening wasn't having the earring fixed but finding a bangle. Solid, substantial, simply designed (a perfect circle, no more no less) stering silver, 5 mm wide, flat inside and curved outside, and best of all, its inner diameter is just over 2.75" and therefore fits.
The Jane Eyre chat was enjoyable if not erudite, and to get to its fifth-floor classroom I had to pass through a display of editorial cartoons, and I found a bangle and got my wrist fixed--it makes the right noise now after seven years of silence. It was a lovely evening.
I like to think that the occasional clink of the two bracelets is not annoying to those around me. I hope. I myself liked the full cacophony of my beloved second-grade teacher's arm, braceleted from wrist to elbow, but then I was seven at the time and adored her (and continued to adore her even when I couldn't continue to be seven).
I saw in the Tattered Cover's announcements recently that an old acquaintance of mine from DU, since moved to Ohio, would have a reading, so last night I went. Her short stories have touches of the same wit that makes her such a delight in person, and I saw some DU folk and had a delicious if short gossip afterward with my first DU acquaintance, and bought the former's book and Lemony Snicket's Beatrice Letters, and walked home with the woman from the nabe who works there. (I think I'll call her Michaela.)
When I got home I'm glad Blake was in a prancing, exploring mood, because the Snicket was not a lying-on-the-couch type of read. If the book gives any worthwhile clues at all to the mythos of the Unfortunate Events, I wasn't able to see past the marketing ploy I'd succumbed to to make sense of them. Also I didn't have an internet handy to check for anagrams. My laptop was closer than the Scrabble game downstairs, and all I was thinking was whatsisname from Rosemary's Baby whose last words were "The name is an anagram" and Rosemary Scrabbling out which name and what it meant.
Edited to add that Kal said she and Neal were in the TC last night looking for books for their honeymoon (British Columbia! I must connect them with Chat) and heard a laugh and looked for me. Obviously to no avail, but I'm glad to know my laugh is still distinctive. Also Kal knew I was going to be there. Also I should say that when she and I were in the library yesterday, I did not laugh or speak loudly.
Also when she came and told me that today, I realized anew that she's getting married! and I am her closest friend in Denver! so I get to throw her a shower! After that I might have got distracted from plans for Hecate Strait and a picnic reception in the meadow until she talked me down, pointing out that September a little early to fuss about a May shower. It's not too early to fuss about a July wedding, though, and that's another thing I get to do: go bridal dress shopping. Wheee!
I only happened across it as I began browsing the fiction section. I've liked Peter Ackroyd before and I'm a sucker for many faux Chaucerian things. What I liked most about it was the tiny glimpses of 1399 London, whether they still exist or are currently in a suburb. I'm not sure I understood the line, if there was one, between fact and fiction.
This was one of the most enjoyable books I've read for a while. Longer than Curious Dog, meatier than Clerkenwell Tales, quicker than Persian Boy, not guiltily lowbrow like Queen's Fool or inexplicably highbrow like Portnoy's Complaint. Art history and iconography reminiscent of The Cornish Trilogy and Possession set in a lighthearted English country farce. I think a DU friend recommended this Michael Frayn years ago, and hey! it has legs on the cover but they're not female ones in stiletto pumps.
Also I began and discarded after just a few pages Douglas Coupland's Eleanor Rigby. I still mean to read J-Pod but this morning I was not in the mood for a miserable female 30something protagonist browbeaten by her mother. So I just stopped. That's big for me. I started Arther and George. I liked The Final Solution with very little Sherlock Holmes under my belt but even primed by Curious Incident I am not sure it will grab me. But it feels worth more pages of effort than the Coupland did.