24 February 1999: Space-Time-Squirrel Continuum

Five more weeks to Daylight Savings Time. It will be almost welcome, so I can enjoy the sunrise again. It's retreating toward 6:30 and I don't go out to appreciate it. And the sun is well up before I do go out to catch the bus.

Last night at the end of step we did sit-ups--up, center, left, center, down, center, right, describing a Y. Not the way I usually write Y--I cannot print casually but lapse into cursive--but a sans-serif one with equilateral legs. So the image that popped into my head was that of the time-traveling device in "Back to the Future" and what was its name, what was its name? I was obsessed. I've seen that movie dozens of times what was its name? My mind paralized, my thoughts focused obsessively on this one elusive name. I couldn't remember and I was thinking of tri-something and getting nowhere.

Until last night, I had never heard the song "You're So Vain (I Bet You Think This Song Is about You)." Or I'm pretty sure I hadn't. I knew the title; it amused me. But I hadn't heard the song, not to remember. Last night during step, or what I thought going in would be step, lyrics suddenly clarified themselves and gelled in my head, and I thought "Oh, so this is that song." And its title line stayed in my head all day today, which is more than I wanted it to do.

At the time, though, the Talking Head thought "This is not step! This is not my beautiful wife!" colored everything else I was aware of, as did pain. The woman whom I would call the regular Tuesday person if she'd taught more than two (or three?) classes now needs surgery, so the woman from the first Tuesday ever is subbing. Still with the too-dark lipstick--which I have to notice in addition to being in amazing shape, and devoted to keeping our hips and thighs in trim. Oof. She did a lot of high-low aerobic work with very little step, and I don't know if I couldn't keep up because her routine was new to me, or because I'm not used to sans-step aerobics, or because she didn't always cue.

She included a lot of exercises for skiing, mountain climbing, and boxing in her routine: Colorado, Colorado, and Tae Bo. Her motivational calls: "Plant those poles! Push off the downhill ski!" etc. Also, during a pause to balance during a lunging exercise: "Pick a point and focus on it--any point besides the audience in the window." Three or four kids stood at the window, the littler ones imitating us, the older ones imitating and laughing at us, in the parking lot outside. Hello!

Anyway, she pushed more strength than stamina, which I need but didn't expect. I drank gallons last night to prevent muscle hang-over.

Leaving, I saw Venus and Jupiter within a half-inch of each other. At least I wasn't so obsessed that I couldn't stop to gaze and wonder at them, or once home to forget to drag RDC out to look at them. I don't remember how much bigger Jupiter is than Earth and Venus, which are about the same circumference, but Venus still looked bigger, because it's closer and brighter, than Jupiter. I miss rural stars. RDC reminds me that if we camp, I can use the star chart he gave me last year. Yeah, if I could bring myself to leave the nest after dark and cold have descended.

Even a conjunction of the planets could not dissuade me from my appointed obsession, however, and I called HAO, who wasn't home and whose roommate also didn't know but gave me HAO's new mobile number. I called HAO away, but she also didn't know, and RDC was making unhelpful suggestions about the Delorean engine that had nothing to do with anything. As we talked and tried to remember, I kept half an eye on the television. Just because, you know, HAO's boring. (Hi Hao!) My half of the conversation lapsed. I was transfixed. "Hold on, Haitch, there's a squirrel on television." Have I mentioned I'm a sucker for an animal commercial?

A squirrel scampered through a window and stole a Post-it from a desk, the pop-up kind of Post-it so that lazy humans or squirrels without opposable thumbs can easily pick up just one note. It scampered outside again, a real squirrel, a trained real squirrel. And back for another note, and outside again, and back for another note. I watched. Finally, we see why it needed the Post-Its. Its tree-hole, the entire inside of the hollow tree, is stickered with Post-Its reading "under the rock," "beside the tree," "along sidewalk."

I'm a sucker for an animal commercial. I admit it proudly. I screamed with laughter. "Finally," the squirrel must have thought, "a way to remember where my several caches are."

The laughter must have loosened a nut--npi--in my head. The elusive name appeared in my head the same way it did in Doc's, but I didn't crack my head on the toilet the way he did. "FLUX CAPACITOR!" I yelled. "It's the flux capacitor!" Ahhh. The relief was magnificent.