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 Coming home
from our jaunt on Saturday, I hopped out for the mail. Whoopee, a key
in the mailbox for one of the big boxes, meaning a present.
The package was from my mother
and therefore was ripped and crumpled because she still ships parcels
in flimsy gift boxes and wraps them with grocery bags (paper ones, at
least, not plastic) and masking tape. It was not open, anyway, as was
a box she sent one Christmas, which was somehow my fault. Within the brown
paper wrapping was a Bowerbird box, and seeing this, I thought maybe
I should wait till Tuesday to open it. (Speaking of Till Tuesday, I heard
that song for the first time in years the other day.) But I didn't wait,
even though she couldn't've gotten anything too hideous there. Inside
the Bowerbird box, nestled among layers of paper towel, lay three small
packages in wrapping paper, one with a bow and therefore not wrapped by her. This
cracked me up again: she did buy something boxed and wrapped at
the Bowerbird and then asked for a second box, bigger than the gift needed,
to ship it in. A free box. I really am unforgiving. The two little gifts
were candles, a 3 and a 1, which amused me. I'll put those on my cake.
The Bowerbird-wrapped littler box held, in a nest of recycled packing
confetti, a necklace, silver with a string of amethysts at the front.
It's nearly a choker but not so near that I can't wear it in my bull-necked
claustrophobia. Lo and behold, I like a present my mother gave me! I was
in no small shock. I put it on, if only to call her in. Blake
is a danger to necklaces and most other jewelry, and any earring-wearing
ear.
The Bowerbird is
a shop in Old Lyme begun by a babysitting victims' mother who saw, upon moving here after an academic stint in Australia, that
there were no interesting gift shops in Old Lyme. Antique stores, yes;
little interesting gift shop, no. The bowerbird is a critter from Oz
that I think I did a report on in elementary school--when she opened the
store, when I was in college, I recognized why she named it thus:
the male weaves grasses together into a nave of a bower and then decorates
it to attract a mate. They decorate their bowers with whatever they can
find and are not above stealing pretty bits from whomever to do so. They
particularly like blue things. So the Bowerbird is a shop full of Impulsive
Necessities and while everything it sells is not blue, its logo is.
The Till Tuesday
song is, of course, "Voices Carry." It is a song I associate with my high
school crush, but I like it still anyway.
Also I got
a card from my father with a
present that shall probably resolve itself into music. Maybe books. Maybe
a donation to the Friends of the Library. A boyfriend's family once gave
a donation to Amnesty International in my name, which was a great present.
I tried to make
myself brownies yesterday but I didn't take the pizza stone out of the
oven. So they didn't bake evenly and are brownie goo, which I personally
like but which is a salmonella danger to anyone else. RDC will bring home
a couple of slices of cake from Alfalfa's tomorrow night, big enough to
prop the numeral candles in.
And the reason
no one was home yesterday to remind me to take the pizza stone
out was that RDC was out shopping. He told me on Friday that he'd figured
out what to get me and on Sunday he brought it home. Wrapped, said he,
by himself (we both knew he was lying). I was sitting at the Mac when
he came home with a big box. A wrapped big box, which meant that Blake,
on my shoulder, nearly had a fit. I just don't understand why he discriminates
wrapping paper from any other kind of pattern. He likes tie dye and batik
patterns a lot, and I don't recall his freaking out at a tree perimeterful
of gifts last December, but regular wrapping paper really disturbs him.
I tried some aversion therapy, since he'd become a footboy, sitting in
a desk chair with my feet next to the box. I don't think it worked.
RDC came home at 2:00. Later in the afternoon we went for a walk, during which he tantalized me about the box's possible contents. By the time "60 Minutes" came on I was salivating--and remember that "60 Minutes" starts at 6:00 here, not 7:00. But I haven't opened it yet. I am being Good. He denies it is either a DVD player or a CD burner, asserting it is a gift for me rather than for us and also one we can afford.
So I wait.
Today I brought
a stack of books back to the library, two-thirds of them read. I figure
even if I don't read them all, I'm increasing the library's circulation
which has got to be good for it, as well as postponing the individual
books' discard dates. From the returns desk I passed through the children's
book to the adults' room, tried one frozen catalog terminal and then another
before turning to the help desk. As I turned, a man stepped in front of
me: "What time is it?" Did I wear a watch? No. I pointed out the clock
on the wall and told him "12:25" before I reached the desk. I browsed
through the stacks, found some Penelope Fitzgerald and "The Lion in Winter,"
checked out my books and movie, and on my way out looked through a rack
of pamphlets listing different awards and things. Out of the corner of
my eye I saw the same man approaching. "Thou shalt be polite until proven
otherwise," I reminded myself, and he held out a Dean Koontz book to me
(a bad sign), then asked how he could get a new library card. Oh (you
vain so-and-so). I moved into the middle of the atrium, and told him,
pointing, that I didn't work there but that desk over there could help
him.
"You don't work here?" he asked. "I thought you worked here."
"No," I smiled, leaving, not adding "I wish." I don't work there. That's
why I didn't wear a name tag, why I carried a wallet and DayRunner, and
why I had sunglasses on the top of my head. I would have been insulted
if a Dean Koontz reader had given me a line, but that the same Dean Koontz
reading person thought I worked at the library I find flattering. Of course, it all
could have been a more imaginative line than I usually get, in which case
he gets a little more credit.
One of RDC's
high school friends just had a second son (with the help of his wife).
She sent out email announcing it, and I bought a card, then RDC couldn't
find their new address, and I emailed them asking for the address, and
the wife replied. It is very strange that the wife and I with very little
connection to one another besides attendance at one another's wedding
carry on most of the correspondence.
She also asked if any bambinos--her words--were in our future. At least
she didn't say "yet." I wonder if she recalls the other conversation
we had on that subject. We were crashing with them in DC to go to a Dead
show. During the weekend she learned I don't want to have kids, which
was an alien concept to her (as it is to many). In one of the museums
off the Mall I bought a paper model of Caernarvon Castle (a redundant
name, n'est-ce pas?) to cut up and assemble and she thought I bought it
for a child. No, I bought it for me, 'cause I like castles, and I was
all excited about it. Seeing my enthusiasm for my plaything, she told
me I sounded like I'd make a great mother.
This seems to be a lot of people's opinion but it's a project I wouldn't
undertake unless assured that the one person who mattered shared that
opinion. I cannot ask my hypothetical child about it though.
But anyway I wonder if she asks that because we've been married nearly
four years and expected to (by others) or if she remembers and wonders
if I've changed my mind. I told her none for us but we enjoy everyone
else's.
Hmm. I was
talking with my bus buddy Jeff about "The Phantom Menace" today,
or talking around it, since he saw it the 20th and I won't see it until
the 27th, and we talked about how your fellow audience can really affect
the movie-watching experience. He hasn't seen "Rocky Horror Picture
Show" but I told him about "Let there be lips!" and how
the lips' arrival is applauded and asked if everyone applauded just seeing
the Lucasfilm logo at the beginning, let alone the background scrolling.
Yes, everyone did. Anyway, now I have all RHPS songs in my head, and Frank-n-Furter
seeing us tremble with antici...pation. The anticipation for lips, my
anticipation for "The Phantom Menace" and my birthday, the group
name's implied anticipation for Tuesday, and the peanut gallery's anticipation
of my procreation make today's title particularly appropos.
And my anticipation of four days from now being able to read people's
journals without fear.
Ack! Now I'm anxiously anticipating Carly Simon's (?) departure
from my head, taking that stupid song with her!
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