Sometimes I Drool

We've been best friends since high school:
       Melany, Kristin, Cathy, and Sarah.

It was--oh, probably junior year. We were at the mall. My friends followed me into a jewelry store to get my mother's old ring sized on my finger. I perched on a stool while the nice lady behind the counter helped me. My friends watched, making fun of my stubby digits. Business complete, I thanked the nice lady and we walked out of the store, whereupon they all three turned on me at once and yelled,

OH MY GOD, KRISTIN!!!!!
I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT!!!!

I have never felt so absolutely clueless.

WHAT??? WHAT DID I DO???

YOU DROOLED IN FRONT OF THAT NICE LADY IN THE STORE!!!!

I DID NOT!!!!

YES YOU DID!!!! DIDN'T YOU SEE THE WAY SHE LOOKED AT YOU FUNNY???

SHE DID NOT!!!!

YES SHE DID!!!! WHEN YOU WERE SITTING THERE TALKING TO HER, A STRING OF DROOL CAME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH, HUNG THERE OFF YOUR LIP FOR A SECOND, THEN FELL!!!

IT DID NOT!!!!

YES IT DID!!! SEE????

And they pointed down at the left leg of my GAP shorts, and there on the lavender denim was a pea-sized dark dab of drool.

I'm pretty sure if you look up "mortification" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of my face at that moment.

goat cheese dumpling

When our friend Cathy had her first baby, Melany, Sarah, and I went to Chicago to offer our love and support.

One night, in a show of most tender friendship, the three of us left Cathy alone with her colicky newborn while we went out barhopping.

We wanted something cool, jazzy... someplace with martinis. We found a good one. Wish I could remember the name.

We sat down at the smooth black granite bar and ordered very dirty martinis. It was a little early for dinner. We looked at the menu and picked out some appetizers. Goat cheese dumpling? Let's try it.

The first bite left us all swooning.

The second bite only got better.

It was all I could do to take my time eating, to be fair and leave some for the others.

The dish was emptying faster than I liked.

I waited my turn as Sarah dug in with her fork, and I watched gluttonously as she raised all that goat-cheese-y deliciousness to her mouth... but just as she began to close her lips around that perfect taste of heaven, a fair-sized chunk separated itself from the mass and fell off, down... down... down... splat onto the bar.

There was no conscious thought or movement on my part.

As instinctively as a child pulls her hand away from a hot stove, I reached over by Sarah's elbow, wiped the mushy goo off the counter with my fingers, then popped it into my mouth.

I was mid-gulp when I noticed the gape-mouthed stares of my friends.

You did NOT just do that.

Oh, yes.

Yes, I did.

Raising Arizona

So many things to love about that movie. It's on TV right now. I almost never turn the TV on, but if someone else does, I don't necessarily bother turning it off.

Son, you got a panty on your head.

the nice thing about a pebble beach

Albi, France
May 15, 2005

The nice thing about lying in the sun on a beach of pebbles while you write in your journal is you can conform the pebbles to the shape of your elbow and hip while resting on your side, and then you can burrow out hollows for your boobs when you roll over on your stomach.

Shopgirl

Ew! Ew! Ew!

I adore Steve Martin, but in this case, I most definitely do NOT dig the old dude fondling the 24-year-old.

NO, Steve, NO!! Pick someone your own age!!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!

I actually had to look away during the kissing scenes.

Overly judgmental? Perhaps.

I'm sure there is True Love to be found between people of such vast age differences. More power to 'em. But for me it's kinda like some people's distaste for Brussels sprouts: my aversion just can't be helped.

I was told the movie was "surprisingly good."

I'd already expected it to be good... but not surprisingly.

As it turns out, the movie was good... but not surprisingly.

elegy for my first car

(written ca. 1990)

Left - Right - Left

They taught us in driver's ed

Look three times before you pull out

Left - Right - Left



We were finally alone, just me and Old Blue

She'd come into the family a mere month before my birth

A two-door Cutlass - a good car, they said

But after sixteen years of supporting me

A babe in a carseat

A toddler, peering out the windows

At 7, straining against the oppressive seatbelt

At 10, waging war against my brother

At 14, wistfully testing out the driver's seat...

Old Blue had seen better days



She had aged gradually

We could never pinpoint a date

When she first showed signs of wear

But there she was -

Scratched paint

Peeling roof

Oil-soaked floors

Torn seats

Cracked dashboard

Useless radio

Ignition that needed no key



All mine

All that glorious freedom

All taken for granted



Sixteen years, two months, twenty-four days

After our lives had merged

I should have remembered...



Left - Right - Left

They taught us in driver's ed

Left - Right -

Then I pulled out

And now there's nothing

Left

------------------------------



a sound I like

THUNK...plunk-plunk-plunk

THUNK...plunk-plunk

THWAP...roll-roll-roll

THUNK...

Many decades ago, my parents' neighborhood was a pecan farm. There are 16 towering pecan trees on their property. This time of year, it makes me smile to hear the pecans hitting the roof.

I love pecans.

I lost a bowl of stew once.

I stopped by my parents' house one evening, and found that my mom had made a big pot of stew (she makes the best stew I've ever tasted--scrambled eggs, too--and Chex Mix). I did whatever it was I'd come there to do, and then, as I prepared to leave, I grabbed a Tupperware bowl out of the cabinet and ladled some stew into the dish to take home for dinner.

A very few minutes later, I was ready to walk out the door, but realized I didn't have the bowl of stew in my hands anymore. I walked back to the kitchen, but it wasn't on the counters.

Think: where had I been in the five minutes since pouring the stew?
The den? No.
The bathroom? No.
It was not a big house.

I started looking in all the rooms, even the ones I knew I hadn't been in. The living room. The bedrooms. My parents' bathroom. I checked the refrigerator. No. What the HELL?

I began to question whether I had actually poured the stew at all. Yes, I was sure I had. And I do not come from a family known for practical jokes or magical powers. The damned stew was somewhere.

I checked all the rooms again. The refrigerator again. The kitchen cabinets (I've been known to put the cereal box in the fridge and the milk carton in the pantry). By now it was beyond absurd.

THIS IS BEYOND ABSURD, I thought, stomping furiously down the hall for the third or fourth time. FINE, then, I'll start looking in the most ABSURD places possible, and to prove my point, as I passed the linen closet, I grabbed the door handle and flung it open dramatically, thinking, it couldn't possibly be in HERE, and there on the third shelf sat my little bowl of stew.

I cocked my head, narrowed my eyes, and stared at it for a second. Then I remembered having gone to the closet a few minutes earlier to fetch a washcloth... or a pillowcase... or some trivial thing so insignificant that the fetching of it hadn't even registered in my brain. But the insignificant fetching had required a two-handed search to sort through the stack of linens, so I'd set the stew down, and then forgotten about it by the time I'd retrieved whatever it was I'd been looking for.

Poor, forgotten stew.

But delicious.

The Princess Bride

I'm a little rusty now, but I was such an avid fan, I had the whole thing memorized, including most of the sound effects, from the opening cough and buzz of little Fred Savage's baseball video game to the sword fight on the Cliffs of Insanity:

Clink-clink-SWISH....
Clink-clink-SWISH....
Clink-clink-clink....clink-clink--clink...
Clink....clink....clink....

(go ahead, put the movie on, you'll see...)

Etch-A-Nude

Last night I had nothing better to do, so I took off my clothes, lay down on the floor in front of a mirror, and drew a portrait of myself on my Etch-A-Sketch.

I like knowing I'm probably the only person on the planet who can say that.

missing the plane

After an idyllic week doing all kinds of perfect nothing in Chicago, I arrived at O'Hare in plenty of time for my 3:25pm flight, made it to Gate F-14 with 10 minutes to spare before boarding, and decided to send a few texts to friends to pass the time. And so time passed... and passed... and it finally occurred to me to wonder why we weren't boarding yet, and, like one of those mind-warping turning points in movies, I realized with horror that I was sitting at gate F-14, while my boarding pass clearly stated that my departure gate was F-12. I grabbed my bag and In Style magazine and booked it across the corridor to the Very Closed Door of F-12, in front of which stood three United Airlines employees, chatting away without a care in the world. I walked up to the Asian one and asked (already knowing the answer, but trying my best to look innocent) "Is this the Tulsa flight?" to which she responded with a quizzical expression at me, a confirmatory look at the closed door, a validating glance at the flight information monitor, and a final condescending first-grade-teacher scowl back at me: "Tulsa's gone. Where were you?!?!" and I pointed sheepishly over to the seats at F-14. I attempted to excuse myself with flakiness. She dismissed me to the customer service desk attendant, who informed me that not only was the next and final flight already oversold, so were all four flights for the following day (stupid PGA). I had no choice but to accept a stand-by ticket, find a lonely spot in the lobby, and hope for the best.

Well, screw that. Rather than sit around another four hours to find out if I may or may not get on the 8pm flight home, I hopped on the train back into the city and slinked sadly (not really) back up the steep steps to Cathy's condo, where they welcomed me with open ridicule. I was already thoroughly exhausted from our week of entirely too much fun, and so we popped open a few cramp-your-stomach-sweet Smirnoff-Ices and ordered Chicago Pizza, which really made the whole ordeal worth it.

So there you have it. I'm in Chicago one more night (possibly two, if I can't make it onto any of tomorrow's flights). It is now 8:24p.m., and rather than letting me crawl back onto the lumpy sofa-bed I so deeply desire at the moment, Cathy is literally pulling at my sleeve to go with her for one last shopping romp. But how can I say no? She's so freaking cute.