ChaiTeaLatte

Disequilibrium

"Seven thousand days. I was running the other day, and I thought, it's been seven thousand days." His face is close to ours as we lean in to listen. The speaker is short, athletic (is that a Hawaiian shirt he's wearing?) and has graying spiky hair . He speaks with an air of energetic surprise, or maybe energetic wonder. "It's hard to believe it's been twenty years," I say and he, laughingly and shaking his head, says "yeah."

The bar is crowded and dark and filled with reunion-goers. I don't recognize many people, not because they've changed so much, but because I had a large high-school class and it's impossible to know everyone, especially when you're shy and focused on your AP classes and your own circle of friends. Something has seriously shifted though. A lot, actually, and that is not surprising. I am not the same person, which is good because it means I've grown, I've experienced many things in life, I've accomplished goals and had little adventures and joys and heartbreaks and other years where I basically just coasted but somehow I can't stop creating a mythology of 'the early years.' Re-writes are addictive. And the town seems so small. Which is weird because I come back once or twice a year and I love it and I brag to all the east-coasters about the cleanliness and the politeness and the types of houses you can buy since the prices are not east-coast prices.

My parent's roomy house, the peacefulness of a small college town in the Midwest, the campus grounds (so green and lush) and buildings, the feeling of being taken care of by my gentle parents: these are things that are infinitely good. Will we have my mother's homemade pizza for dinner? Time to go to the store and get some veggies to put on top. I need high-speed internet access, can I go to your office Dad? It's a rest from my go-go-12-hour-work-day, six-days-a-week-life and reminds me how lucky I am. My friend, the one who came to the reunion with me for company and for luck, says, "they take good care of you." Well, they do.

Funny. This was supposed to be a post about my reunion and it turned into a post about the present. Which I find comforting. Which I find so typical of me because even if I love re-writes, the real thing is the best and the present is so real and alive. Well, you might as well keep moving forward, no point in looking back, today is sweet, can't you feel the lovely cool air on the skin of your arm, look at the Picasso print hanging up on the wall above the computer, look at the colors, oh what a blessing. Oh my, what a blessing. Seven thousand days, huh?

(I'm listening to Darkness by the Police which should be nostalgic and retro, but I listen to it so much at work that it feels very much of the present and makes my heart expand and ache a little. Sting's whiny scratchy voice stirs something in me, you feel a little afraid and hopeful and wanting listening to it. I want and want and want and tomorrow, maybe, I'll get what I want. Only, what is it I want exactly? So, maybe it is nostalgic, just a little, because isn't that what youth feels like? Hope and want. And the little thundery sound in the background music reminds me of Iowa thunderstorms heaving across big skies while I am sitting at home and dreaming of the future. Of the world beyond my own door. Well, here it is. I am in the world beyond my front door. I wish I never woke up this morning, life was easy when it was boring......he sings but I can't agree with him on that sentiment. Life was easy, sure, when it was boring, but who wants to hide from life? It's beyond a blessing, isn't it?)

Reunion

I'm getting ready to go home for the reunion. I can't wait to see everyone, relax at home (one of my Boston colleagues is coming to visit me out in flyover!), to see my family and little K who is so adorably sweet. "We pick you up at the airport," she said on the phone yesterday. Plus, she said something about m&ms and ice cream. I love my family.....

Getting Ready

For my twentieth high-school reunion. Yikes!

People-watching

at Sonsie's tonight. I had dinner with a friend and we sat at a people-watching table facing right onto the sidewalk (they open the huge glass front doors in the warm weather so that the restaurant has, in effect, no front wall. Totally open to the street. The air tonight feels wonderful to my bare skin - soft and gentle).

Several observations: it's the summer of the dress, ultra skinny jeans are a horrifying trend for anyone over 25, and 90s minimalism is long forgotten. Long hair, long skirts, long beads and all sorts of mixed up eighties accessories accessorizing the girls. Big belts, big bags, all manner of flats. "My short hair is totally dated, isn't it?" I say to my friend. "No", he says with a smile. "It's your thing. It's twenties and deco. It's totally your thing."

*And speaking of eighties things, a Fine Young Cannibals song just came on my digital radio station: 'Johnny. We're sorry. Johnny. Won't you come on home?'

**Oh, and now it's the Housemartins. Happy Hour! Remember them? 'What a good place to be.....'

ANNA's 55 fiction

...is going on at Sepia Mutiny.

Bland.

Yeah, I know all these postings and what-not are as bland as can be. That's just the way it's going to be for a while (or was it ever different from that?).

(I should totally just switch over to complete and utter blandness. Vanilla bland boringness. Like a blank sheet. A do-over. Or like that one blog. The World's Most Boring Blog? You know the one where the blog author writes some totally inconsequential thing and it's all relaxing and light and deep and clever and fey and makes you think?)

New Digs

So, our new sign-out room is very nice - it's quiet and clean and well-lit. It's a pleasure to sign-out in that room. This morning I managed to get through all those long difficult cases that take loads of concentration. Yeah new sign-out room!

Wait a minute!

I'm going to work out with M--- tonight. I kept meaning to call him and cancel because heat and humidity are like my kryptonite (and as everyone knows it's hot as Hades up here in the Northeast), but no! I am going to be disciplined and I am so going to sprint from excercise to excercise. 15 reps? Ha!

( Which is the opposite of my usual whining, crying, blubbering, 'do I have to do more kettlebell exercises?' attitude. Seriously - what sadistic torturer invented the whole kettlebell routine? )

Back to the laconic.....

Okay, again, I'm stumped for what to write. Just go read 2Blowhards, or something, okay?

Why Blog?

Because it makes me happy!

I went to Lineage with Jonathan a while back and we had dinner at the bar. It's painted (the whole restaurant, not just the bar) in lovely lemon yellows, with pale cool lights overhead and a back-lit bar. Usually, there are flowers in shades of lemon and white and palest of blues in a glass vase outside the front door. The vase of flowers sits on a little square table, next to a menu, inviting you in. It's a seafood restaurant. One of us ordered chicken. The other, boringly, salmon. We joked and talked with the wait staff so much that they brought us a little taster dessert, before the dessert we really ordered, just to be nice. Or to make sure we came back. They brought us a really rich butterscotch pudding, which I realize sounds potentially disgusting, but was silky, rich, light and creamy all at the same time. I highly recommend it.

(Plus, one of the waiters told us about the time he worked in a restaurant in Las Vegas and how Tom Jones is a really nice guy. How about that?)