it was raining (like always). it was pouring.
b and i had a small business seminar we were going to (nothing anyone need know about now. but we have…ideas). we were running late.
we sprinted through the downpour, regrouped at under the awning, slipped inside. waiting for the elevator, i felt my front pocket.
“i left my phone in the car,” i said, and readied myself to brave the elements again.
“what are you going to need it for? we’re in a meeting,” b said to me. i thought about it, realized she was right.
two hours later, on our way out, the rain had let up. as i got into the car, i saw a shiny thing on the pavement by the car door. sitting in a puddle of water.
the phone had not been forgotten in the car, it had been forgotten in my lap, and had fallen into the three-inch deep water in the parking lot.
yeah–it no longer works.
a blow dryer has done nothing to save my poor phone. only time will tell now. i will wiat, and watch, and pray.
it’s strange–i want to know the time, and i reach for my pocket (i don’t wear a watch–usually.) i touch my pocket when i think i feel it vibrating. when i think of a quick question for b, i reach for it to call and ask. but there is nothing to grab.
in fact, i realize that should i want to call her, i cannot. because i do not know her work number. i can call almost no one. i don’t know any phone numbers.
there was a time when a close friend offered to call me–a close friend with whom i communicated almost every day. he asked my number and i took offense. how could he not know my number?! he said to me only, “dude, it’s in my phone.” i found that abhorrent. now i am that guy.
i shall try to enjoy this respite. to take a break from the business of lie, and to relax in the peace and quiet. maybe i shall even have some sort of a revelation of self!
just–won’t be able to call anyone to tell them about it.
i became a crazy dog person a good while back,
i’ve always been a dog person, of course. i mean, a real, honest-to-goodness, some-might-say-fanatical, dog person. i’ve always had dogs. as a kid, i had several. there was goldie, the golden cocker spaniel i got for christmas one year (not so imaginatively named, i admit). there was captain, the gentle german shepherd mix my mom found on the side of the highway in new mexico. there was teneille (as in “captain and”), the little white poodle that we got a year or two later. there was harry, the pound puppy who just looked like a harry to us (was he a cockapoo? i think so, some weird looking hybrid like that). there was rudy, whom i named “sir rudolph of valentine’s day.”
there have been many others, and i have loved themas well, but those have been my mom’s, or my sister’s, you know, not mine.
and then i moved out of the house. for years and years, i was a lone wolf, able to go anywhere and do anything, without ever worrying who would let the dog out, or what time i had to be home to feed him, or who would watch him if i took a trip. truthfully owning a dog didn’t even really pop into my mind for a good long time.
then i met b, she had just adopted walter. and as our relationship grew into what it is today, he became more and more like my dog. walter awakened something in me that i had not felt in a long time: that soulblistering, intensely protective, i-almost-want-to-cry-when-i-think-about-how-much-i-love-him kind of love. it kind of spooked me, at the same time as it gave me a little bit of…a buzz.
there were more after walter, of course.
b had been emailing me cute little adopt-a-dog dogs for a while, and one of them appealed to me. that got her excited, so bam, here were a couple of foster dogs for us to watch over the weekend. and they never left. at the time, i shook my head and thought, “three dogs? we can’t. we just…can’t.”
but my heart reached out to them just as theirs did to me. and suddenly the family of three was a family of five. the twins–coyote and dingo–are now as much a part of our world as walter is.
less than a month before we moved here to texas, a sketchy-looking man standing in front of the korean supermarket by my apartment saw me walking by with the twins, and said, “want a another one?” the ratty little dog was the cutest thing i had ever seen, reminding me of the online adopt-a-dog that had first interested me in the first place. when the man offered to sell him to me, i realized that this was a shady thing altogether, that this probably was a stolen dog or something, that he was certainly not in the hands of someone who cared about him. it was my duty to get this little guy into the hands of someone who would care for him properly.
many craigslist posts, emails, phone calls, and meetings later, lil truck ended up being our fourth dog. we justified it, saying that the twins and truck were all about a third the size of a “real” dog, so it was like we had two. and no one said anything when we picked up and moved to teas with four dogs. we had our own place, with a yard. no issues there.
and so now we live here in austin, and we take our four dogs to dog parks, and when people say, “which one’s yours?” and we say, “all of ‘em,” and their eyebrows raise, i know that we are now the craziest dog people i know.
then eli came back to town, and stayed with us (still stays with us) with sparky, who i would not call call a small dog. that made five dogs. still, no eyes being batted, since we only have four and a guest.
and then.
and then this little guy was wandering the street, not getting out of the road, and we saw trouble. b jumped out, and we cornered him, no collar or tag, covered in fleas, ribs poking out like crazy. no one around seemed to know to whom he belonged, and the state he was in, we weren’t sure we wanted to give him back anyway.
so now, here we are, six dogs in (though one is a guest), wondering what the legal limit on dogs is in this municipality. and thinking to myself, “i know we’re crazy, but are we this crazy? how crazy are we? five dogs crazy?”
and feeling like the answer might be yes.
what does that mean? it means no one will ever dogsit for us again. it means we can never go on trips together, as one will always have to stay with the dogs. it means the dogs will never get to travel with us, either. it means we will be spending more on vet bills, and dog food bills.
on the other hand, this dog is like a combination of all of our dogs. young and hyper, he wants to play with truck all day long–something the other, more “mature” dogs don’t really care for. but he wants to cuddle as well, to curl up on your lap and receive love. he is long like the twins, scruffy like truck, and has a hairy face like walter.
he does not, however, have a name(we’ve been calling him “The New Guy”). we have, after all, benn trying to keep an emotional detachment while we try to find him a good home. but as it seems harder and harder to ensure what kind of home he might get, and people flake out more and more after telling us how much this dog spoke to them, it makes us wonder:
are we his new home? i know b’s answer.
i think i had a stuffed dog that looked just like this guy when i was a kid. is that what’s doing this to me?
funny(/scary) thing is, I’m pretty ok with it.
he does not smile at me. i say hello, and he just looks down at his clipboard.
i was going to make a crack about the guy who was in the car in front of me, who didn’t get to take his test. the young black kid in the car next to me told me through our open windows that the tester asked him if he had to wear his glasses, and the guy couldn’t speak english, so they pulled him out of the queue. so now i’m up. but he doesn’t seem talkative, so i just put my hands back at ten and two, try to settle the butterflies in my stomach. i took this test before–eighteen years ago. so why am i nervous now?
i feel very out of place. i am the only white english speaker over sixteen here. i showed up at 7:30, a half hour before they opened, so as to not spend all day waiting. and there was still a line about fifteen people long.
i passed the written portion (though i don’t know if they call it written, since it’s all on a computer now) yesterday. i never touched a book. i counted on the eighteen years of driving experience to carry me through. i only missed one question, something about how many yards before a turn i should run my blinker. i thought that would be it; that they would smile, rubber stamp me, snap my picture. not so.
it’s hot, even this early, but i don’t want to sit in the car running the engine the whole time. i’ve been waiting in my car for over half an hour. and i’m low on gas. the tester is my age, probably, but he does not acknowledge this. we are not peers. i am his charge. i’m not sure if he even looks at me. he just says, “follow my instructions please.”
he walked around my car a few minutes ago. watched me flip on my linkers, tap my brakes, honk my horn. now here he is in the car with me, seatbelt fastened, looking down at his clip board.
“pull out,” he says.
so i do.
dear lindsay;
it was the first sunny day we had had in a while. the grass had grown above my ankles. my lawn was unkempt. so i took my recently-purchased secondhand mower (yay craigslist! right linds?), and i took to it, ipod earbuds shoved firmly in ears.
back yard done, i spiralled around and around my front lawn in ever-tightening squares. (i am sure this is how you mow your lawn too, linds. right? it just makes sense.so much more efficient than just back and forth in a line. don’t you agree?) a big bird brown hovered nearby, pecking through the tiny scraps of chopped-up grass. as i mowed closer and closer, he looked at me, but he did not move. he was not scared of me or my mower. my dogs are scared of the mower, and they’re 100 times bigger than this bird. but this bird just watched me, and when i turned, i felt him nod knowingly behind my back.
i was annoyed. what balls on this bird! how dare he just watch me approach with this giant killing machine, and not flinch. he should fear me, i thought. i jogged a little out of my way to get a little closer, and the bird flew about three feet away and landed again, eyeing me challengingly.
i turned again. continued with the mowing.
he moved closer, closer to me, into the thicker grass when i came around, he jumped up to the cable lines extending over the lawn, just a few feet over my head. as i went underneath them, he flapped his wings. in my periphery, it was a large move very near my head, and it made me flinch, duck down. he watched me, unmoving.
i circled around again, and noticed there was another bird–the same kind–sitting in the thick grass as i approached, just watching me. three feet away from him, he finally hopped onto the shorter grass and watched me go by. the next time around there were two; one on each side of the yard. and the first one above me, inches from my head as i passed underneath. all of them watching me. all of them stone faced and unafraid.
have you seen “the birds,” lindsay? will you laugh at me if i tell you i started to get a little nervous?
i waved one hand at them (if i let go of the mower completely, it would die, and i would have no leverage against them at all), but they did not flee.
i finished the lawn, and fled back inside, ashamed.
the moral: don’t mess with birds. they fear very little, and they will always have the numbers on you.
except pigeons. disgusting rat-like birds. i will always hate them.
best live action movie inspired by a toy.
best movie ever produced by hasbro.
best michael bay movie not starring martin lawrence.
not saying much, i know. but that’s all i can give it.
i could add some exclamation points–maybe they’ll put it on theback of the dvd!
i’m just saying–let’s imagine i’m the president of the united states.just for a second.
let’s say i had nothing to do with a cia operative’s name getting leaked for political reasons, so that she almost dies. then, wouldn’t i just let the justice system do it’s thing and get the guy who let that happen? and wouldn’t i just get as FAR away from that mess as possible?
so if, after that guy got a prison sentence, i commuted it to make it much shorter, wouldn’t that KIND OF make me look complicit? so then, wouldn’t that be a boneheaded move, politically?
then:
Bush won’t supply subpoenaed documents.
now, if a bunch of u.s. district attorneys were fired for completely unjustified (i.e.: political) reasons, and my attorney general was under heavy fire for letting this happen (since it’s illegal to fire people just cause they’re democrats, or liberals), and the more he said he never knew, the more documents came out showing that he did–
if i were president, wouldn’t i just agree with all the people saying alberto gonzalez should resign? wouldn’t i shake my head, and be all, “what is this world coming to, y’all? i thought he was a good man” and be done with it? damn right i would.
so if our president argues with everyone, and stands by gonzalez and tells us all he didn’t do anything wrong, and then as the trial gets closer and closer to the truth, he gets quieter, and then finally just tells everyone in the trial not to testify or supply documents, and just ignore the whole damn thing, he would protect them with executive privilege–i mean, am i missing something here, or does this not pretty much make him look like the guiltiest asshole on the planet?
when a criminal on nypd blue say they didn’t do anything, and then the cops show them the evidence, and they shut up, i always know the guy did it. so i guess what i’m asking is:
how can our president be such an idiot?
i don’t mean to be controversial or really even political, i am just overwhelmed from a purely objective standpoint at the idiocy of the man my country elected to lead them into a permanent war.
i left this country the day he was re-elected. sometimes i wonder why i’m back.
dear lindsay;
my arms hurt. my eyes hurt. my head hurts.
no, i wasn’t in some horrific car accident. i don’t have a wacky story about falling off my bike when someone opened their car door right in front of me. and i was not chasing a road runner or anything (no “yipe!” signs for me).
instead of one big story, i have many little ones.
my arms hurt because i finally got back to the gym for the first time in almost a month. it’s so much easier to work out at school. i’m already there, i have time to kill, it’s a short walk over…but hopping in the car is somehow more of a chore. but at least, after this last year of sporadic muscle abuse, i have learned to appreciate soreness as something other than just senseless suffering that could have been easily avoided. i feel a sense of accomplishment. i think to myself, ” there’s work being done in there.”
my eyes hurt because i have a new job that requires actual writing for money. which is awesome. and i am dedicated. which is awesome too. all this means i spent over eight hours sstaring at thius little laptop computer screen yesterday. (for some reason, i can’t type as well on the desktop. the keyboard is just not quite right. my fingers feel better on the laptop.) and upon deciding to take a break, i realized that most of my forms of relaxation and entertainment are eye-related (ocular?). surfing the net, watching television, reading. after ruling all these out, i couldn’t think of anything else to do! weird.
and my head hurts because…well, cause my brain hurts. i have a lot to write all of a sudden. i have ideas for blogs i want to write, stories that might be good someday. i have restaurant reviews for the onion (oh, didn’t i tell you, i’m doing little mini-restaurant reviews for them now in the local paper) that i need to write, and there are people i want to write good, clear, interesting emails to. and when i wake up in the morning, all the words are in there, banging around in my skull, trying to get out.
oh, and i have a paper on shakespeare, since i’m (supposedly) taking a correspondence class.
is this how you feel, linds, with all the scripts you have to read, lines you have to learn, photogs you have to avoid, boys you have to date, and drugs, you have to do? are you just overwhelmed all the time? i mean, but in a good way? cause that’s what all this is. i’m busy. that’s a good thing.
somewhere in the last week, it finally stopped raining. and somehow, i haven’t really noticed.
uber-hip hipster sxsw error: confusing hip new band menomona with hip new band malajube.
uber-nerdy error–using the word “themself” in a sentence as if it were an actual word, then laughing at yourself for it.
(NOTE: unless you’re as hip or nerdy as me, you don’t appreciate this post. so i guess it’s just for me.)
what’s that?
what did i do last night? is that what you asked? why, i’m glad you asked me that.
here’s a hint:
:
(no, that’s not fred savage on my shirt.)
yeah, we went and saw transformers. a couple of days early. yep.
but is that all? why, i’m glad you asked that too. no, as a matter of fact, it isn’t.
no, as a matter of fact, we went to see this monster:
yeah. he blows fire. he eats cars. he shrugs cutely as if to say, “what? i’m not bad. i’m just…robosaurus!”
did it rain? yes it did. did we get wet? yes we did. was it worth it? hell yeah.
was the movie good? well, you know. i mean, robosaurus was there, so that makes up for a lot. and hey–shia is awesome. so…
sure.
