Caterwauling

What better way to ring in a new year than to watch the Caps beat the dayglo-orange off the Flyers in an intense shootout? Oh, yeah, hanging out with Ted, Nic and Victor as well as Ted’s family as we watched our boys whoop some ass on those “wuhter”-drinking figure skaters.

I may not root for the Flyers, but I still loves me my Philly boys!

I’M LATE, I’M LATE FOR A VERY IMPORTANT GAME

Oh Jeebus H, I’m such a freaking dork. I parked at a Metro station that I absolutely abhor because I didn’t think I had enough time to go to my favorite one, and that brought about the curse.

Nic had thoughtfully purchased the tickets and e-mailed us the PDFs. I know me — I lose shit. So I printed two tix and left them in my car. I even remembered to take one as I got out of my car (which was in the eleventy millionth spot away from said station).

So I went about catching my train, and I started racing up the escalator. Whereupon ….

My ticket was gone!

I looked up and down the escalator — no dice. Who could lose an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper?

That would be me.

So I got off the escalator and ran down the stairs. I stopped to see if the paper had landed on the escalator, but I didn’t see it. I knew I’d had the paper when I put my pass into the machine, so I went back there. No dice.

A very nice employee heard my story and let me out to go walk back to my car to see if it was on the way. Nope. But alas, I DID grab my spare copy (I love me for knowing what an IDIOT I can be) and went back to the Metro stop, whereupon the guard waved me through so I wouldn’t have to pay again.

Here’s the deal — I was more nervous that someone had come up behind me and STOLEN the ticket, because the stranger would be sittin’ with my friends and I would have been screwed.

So I trudged up the escalator yet another time. By this time, at least 20 minutes has passed. Wouldn’t you know it, as I stepped off, the paper lay right at the top, face-down and with a footprint on it?

I picked it up and laughed and laughed. Everyone on the platform looked at me strangely as I read it, crumpled it and tossed it. Oh, the hilarity I cause when I’m not even trying — I was quite glad that I would be the one sitting in my seat at the game and that I could stop worrying.

When I came home, the same guard was there and she recognized me immediately. She asked if I’d ever found my paper, and I explained that it was a ticket and that it had apparently ridden up the escalator without me. Go figure. She laughed heartily (at me) and said good, because that woulda been a cruddy way to kick off a new year. I agreed and wished her well and took off.

YOU CAN UNDRESS HER UP, BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE HER ANYWHERE

In any event, Victor learned why it’s best to just never take me in public.

He was very much into the game when I arrived, and he was sort of commenting to himself out loud about it. In any event, I’ve scared many a man in my life, and today was no exception.

Victor: “That’s a high stick.”
Me: (exclamation point forms over head) “A high stick? Heh. I like those!”
Victor: “I think I’m blushing.”

But wait, there’s more.

Announcer: “Please respect your neighbors and refrain from using foul language.”
Me: “Well, fuck me then!”
Victor: (repeats what I said to Ted. Turns back and says) “You’re shit out of luck.”

I’m sure the neighbors weren’t offended — we’re convinced that the row of non-English-speakers behind us were swearing in some sort of Eastern European dialect. 🙂

But my swearing never really ended. Later, as I was making a comment about something, Victor looked at me and said, “You just swore six times!”

Yup, I’m a lady. We’re all just lucky the Caps won, else the expletives woulda REALLY been flying!

D.C. IS DEFINITELY NOT A HOCKEY CITY

I’ve seen sporting events in a handful of cities. Like in Springfield, Ore., all folks have are the University of Oregon Ducks, and people go apeshit at their various games. And Pittsburgh, where I’m from — hoo boy, everyone loves them some of the Black and Gold. I mean, psychotically LOVES their teams.

Not to mention, we had Myron Cope as the color commentator for the Steelers, and then Mike Lange (with the Pens), who could really rile you up. I mean, we’re talking that these arenas and stadiums were on FIRE with fans going ballistic for their teams.

In D.C.? Meh. When the signs came on to make noise, to get louder, to fucking acknowledge that your heart is still beating, you got some half-assed “woo hoos” and that was as good as it gets. Like Nic said, though, D.C. isn’t a hockey town, but she says they do go nuts for their football.

Good lord, if THAT’S what gets this town excited, seriously, yikes. I only root for the ‘Skins when they’re playing New England or Dallas!

In any event, that pretty much ends all I know about sports. So I’d better get off my ass and start cleaning the place up to host the Carnival of the Recipes! Check back in a bit, friends — I’ve got more balls for you than a Wizards game (which, incidentally, are off my radar now that Michael Jordan’s gone). …

A week ago, I left work to find a note sticking out of my car door, with an e-mail address and an enthusiastic “E-mail me!” scrawled on it. Clever boy put it right where the lock is, too; lord knows it’s dark when I wander outside.

I did e-mail back, although it took me a day to do so. I haven’t heard a whisper of a response since. Oh well. I had no idea who it was anyway; I usually pull in like a bat going into outta hell, and with my little personalized plate (the whole office complex knows I’m a blogger), I’m sort of hard to miss. It’s kind of like with my cats — just because they’re hiding their faces, they think I can’t see them. 😉 Apparently, I got noticed even in my perennial oblivion!

I assume he might work for a different company, although I admit, I was reading our corporate newsletter yesterday and realized that, after a full year of working there, I don’t know more than 10 people!

I was hoping he was cute, but now I s’pose we’ll never know. …

Funny how each calendar year seems to have its own personality (or lack thereof). I have a great memory for years — when someone asks when an event took place, I can tell just by the nature of it when it had to have happened.

For example, 2001 was a year of great achievement and great loss for me. Nothing in between. 2002 was a year of trepidation and uncertainty yet for blind risk because anything had to be better than the status quo — I left Pittsburgh and moved to D.C. on a wing and a prayer and little else. The only bad thing about that, in retrospect, is that I went from a fantastic social life to practically none at all.

2003, though, was for fun and friends and celebration. However, 2004 was just for general suck, all around — lots of loss and anxiety. And 2005, well, brought some long-awaited people, places and things to me. It was a year of magic, of growing up, of admitting that some people were right and realizing why people do what they do to get by.

2006, I’m hoping, is another 2003 — of life, light, hope and laughter. Because it’s time for that — now is the time to live and love and just do everything for the sake of feeling good.

Although I am up to my ASS in work right now and will be ringing in the new year with a lot of exhaustion and stress over unfinished projects, both professional and personal, I was just letting my mind wander, and it went to New Year’s Eve as we were ringing in 2004 at my apartment. I had a house full of friends (and we got on the phone with several who couldn’t make it), and we were drinking and laughing and just plain enjoying each other. We spent the next day at another friend’s house — again, having the time of our lives.

That circle has all but disbanded, unfortunately. It’s so hard to keep in touch with people when everyone’s so freaking busy, but I think about them often. One is overseas, and I miss her so. The rest, well, I probably shouldn’t say it publicly, but I miss *most* of them.

That party saw me growing apart from someone in the crowd, and I found that I couldn’t give up that one person and still keep the others. It’s like a divorce when a relationship of any depth ends — someone ultimately “keeps” the good friends and the other is left to miss them. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year at this time, I had a few simple New Year’s resolutions. I’ve crossed off the ones I accomplished:

For 2006, I’m already admitting that I don’t plan to start my resolutions till February. Those include:

Just let me finish my cookies and lasagna that I brought home from Mom’s, and then I’ll get started. We might want to tackle “Stop procrastinating,” though, in 2007. 😉

Another holiday season down the shitter. Whee.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad. I did one nice gift each for my mom and grandfather (I couldn’t do anything last year, so I tried to make up for it), and I also loaded them up in the car one night and dragged them to go to see the Festival of Lights in Wheeling, W.Va.

I’ve seen the lights dozens of times — it’s a driving tour through a golf/resort area. Mostly, I’ve gone down there with friends and gotten shitfaced drunk for really cheap. Ah, those were the days. 😉

In any event, a woman we saw at the Festival (we stopped to use the restroom near the planetarium, and you cannot even enter the building without paying $7 per person) stopped us on the way in and handed us three admission tickets. Wow! I was blown away — I seriously never expect anyone to do anything nice, so that was a lovely Christmas surprise — thanks to her, we got to go in and see a cute little (OK, it was sort of hokey, but still) laser light show and we also walked through the little zoo area.

They were so happy for the road trip — my family doesn’t have a concept of hopping in the car and just doing whatever comes to mind. I’m the spontaneous one of the bunch — I’m also the only one with any spunk left, unfortunately. Hence, I sort of tossed everyone into the car and didn’t really say what I was up to. Funny how you go from being the little kid who’s dragged everywhere to being the activities director. Read the rest of this entry »

Over at The Art of Getting By (a new addition to my blogroll), Janet tells of that precious, precarious time when children start to question the existence of Santa.

I remember those days — I always suspected my mom was behind it somehow, because Santa ALWAYS knew what I wanted. Which was never really much — I’ve always been sort of a loner, so I could be entertained with books and toys that didn’t require a gaggle of participants. (I hate board games to this day.) But back then, I could be pacified with images of Santa deploying a special elf to go clean out the bookstores with all of my requests.

I think it was in third grade when all of these suspicions about this magical entity wormed their way into my head, but I wanted to hold on for just another year. Then came fourth grade, when — as the designated “big kids” in the school, i.e., the oldest in elementary school — we got word that the whole Santa thing was just a farce.

I’ll never forget being in Ms. Carp’s class that holiday. (I loved that woman — I was so totally her teacher’s pet, especially after she caught me as a 9-year-old reading “The Great Gatsby” during a free period — Santa had done well by me, once again! Well, that and I had written to then-President Ronald Reagan, telling him I thought he was an asshole, and I actually got a response and a book from the Oval Office. You know how people curse you with hoping you have a child who’s just like you were? Lord, may the birth control continue working!!!)

Anyway, a couple of the popular, stuck-up bitches of my class (with whom I had been friends for about a day and a half), were teasing this kid Kevin who truly, honestly insisted there is SO a Santa Claus. They had older sisters and were thrilled to burst his bubble. And in doing so, they ruined it for the rest of us who were sort of on the fence about it anyway.

I don’t envy the position that put my teacher in. Janet’s entry touched me because she has been in that position — to take control of a class whose fundamental beliefs were shattering before her very eyes.

Ms. Carp quickly refuted the girls’ claims, telling us that it is a special time of year when all sorts of magic is possible. That we were certainly allowed to question it but the most important thing at the end of the day is to believe that magic would come to those who wanted to believe in it.

I loved her for that. We studied her so carefully, looking for signs that she wasn’t bullshitting us. And her expression gave nothing away, so we took her at face value. But that was the only year I looked for (and found) hidden presents and giftwrap. I never did it again, though — to this day, I am happy to open a gift when and only when the proper time has come.

I didn’t tell my mom what I’d done — even for as young as I was, I knew how important it was that all of her hard work be honored by my silence — at least for the time being. There was a woman whose sole joy in life was seeing her daughter’s face light up as perfect present after present was unveiled. Thank god I was smart enough back then to know that.

However, that was the year the innocence that belongs only to the very young died. I officially grew up. She left my stepfather a few months later and we moved in with my grandparents. I was happy to be rid of him, though. A lot of other bad things happened that year, too — 1984 was the year that my belief in magic gave up the ghost.

It’s taken me a long time, though, but I really do hope to see Santa Claus again. Because I know he’s out there somewhere — he’s just gotten a little bit lost along the way to my place. But I promise, I’ll let him in when he’s in the neighborhood again, because I think Ms. Carp was right — magic will only come to those who believe in it.

I still believe in you, Santa. …

Tiff wrote about an adorable munchkin on her flight who made her ovaries hurt. I had one of those on the flight from Memphis to DCA — just a little cherub, who was knee-high to a grasshopper, so they say. She was going to visit her grandma, and she was so excited.

To keep her quiet, her mom gave her a portable DVD player, and she watched “Toy Story” during the two-hour flight. She also had a little Woody doll, with whom she shared her window seat right in front of me.

She held him up to the window to make sure he got to see the Memphis and metro D.C. skylines, and she explained the handful of air pockets to him as “the plane acting silly.” She told him to think about how much fun they were going to have because they were spending Christmas with Grandma.

So friggin’ cute. I want one only if I can get one that sweet, smart and well-mannered. 😉

Jet lag + exhaustion + letdown from having to leave an awesome trip behind + general suck = Midol time arriving a few days early. Take cover, kids — it’s a bitch-on-six-cylinders kind of day!

I knew it was coming, though. I had a layover in Memphis this weekend, and I had way too much time on my hands (read: only four gift shops and a 90-minute stay there. I bought some Memphis Mary and that was all she wrote). So I parked myself at my gate and decided to people-watch.

And while tons of people caught my eye, I most remember a young Southern gentleman, about my age, who walked slowly, with a little bit of a limp.

But why I was enraptured by him was how he would walk up to every uniformed service member he saw — which was a lot — and he stopped each one to shake their hands and to say thank you for everything they are doing to serve our country.

And I burst into tears all six times I witnessed it up-close. He may have acquired a war injury as a young soldier himself, perhaps explaining his careful gait. Maybe he was just brought up with mannners and/or he’s a true Southern gentleman, with his approaching of these military men, most of whom looked to be barely 18.

In any event, I don’t know if those deployed fighters were as touched by this young man as I was, but this blog entry is my little way of saluting him right back, especially because he didn’t seem like the type of guy who would have even thought about being noticed or remembered for such a small (but so significant) act of kindness and gratitude.

*Crying again, this time realizing industrial, Costco-sized bottle of Midol is at work. Waah!*

So I walked into Reagan National early Tuesday morning, luggage in tow, to the America West counter.

It was one of those rare occasions in which I wanted to deal with a real, live human at the ticket counter. But I suppose I should have defined human.

Anywho, I got into line — I was first, behind two people at the electronic ticket dispenser Because I had a minute, I grabbed my wallet and yanked out my driver’s license in one fluid motion. I say this because some jerkoff walked up to the side of the counter and got serviced RIGHT AWAY while I waited. Me? Not happy.

One of the machines opened up, and this little man who CLEARLY had short-man syndrome snarled at me to go to it already. So I lugged my bags up to it, whereupon it promptly told me that I couldn’t check in because you can only check in eight hours or fewer, prior to your flight. Seeing as though my flight was leaving in, oh, an HOUR, this was Not Good.

So I asked the Sniveling Little Shit to help me. He acted like I had just eaten his breakfast and stormed out to show me what I’d done wrong. Which was nothing because I’m not a goddamned moron, so he had to check me in himself, which took all of 60 seconds.

Meanwhile, a guy came up to the next machine and it gave him a whole different type of error. So when the Sniveling Little Shit snuck out from behind the big, bad counter, I didn’t really see him.

The thing is, I have this one suitcase that literally takes all of my might to lift. It’s for suits and stuff, and there’s so much hardware and so damn many zippers that the thing is heavy without any clothes in it. Shove in a few dozen yards of clothing, and yay carpal tunnel.

Anyway, I totally did not plan this, but when I gathered up all my strength and hoisted that big-ass suitcase into the air, I (accidentally, I promise!) HIT the Sniveling Little Shit and sent him FLYING across the aisle! Hah!

Oh, to see his legs going in opposite directions warmed my frosty little heart that day. I sort of choked out a half-assed, “Sorry!” before scooting away to hand over my bags to security.

All told, I wasn’t the ONLY one flying that day! 😉

My favorite memory from my trip was definitely when I was standing atop the Eiffel Tower (a half-scale replica of the one in Paris), overlooking the Bellagio Hotel, which has the most magnificent fountains. Every 15 minutes, there’s a water show, where the fountains dance in myriad patterns — no two (consecutive) shows are the same. And there’s music to complement the movements.

It was near midnight on my last day in Vegas, and I really just wanted some peace and quiet. If I could have brought my journal up there with me, I would have — it was just a prime thinking location. But, alas, people talked. A lot. And the only thing that kept me from throwing anyone off the building was the fact that talking to other tourons tourists helped us to figure out the song that was playing, which was perfect (and it sure beat the previous Celine Dion song. Ugh).

The gal next to me asked if I were a movie buff. I kind of shrugged and asked what movie she was thinking about. She said she didn’t know but the song came from it. I had a few ideas, but in talking, she said, “Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour were in it.” I said, “Somewhere in Time” and I thought she could have just hugged me. And I would have hugged her back, because I would have been humming the song for weeks without knowing what it was.

In any event, I’d watched the fountains from inside Circo, where I don’t even want to talk about what my meal cost but wow, hello that’s the way to live! But they were more breathtaking at nearly 550 feet.

And guess who left her fully charged digital camera AT HOME before this odyssey began? *sigh* That would be the same girl who bought a camera phone, oh, YESTERDAY. 😉