Gee, your hair smells terrific
All day long I was rocking a
1977 Kristy McNichol hairdo. Hard. It wasn't my top choice for Look of the Day but I was going with it, seeing as how it didn't hurt Kristy any during her mid-'70s peak. The only difference is, my hair isn't thin and wispy like hers; it's thick and naturally curly/wavy so it did the feathering thing at the sides and the flat thing on the top but... like... thicker. It looked this way because I desperately need a haircut. I haven't had one in three months.
Two people, a co-worker and the parking attendant, asked if I'd gotten a haircut. When I said that no, I actually
needed a haircut, they said they thought I'd done something different with my hairstyle. If washing it a day behind schedule and not sleeping on it for 10 hours to tame it into looking fairly human counts as "something different," then yes -- guilty as charged.
Ticket to nowhere
After the Greyhound "Local" bus passed me this morning, I noticed a woman yelling across the street at someone, ticket in hand, looking as if she'd missed her bus -- perhaps that one -- and was at her wit's end, not knowing what to do or where to go. Behind her, a black cabbie in his 60s puttered around, trying to go about his business in spite of the scene.
Wearing a stylish white jacket/black t-shirt and jeans ensemble, she was youngish and attractive -- dyed blonde hair (brown roots showing), brown eyes, well-tanned, tallish, shapely, mid- to late-30s. And yet, around 10:30 this morning on dingy Forsyth Street in downtown Atlanta, her world was, for the moment, falling apart at a rundown bus station and she looked more panicked than I've seen anyone look in a long time. Slightly angry, too, but mostly fearful of something she was missing out on. Or, perhaps, something she had hoped to escape.
My eyes have seen you
Just before stepping into the shower this morning, I noticed a spider huddling in the far right corner of the stall. I'm not a fan of spiders anyway but this one was black, small and beefy -- likely to bite me if bothered -- and my guess was that one man's shower is another spider's bother. So I wadded up a bunch of toilet paper, trapped it, killed it and flushed it. I washed up, took my shower (quickly, mind you, after that experience), got ready for work and here I am -- alive and well. The world is, alas, less one spider.
But as steam clouds overtook the bathroom windows, I thought about what it took for our paths to ultimately cross - the spider and me. I never use that guest room shower. On Sunday night, the shower door setup in my bathroom came crashing down on me in the tub/shower, luckily not injuring me, but forcing me to use the other bathroom for the week.
What if someone else had been in the shower Sunday when the doors fell in? What if I hadn't had to switch showers and I hadn't seen that spider this morning? What if someone else hadn't seen that spider? What is it deep inside us, as humans, that warns us against falling doors or of even the tiniest perceived threat?
Au naturel
Studying my newly-finished natural oak living room floors, I feel depressed about the number of people who cover up their own floors with carpet. Wood has character. There's a little lesson from nature in every floorboard if you're willing to look.
Baptism by fire
On lap lord-knows-what today out at the park, I noticed a flyer wafting across the track advertising something called the "New Birth Fire Baptised Church of Holiness."
As I quickly trekked past it on my way to another lap, a cooling breeze blew the sheet of paper away to some unknown destination. Not that I'd even considered going, but I was glad to see the tract taken off with the wind. Exercise is punishing enough. Church shouldn't be.
Lose control
My niece turned nine on September 21 but her skate party was today. I'd sworn up and down all week that I would NOT lace up a pair of skates and hit the floor. And of course I did once we got there. Falling all over the place to the amusement of not only our group of kids but every other kid in the place and several teenagers and grownups, I reckoned it was my lot today to look ridiculous.
My motto at the skating rink is: If you're going to wipe out, make it spectacular. Do it right under the disco ball. Raise the roof a few times to the beat. And when it inevitably happens again, go through your little routine, pick yourself up and see how far you can get before you have to start mixing things up after your next header into the side carpeting.
One hour later, the maturity of being a 33-year-old kicked in and I turned in my skates and just took pictures of my niece, her mom and aunt and the assorted gaggle of little friends having fun, making skate trains and helping each other around the rink. Because you only turn nine once. And it's a long time before looking ridiculous while wiping out spectacularly right under the disco ball is fun again.
Invasion
They're everywhere.
Dandelion head-looking white fungal spores are blowing all through the air here in Georgia, wafting around like tiny cottonballs. They attach themselves to your car, the trees, your clothes, the grass -- anything within their path.
What are they and where are they here? I can't say they come in peace because the sneezing has already started.
You're groovy
The little girl down the street rang the doorbell the other night and handed me a thank-you note for buying a box of candy from her as part of her elementary school's annual fundraiser. Scooby Doo smiled at me on the cover and inside the printed message told me I was "groovy." In schoolkid handwriting, she had personally thanked me for helping out.
It was such a classy little gesture that I stuck Scooby to the refrigerator. There is no finer tribute if you're a thank-you card.
Kicking the heart out
Tonight I had to break a little kid's heart and he didn't even know about it. I just know that it broke my heart to do it, having to tell someone else the reason why I wouldn't be able to take him somewhere this weekend when I'd be taking his friends, and even though none of it was my fault and I really wanted him to be there, I feel awful.
I understand why people used to shoot the messengers.
Crossing words
Crosswords are another odd means of relaxation for me, much in the same way that a four-mile speedwalk/jog in the park is. Few of my friends understand why I enjoy either but then again I don't get why they love NASCAR and go to movies starring Tom Cruise.
I had a tough time finding a new crossword omnibus at the bookstore last night. I don't do "easy" crosswords and I've just about worked my way through the various volumes of the NY Times and Random House Sunday collections, which contain the most difficult puzzles. Finally, I settled on the NY Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus Vol. 8 and headed to the cash register.
"Man, I wish I could do crossword puzzles!" the cashier said brightly as I fished in my handbag for cash. "I try but I'm just not good at them."
"Me neither," her co-worker chimed in, coming over to eye my purchase. "I mean, I do the 'easy' New York Times ones but..."
"It's really not that hard," I said. "Like, you just have to kind of think ahead. You know, it's like Scrabble -- which letters are you going to be able to use in other words? If a crossword says 'North Carolina college,' people always put 'DUKE' when it's 'ELON.' Because you're going to use letters like E and O and N. You won't use D and K in a lot of words."
They both just looked at me as if they really did care, nodding their heads in unison.
"Well, you're just a lot smarter than I am," the cashier said, handing me my bag as she sent me off with a tight, forced smile.
Pardon our progress
Each morning just before I get to work, I pass Atlanta's main Greyhound bus terminal. When the '96 Olympics hit town, the city forced Greyhound to move away from Centennial Olympic Park, which is close to the true heart of downtown, farther south to the old part of the city off Forsyth Street where the sort of folks who have to take buses for long distance transportation wouldn't mingle with the sort of folks who party at Olympic events.
I take Forsyth to work because it's a little-used shortcut that allows me to skate right to the newspaper offices, located in the older part of the city. And every day when I drive the route I remember when Rich's was still Atlanta's pride, our hometown department store, located centrally downtown at Forsyth and Alabama. My mom would bundle up my niece and me as kids back in the '70s and we'd hop on the bus right up the street from our house in East Point and ride into Atlanta for a day of shopping downtown, a thrilling adventure for us which always culminated with a stop at the Rich's bakery where we both got those delicious iced smiley-face cookies in pink and yellow, wrapped in wax paper.
Each Thanksgiving, after our early afternoon dinner when our cousin Marshall had driven up from Miami, we'd all pile onto the bus and ride up to Rich's Downtown at Forsyth to watch the Lighting of Rich's Great Tree. Back then, there were no celebrities brought in to sing, only local church and school choirs set up on the Forsyth Street Bridge which connected the old Rich's store with the newer store across the street. So you had to pick a side of Forsyth on which to stand and it was always packed to the gills with people on either side. Marshall would put me on his shoulders when I was a tiny girl so I could see, but the Great Tree itself, perched atop the bridge walkway, was visible throughout almost all of the city and when it was finally lit on the high note of "O Holy Night," the crowds on Forsyth cheered and clapped, singing along reverently with the lovely hymn as the black night turned a warm glow of white, red, green and gold.
But the folks who exit the buses at the Greyhound terminal off Forsyth Street these days don't know all that. All they know is that Atlanta, once The City Too Busy To Hate, welcomes them with a squalid mini-mart across the street, flanked by the infamous Magic City strip club. This morning, an elderly black man toting a tattered, faded light blue suitcase rounded the corner away from Forsyth as I turned onto the street. He headed north towards downtown Atlanta, moving instinctively in the direction of municipal growth and success.
Fun on The Flats
Sitting next to my friend
Rogers and me at last night's Connecticut-Georgia Tech game was a dad with his two young boys, probably ages six and nine, and they were all decked out in their Tech gear. Dad was teaching the juniors about the finer points of football ("See how P.J. Daniels just fought for that extra yard, son? That's what you call 'second effort'.) and the little guys were taking it all in, the sixer asking plenty of questions all starting with "Dad! Dad!" and the older, wiser brother studying the game like a young scholar, likely having gleaned a couple of extra years' worth of dad's tips that his baby bro wasn't yet privy to.
I got chummy with the dad and the kids somewhat and by the end of the game, we were high-fiving and chatting. Little bro even got caught making rabbit ears behind big bro's head and big bro swatted at him playfully. And suddenly I wished I had my nieces, who are 10 and eight, with me. Because it would have been one big kid/grownup party, with my girls flirting in their coquettish little kid way with those really cute boys who will grow up to be teenage heartbreakers, and the lot of them doing what kids do best: taking an event that adults get all too serious about -- like college football -- and breaking it down to its essence: a game, a fun game. A game where you go to have a Coke, spend some quality time with your dad or your aunt, watch super-big guys run around in weird-looking uniforms, jump around and yell like crazy when your team scores a touchdown and, of course, make rabbit ears behind your big brother's head when he's not looking.
An island, entire of itself
Momentum won't let you stop or even pull off to the side, really, once you've given it the gas in order to join the mad rush on the freeway. At least that's how I reasoned it out when I caught sight of the beautiful black dog, probably a lab mix, sitting among the tall green grass in the large interchange island as I was speeding down the on-ramp.
It was just relaxing there like it owned the grassy expanse, taking in the morning sun, seemingly unaware of the toxic traffic hurtling past. My first inexplicable thought was that I wished I had my camera to snap a picture of this rare sight. Then I wanted to stop and pick the dog up, take it to the local animal control office and do what I could to keep it from being hit or killed on the interstate. But how could I, really, at 45 m.p.h. and gaining, plus having already passed the island with nowhere to back up? It would be dangerous to the dog. And to me. Also, while the Pound was somewhat preferable to the interstate it was still the Pound. Who knew if the dog would be hit if left alone?
Driving on, I reckoned it wasn't my decision to make. Coming home, I exited on the opposite side of the freeway, craning my neck to see if the dog was still sunning itself in the island. I didn't see it. I'm hoping it just went home, wherever it lives, and that its island adventure is at an end, with someone's prayers answered for its safe return.
Consequences
My father is home from the hospital but he'll have to use oxygen for the rest of his life as a result of smoking for so long.
This afternoon, when I walked down the street to give my neighbor a check for her elementary school-age daughter's fundraiser, she and the little girl were in the mom's truck. As I handed the check over, mom thanked me for the check and, noticing a rising twist of smoke, flicked her cigarette ashes into the tray between their seats and then drove off.
I can hear the newest resident of our house down the hall right now, breathing.
Fox to the hounds
I'm heading for a workout. I may wait until 6 p.m. to actually leave the house, which means I'll get to the park around 6:10. That means I'll likely avoid the Tarpons, our area club swim team.
Looking more healthy, athletic and impossibly thin than anyone ever should, the Tarpons hit the track on odd afternoons right around 5:30. They start jogging around the rest of us who are sweating it out like dogs, desperate to finish even the shortest distance, like it's no big deal. I can't stand the way they pass me on the track. They're young and fit. I'm not young anymore, compared to them, and just getting in passable shape is a struggle.
But the other day I took the Tarpons on. They were starting off on their initial trot and I was on my finishing lap of my first two miles. I'd considered just walking it that day, but seeing them there made me determined to finish strong. And I did. I posted one of my best times of late.
Six p.m. by my clock. Fox 1, Hounds 0. At least until I actually get to the park, that is.
IBY 560
Picking up a side of something to go with dinner tonight, I noticed that the car in front of me at the drive-thru had Louisiana plates. The dealer stamp had a Metairie address. My guess was that the folks inside were among the many Katrina evacuees who'd made their way to the Atlanta area.
So I walked up to the open driver's side window and handed the young man inside a $20, telling him dinner was on me tonight. At first he looked a little stunned but then he smiled and thanked me and his wife, in the back seat with a baby snuggled in its car seat, also thanked me. When I asked if they had had to relocate, the man said "Yes. We lost everything."
I had to give him a hug. I just had to. "God bless you," I told him, really meaning it. Then I went back to my own car. They picked up their supper and before the family drove away we exchanged a final wave. Another thanks, and not just for dinner.
The sweet swill of success
Since the
Baby Braves are all mega
Yoo-Hoo fans, Atlanta is going crazy for the stuff. I walked into the local
Publix yesterday and there were cases of it right next to the front entrance with huge "SALE!" signs beckoning unsuspecting shoppers to actually buy the swill.
Ever had Yoo-Hoo? Yuck. Jeff Francoeur and the rest of our Kids are cuties but I have to question their beverage choices, especially since we live smack-dab in the mecca of soft drink cities -- CokeTown USA, where the free-flowing carbonated bliss that is Coca-Cola can be found right around every corner.
Deconstructing this fence isn't easy
My neighbor, Melissa, told me last night that another neighbor's father had died about a month ago. Of course it saddened me to hear that but I was upset at myself because I shouldn't have had to hear it secondhand. If I was a better neighbor, I'd have known.
We met them literally by accident when we were getting ready to move into our then new house back in the summer of 1981. The emergency brake on my dad's car slipped out of gear and it rolled quietly down the gently sloping street, taking out their mailbox and coming to a stop in their front yard right next to their front door. Mr. H was amazingly genial about it all, laughing and joking with my dad, who quickly wrote a check to replace the mailbox while apologizing up and down. Meanwhile, his eight-year-old daughter, Patti, introduced herself to me in what is still the strangest way any child has ever said hello to me up to this day. "Hi," she said brightly, "My name is Patricia H. but everybody calls me Patti and nobody understands me." It was like meeting a "Peanuts" character.
For a while, when I first moved in, we were friends. Patti and I rode bikes together on her end of the street after school and played games. But then I got to know the boys up on my end of the block and that was that. She wasn't the kind of girl who enjoyed being the tomboy invited to hang around while Kevin, Mike, Jamey, Jamie, Jeff, Tim, Michael and Simon rode bikes, played Nerf tackle football, baseball or H-O-R-S-E. Patti didn't get a kick out of hanging out in Jamey's basement like I did, debating who was cooler -- Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Rolling Stones -- while watching him fix his treasured Diamondback BMX bike while we listened to Ozzy Osbourne decades before he became a cuddly, if brain-damaged, rock dad on an MTV reality show.
And so now, Patti and I barely know each other. She's 32; I'm 33. She's got a 12-year-old daughter and is a really good mom. We've chatted, handed out leaflets to fight an apartment developer who wanted to clear-cut the woods behind our neighborhood. But are we friends? No. I'd suspected something had happened to her dad since I hadn't seen him around like usual. You live in a neighborhood long enough, you get to know the people and their patterns.
I want to let Patti know that I'm sorry about her father's passing. He had a brain tumor, Melissa said. I want to open the gate to the fence that I put up back in 4th grade that's kept me from walking just down the street and making friends with the first friend I had in my neighborhood, the only other kid from the block who still lives here after all these years.
It's strange, trying to pry out these rusty nails after so many years when I don't even really remember why I felt a need to hammer them in at all.
Good goes around
After visiting my dad at the hospital today and noticing that he looked a little more tired than he had in our previous visits, my mom and I went to our favorite pizza place nearby to get some lunch. We used to go there on a semi-regular basis until my mom's legs got so weak that she just didn't have the energy anymore. But she loved going and so today she asked if we could go there for lunch and of course I said yes. It was nice to be there with her, just like the old days. We're best friends, my mom and me.
When we asked for the check, the waitress told us that the guy who'd been sitting one booth across from us had already paid for our lunch. He'd asked her not to say anything about it until after he'd left. My mom and I were beside ourselves, amazed at the man's kindness. I hastily wrote a note to him, thanking him for his generosity and for reminding me that people are basically good (see my "One bad apple" blog).
Later, I handed our waitress a $5 tip and the note, asking if she'd please give it to the guy next time he came in. She said she'd try but that he wasn't a regular -- she'd never seen him in there before. She thought he knew us. He didn't. After giving her the short version of how my purse had been stolen, she smiled and said, "See? Good things come around." Indeed.
These occasional autumn days
In a recent essay I edited for a special section we posted online, one of our paper's guest writers said that the reason he thinks Southerners go crazy for college football is seasonal. Specifically, he noted that since we have really gray and brown (read: dull and non-picture postcard snowy) winters here, our springs are fairly short (and pollen-laden, which makes them miserable for all us allergy sufferers) and our summers are swelteringly hot, autumn is the one season we have that's absolutely perfect down here. So football fans make the most of the time outdoors.
Football doesn't make my autumns, but being outdoors in the welcome first cool breezes of September does. That's how it was all day today -- sunny, breezy, cool and with no humidity at all. Any born-and-bred Southerner knows, of course, that Mother Nature is just teasing us with these snippets of autumn; fall never comes to the South this early. But we do appreciate the sneak previews.
One bad apple
Stupidly, I left my windows down today in the at-work parking lot because I didn't want my car interior to bake. And so, thinking "out of sight, out of mind," I stowed my CD case and purse in my trunk, taking my car keys inside with me. Should I have been all that surprised when security called an hour later, telling me that a homeless man had crawled into my car, attempting to steal my CD case, cellphone and CD player face cover? No, I guess. Though he did get my purse, everything else was still in the car.
While I was frantically cancelling my credit and debit cards and putting a hold on my checking and savings accounts, security returned to tell me the police caught the man. They found my bag, too -- my checks still untouched, my SSN card there, my various keys OK, but my driver's license, medical, dental, credit and debit cards gone. I'm also out a wad of cash - about $100 worth - not to mention my general sense of personal security. My credit/debit accounts are cancelled and new cards are on the way. I've let the medical folks know via email that I need new cards and I'll contact them tomorrow when they're back in the office. I can get my driver's license replaced. I'll have the hold taken off my checking and savings accounts. I have my bag back and I'll clean it. My cellphone, stereo and CDs are all here, so I really only lost the cash.
Today I feel like I've already given my share of spare cash to the homeless until next Labor Day rolls around. Until then, the many decent folks who I would have otherwise shared spare money with will receive my gifts only through the charities I already donate to, like the Salvation Army, Red Cross and Atlanta Community Food Bank.
All this man would have had to do was ask instead of taking.
Clean sheets
Each Sunday night, I change the sheets on my bed. It's become automatic, a part of my week that happens like clockwork. Are my sheets really that dirty? Probably not. But there's something about starting each Monday with a fresh set of sheets that makes me feel better. At least until the next Sunday.
This just in: A quote of note from the "Pittsburgh And Beyond" blog:
"It’s 2:30 and the sheets are in the dryer so tonight I’m gonna have that exquisite feel of clean sheets on my skin, so I think I’m gonna go take a shower in a minute so I get the full effect from my sheltered suburban childhood when it was so comfy and excellent to have a hot pair of underpants on a just out of the shower body in fresh from the dryer sheets on the tucked in bed."Shower-to-sheets is a routine I know all too well and it's one of the most cleansing, albeit short-lived, experiences you'll ever have. An amazing instantaneous cooling sensation followed by growing warmth. Incredibly relaxing.
But the hot pair of underpants part? I can't speak to that.
Slow ride
Because I remember how awful it was to sit in hour-long gas lines back in the mid-'70s with my parents during the gas crunch, I'm trying to do my part now in order to conserve fuel. One way I'm taking action is by simply slowing down on the interstate to the posted speed limit.
It's a novel concept -- just slowing down -- in ATL, The City Too Busy To Brake, but I'm doing it no matter how many dirty looks I get. I still get exactly where I was going, albeit a little later than normal. But what's interesting is that I'm starting to wonder why I was in such a hurry to begin with, on all the same roads, going to all the same places at all the same times.
Days dwindle down
"April is the cruellest month," T.S. Eliot wrote in his 1922 epic poem "The Waste Land." But I think cruelty has found a new month in which to mark off its days. And it likes the early autumn promise September holds.
