The Vacation Thief

Yesterday was a disappointment.

I was behind, sitting at the computer, burning dinner, and watching Nick doze on the couch when I thought about how much Nick now looks like Mike when he's asleep on the couch. I wanted to take a picture of him, one of my bits about gathering evidence of miracles, but I knew that coming that close and peering down at him while he slept would probably wake him up, even if I did manage to make my new phone silent instead of mimicking that stupid shutter sound when I press the button.

And then the landline rang. Nick didn't wake up. I'm not entirely sure why we've had a landline for the the past six years. I almost always ignore it. Sometimes I look at the number displayed. Rarely, I answer and tell them to take us off their list. This time, it was my credit card company. There was a suspicious activity on my card and I needed to call them. This phone number, that case number. Please call as soon as possible.

Here's the thing - when anyone, even someone I trust, leaves a message to call this number about my credit card, I'm suspect. I called the number on the back of my credit card instead.

I have an LL Bean credit card. That means that we can get coupons for free new clothes when we charge stuff on our card. What a great deal, don't you think?

Plus, they have great heuristics and often call to check that a charge is appropriate. The only time they made a mistake was once when Mike and I were traveling in different states and they thought that was weird. It was weird.

The LL Bean credit card woman who came on the phone gave me her name and said she was in Maine. Maine! I love Maine! Mike and I honeymooned in Maine. Right. LL Bean is in Maine. I like imagining being in Maine whenever I talk to these people on the phone. I wanted to ask how her weather was, but I usually have to work them up a bit before I get them laughing and chatting on the phone as if we were acquaintances.

"Thank you for checking with me about this," I said after I'd answered all the special code words only I would know. Even when I did make a charge that was refused for some reason, I try to remember to thank them for being proactive when a suspicious charge comes onto my card. It's hard to stay ahead of the guy who would steal my money, but they give it a good shot.

"Did you charge $173.14 at a bike shop today?"

"No," I said slowly. "I've been at home all day. No charges. Wait, let me think. No. I haven't even bought anything online. I think." Way to be certain of your answer, I thought.

"This was charged in Florida," she said.

"Florida. That sounds nice, doesn't it? A bike ride in Florida." She laughed. We went over a couple more of my charges, more local ones, but there was also a hotel in Florida, the DoubleTree in Orlando, that was refused too. Oh man. A nice hotel in Florida. This guy tried to charge $4000 in just a few hours. Wow!

"Did you charge $42.11 at Albertson's yesterday?"

"Yeah, that sounds more my speed, grocery shopping," I said. Boring. At home. Shopping for food to feed a teenaged boy.

"That four thousand dollar vacation in Florida is sounding pretty nice right about now, don't you think?" I asked. I'd forgotten to ask about her weather. Did she get any of that load of East Coast snow? Was it so cold her tongue would stick to the flag pole if she licked it?

"Yeah, it does," she said. I had her. I could hear the wishful thinking in her voice too.

"You know, maybe I need to double-check with my husband to make sure he wasn't planning an awesome surprise for Valentine's Day. That would be nice."

"But that would have been on his card number, right?" Way to burst my bubble. Her voice went flat. She had burst her own bubble too.

"Well, go ahead and cancel the card and I'll check with him just in case. A four thousand dollar biking vacation in Florida would be fun. I'll call you back if he was going to surprise me. That way, you could let the charges go through. Hey, it could happen, right?" She laughed again. I could picture her responsible but unimaginative boyfriend in that laugh. I swear I could. A good reliable guy, but not too interested in details like Valentine's Day.

Of course, when I called Mike, he actually snorted when I asked him about the great Florida biking vacation extravaganza for Valentine's Day. He doesn't do much for Valentine's Day any more but to his credit, he's learned not to ignore it completely. He tried not to snort, but even though he coughed afterward, I still knew it was still a snort. Yeah, there was a Valentines a couple of years ago. He wasn't feeling well. I told him not to bother, but when the day came and went, I ended up crying and telling him it was okay all in the same breath. He knew it wasn't okay, not really. Nope, he hasn't missed getting me something, anything, a mechanical pencil and a spiral notebook, a dried bunch of flowers from those slimy black tubs, a plastic grocery bag with hearts on it, something, for Valentine's Day since then. He told me to call the LL Bean people back anyway, even though he hadn't gotten me a surprise four thousand dollar biking vacation at the DoubleTree in Orlando, Florida for Valentine's Day.

When I called back, I got the same woman on the phone. I recognized her voice. She had to go through the whole rigamarole asking for answers to code words that she'd asked me before but I knew she knew who I was. She started laughing right away when I began to ramble on.

"You canceled the credit card anyway, but I wanted to let you know that my husband didn't order any stuff from Florida today, not even as a surprise. I don't think he'd even thought about Valentine's Day yet."

She sighed. I'm sure it was an involuntary sigh. I'm sure she was imagining the sad bouquet of carnations or the avocado or the spiral notebook her boyfriend was probably going to pick up for her at the grocery store in a futile attempt to placate her for the Hallmarkiest holiday on the calendar.

"Nope. There's no vacation in Florida for me this spring. Nothing. I have to say that I'm a little disappointed. This thief had a pretty sweet plan, to stay at a nice hotel with a pool, to rent bikes and ride along the beach, to be in Florida, Florida, the state that will probably disappear in the next ten years along with Venice, polar bears, and New York city because of global warming. We'd better get to Florida while we can, don't you think?" I said. Sometimes I don't know when to stop talking.  Okay, a lot of times.

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," she said in that tone that says that neither of us, short of using someone else's credit card and someone else's vacation time, was going to bike on a beach in Florida in the near future. "Thanks for calling anyway."

"You welcome," I said and signed off. I felt a little bad, disappointing my new friend in Maine with bad news like that so soon after meeting her. But it was important not to inflate her expectations too high. That way, when her dependable boyfriend came home with tulips and dark chocolate, she'd be happy. Maybe by then she'll forget about biking at sunrise on a beach in Florida for Valentine's Day and having him ask her to marry her there.

Some day I should tell you the story about how Mike asked me to marry him. I was in my pajamas. He's a true romantic, that man. I tell you. I'm hoping my friend in Maine tells her boyfriend about the thief who tried to buy a biking trip and a hotel stay at the Disney's Polynesian Village Resort so he could ask his girlfriend to marry him at sunrise on the beach. It won't make her boyfriend any more imaginative, but maybe he'll remember to buy her a bouquet of tulips and a package of chocolates from the grocery store.

Mike will probably remember too because I know he doesn't want to make me cry. I remind myself that even if I had married a romantic thief in Florida, I'd probably wake up one day in a year or two to find my checking and savings account cleared out and new charges on my credit card for a boating vacation at Lake Placid, a surprise for a new girlfriend. That damned thief stole my imaginary vacation.

Thank you for listening, jb

Too Dumb to Be an Intellectual Snot

Fridays are supposed to be the day I do what I want. This is not that day.

Last night on Facebook, someone posted a list of the books that were referenced in 'The Gilmore Girls.' I watched 'The Gilmore Girls' for a while, but I guess I didn't really watch 'The Gilmore Girls' the way some people do. I didn't study 'The Gilmore Girls.' Sorry.

It's the same way with Dr. Who. I don't feel the need to study Dr. Who either, though when I found out who River Song really was, I had a momentary impulse to go back and look for references to her to see how my perspective had changed. Do you care? I'm sure someone has written about these references, in detail. My mind is jumping (always jumping) to a line in Arlo Guthrie's song, 'Alice's Restaurant.' He wanted us to sing 'in harmony.' Yes, there are lots of people writing, in detail, about Dr. Who on the Internet, and in harmony.

And don't get me started about 'Firefly.' If I were to study a show, I would study 'Firefly,' in detail, in harmony.

Yes, I'm that kind of girl, an almost trekker, an almost fan-club girl, an almost cult-follower of particular shows that got canceled too soon. I went to Comic Con once, but I didn't dress up. I'm that kind of girl.

Right. Where was I? The book list. So, I love book lists, though I'm not one of those people who has made a list of all the books I've ever read either. I took a good look at Rory's list, a good list. I love counting how many books I've read from people's lists of classic books. Even better, I like the arguments that ensue when people make lists like that. Remember the BBC list? There were a whole bunch of people saying that this book or that book should absolutely be on the BBC list. That's only because it was a hard, big book that they had read and they wanted it on the list to get credit, to get an 'A' for effort. Do you know what I mean? Do you even care?

So, I was counting the books I had read from 'The Gilmore Girls' book list and, as usual, I was pretty smug at first. I read four out of the first five books! Yay me! I is such a smarty-pants, see?

But then, I got to books I wasn't entirely sure I had read. Yup. There are book that I'm pretty sure I've read, but I have absolutely no recollection of their contents. Actually, that's a lot of books. For example, I read 'Angela's Ashes,' but all I remember is my disgust that the guy's mom would buy cigarettes instead of food and that the author was such a whiner to the end. I mean, there seemed to be no end to the distress, no ray of light, no redeeming reason except revenge for writing that book. How's that for a synopsis? Pretty lame, right? Do you even care? And that's a book I remember. Sometimes I just remember that I read that book, but I have no idea what it was about. None. Nada. Zippo. Zilch.

Okay, I might have a vague recollection of where I was sitting when I read the book, in the hospital lobby, in the stacks of the library and my dad's college, or in the hundred year old house with the strange noises. Or I might remember a lost friend who insisted that I borrow his book and complained that I had it for three months on my bookshelf. But do I remember what these books were about?

Not such a smarty-pants now, are we? Yes, I have gotten half way through lesser-known titles and realized that I knew the ending. I'm not psychic, but I had forgotten that I had already read the book! I'm not prepared, ever, to teach a literature class. After reading thousands of books, I just don't remember the details of most of them. Sorry.

An ex-friend once quizzed me on the storyline of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' and quickly moved from friend to ex-friend. I do not need to justify my reading list to anyone, I told her. I had read that book in high school and had easily read a couple thousand books since then. I had read 'The Epic of Gilgamesh!' She looked at me dubiously. I should look her up in a couple of years and quiz her on the nuances of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame.' Bitch.

But I'd have to reread the book first and there are too many other books on my list to read, some of them from 'The Gilmore Girls' book list.

So, when I got done counting Rory's list, I had about 75 1/2 books or so that I was pretty sure I had probably read. I could not remember for certain. And do you even care how many books I've read? Do you? Should you?

But I like to think that salient concepts stay with me, somewhere deep in my brain. For example, I am absolutely sure I read 'Of Mice and Men' in high school because it was one of a few books on a teacher's reading list that I hadn't already read. I was proud of that fact back then. I knew my details back then. I could quote lines from books I had read, back then. I could provide synopses of any of them and probably did whether or not people wanted to hear them. Oh, I was a smarty-pants.

People didn't like me, sometimes, because I was a smart-ass, I mean smarty-pants. I've come to believe that it's nice to be smart, but it's nicer to be nice. Besides, I can't carry off the intellectual snob thing with my Swiss-cheese brain anyway. Drooling and total dementia are just around the corner, I tell you. I just can't remember enough details to make the intellectual snot approach work anyhow . It was exhausting anyway. There were always people who were better at it than I was and who could make me feel bad in an instant. There were also people who didn't know details but they didn't usually give a shit and that made me feel bad too.

Trying to prove something, other than a theorem, usually leads to a sense of inadequacy. There, quote that!

So, this morning at dawn, I was trying to figure out where I was, trying to wake up, trying to remember my plan for the day. Nick had been up in the night with a stomach ache after eating too much cheese. That kid.

And so I had stayed up with him for a while in the night and ended up getting only half a night's sleep. Yes, it is difficult to hold onto smart-ass details after slightly less than four hours of sleep. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

But this morning, that book list was still with me in some nebulous form. I realized that instead of having a nice Friday doing some of what I had to do first and then some fun things, I was going to spend a good chunk of my day trying to become sane by sleeping until I'd gotten reasonable rest and then struggling, as usual, to get done those things done that I really had to do. Fun things? My own agenda? Out the window, as usual.

And there was a snatch of a detail that remained in my mind from a book I had read: '... the best laid plans of mice and men' ...

which, when I went to find it on the Internet to get the quote right, I had to look through five or six pages of Steinbeck quotes before I could find the one I was thinking of, the one that titled the book. In the process, I realized that I remembered very little of the book itself. Lenny, a wise but stupid boy-man, was accused of a crime he didn't commit. Pathetic. And you probably don't give a shit, do you now? I finally found my quote, wondering why that wasn't the first thing that came up on my Internet radar. I realized that my paltry recollection of the quote, which actually came from a poem by Robert Burns, was worded completely differently than I remembered it. I read the whole poem by Burns, barely understanding it. I'm sure people have analyzed and made lists about this poem too, but I could barely hold the thread that held Burn's poem to Steinbeck's book. Was there a good connection? Steinbeck must have thought so since he made it his title. Those people who quoted quotes would probably be glad to tell me if I asked, but would they make me feel bad in the process? Most of them didn't think it important enough to include in their list of quotes.  Does this even matter? It must have been so obvious that those smart-ass, I mean smarty-pants people out there who were trying to prove their intelligence to the world, wouldn't even bother to add the line to their list.

 So, never mind about the list of books I can't remember reading and never mind about 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' and never mind about Steinbeck and Dr. Who and that guy who wrote 'Firefly.' We'll all be worms some day and none of it will matter anyway. Right?

So why even give a shit?

Why are the stories important? That's all they are, the shows, the books, even the lists of relevant quotes that someone compiled. They're all stories that we cling to.

It mattered so much, Burns wrote a poem. It mattered so much Steinbeck wrote a book using a line from Burns' poem. It mattered so much someone copied a sentence from Steinbeck's book. It mattered so much that part of my tattered mind remembered an element of that first sentence, something that was written when a Scottish poet had a conversation with a mouse invading his house in 1785.

And suddenly, I was that mouse, intent on living in the poet's cozy home, intent on listening to the poet's voice echoing off stone walls, intent on nibbling bits of discarded bread and cheese, only to be thrown out into the cold night, the best laid plans of mice and men.

And the reason that you should give a shit, not because I can prove something I can barely remember, not because I've accomplished bits of a pseudo-important list, but because the stories make a connection through time and space and imagination. We need those stories because they tell us who they were then and who we are now and they remind us that there is a connection, still. They make us human.

I'm going to go eat some cheese and listen to a bit of a story before I snuggle into my warm nest.

Thank you for listening, jb

A Minor Fear

Last night, after I brushed my teeth, I put the little white rubber plug into the black gaping hole that is the drain. I had never done that before, but I've thought about the protection it might give, the slight comfort.

Something lives down there. It has ugly black and pink tentacles that I sometimes break off when I scrub the drain with that heavy-duty pipe cleaner Mike bought me. When I use my heavy-duty pipe cleaner in that drain, I sometimes feel like a minor super hero at battle with an alien.

When I put toothpaste and spit and kitchen sludge down the drain, I imagine I am involuntarily feeding him. Now and then, when he clogs the drain or makes it slow, I put vinegar and boiling water on his head and I imagine the screaming as the heat and vinegar loosens his grip and he slides away toward the septic tank. He's afraid of the creatures that live in the septic tank. They would devour him, so he grips the end of the pipe and slowly crawls back up into my drain to safety. He's thinner now and missing many pink and black tentacles which the septic monsters ate greedily.

I imagine him whispering up through the pipes that he will not get fat and slow the drain, that he will not reach his ugly fingers up over the edge of the sink and show me his pockmarked and gelatinous face, but when I am brushing my teeth and look down into that black hole of his, I fear that he will leap out of the drain, attach his tentacles to my foamy lips, and kiss my ugly pink tongue. I'm afraid he might find my dark throat a more cozy place to live and that I would be stuck, living a long and agonizing life, with him there.

Thank you for listening, jb

'Destiny's Gambit' by R.J. Wood

My friend R.J. Wood wrote a book that I really like, 'Destiny's Gambit!' It's either juvenile or young adult fiction, but I can never remember which is which. Which is older, a juvenile delinquent or a young adult? Either way, it's a good book for your middle reader. Well, I admit, it's a good book for the mom of a middle reader. I don't tell my friends that I read kid's books without being required to, but now you know. When I'm reading a book like this, I almost remember what it was like to be a kid.

I loved that this awkward boy in the story, Jake, ended up being so strong and so wise. Does it always seem like having a rough time of it leads a kid that way or am I just wishing it were so because I was an awkward girl? I'm telling you that, as a kid, I dreamed it would be true, that I would be someone who was hidden at first but underneath, was something special. I'm something all right, but we won't go into that right now.

I really want to tell you the story. That would ruin it, wouldn't it?

Oh, you know I'm going to tell you anyway, at least some of it. If you don't want to hear it, you should squeeze your eyes closed and clamp your hands over your ears, saying 'La-la-la-la-la-la' until I'm done.

Well, Jake finds a boat in the middle of a field of grass. It fuels his imagination and the next thing you know he's off on a nautical adventure. The cool thing is that he finds some intense friends along the way. How can you have an adventure without some friends? The other cool thing is that this adventure is in space so some things are different. Sound in a vacuum, remember that? And 'an object in motion tends to stay in motion' especially when there's no gravity or friction or anything. And what about oxygen? Yeah, well that's all worked out. But the coolest thing is that when you're in space you have to ask yourself what 'up' actually means. Jake has to get used to all this stuff, plus some pretty radical 'people.'

Oh man. I can't tell you the whole story. It wouldn't be fair to my author friend and I wouldn't do the story justice.

Okay, any of you that closed your eyes and are sitting there saying 'La-la-la-la' can stop now. I SAID ANY OF YOU THAT CLOSED YOUR ...

Oh, never mind.

Thank you for listening, jb

Funny and Frightening

I haven't told you about books I'm reading lately, have I? I've been reading funny. You know when it's late and you're reading but also trying not to wake people up? If that's what you're doing, you do not want to read 'Bossypants' by Tina Fey or 'Let's Pretend this Never Happened' by the Bloggess, Jenny Lawson. (Boy, I hope Jenny Lawson owns that word, Bloggess, because if she doesn't, some big company is totally going to come along and steal it from her. Bossypants would be a good word to own too, but no one is going to mess with Tina Fey after what she did to Sarah Palin's career. One the same note, no one will bother Jenny Lawson simply because she spends so much time writing about taxidermy and accidentally killing your best friend in your sleep. Seriously, I love reading her book, but would I want to be friends with her? Would I? Yeah, I guess I would, but I'd just have to put my fate in the hands of the great Universe and hope that I really can't die laughing.)

Mike keeps asking me to go to a sleep doctor because I'm not sleeping at night. I blame the funny books. Think about it. They always tell you not to exercise too close to bed time because it'll get your adrenaline running and I think it's the same with laughing until your ribs hurt. I always wish someone was up during the night so I could read sections of these books to them. I hate when people do that to me, but I love doing it.

I could go to bed right now, but it's only 7:33 and I'd wake up at 2:43 am and have to watch multiple episodes of Dr. Who until everybody got up. Sometimes I do a load of dishes in the middle of the night, but no one appreciates the vacuum when they're sleeping and it's too dark and scary outside to mow the lawn.

Funny thing about the dark. I am scared of the dark. Really. You should have seen me trying to take out the garbage after dark after I saw the movie 'I am Legend.' That movie drove me inside my house at night for at least a year. And it was worse whenever I would see anyone walking along the highway outside my house in the evening. No. Sorry. Can't think about that movie too much or I'll go right back to that place.

But do you want to know the funny part, the thing that's strange? When I go camping, I totally love walking around at night in the dark after the campfire has been doused and most of the time, I don't even bother turning on my flashlight. Can someone explain to me why it's so different? Dark streets in a city freak me out but not in the wilderness. Oh, that was totally logical. I managed to spend weekend nights in New York city for eight years and I learned to stay in the light. If it's dark down that alley, you do not want to know what's in there. But I live with woods on three sides of my house with a nearly impenetrable hillside behind it. If anyone is coming from back there, they're falling. So why isn't it the same at home as it is at camp?

Maybe it's the people I'm camping with. I don't like camping alone. Not one bit. One time, I tried to camp by myself and I didn't sleep all night. There was no peace. Another time I car camped on the way to visit my family and I slept so close to my car I might as well have been sleeping under it. I could smell antifreeze. Must have had a leak. No wonder that car froze up one day and never ran again.

It still doesn't make sense, because those same people are usually the ones sleeping in my house when I'm freaked out about going outside into the dark. Mike loves to give me a little bit of grief about 'I am Legend.' Is that funny?

Hey, what happened? I was supposed to be telling you about the funny books I've been reading. Sorry. I just carried away. Plus, I caught a bit of a stomach flu. It was hard to watch the bridal shop scene in 'Bridesmaids' last night. It's not quite as funny when you feel that way too. I haven't hugged you lately, have I? Don't think so. Good. Go wash your hands, just in case.

I told Mike that I'm almost better except that I felt bloated all day. He started singing 'bloated on the river' to the tune of 'Proud Mary' as he made up plates of turkey, mashed potatoes, and vegetables for Nick and himself. I ate oatmeal. Turkey didn't even smell right. I yelled into the kitchen to ask him if that was the search and rescue theme song. He stopped short for a minute, a plate in each hand. Then he burst out laughing. I made him laugh! Why is drowning on the river funny? Why is getting food poisoning in a movie? Why?

Maybe Jenny Lawson is rubbing off on me. I will not tell you the real story of my stomach flu. I keep telling myself I won't tell you. It might have been funny, but it wasn't funny yesterday so I don't want to tell you and maybe I won't, not even for the sake of making you laugh.

Thank you for listening, jb

My Grandma's Rocking Chair

Today, I gave away my grandma's rocking chair. I wasn't supposed to give it away. I was supposed to keep it in the family.

Forever.

Here's the thing. I don't remember Grandma rocking me in this chair. I remember what it looked like. It was a simple chair with a leather seat with a lion embossed in it. There was a pattern carved in the headboard. It was pretty. And yet already the details are fading. What I do remember is that it was more narrow than I am and when she gave it to me, Grandma warned me not to let anyone too big sit in it.

Well, then.

What do you do with a rocking chair that isn't for someone too big? I could never have rocked Nick in it. I could never have taken comfort by sitting in Mike's lap in it. I could not welcome people to sit down in my home without worrying that if they were 'too big' they might break Grandma's chair. What kind of hospitality is that?

What do you do with a chair like that?

This poor chair sat in the corner downstairs for twenty years, forlorn and abandoned. Sometimes I piled clothes to donate on its seat. There were no joyful memories in Grandma's poor chair. I couldn't even remember where it had stood in her house.

Please don't think this is the only thing my Grandma ever gave me. It isn't. I have many things. I have her china cabinet. I remember standing in front of it in her tiny dining room, looking at the treasures inside. Once in a while, Grandma would take down the ornate key and gently open her china cabinet so I could look at a bowl of marbles, Daddy's red wooden yo-yo, or the blue metal donkey that had a slot in its back for coins. I loved that china cabinet with its curved glass doors. It sits to my left, filled with treasures, my tiny bear from the Smokey Mountains, Daddy's college mug, Mike's great-grandfather's meerschaum pipe in its little case lined with red velvet. When he was small, Nick often stood in front of that china cabinet, begging to look at the treasures that lay within. He is gentle with the key, careful of the glass. That china cabinet will be handed down to him some day with love and memories attached to it.

Today, after twenty years of neglect, I gave Grandma's rocking chair away to a new home, to newlywed friends with an empty house. I might have been able to sell it in Snohomish, but I didn't. I wanted to give it away. I wanted to give it to someone I cared about, someone who might eventually need a rocking chair to rock a tiny baby. They could form memories in that old rocking chair. Grandma's chair now has an opportunity to achieve beauty and love and a sense of family after all these years of sitting alone.

My friend's new bride glowed when she looked at that chair. I told her that it had belonged to my grandma. I wanted to tell her how much my grandma had loved me, but I stopped short. That story is too long to tell.

"We'll take good care of your grandma's chair," she said quietly and I knew it was going to a good home.

It's a good thing I'm not giving away kittens.

Thank you for listening, jb

For My Friend Arti