odds and ends
Getting on the number 8 bus at midnight downtown is like stepping into a bar after last call: it's too bright, it's full of dazed and wilted people and the air is thick with the warm, sweet smell of exhaled liquor-breath. It is 2am and a cab will be here to take me to the airport in four hours. Should I even bother laying down to sleep? What difference will it make, since I will sleep all day tomorrow on the plane?
I got home from work at 12:30 and finished up all the little odds and ends I'd left hanging from earlier: finished packing, washed all my dishes, watered my plants, etc, etc. My bags are unusually light, which only seems unusual until I remember that I haven't been back east in the summertime in years. Instead, I tend to go around x-mas and then my bags are heavy with sweaters and long pants. My surprisingly light bags seem to be calling out for more stuff and as I glance around my tidy little apartment, I see a hundred little comfort items that would love to take with me to Georgia to help keep me sane: books, magazines, knick-knacks, etc.
I will resist the urge to fill my bags with extra stuff because none of it will really help. I have all the school books I need plus one pleasure-reading book about a man who walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain with a donkey. In fact, the only extra "luxury" item I will pack tomorrow to keep me company on my trip is Carlos the small, stuffed donkey SK got me a month ago. Carlos will come because SK can't. But thank god for SK, who has borrowed my little golden chariot and gone to the coast for a seminar this weekend. She did my laundry for me earlier in the week, which was not only super helpful but also really perfect because now all my clothes smell like her and now I'll have her smell with me all week. Between her smell on my clothes and Carlos the donkey, I'll be well-cared for.
I went out with a bang at work tonight. Wednesday nights have long been my favorite nights to work. I enjoy my coworkers, Fat Tony and Chunk, and Wednesday night is also bingo night. Bingo night has been much more exciting since I bought what I affectionately refer to as "the bingo enforcer." The bingo enforcer is a super-soaker style water blaster that I use to keep everybody in line. For instance, if you call out "bingo!!" when you don't really have bingo, just because you think it's funny, the bingo enforcer will let you know in a heartbeat just how *not* funny it is.
People love the bingo enforcer and do all sorts of things to provoke a blast from it. They laugh and joke about it and get annoyed with me when I forget to bring it. However, there's always the danger when you start squirting people with water that they're eventually going to want to squirt you back. To minimize this risk, I am *very* moderate with my squirting, I try to be faultlessly fair and I even squirt *myself* if I do something obnoxious that would get anyone else squirted. These risk management techniques have worked so far. Until tonight.
The Chief had been warning me all week that he was going to get me on bingo night. He never came right out and said it, he just grinned and made sly little comments that led me to believe he'd managed to score himself some kind of superior water-blasting toy and planned to turn it on me during bingo. I was very careful to establish myself firmly as the alpha-water-blaster at the start of bingo tonight, bullying the Chief back into his seat so he couldn't go get the blaster I suspected he had, but I could only hold him off for so long. Eventually, long after bingo was over and I'd almost forgotten about him, he surfaced with this weird, homemade, ramshackle blaster and straight-up ambushed me while I sat, innocently playing skip-bo with some clients.
I'm no dummy, so I had my bingo enforcer loaded and ready to go by my side. One hit from the Chief and I was up and going. I felt like a ten year old again, running around and playing. I chased him all over, eventually chased him out the door and down the street. He came back and we started all over again. He got me pretty good a few times and I got him back and meanwhile everyone around laughed and laughed at us. It was really fun.
Now I'm exhausted and happy and trying to stay awake. I don't want to lose a moment of this time in my little house because in four short hours I'll be swept away and I'll spend the rest of the week in a tumult of old drama and other people's energies without a lot of freedom or space to myself. It will pass really fast, though, and before I know it, I'll be right back here in my little chair at my little desk writing more blogs like I never even left. Hmm. So here I go.
I got home from work at 12:30 and finished up all the little odds and ends I'd left hanging from earlier: finished packing, washed all my dishes, watered my plants, etc, etc. My bags are unusually light, which only seems unusual until I remember that I haven't been back east in the summertime in years. Instead, I tend to go around x-mas and then my bags are heavy with sweaters and long pants. My surprisingly light bags seem to be calling out for more stuff and as I glance around my tidy little apartment, I see a hundred little comfort items that would love to take with me to Georgia to help keep me sane: books, magazines, knick-knacks, etc.
I will resist the urge to fill my bags with extra stuff because none of it will really help. I have all the school books I need plus one pleasure-reading book about a man who walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain with a donkey. In fact, the only extra "luxury" item I will pack tomorrow to keep me company on my trip is Carlos the small, stuffed donkey SK got me a month ago. Carlos will come because SK can't. But thank god for SK, who has borrowed my little golden chariot and gone to the coast for a seminar this weekend. She did my laundry for me earlier in the week, which was not only super helpful but also really perfect because now all my clothes smell like her and now I'll have her smell with me all week. Between her smell on my clothes and Carlos the donkey, I'll be well-cared for.
I went out with a bang at work tonight. Wednesday nights have long been my favorite nights to work. I enjoy my coworkers, Fat Tony and Chunk, and Wednesday night is also bingo night. Bingo night has been much more exciting since I bought what I affectionately refer to as "the bingo enforcer." The bingo enforcer is a super-soaker style water blaster that I use to keep everybody in line. For instance, if you call out "bingo!!" when you don't really have bingo, just because you think it's funny, the bingo enforcer will let you know in a heartbeat just how *not* funny it is.
People love the bingo enforcer and do all sorts of things to provoke a blast from it. They laugh and joke about it and get annoyed with me when I forget to bring it. However, there's always the danger when you start squirting people with water that they're eventually going to want to squirt you back. To minimize this risk, I am *very* moderate with my squirting, I try to be faultlessly fair and I even squirt *myself* if I do something obnoxious that would get anyone else squirted. These risk management techniques have worked so far. Until tonight.
The Chief had been warning me all week that he was going to get me on bingo night. He never came right out and said it, he just grinned and made sly little comments that led me to believe he'd managed to score himself some kind of superior water-blasting toy and planned to turn it on me during bingo. I was very careful to establish myself firmly as the alpha-water-blaster at the start of bingo tonight, bullying the Chief back into his seat so he couldn't go get the blaster I suspected he had, but I could only hold him off for so long. Eventually, long after bingo was over and I'd almost forgotten about him, he surfaced with this weird, homemade, ramshackle blaster and straight-up ambushed me while I sat, innocently playing skip-bo with some clients.
I'm no dummy, so I had my bingo enforcer loaded and ready to go by my side. One hit from the Chief and I was up and going. I felt like a ten year old again, running around and playing. I chased him all over, eventually chased him out the door and down the street. He came back and we started all over again. He got me pretty good a few times and I got him back and meanwhile everyone around laughed and laughed at us. It was really fun.
Now I'm exhausted and happy and trying to stay awake. I don't want to lose a moment of this time in my little house because in four short hours I'll be swept away and I'll spend the rest of the week in a tumult of old drama and other people's energies without a lot of freedom or space to myself. It will pass really fast, though, and before I know it, I'll be right back here in my little chair at my little desk writing more blogs like I never even left. Hmm. So here I go.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 1:53 AM
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