Just a stargazer

When I was about 4 years old, I really gave in to peer pressure one day. This is what I remember of the story.

I was at a childcare center in the fitness club where my mom played raquetball. There were about 4 other girls there my age, and we were playing together. One of them hatched a plot to eat crayons, something we weren’t supposed to do. I’m pretty sure I didn’t really want to do it, but I went along with the plot anyway. The ringleaders approached the crayons and I followed them. We took a few bites. They were disgusting! Ugh! What a ridiculously stupid idea those girls had! By that time, I think we were found out anyway. I got in trouble… In fact, I got called a “troublemaker;” it was a new word that I didn’t understand. I imagined a Toastmaster toaster making something called trouble. I was not a toaster. It wasn’t my idea to eat the crayons anyway, but maybe that incident kept me from the desire to always go along with the group.

I have detested my hair all summer long. It is a nasty length in-between short and long and it won’t straighten to save its already-dead life. I would like to cut it off and have something decent looking, but part of me feels I should stick it out and see if 8 more months of growth will somehow make it look pretty. At least in the winter time the humidity will not be as much of a factor. At least I have hair at all.

It was a good thing I brought my swimsuit to New York. Just before we left, I was like “what do you mean they don’t have a pool at the hotel?! What do you mean we’re not going to go to the beach?!” But I brought it, just in case, and I tried to convince people that we should go to Coney Island. We’ll we didn’t make it to any body of water, but because my swimming suit is so cute, I did decide to wear it to the theater one night with some pink pants and my mom’s white long sleeve cotton shirt/jacket. It was a good thing.

After the show, we went to the subway and found out they were flooded and no trains were running! Then we waited for the bus (we had just missed our bus and the next one that came was completely full so we just got on the one after that even though it had a different route that the one we wanted and would drop us 6 blocks away from our hotel instead of right in front of it.) By the time we got to about 75th street in our short ride uptown on a crowded bus, the rain commenced. It came down in sheets. There was nothing we could do but get off the bus and run to the hotel as fast as we could in the pouring rain. After about one block, we were completely drenched. We might as well have jumped in the Hudson River, we were that wet. Good thing I was wearing my swimsuit.

“Step on a steam train. Step out in the driving rain… she’s running to stand still.” -U2

Alright, so maybe I’m not in the “hot” category now… but I’m pretty sure I’ll be thin and sexy when I’m twice my age! How many women can say that? I’ll look great in my 50s, just you wait boyz!

Alright, so maybe I’m not in the “hot” category now… but I’m pretty sure I’ll be thin and sexy when I’m twice my age! How many women can say that? I’ll look great in my 50s, just you wait boyz!

I’m back. NYC was a busy place, considering I was traveling with a bunch of 50 and 60-somethings with type A personalities. They made me go see “Menopause, the Musical.” I could tell that they enjoyed the show much more than I did. But I enjoyed the boy band parody “Altar Boys” (Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan, and Abraham) much more than they did. I tried to win tickets to Wicked and Avenue Q, but to no avail. All worked out well, though, because I was able to attend opening night for Shakespeare in the Park. Central Park. Opening night of a musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was excellent, and a very exciting thing to do in NYC.

Other things I did while I was there… I went to the top of the Empire State Building at night and I went to Ground Zero. I saw “All Shook Up” and a bunch of museums… the Met, the Guggenheim, the cloisters, and a museum of natural history (where I learned things about the universe that I did not learn in school, perhaps because we are always learning new things about space. I also saw some dinosaur bones and some stuffed lions and elephants). I had lunch at the Tavern on the Green… it was definitely too posh for me, but I liked the mirrors and lanterns.

And then there was the wedding. My relatives said it was the fanciest they had gone to, but they did not attend the wedding where the bride had 12 bridesmaids, each with homemade renaissance-style gowns, and each of the groomsmen wearing kilts, where the pumpkin soup was served inside a pumpkin. And they did not go to the Pakistani 2-day affair at the Chase Park Plaza where half of the guests were given corsages to wear, and every chair, and there must have been 250 of them, had flowers on them.

This wedding did win my award for best food. It was so good! They had three enormous spreads set out just for appetizers… there was fruit, bread, cheese, crackers, clams, oysters, lobster ravioli, peking duck, SUSHI, and all kinds of other things. Then we went into the reception hall for the real meal, which was also delicious and included some kind of meat that I can’t remember the name of but even if I could I wouldn’t be able to spell it. The wedding and reception was really fabulous. We enjoyed the dancing and video and DJ and most of all the food!

Well, I don’t need a fancy wedding with a sushi bar (but I would like an open bar). I just want to get married. And I will have a fun wedding. A good time will be had by all.

“…now I know you can RENT it…”

I’ll be back on the blog in a bit over a week. Going to Luis’ wedding in NYC with the family.

“…now I know you can RENT it…”

I’ll be back on the blog in a bit over a week. Going to Luis’ wedding in NYC with the family.

Here is a paragraph I wrote for class back in 2000. (Surprisingly, Mike and I are still on good terms. I love you, brother.)

I can remember my first box of 64 crayons, the ones with the sharpeners on the back. It must have been the most shining of my Christmas gifts that year. Every crayon, vibrant and pristine, represented a miniature work of art. They were my crayons. The ones a four-year-old could use to draw her dreams within the boundaries of cartoon character paper. The crayons would often cross those thick black lines; my clumsy hands failed in their attempt at perfection. It didn’t matter. The art was as flawless in my young eyes as the new box of crayons. At the bottom of each masterpiece, I could scribble my signature. It wasn’t scripted like your mother’s name when she signs field trip permission forms or a doctor’s when she writes out a prescription for a drug that will make you feel all better. It was four block letters each carved in different shades of orange and red. The crayons were virginal, innocent, unspoiled, and untouched–the perfect set of colors. The perfect way to capture the art in me. This gift was my treasure. I remember how excited I was to possess such an array of ambitions. I could for one moment be the envy of the other preschool children who only had a set of 8 crayons, or 24, or 48. I could leave my old set of broken, contaminated crayons behind. A distant memory. This new yellow box was joy itself. Inside the box was the closest I’ll ever come to touching a rainbow. I remember owning these pieces of happiness. And I remember the horror of finding my little brother joyously seated on the floor of the kitchen behind two small boxes: my brand new box of crayons and a bright green pencil box. For amusement he plucked each new, innocent crayon from its crib and proceeded to toss nearly every one of my 64 unused treasures into the pencil box…after he broke it in half.

We had a party at work (off site) and there was some alcohol left over that as being given away. I now have a bottle of wine and two warm beers in one of the cabinets in my office. Since I don’t drive to work, I haven’t taken them home yet. I just keep having to remind myself that the “liquor cabinet” has to stay shut so people don’t think I’m some lush boozing up at work! At least it’s not illegal to have alcohol in the building, which seems atypical on a university campus these days.