Audrey ate my plastic dinosaur! She chewed his whole face off, and then savaged his legs! Arrrgsh!

"...We stopped to ask a likely-looking Giraffe; he smiled at us from atop his long spotted elegant neck, and said nothing.

'Do you suppose he doesn't speak English?' Bird wondered aloud.

'Maybe he's just Stupid,' grumbled Oxymephorous.

'Do you think he might come along with us...? Hey, do you want to go on an adventure??' I asked.

Giraffe kept smiling, and said nothing. "

Hiding Out

I've been laying low all weekend in a newfound sanctuary. The deal is, I get to lounge around and sleep and read books and develop some truly excellent bed-head in an effort to be cozy and companionable, and in exchange i get my back rubbed and listen to good music and have meals cooked for me. It has been nine days since I got sick, and never have i been this well looked after.

Actually, come to think of it, aside from being stir crazy and missing the sunlight (did i mention i haven't been outdoors in well over 72 hours?) i have never been so content, or well-loved, or taken care of.  mmmm.....

Aha! food is here! I am so spoiled. More later.

"...There was a lovely spiderweb in an old tree. Oxymephorous was creeped out by spiders, but I thought since we were lost, we might as well stop and ask.

'Pardon me,' I said, 'But do you by any chance know how to get to Xanadu?'

'Of course,' She replied. 'It's right behind you. It always is.' "

I slept all day.

 Here are the things i dreamt about.

1. I was wearing my skirt with the parasol design on it and it started to rain. My skirt got wet. Go figure.

2. I wanted to go swimming but it was snowy out, but it was warm. This was confusing, I wasn't sure if swimming pools were allowed.

3. I was trying to run home but i was being pursued. I had to do a little king fu because some turks tried to stop me, they were wearing some chic dark violet suits and sunglasses. I dodged through a dunkin donuts, and in the restroom I was cornered by a woman who wanted me for her son. I told her that if she could get me home, I'd do anything for her son she wanted. She gave me some lime green track pants and new socks, and brought me home with her. The plan was to meet the guy, and then run like hell at my first chance. Which i did, after i realized what they all meant. He followed me, leaving his mother in tears, and in the end helped me get away after i kissed him. I never got home.

Audrey: (Dancing) You're home! You're home, you're home you're home!

Me: Hi, Auddie, how's it shakin'? (drops bag on floor)

Audrey: Gimme a carrot!

Me: Just a sec, luv. Then we can go hang in the park.

Audrey: You're never here, and i want a carrot. And the park is scary.

Me: I thought you liked the park!

Audrey: It's noisy.

Me: You can eat grass, and carrots.

Audrey: Where have you been, anyway?

Me: You know where I've been, silly.

Audrey: Oh, him.

Me: He likes you. He says you're cute. Even though you shed all over him the last time he visited us.

Audrey: He has yet to bring me a treat, and he's lucky i haven't peed on him.

Me: You are a brat. Remember those dried apricots last week? He brought those.

Audrey: They tasted funny. But i kinda like when he scratches my ears.

Me: You like anyone who does that. C'mon, lets go to the park.

Audrey: So are you gonna keep him?

Me: What???

Audrey: You ought to be with someone nice.

Me: Great, now i'm getting dating advice from a rodent.

Audrey: Well, just think of your track record. For once you've found someone who treats you well, and that makes you nervous. I mean, I'm no expert, but i think you have  issues with your self esteem stemming from suppressed lonliness as an only child compounded by your insecurities about your knobby knees.

Me: What??

Audrey: You know exactly what i'm talking about.

Me: Just eat your carrot and shut up.

Audrey: Can we go to the park later?

These Days

I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking
These days, these days.
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to.

I've stopped my rambling,
I don't do too much gambling
These days, these days.
These days I seem to think about
How all the changes came about my ways
And I wonder if I'll see another highway.

I had a lover,
I don't think I'll risk another
These days, these days.
And if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
It's just that I've been losing so long.
La la la la la, la la.

I've stopped my dreaming,
I won't do too much scheming
These days, these days.
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten.
Please don't confront me with my failures,
I had not forgotten them.

I have been spending hours soaking in the tub a la Margot Tenenbaum. I wish i would get better soon. So if you haven't heard from me, that's where I've been. I'm not ignoring you.

 

Today I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. In its entirety. the whole shebang. No really, I did, and it's a real book. That's really the title.  So I hung around all day and read about people being sick and the lame transit system in San Fran and all this angst and laughable tragedy, and it was great thing, the sort of stuff that makes you want to go to the beach and sit and think. But mostly I just like the part where the kid is leaning out the car window saying "Moo" to random people. Because that sort of thing is wicked funny, and very important.

I have been holed up in my room for two days in the sweltering heat, suffering. Well, no, actually, I've just been immobilized temporarily. I have watched three DVD's, read the aforementioned book, devoured half a package of animal crackers, and done alot of sleeping. And thinking, but it's hot, so all i can conjure up right now is a dream I had about catching a large, pink, great-eyed fish, and how i ought to clean my room as soon as i can get up, and whether or not i'm frittering away the summer, and how much it sucks that i missed out on napping on a rock at the beach with Bry.

He showed up at my door last night in this incredibly goofy/sexy green straw cowboy hat. I limped to the front door in my aqua robe to let him in, and traded a hug for a bevy of treats and comfort-items.

• animal crackers


• bananananas


• a series of short stories by David Sedaris (sp?)


• haagen daas


• an endlessly entertaining trashy supermarket tabloid


• a strawberry smoothie


• kisses galore


• A Heartbreaking Work of....well, you know.


• dried apricots, which i have been chucking at Audrey all day. She says thank you. 

If i have missed anything else, it is because i have already devoured/drank/read/swooned about it. Because this is definitely cause for mad swoonage, and I'm not talking about the fricking heat. Hee hee. I am entirely smitten.

And yes, i know you're reading this, too. Kisses.

$#@!&! Monkeys

Just when i had it all sorted out, he went and dropped a bolt from heaven on me, right out of the blue.

Maine

We left the city under stifling heat, creeping our way along 93 with a host of fellow traffic-travelers and friday escapees. In the face of all aridity, we declared that if we managed to amiably survive the snarl, then we could manage just about anything together. Once Boston had slunk away behind us and we felt the open road and sea breezes before us, we knew for sure we were made to be traveling companions.

Portsmouth offered us a view of tugboats and bonsai trees and a slew of toys, and we peered starry eyed into gallery windows and glass objets d'art. Solace and iridesence marked the evening by sunset, and in that light we sipped rum and ginger beer and plotted what toys we would buy to wreak havoc upon the world. I also met some very rude ducks. Then we turned north again and wandered up Route 1, slipping into Maine under cover of dark.

Butterscotch tastes best at 11 pm in the middle of an adventure. We talked about sultry things and silly things, and stopped for ice cream along the way. Then on though Portland, sugar high and sleepy, along the dark seaside roads with their buttoned-up antique shacks and sleeping tourist traps, into Camden.

At the crest of a hill we met the Maine police. Do not mess with the Maine Police. They will stop you and scold you, very very sternly, but we were polite, so we got a nothing more than a "good evening" and a furrowed look from the lady trooper. We were sent along our merry way. Luck was apparently following us, and we chalked it up to another good omen.

Ha. Or so we thought. We arrived in the dead of the night at the door of our would-be cottage, only to find the proprietors had gone to bed and we were stranded in the middle of the night with nowhere to sleep. Between the sugar and the miles gone by and the aforementioned sultry conversation, there was nothing more we wanted than a place to bunk down. Despite all of our desperate bell ringing and phone dialing (@$%&! cell phone battery died) and scampering about, it was apparent our luck had gone the same way as the dead flattened something or other i had seen on the median a mile back. So, exhausted and desperate and worried, we turned south to Camden again.

Dead smack in the center of town there is a quaint little spot with a maze of lopsided rooms for rent, and we snagged a suite for ourselves. By three AM we had bathed, had a good pillowfight, and soothed ourselves into sleep. Morning brought us free coffee and a map and some strawberries, and we spent the morningtime watching boats on the pier in the sunshine. We then got ourselves a little lost on some farmland back roads, and marveled at the lupine and the wobbly barns. We schemed and collaborated as we went along, and the light and the fresh air made me happy.

We stopped at Perry's Nut House after whooping it up along route 1 to whatever wierdness i had brought along for music, and there we goofed around with plastic flamingos and dinosaurs and ridiculous looking candy. We left with two plastic dinosaurs after finding a common love for childhood palentology, and in a few minutes were at the door of our long lost cottage. We flung open the windows to let in the sea air, and soon enough found ourselves sprawled out in a grand nap, where we spent most of the afternoon. Naps, we decided, are almost as important as:

• chocolate
  
• dinosaurs
  
• good music
  
• architecture
  
• adventures
  
• & lots of other things

Dinner at the Chocolate Grill happened after an evening wandering in the wrong direction (ahh, but wherever you go, that's where you are.), where we bonded over a rare and mutual love for pineapple on our pizza, and a similar sense of metaphysics and philosophy. We both knew karma had something to do with everything we had done and seen, and lead us to each other, and the chocolate souffles before us. By midnight we had taken our peace with the universe and fell asleep in our cottage. The plastic dinosaurs watched over us from the dresser.

We didn't want to leave. We even dreamed up a plot to move to belfast and rip down barns and open a restaurant and paint fiberglass bears or buy a boat or something, so we wouldn't have to go back to the ordinariness. But is it so ordinary? Together we make things extraordinary, wherever we wander, wherever we rest, wherever we think or listen or create. We were official cohorts, schemers, connivers, and adventurers. So Southwards again, over hill and dale, past lakes and old tractors and gull shadows, and sea-meadows, leading to Portland.

I found books. One is about a mouse that makes a boat, and a new copy of the Arabian Nights. If i had a hundred and fifty dollars, I would have loved the antique version of Schherazade's tale with the art nouveau illustrations, but no dice. So we peered over one another's shoulders at architecture books and cookbooks and children's stories, and after having our fill of all things literary, we plunked ourselves down in a cafe across the way. I recall a distinct moment of peace over chai and raspberry cream soda, and next to me i think i found a similar spirit.

It helps to travel with someone who is brave. I think i may have met my hero. Sure, the car wouldn't start when we got to the garage where we parked, but we had plenty of candy and the natives at the loading dock were terribly nice. We negotiated our way out of the sticky situation. I was nervous about the whole difuglety, but somehow together we managed okay, got the car going, went on our way. I think I found someone who gives me the gumption to do what i thought i could not, but also offers me the comfort to show my vulnerability. I thought about this in the quiet moments along our ride home (and in the dining room at Yoken's Thar She Blows! Restaurant with the giant neon whale sign outside), how important it is to make the most of the people near you, to learn from the things you find love in, and most of all to be happy with oneself.

And then i was home again.