Read a great book: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Watched a great movie: The Fall by Tarsem Singh
Looked at a beautiful thing: Amazing paper craft castle
Laughed really hard: Regretsy (warning, some NSFW)
Friday night was the 25-year anniversary party for my company. The theme was The 80s and for weeks people have been talking about what they were going to wear, going shopping at second-hand stores and debating what does and doesn’t define 80s style. You have no idea how old it made me feel. Probably like my parents did when we had 50s or 60s parties. I wasn’t feeling 100% all week and was waffling about whether to go up until the last minute, partly because I really wasn’t in the mood for dressing up. I happened to mention to my husband what the party theme was and he exclaimed, rather surprisingly enthusiastic, that I could wear a hockey jersey and tuck my jeans into my socks! Mmmm…okay. I never wore a hockey jersey in the 80s but apparently it was a defining outfit for high school girls in 80s movies. Whatever. I DID, however, tuck my jeans into my white socks for approximately 10 years straight, so I figured I could handle that part.
In the back of my closet, I have a ribbon hanging that is clipped full of the giant fluffly hairbows-on-barrettes that were de rigeur for anyone with long hair in the 80s. God knows why I’ve never gotten rid of them. Even more scary: I could wear a different one each day for TWO WEEKS. Imagine the horror! I chose the biggest and ugliest one: black with red roses. Anders found his Chicago Blackhawks jersey and I put a sage-green turtleneck under it. Also hanging in the back of the closet was a bandanna stuck full of pins. I found 3 appropriate ones from the decade, including my Class of 82 button and a huge one celebrating the Chicago Bears Superbowl XX victory in 1985. So, unlike many of the people at the party, who weren’t even BORN until 1984, everything I had on was authentic.
I stayed through the dinner and entertainment, but left shortly afterwards, at 10 o’clock. Only to discover a note tucked into the driver’s side window of the car that said “Check your right front tire!!”…which was flat. ARGH! Thank heavens for a colleague who, also on his way to his car, stopped to verify the impossibility of driving on the tire, and then kindly helped me change it, since I didn’t even know where to start.
It was a lovely relaxing quiet weekend, after the Friday night adventures, in which I read a lot. It was raining pretty much straight for 2 days and today the winds were howling around the house and shaking it once in awhile. Because I had a flat tire on Friday night, and the spare is still on the car, I didn’t go anywhere, though I had thought about a bookstore visit and sushi in town, but decided it wasn’t worth the, admittedly small, risk of having lightning strike twice, so I stayed in, warm and cozy and occasionally watched the rain from the living room window and marveled at how the branches of trees can be flung so crazily about and yet return to their original position as soon as there was a break in the wind.
It seems quiet out there, as it often does on the weekend. My friend’s husband started his second round of chemo on Friday night, and my thoughts are preoccupied with both selfish thoughts and complete hope that they will get through this intact. It’s hard to realize that everything that happens to people we care about is still filtered through the egocentric lens of our own needs and desires. Is there any worse feeling than helplessness? Giving thanks for my own blessings and health is anathema to me when I reflect on how many people don’t have the same luxury.
A conversation this weekend reaffirmed for me why I don’t like to talk about religion or politics. It’s not because I don’t care about other people’s opinions, exactly, but on some level, the one where we ALL THINK WE’RE RIGHT, I can’t be bothered to defend my position or sometimes, to even explain what often seems so self-evident to me. Talk about egocentric! Mostly what I want to do, faced with that sort of situation, is to trawl my bookshelves, and pull down the relevant texts that helped form MY worldview and force the other party to read them first. But, because I am a huge believer in everyone’s right to their own opinion, I usually find myself shutting up and changing the subject. I’m not an arguer, not about stuff like that. I know there are too many ways for people to view the world to think that mine is the only valid one.
Things I am really sick of: sibling squabbles, fighting for computer time, preadolescent drama
Things I really don’t want to hear more about: World of Warcraft, my daughter’s sense of injustice, whose turn it is to play
People I have much more sympathy for these days: My mom and dad during our teen years
The other day I mock-threatened my daughter with Mark Twain’s solution to adolescence: a barrel with a hole in it. She laughed, but she doesn’t really get how close the menace is some days.
It’s another busy week chez lizardek: I have training and handover to do by phone, an appointment Tuesday evening, an AWC board meeting for new board members, and book group. Plus I have to have the final adjustments made to the AWC directory by the end of the week so it can go to print. But nothing tomorrow and nothing Friday (at the moment) which will hopefully help even it out.