Little D sits beside me in my generous sister’s car as I rush to Anna’s house to pick up keys to the church. A glaring Indian summer sunset seeps through the front window and blinds D as she squirms and talks about her day. Two seconds later my phone rings and I pick it up because it’s my grandmother.
“Is this L?” I hear an unfamiliar voice say.
“Yes,” I answer back, assuming it’s a nurse at my grandmother’s care facility.
“Here’s your granddaughter,” the woman says softly while the phone crackles from movement on the other end. My grandmother gets on and briefly says hello.
“Now listen to this dolly,” my grandmother says sweetly and I hear more crackling whilst she shoves the phone up against a radio. For the next thirty minutes my phone is blaring with semi-discernable music from my grandmother’s radio. Little D gives me a quizzical look and I just shake my head. When we pull up in front of Anna’s I turn to D:
“Hold on to this please,” I say and press the speaker phone button.
“What IS this? No way…I’m coming in.”
“No you’re not. Stay here and if my grandmother gets on the line, tell her I just went to the door to get a friend.”
“Hello there!” shouts Anna’s late eighty-something husband as he swings open the door. His six foot three inch frame fills the doorway as he tells me about the front porch light that hadn’t been working for fifteen years until he fixed it yesterday and turned it on to welcome me. Anna comes to the door with a clutch of keys the size of my head.
Oh crap. I think. How will I ever….
“I’m coming with you,” she offers matter-of-factly. She is in her eighties as well but continues to work more than forty hour weeks at the church, disciple gazillions of people, and organizes more events than even I can keep track of.
I lost my keys at church Sunday morning and I thought if anyone could help me find them, it would be Anna. Ok I didn’t think of that—my sister did but whatever.
After scouring the church and being dragged into the middle of some poor pastor’s meeting by a Russian woman I have never seen before in my life (and told to just ASK the man if he’d seen some keys…umm…WHILE he was speaking), Little D, Anna and I left with absolutely no luck.
“My mom is getting’ drunk with my other mom and their smokin’ a LOT of mary jane,” Little D offers to Anna who turns to look at me with a surprisingly unsurprised expression.
“Oh dear,” she says.
“Yep…that’s why I’m hangin’ out with L. Otherwise my mom will yell when she gets drunk drunk and their takin’ shots so I know she’ll be drunk drunk soon.”
“Well thank you for your help,” I say to Anna when I return her to her house. My grandmother calls again.
“You know, when I called before, they kept saying I should add more numbers to the numbers you gave me….” She says over and over. “Do you have any idea what numbers I should add? Any ones that I want? I’m glad you could listen to my TV….”
“Radio, Pammy. That was your radio. And thank you for sharing with me!” She keeps talking for twenty more minutes and Little D dozes off in the front seat.
And then my mind starts to wander. I’ve been asked several times lately “L, where have you been?” by a variety of people. It’s not just my blog that is absent. It’s me. It’s keys. Its pieces of my life I can’t seem to find at the moment. Pieces of my mind as well.
“Look, you idiot,” my friend Rubo writes me. “I TOLD you listen to my four steps to get your life where it should be and getting a dog is not one of them. So get your mind out of your Melrose Place/90210/Grey’s Anatomy bullcrap life you’ve got going on there in Hollywood and tape my four steps to your dog’s ass and get on track!”
Um. Ok. If only it were so simple.
Even last week I posted a blog but within the same day removed it because I am a horrible person sometimes who should just keep her mouth shut.
I removed the blog because I ranted about what a bigot Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family is and then promptly proved to myself that I am no better. I went OFF on him and people who think like him….and then about two hours later had an “accident” with Honda which was pretty much criminal and well….I did NOT respond to the situation in the way that I should have. The entire rest of the afternoon I kept reminding myself to shut up when I want to criticize people because no doubt I am equally, if not more fully, flawed. I was also deeply in fear of the police. Anyway.
In fact, I’m HORRIBLY flawed and that’s also where I’ve been. In Flawland. My older sister has been a perfect saint to me (as most of my siblings generally are) and that’s saying something considering I’m a heinous roommate (I tend to disassociate from the stacks of “papers” that begin to climb to the ceiling) and yet I still do really crappy things to her. Like, really crappy. And yes, I still use the word crappy. Like I use the word Frick. I make up my own cuss words. Some people would say cuss is something no one outside of Georgia in the 1920’s should use, but I grew up where it the word was still operable.
“Did you just say frick?” Some guy asked me at another guys’ apartment Sat. night while I was attempting to play a game.
Why yes. I did. Because in addition to being in “I lost a lot of things” land, and “Flawland”, I’ve also been in “Making up Reality and Creating More Confusion Land”.
Rather than explaining that zone of my own strange universe, I will simply say that blogging hasn’t been as prolific (though I do get a chance to peruse all of yours now and again even if I don’t always comment—so sorry) because my life here, in the now, in it’s strange zones and lands, has been taking up a lot of weird time.
And soon you’ll all meet Tweak. My dog. And yes, I named him after crystal meth. Ok not entirely....but sorta....
“Is this L?” I hear an unfamiliar voice say.
“Yes,” I answer back, assuming it’s a nurse at my grandmother’s care facility.
“Here’s your granddaughter,” the woman says softly while the phone crackles from movement on the other end. My grandmother gets on and briefly says hello.
“Now listen to this dolly,” my grandmother says sweetly and I hear more crackling whilst she shoves the phone up against a radio. For the next thirty minutes my phone is blaring with semi-discernable music from my grandmother’s radio. Little D gives me a quizzical look and I just shake my head. When we pull up in front of Anna’s I turn to D:
“Hold on to this please,” I say and press the speaker phone button.
“What IS this? No way…I’m coming in.”
“No you’re not. Stay here and if my grandmother gets on the line, tell her I just went to the door to get a friend.”
“Hello there!” shouts Anna’s late eighty-something husband as he swings open the door. His six foot three inch frame fills the doorway as he tells me about the front porch light that hadn’t been working for fifteen years until he fixed it yesterday and turned it on to welcome me. Anna comes to the door with a clutch of keys the size of my head.
Oh crap. I think. How will I ever….
“I’m coming with you,” she offers matter-of-factly. She is in her eighties as well but continues to work more than forty hour weeks at the church, disciple gazillions of people, and organizes more events than even I can keep track of.
I lost my keys at church Sunday morning and I thought if anyone could help me find them, it would be Anna. Ok I didn’t think of that—my sister did but whatever.
After scouring the church and being dragged into the middle of some poor pastor’s meeting by a Russian woman I have never seen before in my life (and told to just ASK the man if he’d seen some keys…umm…WHILE he was speaking), Little D, Anna and I left with absolutely no luck.
“My mom is getting’ drunk with my other mom and their smokin’ a LOT of mary jane,” Little D offers to Anna who turns to look at me with a surprisingly unsurprised expression.
“Oh dear,” she says.
“Yep…that’s why I’m hangin’ out with L. Otherwise my mom will yell when she gets drunk drunk and their takin’ shots so I know she’ll be drunk drunk soon.”
“Well thank you for your help,” I say to Anna when I return her to her house. My grandmother calls again.
“You know, when I called before, they kept saying I should add more numbers to the numbers you gave me….” She says over and over. “Do you have any idea what numbers I should add? Any ones that I want? I’m glad you could listen to my TV….”
“Radio, Pammy. That was your radio. And thank you for sharing with me!” She keeps talking for twenty more minutes and Little D dozes off in the front seat.
And then my mind starts to wander. I’ve been asked several times lately “L, where have you been?” by a variety of people. It’s not just my blog that is absent. It’s me. It’s keys. Its pieces of my life I can’t seem to find at the moment. Pieces of my mind as well.
“Look, you idiot,” my friend Rubo writes me. “I TOLD you listen to my four steps to get your life where it should be and getting a dog is not one of them. So get your mind out of your Melrose Place/90210/Grey’s Anatomy bullcrap life you’ve got going on there in Hollywood and tape my four steps to your dog’s ass and get on track!”
Um. Ok. If only it were so simple.
Even last week I posted a blog but within the same day removed it because I am a horrible person sometimes who should just keep her mouth shut.
I removed the blog because I ranted about what a bigot Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family is and then promptly proved to myself that I am no better. I went OFF on him and people who think like him….and then about two hours later had an “accident” with Honda which was pretty much criminal and well….I did NOT respond to the situation in the way that I should have. The entire rest of the afternoon I kept reminding myself to shut up when I want to criticize people because no doubt I am equally, if not more fully, flawed. I was also deeply in fear of the police. Anyway.
In fact, I’m HORRIBLY flawed and that’s also where I’ve been. In Flawland. My older sister has been a perfect saint to me (as most of my siblings generally are) and that’s saying something considering I’m a heinous roommate (I tend to disassociate from the stacks of “papers” that begin to climb to the ceiling) and yet I still do really crappy things to her. Like, really crappy. And yes, I still use the word crappy. Like I use the word Frick. I make up my own cuss words. Some people would say cuss is something no one outside of Georgia in the 1920’s should use, but I grew up where it the word was still operable.
“Did you just say frick?” Some guy asked me at another guys’ apartment Sat. night while I was attempting to play a game.
Why yes. I did. Because in addition to being in “I lost a lot of things” land, and “Flawland”, I’ve also been in “Making up Reality and Creating More Confusion Land”.
Rather than explaining that zone of my own strange universe, I will simply say that blogging hasn’t been as prolific (though I do get a chance to peruse all of yours now and again even if I don’t always comment—so sorry) because my life here, in the now, in it’s strange zones and lands, has been taking up a lot of weird time.
And soon you’ll all meet Tweak. My dog. And yes, I named him after crystal meth. Ok not entirely....but sorta....
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