I'm writing this post in Word because my Internet is down. It feels weird. The house feels strangely empty when I can't stop whatever I'm doing every five minutes and see what everyone is up to on Facebook. Or check my email.
This morning's unfortunate communication blackout isn't by choice but I think it's probably healthy to take breaks every now and then from technology. I haven't been texting as much this past week. Maybe I am still bitter that my phone may or may not be receiving all of the messages that come in. More people have complained about that. Irritated, they finally call me.
"Why aren't you answering my texts?" Coco said. "I needed to know if you wanted to go with me to this thing. You didn't answer so I just bought you a ticket. Now you're going."
She does this a lot. I think it's because I am sort of famous for canceling plans at the last minute.
"There's this amazing thing I want you to go to." she said a few weeks ago.
"What is it?" I am wary. She enjoys a lot of things that are suspect to me. Like hummus and interpretive dance.
"I can't tell you. But you will love it. Besides I already bought you the 30 dollar ticket so you have to go."
So then I have to call someone else up and cancel with them, because she paid thirty dollars so it must be important, and I'm slightly annoyed but mostly just love her for dragging me into adventures outside of my normal comfort zone.
The last time this happened I walked into a big theater-literally no idea what we were about to see.
I couldn't decide whether it would be worse to discover I was trapped for two hours watching a play or a dance performance. Or-God Forbid- a musical. I really don't like standing up for any period of time watching people jump around or sing. I get tired. I
This time Coco bought me a ticket to go on a mystery trip for three days to what she will only describe as a "grown up summer camp for artists" It's out in the country. And I'm supposed to bring bug spray. That's all I know.
Tents? Cabins with bunk beds? Arts and crafts? Ghost stories by a fire?
No idea.
I think I'm looking forward to the Grown Up Summer Camp next weekend. Although I trust Coco's judgment on these things, it could very well be a bunch of hippies in tents by the side of a dirt road doing past life regression while they heat up cans of garbanzo beans by the fire. They probably don't even know what Facebook is because they are too busy painting their bodies with henna and perfecting their hackey-sack game to find out about "computers".
I can easily imagine being the only white person there who doesn't have dreadlocks, isn't wearing a hand-blown glass mushroom necklace and doesn't weave items out of hemp. They will probably make me sit in a drum circle while I am waiting for my turn in the sweat lodge.
Also- Patchouli. I don't even have to explain that one.
"I'm doing the Master Cleanse," one of them will say as she drinks from a giant cup of lemon water and cayenne, right after taking a huge drag on her clove cigarette, "It really flushes out the toxins."
And because Summer Camp is in the first week of June I won't be able to blunt the edge of my pain with a bottle of Patron while I say-
"I know man. But none of that is going to matter in 2012 when the world ends."
Because hippies, like all other magical creatures, believe in a lot of bullshit. Healing crystals, conspiracy theories, interest rates set by the Fed, ancient Mayan Armageddon prophecies, Nostradamus, whatever.
I grew up with them. So I have no patience with that shit.
My mom used to be one. She and my dad had matching waist length hair the day they got married. They "lived off the land" in a shack outside the city-growing their own vegetables, killing deer for meat and cooking it over a wood stove because they had no heat or electricity.
By choice.
With an infant.
My mother got tired of it first. She left my Dad out there to play Grateful Dead songs on his guitar by himself while she rented an apartment that had a real stove. There wasn't even a tree growing up through the bathroom floor like there was at my Dad's shack.
"Do you know how hard it is to get a shitty diaper clean with cold water on a washboard?" And that was the end of that.
She has become increasingly pragmatic with age. Unlike me ("Sure Hobo-I'll go to the ATM and withdraw my last 20 dollars so you can go home and feed your son! It's awesome that you have a job that starts tomorrow! ") my mother is the opposite. She has what is called "Common Sense" and her bullshit detector is always turned up to the High setting.
We saw something about that Mayan prophecy the other day on PBS.
"Historical anthropologists still don't understand how the Mayans were able to calculate their calendar so accurately," the narrator said." Many people believe the prophecies written in their big Mayan freak out books that say we're all going to die in 2012."
The picture on the screen showed people running through the streets, hair on fire, balls of flame falling from the smoke filled sky.
I just kind of sat there,
"Is that true?" I thought. " Coco and I were going to go to Fiji next May for Drinking Month."
My mom got up, laughing, as she refilled her glass of "sweet tea".
" Why are you always making me watch this crap? Why can't we just watch Dateline like normal people?"
"Mom. You like educational programs. Besides I hate commercials." I bit my nail harder- with a new, slight sense of foreboding. What if they are right?
"I don't get into this post-apocalyptic stuff like you and your zombie movies." She turned the channel. "What do the Mayans know anyway? Clearly they couldn't have been that smart because look how they ended up. Do you know any 'Mayans'? Is the city of "Maya" a great travel destination? No. They're all gone. So how smart can their calendar be? Maybe they should have used that calendar to predict when the Spanish were going to come kill them all."
"I think that was the Aztecs, Mom."
"Whatever." she handed me some "sweet tea" and switched the channel to "Dateline."
Similarly, at a somewhat critical juncture in my life several years ago when I was trying to decide how to approach a difficult problem I was having with someone, my mother was the voice of reason in the room.
"I'm trying to be the Buddha about this." I said, closing my eyes and touching my index finger to my thumb as I breathed in and out.
"Well, that's stupid." she said as she took a long drag off her cigarette. "Look at the Dalai Lama. Tibet is fucked now. He lives in India."
Good point.
Drawbacks to dating your house-
It can't open the jar of pickles for you. So they just stay closed until you can lure a male into the house to do that for you because you don't have man hands-thank God.
Not only can your house not open the pickles-it cannot fix its own screen door, show you how to use the three remotes when you forget(every day) or take out the recycling-which has become prodigious in May.
Your house is not sexy. Unless you are one of those girls that are turned on by stone walls and antique baseboards -and then,well--God help you girlfriend. There is probably a porn site for you somewhere-a naughty version of "This Old House" People are into everything these days.
Not for me to judge.
Your house cannot laugh at your jokes. Or tell any new ones. Not much conversation at all. You can't tell if it's being passive agressive or just pensive.
And, while it's nice to sit in silence-maybe read together-sometimes you need feedback-
like when you ask "Why did that bitch at work steal my 'Eat, Pray, Love' coffee cup? I left it by the water cooler and now it's on her desk. Who the fuck does she think she is?"
Since your house doesn't ever helpfully say things like-"When was the last time you shaved your legs? I feel like I am making out with a man. Get away from me and go take care of that."-You forget to. And don't notice it until you're already out wearing a short skirt.
Your house cannot share your appreciation for Andrew Bird.
Do they even *have* pheasants on the Jersey Shore?
23 hours ago
