Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2003 - 2:14 p.m.
Greetings,
I am sitting in the middle of a ghost town. Everyone has either left for the day or not bothered to come in at all except me and two other women. There may be some lurkers I have not been able to see because cube walls are not see-through. But I doubt it.
During a phone call to Thomas to sort of needle him over the fact that I get to leave early today (but it involves bringing Meow to the vet and grocery shopping so big deal), I remembered that I have no house key because I gave it to my friend so she could check on the cats in our absence. If not for the phone call to gloat (sort of), I would have arrived on my own doorstep and been unable to get inside to shove Meow in her carrier and cart her yowling sad ass off to the vet for the weekend.
So now Thomas gets off early today too. And I get to drive to the Westblank to pick him (and his house key) up on top of it. AND while I am dropping off Meow and buying shitty litter, he’s going to be home packing (or surfing the net).
So who should be gloating now?
Will this teach me to never make gloating, needling phone calls again? Yeah, right.
I have sent out a plethora of Thanksgiving e-cards to various and sundry people. Most timed to arrive tomorrow, but one actually got away from me and went out to my father today. But he has a couple more in store for tomorrow when I am actually there to read them with him. Unless he checks his e-mail before he leaves to pick us up at the airport.
The anticipation of whether he will or won’t is bound to kill me overnight in my sleep if I don’t keep a handle on myself.
It’s a dreary, wet sort of day here in New Orleans. The kind of day that sighs, “Autumn” in a soft, tired voice. The year is starting to feel old now and the leaves on the trees in my neighborhood have, for the most part, fallen down in a scatter of brittle brown.
I remember one of the first things I noticed about my new house back in March was the sight of the huge old tree in the vacant lot behind my house standing up in its stark, nakedness, framed perfectly in my bathroom window as I ran my bathwater at dusk on a Saturday night.
Spring came and the tree filled out triumphantly, but now it is mostly bare again, back to its original state.
As a metaphor for winter, there’s nothing that says it with quite such a comforting wrench as a bare tree.
Last night I discovered a rather large, menacing spider in my bathroom. She was standing guard on the cold tiles behind the toilet. She had scary markings on her back and while she was too big to be a brown recluse and I don’t think we have black widows here in New Orleans, she did not look…wholesome, if you know what I mean.
Then there was that beat up, dead as a doornail, sucked dry as bone additional spider carcass she was standing over to add to her dangerous aura.
I did not want to kill her (and I blamed it on Erzulie, the voodoo lwa guarding my bedchamber – she doesn’t want ugly things around her, but she doesn’t want them squashed out of existence either necessarily), so I persuaded a very Doubting Thomas to scoop her up in a plastic cup and dump her out the bedroom window.
He didn’t want to kill her, but he didn’t want to be eaten alive by her either, a sentiment I heartily shared which is why I asked *him* to dispose of her naturally.
Kat will be proud and relieved to read that Mrs. Killer Spider was successfully transplanted under our poor unsuspecting neighbors’ house where she is no doubt laying ten thousand evil little eggs which will hatch into ten thousand evil little minion spiderlings at some hopefully distant point in the future.
May none of them find their way into Crescentwood is all I have to say.
I am typing this entry in Word and my Office Assistant, Merlin, is standing by to give me helpful pointers and/or to fall asleep standing up. He is dressed in blue robes decorated with gold stars and crescent moons and he has a long white beard. He peers around in confusion for the most part of the day, with the occasional bouts of sleeping standing up. Just now he took out a golden wand topped with a star and stared at it as if he had no idea what it was for or what in tarnation to do with it.
I suspect he’s not quite all there. A few cards short of a full Tarot deck, if you know what I mean. Perhaps he’s the victim of a rather potent Befuddlement Spell, although he does give kick ass help when asked.
Right now he’s peering shiftily to the left and the right looking for something he’s no doubt forgotten what it was in the first place. Merlin the Mite Confused.
As I was driving in this morning I flashed back to the first time my father drove me to his house in North Carolina. Everything was unfamiliar and rural and we stopped at a grocery store, Harris Teeter, for wine. It was Thanksgiving Day and I had been married just over a month although I cannot for the life of me remember Lou being present in the car with us. Perhaps I am doing some selective memory editing or maybe he didn’t come that year or I came early or it may be that he was so supremely incidental to the moment as to be rendered invisible. But all I can remember is driving (and driving) down lots of rural, Southern roads and seeing lovely homes situated next to broken down trailers.
It was alien landscape compared to New England. Now, of course, I live further south than my parents do and nothing can compare to New Orleans if you want beauty next to squalor.
I remember being shocked that we could buy wine on a holiday and in a supermarket to boot. That sort of thing just is not possible in strait-laced, behind the times, New England. You get your alcohol, (including wine) at the package store which opens at 10 and closes at 8 and is never open on Sundays or holidays ever. And even if you can buy your beer and malt beverages (but not wine coolers) at the grocery store, you can’t buy them before 10 or after 8 or on Sundays or holidays. They have this large grey tarp they pull down over the beer cooler during these times. It’s archaic. Seriously.
(Merlin the Mite Confused actually just yawned so hard his head nearly split open and now he’s snoring and asleep standing up. You just can’t find good administrative work these days!)
My parents’ house was brand new having just been built within the last 18 months or so. It was the first time I ever saw it, or their dog Toby who was just past his first birthday and so technically not a puppy, but he still hadn’t filled out completely. Biffy and Buffy were both still alive too and greeted me at the door. Biffy used to make this “woo woo woo” noise and drag himself around on his belly as if he suddenly forgot how to use his back legs due to the sheer overload of sensory pleasure it gave him to see you.
The house smelled like Thanksgiving – turkey in the oven, potatoes boiling on the stove. A football game played in the background on the television.
I got the tour of the house and especially remember liking the ducks on the wall paper in my father’s study. Most of the furniture was new, but there were bits and pieces I remembered from our house on Ferndale Drive in Manchester, Connecticut.
I also remember being struck by the fact that the living room was the full length of the house and there was a front porch and a screened-in back one and that there was no formal dining room, but a kitchen/dining area that was very cozy.
It was massively different from my childhood home and yet my parents seemed to fit there more than they ever did on Ferndale Drive. (Well, my father’s Rec Room down in the cellar of the old house did fit him, but that’s because you never really saw him in any other room in house!)
Over the years the house has been decorated and redecorated. Carpets have replaced flooring and vice versa. Yet it has still retained an essential sameness that makes me feel at home as soon as we drive into the development.
I have never enjoyed my Thanksgivings more since I married Tommy. He enjoys the same qualities of the house and the land that I do and he and my parents have a relationship that far transcends the pitiful excuse for one that my ex bothered to develop with them. I always know Tommy is enjoying himself immensely and I am able to relax in a way I never could with Lou sitting sullenly at the dinner table looking at the cranberry and pumpkin bread disdainfully thinking that “cake” should be served as a dessert and a meal made by a non-Italian, no matter how delicious, is never quite as good as one made by an Italian. Blah to all that!
Well, it’s about two hours until I blow this clambake, so I’d better get all my work caught up before I do. I won’t be back behind this desk until next month!
