nudle

Today I got an invitation to Linkedin with G.B., a boy I used to know (because back when I knew him he was a boy, and will likely remain a boy to me forever even though we did meet again as adults at a class reunion that is slightly foggy to me, which is unfortunate, and I promise myself I will not drink so much Champagne on the way to other, future, class reunions). G.B. was a nice guy and it gave me a tiny warm feeling that he wanted to Linkedin. I know that G.B. Linkedin me only because the algorithm suggested it because other girls and boys from elementary school and junior high and high school have Linkedin me. (I actually don't know if anyone from those days has Linkedin me. Must go check, further delaying accomplishing anything. No. No. I will not do that. I will sit in this chair and write for real now. Not for this blog. But first I must tie up the ends of this inconsequential missive.)

Why do I get a tiny warm feeling at G.B.'s digital-only invitation to simply show we are 'professionally networked,' even though he works for a toy company and I sit alone trying to put words down so I can finish this infernal novel? I suppose it's because we want to be noticed and we have a primal need to belong. Additionally, I'll take anything I can get when I feel alone and scared, picking up my manuscript after being away reveling among family and drinking Chardonnay like a footloose bon vivant. Now I find myself in a dim, dank, hard-edged corridor with many doors that stretches before me like that hallway in Poltergeist. And offspring pick-up looms...

She's turning ten.

Tonight an old friend and his family are coming for dinner. I try to remember the last time I saw him, and I can't. We used to work together. I left that job in 2003. We ran a marathon together before that, if I can call 'together' him running it in half the time I did. Still, my feet pounded the same pavement the same day his did.

Thinking about old friends, and missing them, makes me wonder why we dwell on the last time we saw someone, and were physically in the same room with them. In my relationships, being with friends is important. Farewells are difficult enough that I never say goodbye (unless I really mean it). When it's been a long time since I've been in the same room with a friend, it's like a craving. I want to see them and hug them and talk to them. In person.

I don't much like the phone, though. Skype really freaks me out.

I wish it wasn't so weird to write letters. If you would like to receive a letter from me, let me know.

Thursday night randomness.

I'm not so sure about this blogging every day thing. I can't seem to help falling asleep putting Iona to bed. Then I awake with a start, thinking, "I have to write! I have to hurry!" I wobble blearily upstairs and think, have I really gotten this boring? In my defense, it's been a gradual process, barely noticeable as it's happened. One moment you're spending your very last six dollars buying a drink for a friend while out dancing at a techno club, and then, thirteen or fourteen years later but somehow in the next moment you're spending your days worrying about everything only to fall asleep at 8:30 with a small, snoring person on a single futon. Time. It folded in on itself and it appears I jumped that fold. Now here I am, speaking a new language peppered with:
placement
disruption
foster
respite
attachment
hypervigilance
transracial
homestudy

Today I put my hand in my backpack and somehow ran an old show ticket under the nail of my index finger, giving myself a paper cut. Heinous. It's throbbing now. Also had my small but dense breasts smashed between plastic and metal for the second time; fingers crossed I don't have to go back for more of that fun.

Tomorrow off to procure large fish to serve nine from Ewan's office, plus two and a half in our own household. I think I'll get thin meatstuff here for starters.

Saturday is running, running and running which clears the head and wakes the knees.

Easter Sunday means church and family and ham and potatoes.

Now I hear coughing and have to go see to it with Benadryl. Maybe I'll lie down, fall asleep, and dream of taking up meditation.

Time travel.

Today I took Iona to a play. We were with my sister, her daughter and a friend of Iona's from school, and we were settling in to our seats in the last row of the main floor. The kids were sitting up their knees, testing postures that would allow them to see the stage better. A family we know stopped at the end of our row to say hello and we were yelling greetings to them. It was chaos.

As all this was all happening a man leaned in to get my attention. I looked up, thinking he was going to tell us that the children needed to sit all the way down so the sound technician could see the stage.

It turns out he was someone I dated twenty years ago. Whoa. Time travel.

When I knew this guy we were in design school. He was so good-looking that I was amazed he was interested in me. He played the part of the bad boy designer, tall and thin with coal-black, spiky hair, angular features and an earring. He wore leather and drove a Ninja, which he painted an unlikely bright blue color. He said, "Anyone can drive a charcoal gray bike. This color stands out." He was beautiful. I loved looking at him in all his lanky splendor, the way he moved. I watched him with a type of greed. He was art, personified.

I kept waiting for my attraction to match the intensity of my admiration. It never happened, but I couldn't let him go because I was addicted to watching him. Maybe he felt the same lack, because he dumped me after we were together for a couple months and immediately started dating another design student, someone I secretly loathed. She was a perky, friendly redheaded overachiever with a reputation for stealing others' ideas and executing them superbly.

Maybe twelve years ago I saw his wedding invitation in a stationery house when I was back in Seattle for a brief visit. It was letterpress printed and beautifully designed. During that visit, and I don't remember how this came about, he called. I had just broken off an engagement. I don't know, maybe I was feeling lonely, but we talked for over an hour. Turns out he was divorcing the woman in the invitation. Maybe, when we hung up, we said keep in touch.

I have to admit that today I felt that old admiration. I told him he looked really good, and he did, lean and tall and hip. His hairline was in recession, salt and pepper, cropped close to his skull. He had a silver hoop in each ear. I expressed my amazement that he recognized me in the melee. He said, "You look exactly the same." He pointed out his son, three and a half. We said, "Great to see you." I wonder if I'll run into him again in another twenty years.

The Ranch.

When I was growing up we used to go to my grandmother's ranch every spring. My sisters and I refer to it as The Ranch, with capitalization, because it was a magical place, exotic and dangerous compared to the suburban places where we lived outside Seattle. The Ranch was outside Boerne, which was outside San Antonio. I remember we referred to San Antonio slangily as Sanantone, drawing out and putting emphasis on tone.

The house was a rambling rambler built of large, flat flagstones. It was basically like two houses linked by a hallway, creating a big house shaped like the letter U. The left wing had the sleeping porch (where we slept in high twin beds with white chenille spreads) and a bedroom (where Mom and Dad slept) and a living room. The two wings were connected by the long hallway with its overhanging roof, and this housed the servants' quarters (including the bedroom for my mom and uncle's nanny, whose name was Fanny, who later became Grandma's mostly companion). On the right were the big kitchen and Grandma's bedroom and treasure grotto bathroom with jewels in the walls the large dining room with its giant carved table and the sunken living room with the heads of Grandaddy's big game conquests on the walls and the screened porch.

The pool was down a small embankment from the screened porch, and it was kidney-shaped and surrounded by a flagstone walk. It had a diving board and the walk was surrounded by coarse, survival-oriented crabgrass, then beyond that was some sort of gully and trees and scrubbly bushes with prickles, but there was a low flagstone wall between us and all that danger.

In between the U, in the middle, were plants and a pool with goldfish and, sometimes, frogs, and, sometimes, peacocks and reindeer, and a trickling fountain that went down a mosaic pathway. The mosaic was bright, broken crockery. I think Grandma made it herself. One turned on the fountain in the morning, and off at night, by sticking one's hand down into a cylinder made of the same grouty stuff as the mosaic pathway. As kids we were warned never to stick our hand in there, because of snakes and scorpions. Get an adult.

Okay, now my head is right there, at The Ranch. So we're switching tenses. Other dangers include:

Don't put your hand in a broom or a mop. There might be a scorpion.

Be careful walking over the cattleguard, because your leg could fall through and get stuck, and there could be snakes in the grass growing in the bottom. This happened to me when I was seven and my sister Kathy had to run get an adult, and she was gone for ages and ages, and I was certain a snake was going to come and get me, and I cried hysterically.

Don't go near the pool unless there's an adult. Our distant cousin Scotty fell into the pool when he was just two or maybe three, and no one knew until we heard a piercing scream that went on and on, and it was my sister Beth, who was five, standing on the edge of the pool looking at Scotty, who was floating face-down. Scotty's grandfather Evetts, my mom's cousin, jumped in fully clothed, in his polo shirt and khaki shorts and expensive loafers and gold watch. He turned Scotty over, and Scotty opened his eyes and started laughing. He had been holding his breath and floating, as if he were waiting to be rescued. We all hugged Beth and told her she was a hero, that she had saved Scotty's life. We all cried. She hated to be the center of attention, and was embarrassed. She still hates to be the center of attention and threw up all morning on her wedding day.

Don't ever go in the walk-in freezer by yourself because it latches and there's no way to open the door from the inside, and if no one knew you were in there you could freeze. To death. When you do go in to get ice cream be sure to flip on the switch that turns the red light on by the door, and that means there's someone in there, and let the door close softly so it bounces on the latch thingy; don't let it latch, and always take someone with you.

Don't ride Old Red. Old Red was an old chestnut stallion or gelding (all I'm sure about is that he was male and he was cranky). I remember clearly that Granddaddy or Victor put Kathy on Old Red and Old Red threw her off, and she had scrapes up the backs of her legs and on her back, and I was shocked at how bad they were, and she cried and cried. I think Mom was mad and blamed Granddaddy for not knowing his horse better than he did.

Don't put your hand in the hog pen when you slop the hogs because the hogs are mean and they bite.

We love The Ranch.