Diarrhea of the mouth

I'm a talker. It's my own personal Mt. Everest. To hold my tongue. I think over my list of friends and find that all of them have a reputation for talking and I know that I do also. Occasionally this happens. I'm up in the middle of the night, mostly because of the coffee I drank this afternoon but also because of what I said while I was drinking it. Thank God it wasn't booze. Who knows what I would have said? I leave no stone unturned in these times of evacuation. Nothing is sacred. I only hope, each time, that the listener can be trusted. I'm afraid, based on what I know about myself, that if they're willing to hear me betray and abuse everyone I know and love, they're unlikely to keep faith. Do I? Have I? Will I? When people evacuate their hearts to me, do I keep quiet what they've said? My own husband knows I don't. Here's the sad truth: If there's a secret at his office that he's not allowed to tell, he may tell someone but it's not me. Maybe it's good that i know this about myself. I pray that it will never ruin any valuable relationship in my life. That is, perhaps, why I'm up at 2am writing about what I've done. I certainly can't confess to the victims. What would I say? "I told Bill that I think you're insecure and angry and I guess I do think that but I had no right to say it because you're my friend and I'm sorry." More than that, "I told Bill that you told me that someone told you that Mary..." I'm not trying to be vindictive when I do this. I really am not. But when the wrong ear is involved, it certainly has the potential to hurt everyone. Suppose I'm in a crowded theatre during these rounds of abuse and someone indirectly involved is around. Suppose the friend I'm trusting is unaware of the importance of the secret (taking her cue from my indelicate handling of the precious commodity). I don't want to be someone who can't be trusted, even by my husband. Do I do it for approval? Sometimes. Also, it makes me feel better when someone is bothering me. Sadly, someone is always bothering me. I'm very intolerant of all kinds of weakness and painfully proficient at calling it out. It's like the freaking devil. If I believed in the devil, this would be his manifestation. Biblically, I think I'm obligated to rip out my own tongue and I honestly think I would be a better person for it. It's something I give up at Lent, renounce every new year, write on scraps of paper and burn. And yet, thirty years into the journey, I still do it as badly as ever, with reckless abandon. No more restraint than when I was 14 on some days. Today I feel dirty. I feel angry at the listener, fearing that she'll tell, knowing that I'm only angry at myself. I want to pick up and move. To leave behind anyone who knows my secrets, and those of the people I care about, because of me. I want to start over and try again with a perfect life and nothing on my conscience but, of course, I can't.
I mean, of course I could but it would be ten minutes and a cup of coffee or, worse, beer, before I would need to leave again. I wait a little while when someone tells me something is a secret. Long enough that I think it doesn't matter...or until I forget they said it was a secret. Here's when you know you have a problem: Someone is a little cold toward me (maybe they've had a bad day, maybe they don't feel well, maybe the pitch of my voice is getting on their nerves) and I immediately try to remember if there's something I said about them to someone who might have told them. Ugh. Stop the ride, I want to get off. It's the worst punishment, perhaps, to be trapped in the life you've created for yourself. Actually, my life is pretty good. I'm not sure I deserve it. There's this book I'm reading, Jonathan Safran Foer...he writes about a book of truth or something from the Slacker side of a Jewish town before the war...I think that's the context, anyway. The entry regarding "Why unconditionally bad things happen to unconditionally good people" says, "They don't." Please may I keep my undeserved friends. I love them all so much for all my evil tongue betrays me. Please may today's indiscretions be lost in a karmic black hole and not come back to bite me. Can I earn the words back into my mouth with enough love and sacrifice? Would I be willing to do it if I could? Please.

A funny thing happened on the way to coffee...

As I so often do, when the day is growing tiresome, I went with my friends today to get a little coffee at the kiosk. So, out I went with K, K, and D. D is a man. Walk walk walk POPHISSSSSSSSSSSSSS. D pointed out that someone had flattened a tire. Ah, geez, poor whoever it is. I started walking toward the afflicted car. K, K, and D scattered. Fine. They're busy people. I walked up to the car but the skinny blonde young girl with a nosering driving the car kept driving. Slowly. She was on her cell phone. I started poking my head down into view from her passenger window, "Um, your tire is flat, I can help you." People out smoking at the nearby building entrance stared at me. Blinking. The girl was still kind of driving. I looked, shrugged, smiled, the cell phone flat tire girl ignored me, as did the smokers. So, the girl finally got out and I said, "You're tire is flat." and she said, "I'm aware of that. I need to turn this in " I said, "I can help." she said, "Can you just stand right here while I turn this in?" I did. I stood there. The smokers went inside. Meanwhile, an old friend of mine approached. "Hey!" I said. "Hey!" he said. "This young lady has a flat tire." I said. "Do you have time?" "Too change a tire? Sure!" my friend said. He proceeded to change the tire expertly. I stood in the street to avoid his being killed. It was hot, almost August. He was all sweating and dirty in his worky worky polo shirt and khakis, being a big champion. The girl, all this time, just sort of looked confused and said things like, "It's not even my car, I don't know where the spare is, Is there a hazard light? etc." When the tire was changed, I put the old tire in the trunk and we both told the girl where to get the old tire fixed/replaced. She drove away without much said. Here are my questions:
(1) Don't we help people with flat tires? Why did everyone seem to think I was so strange? K,K, and D? The smokers? She was even a girl. She had something to turn in.
(2) Why was my later friend so helpful and willing? Is it just because he thought I knew the girl? (He did.) Is it just that he and I agree about the whole tire changing helping thing? Or maybe we're both just eager to show off our skills. One of the other times I helped a stranger was a girl having trouble starting a mower. I like to show off my skills.
(3) Do I still get credit on my soul score card now that I've told everyone this story? The friend gets a ton of credit, having done the work. Does the girl's indifference/rudeness help or hurt us?
I have a strange feeling and an obsession with the event. I feel inexplicably bound to my helpful friend. The whole thing reminds me of my recent tennis experience. I asked around and all these people wanted to play tennis so I set a time and we all played. I don't play tennis. They all do. They weren't playing but they wanted to play. They needed someone to make the plan. Is helping people the same way? Am I in the role of instigator in my life? Maybe so. It sounds good to me. Jumping in when someone, say, sets up a kickball league and picking colors and cheering and helping people make things happen when I stink at kickball. Making connections between a flat tire and someone who's expert at changing tires...I could have done it but it would have taken a lot longer.

Milwaukee, WI

I've been thinking a lot about Milwaukee, WI and Laverne and Shirley and medium sized cities and the midwest and regions I've never visited and snow and moderately priced houses and leaving behind the life that I have and doing something new. I'm not sure why Milwaukee except that I have no idea what's there. I hear really good things about the twin cities and Minnesota. It's strange because you know what you know and you know what's on TV and the rest is just fog. Like Philadelphia. My 15-year-old cousin, when asked where she might like to live upon graduating from high school and moving on, would like to move to Philadelphia. To be fair, she had just come from visiting that fair city. She sang the Fresh Prince song. I joined her...I said to the cabby, 'Yo, Holmes, smell ya later.' I had just asked about New York. No, she said, she wasn't interested in living in New York. She likes Florida, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. Maybe I would like Philadelphia, I thought. How could I know? Nashville has been in Jane Magazine a lot recently. I lived there in high school and thought it was kind of a drag but every place is a drag when you're under 18. And people love Memphis. What about Little Rock, Arkansas? There's a lot of talk about Austin, Asheville, Boulder, Berkeley, Charleston, Raleigh, Portland (did you know that Portland specializes in gourmet doughnuts?). What about Phoenix? People like Birmingham. Birmingham. I think I would hate it but people like it. The housing is moderately priced. The traffic is easy. I could live near my job and have a garden and a walk-in closet. Maybe somewhere on the coast but without a beach or maybe the coast of Delaware. I liked the coast of Delaware when I was there. Maybe I should move to Rehobeth, Delaware. Maybe I would like Florida (shutter). I really don't think I would. But St. Augustine is really nice. I could move into a retirement center and drive a golf cart. I watch househunters a lot and the houses aren't like the houses where I live. It's not a shock, right? I mean different regions have different houses but it's funny. My choices are ranch and bungalow. What's 'traditional'? I don't know but it's three stories, four bedrooms, and one bathroom that's off the dining room. This particular traditional home also had a stunning view of Mt. Ranier. I can't even see stupid Stone Mountain from my house. On the other hand, I can eat Vietnamese food any day of the week and not just Indian but Southern, Northern, Eastern, Western Indian, or Udipi cuisine, which is an island off the coast of India. Or Kudrathi, which I think is actually Western India. I can have Ethiopian or Sudanese or Egyptian. I work with people from Puerto Rico and Germany and Korea and China and get practice at pronouncing names in all those languages. If I need yarn for knitting that's made of bamboo, I can find it. If I want to try any beer in the world on tap, I can. I can even get single malt scotch by the glass in one restaurant I know. I can see ET on the big screen or Harry Potter at the drive-in. My friends are here and I know how to get around and when my husband finished law school, he could come to me and still get a really good job. The following quote is on my coffee cup: "I used to think that going to the jungle made my life an adventure. However, after years of unusual work in exotic places, I realize that it is not how far off I go or how deep into the forest I walk that gives my life meaning. I see that living life fully is what makes life--anyone's life, no matter where they do or do not go--an adventure." It's Maria Fadiman who is, apparently, a Geographer, ethnobotanist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. I'd like to be able to say the same thing...

Mowing my lawn

Being a homeowner is more satisfying than I might have anticipated. I couldn't imagine the difference between renting and owning, in much the same way that I couldn't fathom marriage, an indescribable situation that I'll save for another day. There's the daydreaming to be sure. Not a day goes by that we don't imagine the driveway improvements, paint colors, and zinnia beds that would make such a difference in the value of our home. HGTV has taken on new meaning and Ace Hardware is no longer just a place to buy kitschy retro kitchen gifts.

Today the homeowner activity is grass mowing. My husband has his chores but mowing is mine. 5,000 square feet of mixed-species grass and weeds that are mine and about which I care quite dearly. It's been watered, weeded and fed, and otherwise tended since we moved in and I think it might be paying off. We bought the house from a flipper. It has a new kitchen and a master suite but the landscaping, beyond the first 6 feet away from the front of the house, was ignored and it's about 50 years old. Also, apparently, a drainage line was replaced somewhat recently and the fill dirt was left to be covered with whatever seeds and what not came along. The eastern third of the lawn is the eastern neighbor's zoysia. The western third is the western neighbor's bermuda grass. The middle, where the drainage line was run, is weedy dirt. But, as I said, I think the water and fertilizer and so on are starting to help close the gap. This won't get rid of the lumps and bumps but, well, it will be fine.

So, I left work early to mow. I pulled the mower out from under the house, added gas from the can, pulled five times, and mowed. I think this might be the most zen I have in my life, this coming from a yoga enthusiast. It's so loud that even when I've wanted to wear headphones and listen to music, they have to be turned up to the point of serious ear damage so now I just listen to the hummm, clack clack clack, hummm of the mower as I walk every square foot of my own personal grass patch. From this vantage point, I can see that many of the weeds I observed a few months ago have either gone dormant or fallen victim to Senor Scott. I can also see that many of them have not. I can feel with my feet that much of the grass (eastern third) is so thick that it bears my weight, allowing the bugs and worms to go unmolested beneath. I can smell the differences in the shrubs as I duck beneath them, jostling them soundly with my shoulder, leaving with dead flowers and seed pods in my hair and on my shirt. My hands are numb, my skin itches, and I sneeze and sweat and smell like gasoline and cut grass. It smells and feels like summer. My sister was the one who cut most of the grass growing up. My sister and my dad. We got money for chores and she was older than I was so she was allowed the more dangerous chore first. So, my sister cut most of the grass but sometimes she was at camp and eventually she graduated and left home and then I did some cutting. We had a mower that was much like the one I'm using now but it wasn't a mulcher so we emptied the bag on the back when it filled, which happened three or four times per cutting, the cut grass would be wet and stick in there and you would have to kick the bag with your foot to get it out and, if you filled it too full, tug it out with your hand. We piled it into various places around the yard that were meant, I think, to be compost piles but they got too big and too full and they didn't break down as fast as they grew so we started piling it around a big oak tree in front, then in a corner in the back, and ultimately filled all of the unused portions of the yard. I guess my dad did as much to that grass as I do now. You don't notice these things when you're small. There are neighbors driving by. I wonder if they are thinking negatively about my husband for leaving the mowing to me or positively about me for mowing or if they're noticing me at all. There's one neighbor who's dog is always peeing in our flower bed. She pulls him by because I'm watching but you can see that he recognizes the spot. It's 6pm so the temperature has come down to 92. The hair at the back of my neck is making those pointy spikes that cause me to hate short hair. I'm sneezing like there's no tomorrow. I've been in the air conditioning all day and it waits for me inside but, for now, it's late June and I recognize summer and say, "Hello. I've missed you. You haven't changed a bit."

Kick ball injury

Nothing is more reminiscent of childhood than a rousing game of kickball. Nothing brings back the humbling reality of age like a kickball injury. I kicked too hard and pulled a muscle in my leg. Seriously. This was the second practice of the kickball season with a departmental intramural team. Our first game (out of four) is tomorrow and it will be a real bummer if I'm unable to play due to an injury. I'm the Chipper Jones of kickball. I had such a promising beginning but I'm delicate. One missed stretching session and I'm out of the game. Sigh.

It started out beautifully. Life was tough, work was hard, and we'd all signed up for a summer of childish revelry. I had some doubts but I decided to give it my all and have a good time. Did I ever! The rest of the games and practices may never measure up to that first one. Much like the Pirates of the Carribean movies, my expectations started out low but after the first thrilling experience, I got too hopeful. It's not possible for future events to measure up but, even if it were, well, we'll see. The first practice, no one wanted to go home. Time ticked by and we left reluctantly after two hours of good times. There were blood, sweat, and collisions. I ran as hard as I could from base-to-base, looking down at my legs and imagining that I was running so fast they were blurring like the legs of Road Runner evading Wile E. Coyote. It was an experience that cannot be replicated.

During practice number two, conditions were such that I arrived late, teams had already been assigned and I was on offense. I hadn't warmed up, my muscles were cold. I came up to the plate, gave it my all and *rrrrip*. I attempted to run but my pop-fly had been caught. It was the third out. I limped into the field. The rest of the game went likewise. Three up, three down every inning. The magic was gone. There were few collisions and no blood. After just an hour people started saying things like, "One more inning and I need to go to a basketball game." I limped on to my car and spent the evening icing and heating my ridiculous injury. It's still stiff this morning so I took an Aleve. The curtain has been drawn back. I'm thirty years old and kickball is for the young.