Last Thursday, I packed up my mules and my mullets and headed east across the mountains to a small farming town where a teeny, tiny cottage awaited my shabby (chic) shit.You're not in Uzbekistan anymore, Dorothy. Ya feel me?
By Friday evening, I was bubbling with blog post ideas. I was also surrounded by boxes big and small and a veritable buttload of weeds and chipped paint. The posts languished. The posts died. I had a wake. Elizabeth Taylor made an appearance. She was wearing sunglasses. We kissed.When I have trouble in mind, I turn to my rock and cinnamon role model, Alex. My shorty is a versatile so and so. In recent weeks, he's held both my hand and his tongue (his tongue!) through arguments about my parents, my parents, and the high heels and lows of house-hunting. Not to embarrass him, but he's even looked at color swatches and ran price comparisons on washers and dryers. He knows what I mean when I say "celery green."
Back in winter when our love was first brazenly in bloom and the like? He created an internet-driven playlist for me. The songs were initially designed to school me; now they serve as our soundtrack. I don't think it would surprise anyone to learn that the list includes Loretta Lynn singing "Have Mercy" and the Everly Brothers laying it down in "Love Hurts." I'm not sure what he is getting at with "Too Drunk to ***," though. My point is that the songs have knit us together, tighter than my grandmother's perm. He inhabits Nick Cave when I'm in my garden, and the "The happy hooded bluebells bow / and bend their heads all a-down..."
Today I feel like I've emerged victorious from a bloody battle worthy of if not Shakespeare then at least a half season of All in the Family. And you wondered where I got my dimples and dysfunction! But? I'm a gonna focus on the victorious part. You know, where I wear laurels and a bathing suit while I powerwash my new house? It's hot and gorgeous up in here, although today was the first day I needed my air conditioner. Too bad it's in the garage, waiting for the electricity rewire. My lily white is closer to papaver pink. What else? The cats are happy and dusty. I saw a bobcat sunbathing yesterday on the median in front of my house. (Is bobcat one word or two?) Quail tramp up and down the road. You're getting the picture, right? My Town and so forth?
When they were here, my parents met three of my neighbors. They told three friends who told three friends and now everyone knows that Sandi is getting divorced, has two children and already has a boyfriend; Herb and Terry are Democrats and gardeners and Margaret is c-r-a-z-y.
I've privately nicknamed her Mags. She's 74 years old, a widow who loves her Lord. I'm not sure if she means in the biblical sense, because we haven't discussed it that thoroughly (I haven't introduced my theories on Jesus's legendary schlong and his proclivity for the grape.) She stopped by Saturday night to invite me to church the following day. I asked her what it would be like. I inquired after snakes and speaking in tongues. I was joking. She wasn't. She told me she speaks in tongues but only to her lord. (Is "Lord" capitalized in this instance?)
FYI: I spent most of Sunday morning in bed, in a slink-like skulky fashion. You know me: Feign illness rather than bake the cookies I promised my niece. Talk about bunk!
O! My heart attack just reminded me: Sandi has a cockatoo and a Rottweiler. I know it's a Rottweiler; I think it's a cockatoo. What kind of bird shrieks in the most alarming and heinous way? Whatever it is, yeah. She has one of those.This town is deserted yet still charming. It's my own Private Idaho--nirvana for a melancholy agoraphobic who suffers from flights of nostalgic fancy, not to mention cravings for soda jerks. There is an awesome 1950s-era sign in front of one of the bars, an eight lane bowling alley, and a movie theater that seats 400 and only has one screen. The liquor store shares its space with a quilting shop. I'm not sure what the owner would think of a single girl buying a bottle of vodka. I'm not sure I care. The library is cool and lovely. And by cool I mean, it has air conditioning and people have to be quiet.
I think it's going to take me two weeks to get a vegetable garden in place. I think I may have Lyme's disease. I think I have the kind of sunstroke reserved for hyperchondriacs. I think. Well, I think this ain't Paris. But it'll do.
And nah, that's not me. That's Detective William "Bunk" Moreland. I have three more episodes of The Wire left. And then it's all over. Sheee-it!
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