Mike and I were in the beer line at a concert last week.
“I think we cut in front of you,” Mike said to the guy behind us.
“No, no, not a problem,” he said, amicably. “Boy, what a line. I think there are more people here waiting for beer than there are up by the stage.” He scanned the plaza.
“What do you think that says about us as Americans?”
“We’re thirsty,” we said in unison.
“Folks been together a while?” He said.
You GUYS, March is National Craft Month! It’s time to roam the aisles of Hobby Lobby looking for stuff to cut out, hot glue, toll paint, shellac, stuff with potpourri and stick on a shelf.
You may sense some sarcasm, particularly if we’ve become acquainted any time in the past decade.
You may know I wear mostly black, khaki or grey, because with so much going on I get overwhelmed by choices. That’s not an indicator of someone with a lot of bandwidth for crafts. I once had most of our house painted in colors the painter picked out based on what more creative people were having him do. I now can proudly say that my walls resemble those of some of the most stylish homes in the ‘burbs.
I’m never sure when I pass someone running in an event if I should say “good job,” or “keep it up” or something like other runners say to me when they pass – which is a far more likely scenario. I always credit their encouragement to the fact that I look like I’m about to fall over dead and they probably want to see if I’ll respond, just to make sure they don’t have to flag down someone with a defibulator.
I do pass other runners on occassion. The difference is that the person passing me could be anyone from a lithe, 20-something college track star to a senior citizen, but the person I’m likely to pass – my “road kill” in running vernacular – is someone who looks to be further along on the spectrum of risk for myocardial infarction than I. I worry about coming across as a condescending jerk; panting “keep going, you can make it,” as I pass slowly enough for there to be an awkward pause if the person doesn’t respond.
From time to time this weekend, I noticed the couple in the campsite across from us. They would get up early, go for a run, come back for breakfast, jump on their bikes, disappear again, come back late for dinner. They were fabulously unencumbered by kids and pets and all their accouterments, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. I was jealous.
Somewhere along the line our camp style has been wrenched from more of a minimalist approach to where we find ourselves today. We used to be able to stow all our gear in two large-ish Rubbermaid bins in the garage, which we could toss into the truck with a cooler, sleeping bags and a change of clothing whenever we wanted to hit the road. We might have an approximate destination in mind, but if not, we could wander from campground to campground until we found something we liked. We didn’t always need a campground, we could just take some dirt road into the mountains and happen upon a wide spot in the trees and set up our tent at dusk.
So, it’s a hundred and freakin’ who knows how many degrees outside, and inside we’re starting to make each other crazy. I think part of the problem is my kids only unplug from the matrix long enough to make demands, eat all our food, or yell at each other. The other part of the problem is bugs.
Little, smelly, flying bugs infested my house last weekend and whether they hatched in here or they’re crawling in some minuscule hole somewhere to evade the heat, I don’t know, but I think they’re going to cost me my sanity.
