vacation

We have ways of making you nap

2008-07-16T13:08:02+00:00

Consider this portion of yesterday's twitter traffic:

Itarille: Almost want to say screw working out, go home and take a nap...
adamrg: @Itarille Naps are for next week! Gosh, it is almost vacation time!
Itarille: @adamrg but wouldn't I waste a lot of my holiday time if keep zonking out on naps?
adamrg: @Itarille That's what holidays are for. I'll talk to @domesticat and we'll make sure that we have enough time for lazy reading/napping.
domesticat: @Itarille Vacation napping is awesome.
Itarille: @adamrg @domesticat how is the night sky in Everett? I want to see a nice, starry night sky...
adamrg: @Itarille We can accomplish that. How about we find a nice camping spot on the beach, and lie on the beach and watch stars?
domesticat: @adamrg Yes please!
Itarille: @adamrg wow, that sounds amazing..
domesticat: @adamrg Two thumbs solidly up it seems!

In all seriousness, do you know anyone whose response to "How about we find a nice camping spot on the beach, and lie on the beach and watch stars?" is anything but HELL YES SIGN ME UP NOW WHERE'S THE BLANKET?

(Six more days! Not that I'm counting, or foaming at the mouth, or anything.)

I plan to turn on the daily twitter reposts while I'm gone. Obviously, Adam and Asai and I all have twitter accounts, and we'll be together for quite a few days in a row. (I suggest at least looking afraid, even if you really aren't.) Technically, Brad and Jeff have accounts too. However, Jeff never uses his, and Brad won't be posting anything from the cabin due to the fact that we 1) won't have internet access there and 2) Brad still regards cell phones as a voodoo he just won't do.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my to-do list wants a cuddle.

magical moon

2006-10-07T05:11:47+00:00

We've relaxed since getting here, having put down our daily lives on the floor next to our bags and picking up something simpler. We've flitted from restaurant to restaurant, snagging wings here, Chinese there.This afternoon, we went gifting, bringing Patrick along for the plan of getting him a birthday shirt. A simple plan, a dress shirt; help Patrick finally find a dress shirt he liked that actually fit, buy it for him and wish him a happy birthday.

But plans made are not always plans executed, and a 20x38 shirt was not to be found in the style of his liking, so I asked him for a second choice and he said, "Cologne." We headed to the men's fragrance department and the man behind the counter began lining up freshly-sprayed sheets of paper. We interspersed our sniffings of cologne with coffee beans, and watched as Patrick determined that his scent should be a simple, clean one.

It sounded so familiar; it was the same choice that Jeff made some time ago, when seeking a new scent of his own. They are very much different, my husband and this friend of mine, but they do share occasional flashes of similarity that make me laugh. It's as if there is a central repository of geekboy DNA that was drawn from to create the bases of their personalities.

We finished earlier than expected, and I indulged my growing fascination with perfumery by asking questions, resulting in my being pointed to scents I'd never heard of before. One in particular caught my attention, its lush (and almost edible) simplicity making me want to wallow in it.

Or, as Patrick noted, he and Jeff knew I was interested "because your invisible tail started to thump audibly."

I sprayed the fragrance on after my shower, reveling in the relative olfactory calm it produced. My preferences tend toward older, more complex perfumes; I hold great love for French classics like Cuir de Russie and Mitsouko.

The occasion? Watching improv comedy. We sat, Jeff and I, comped through the first performance but choosing to stay (and pay) for the second because we loved it, laughing out loud and relaxing against each other as the night went on. Comfort. Simplicity. No phones, no pressing deadlines, no code, just us a little dressed up and snickering until my laughs smudged my mascara against my lower eyelids.

While I am flirtatious with a few friends, Jeff and I are not the demonstrative sort. Our cues are easily missed if you don't know what to look for. From our cats, twinned halves of a whole, we've picked up the habit of nonverbal echolocation:

"Rowr?"
"Rowr."

—and there it is, the answer to the question: we know the other is there, and is listening. In the end, that's all we really want to know.

On the way back from the theatre we relived some of the better moments of the night, especially savoring the silly suggestions of mine that got incorporated into the show, and agreed that it had been an excellent day. When we climbed out of the car I marveled at the silvery sharpness of the moonlight, crisp and bright enough to cast midnight shadows, and as I concentrated for a moment I could smell the faintest cloud of scent still clinging to my skin.

"Wow. Look at that," I said. After locking up the car, Jeff looked up and nodded agreement.

I watched my feet lay silent black footprints on the Florida grass and thought to myself while walking in, yes indeed, Hanae Mori's "Magical Moon" was indeed the perfect perfume for the day—simple, calm, sweet, and clean—and I might just have to hunt up a tiny vial of it just so that in future days, I could jump back and at least smell the calm beauty of this day, even if I could not relive it.

You cannot take the measure of a place without experiencing it with your own senses. I do not know this place, not yet; I know bits and pieces of roads and intersections, and the interior of a gym rather well, and the photos on the walls of this house best of all. It's been a long time since I've done this sort of thing, traipsing cross-country to a place that I've never seen before in order to drop out of my life for a week or so at a time.

I've been disoriented.
It's improving.

There are photos on the walls here, photos of people I do not know and whose lives I have only the barest of intersections with. Noah, your photo sits in the front room, the butterfly perennially half-perched on the branch, the photo safely ensconced in the frame I found in Huntsville. It fits in here, better than I think either of us expected.

I have a list of things to do that seemed somewhat important while I was in Huntsville. I make no secret of my list-making tendencies; there is comfort in having options, even if one chooses not to exercise them. So far, I have chosen not to exercise them. Any of them, really. There is retail therapy to do and a lighthouse to see and instead, I find myself errant, drawn again and again to the comforting, well-lit couch in the front room, and the peaceful doze of a book read between nods of head.

Patrick wandered about last night, lighting candles against the storm that raged while we watched Buffy episodes. "Do you have lots of power outages here?" I asked. He nodded.

It is hard to pinpoint the differences here. Foliage. Trees. I am still fascinated by palm trees, and was surprised to learn that one must use a saw to trim the bottom section of the tree to keep it neat. I had just assumed they grew that way. The air is thick, humid; it reminds me of summers in Arkansas save for the subtle scent of water. Most of the time, I do not see the water, but every time I open the door, I can smell it. It hangs in the air in a way that I cannot describe, that from now on I suspect I will always associate with Florida.

The folk at the local YMCA have proven to be far nicer than any of the YMCA-related people I spoke with on the phone prior to the trip. I expected to be able to work out once here without paying a membership fee; instead, I wandered in with Patrick on my first morning here and ended up with a free guest pass for the entire duration of my stay. (I also ended up marooning my notebook at the front desk, but that's another story of my forgetfulness for another, lazier, day.)

I think I might get to the retail therapy this afternoon, if the errant sunbeam doesn't catch me as it did yesterday. Should it happen, I would not argue, but should it not, I will count my lazy afternoon well-spent, nevertheless. The world doesn't need me for a little while, and I find myself unwilling to do more than just check in periodically.

I'm here, and that is enough.

something borrowed (something blue)

2006-07-17T14:22:16+00:00

I've had Talking Heads in, well, my head for most of the week. I started the trip with "Once In A Lifetime" and sang along until I had most of it.

"And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?"
— Talking Heads

South and east, I think, past the sprawl and congestion of Atlanta to the sprawl and congestion of yet another place, but one that has something I haven't seen in quite some time. Ocean.

Into the blue again, indeed.

I remember, vaguely, Jessica showing me how to walk on sand in Mobile, a lesson I had mostly forgotten by the time Noah re-taught me in a chilly SoCal December several years ago.

It's time to see if the lesson stuck, to grab the sarong and the straw hat and stow them among my mechanical pencil and book of devilish word puzzles and take them to the beach—take the SPF 8000 and a list of postcards to write and watch the water as it continues its ceaseless wash from the east.

I won't be online much for the next week.

Here's to ducking sunburns and solving crosswords at the beach and mojitos in a Brazilian steakhouse and late-night conversations that never quite have a point.

Here's to getting over the fear of flying.

Here's to a last lunch with Jake before he flies out west.

Here's to the spouse who lets me go, because he knows that the only way to keep someone like me truly rooted is to occasionally turn a blind eye when she takes wing.

I'll fly home in a little over a week. See you soon.

Colorado #5: soft sequence

2006-02-19T04:39:10+00:00

I had my seat belt unbuckled before we even came to a stop, safety be damned. I grabbed my books, yawned, and all but tumbled off the plane. I was halfway through the jetway when the altitude caught up with me. Denver air will do that, sapping your muscles of energy while your brain still thinks there should be more in the tank.My tank was empty. It had been for twelve days. All I had to do was fall forward onto the motorized walkways, keep falling forward into the inter-concourse trains and hope that I ended up ass somewhere near teakettle on the escalators to baggage claim.

I blessed the DIA motorized walkways. I bobbed and weaved while standing still, concentrating on breathing while the world scrolled by. Plans, beautiful plans, all scrubbed when I didn't see you when I took the last escalator up. I began to walk in the direction of baggage claim, figuring that I would see you there. I stopped to rearrange my belongings in my arms, travel penguin clutched in my arms, when the first familiar voice I'd heard in a few hours chuckled behind me and said, "It works better if you don't walk in the opposite direction from me."

There you were. Behind me, all the time.

Fall forward, into the car. "I got you a snack," you said. Even before I looked at the drink in my hand, I knew you would have remembered: Code Red, a legacy of previous trips, and the same drink I had every time.

Somewhere along I-25, the road sang me to sleep.

I awakened in time to walk in with you to the theatre to pick up Jake, who wasn't out front waiting for us like I expected. We asked for him, and the drone up front placed the radio to her mouth and said, "Mr. Theisen? There are two people to see you out front."

I expected the hug, but not its vehemence.

We unpacked my bag in the new apartment, and when you tapped the light switch, the purple lights I'd made for you began to glow in soft sequence. The futon was as I remembered, despite being in a new apartment, and Jake's white blanket held the comforting swaddle of previous Januaries spent curled up with ice cream and conversation in apartments past.

You insisted, rightly, on my taking my medication. Tussionex plus Lunesta guaranteed virtually immediate sleep. My last memory of that night was a soft hand stroking my hair back from my forehead, and gentle words in the dark: "You're here. You're really here."

You and whose penguin army?

2006-02-13T08:02:06+00:00