Plans

I hesitate to say that tomorrow I am planning on enjoying a brisk day with my windows open and a cinnamon and sandalwood candle burning, reading, cleaning, and nesting—which might also include cooking. I may even be ready to make chili. I can stop for ground beef on my way home from the gym and be content to spend the rest of the day inside.

I hesitate because yesterday I planned, after my visit to the gym and a quick dinner at home, to run errands and go shopping. I had to go to Wal-Mart, and to Target to pick up some pictures from Seattle that I finally had developed (printed?), and I thought I might head further away to Lord and Taylor. (I have a coupon!) But apparently the universe had other plans.

I got in my car and it wouldn’t start. Nothing. No click, no laboring. I tried using my power windows; they budged an inch and stopped, and wouldn’t go back up. I figured it was my battery. But I wasn’t sure. The only person who could be sure is my father, of course. So I did what any respectable and responsible single forty-four year old woman would do in a situation like that. I called my dad. Who needs AAA when my dad lives 10 minutes away? He confirmed it sounds like my battery, and offered to help me out today. He and my mom were headed out somewhere, so I told him I could get a ride to school today and we could deal with it Saturday if he wanted, but he was willing to help today after school.

I am grateful for his willingness to help and his ability to do car things. I have my fingers crossed that after buying a car battery, because I really have no idea how much that will cost, I’ll have money left for those errands. But as for this afternoon, there will be no margaritas with work friends. (Wow, no shopping, no margaritas…)

As for tomorrow, well I guess that’s for the universe to decide also. But I’m feeling pretty hopeful that it won’t have issues with an early autumn day of nesting.

[Heart] Note…to Innocence (and Charlie)

I went to my sister Liz’s yesterday to help out. My brother-in-law (aka Ice Man) was away on business and Meredith’s school had their Open House, which Liz wanted to attend. (Of course.) I drove down after school so she could go and I so could spend some time with the kids, which I haven’t done in weeks. I had not seen them since a family get together at my parents’ a few weeks ago--since Meredith started school again and Charlie started preschool and soccer.

After big hugs and smiles they started talking a mile a minute, sometimes talking over each other, sometimes taking turns telling me stories, with excitement and the pure, unadulterated joy of children.

“Asia,” Charlie said. “I learned my F words today!”

OMG. My heart stopped and I bit my lip, because I was on the verge of laughing, thinking, what the hell did my crazy sister say that he overheard?...

“Firetruck. Fan. Fwends. Fuzzy[…]”

Christmas in September

Sunday night, when I was winding down from the weekend, ready to watch a little TV, I couldn’t find anything to watch. Nothing interested me on my favorite channels. MSNBC was showing one of their weekend prison or crime shows (no thanks), Food Network didn’t have anything new (shocker) or appealing on, and regular network programs weren’t grabbing me. So I decided to channel surf. Once I got started, I thought I might get more familiar with my remote.

For the two plus years I have had cable TV (I was a hold out. I don’t know if I’m proud or embarrassed), it has been enough to use info, guide, select, last, volume, and number keys. I look at what’s between channels 2 and 63 (Bravo), and that’s the extent of it. And there I was, using the A, B, and C keys, somewhere in the 900s!

Music?!?! I have cable music channels? I thought that was on a fancier, more expensive plan—if that’s possible without being criminal. Wow! All those times TV shows were just white noise I could have been listening to commercial free music (since I don’t have an ipod and speaker set up. I don’t actually even have an ipod)?! I couldn’t believe it.

Really I couldn’t. I doubted my luck, thought maybe it was a free weekend special. So last night, as I was getting ready to watch the Patriots season opener (go Pats!) and not interested in a third consecutive half hour of local news, I thought I’d double check. Could I find it again? Would it still be there?

Well, not only did I still have music available, but I decided to search the guide again—by category even (go, me!)—and use new buttons on my remote and when I did, I found…[wait for it]…games! Sudoku on my TV screen! And the music was still there. While classic rock continued to play—Jimi Hendrix followed by Aerosmith, then Neil Young—I did a Sudoku puzzle with my remote. How cool is that?

And I found a channel that runs back to back PBS cooking shows—Ming and Lidia and Joanne Weir—and then, thank goodness I set my timer for the game because I would have missed it.

Sneakers

There’s a weird thing going on with me it seems. First I join a gym. Voluntarily. And I go. I even go every morning of the long holiday weekend. I take advantage of the four free training sessions offered with my membership, and I don’t give up when I start wheezing five minutes into my first go on the elliptical. Then, this weekend, I bought new sneakers. And I [heart] them.

I haven’t bought new sneakers in years, and the ones I have just don’t feel right. Honestly, they never did. So with my coupon in hand (well, in cute pink bag), I went to a sporting goods store to check out some new fitness trainers. Listen to me. I fell in love with a pair of Nikes and bought them. They are white mesh, with little patent leather reflective thingies on the side (I guess technically they are “adjustable midfoot support straps, for stability”), and turquoise blue (one of my favorite colors!) on the tongue and sole. They’re so cute—and comfortable! Without my 25 dollar off coupon they would have been the most expensive sneakers I have ever owned. Even with the coupon, I think they are. But the point really is more that I got as excited about wearing them as I did those patent leather shoes whose days are numbered. In fact, I had to wear them the very next day—while I was running errands. I was like a teenager wearing corduroys in mid-September, back-to-school heat or a Fisherman’s knit sweater during Indian summer—excited and unable to wait until the moment was right. There I was tooling around Costco and Shaw’s in my new trainers.

I had already bought a new five pack of socks (so comfy!) when I bought three new sports bras the day before. (My last sports bra purchase dates back longer than sneakers!) What’s next? A fancy, sporty gym watch with built in heart monitor? Matching turquoise ear buds?

Yeah, you’re right. Definitely the matching earbuds.

Time Frames

During the summer one day blends with the next. Summer vacation is like a never-ending weekend. I plan my days according to weather forecasts more than the calendar; I hardly pay attention to days of the week. Housecleaning gets done when I get around to it—usually when it gets on my nerves or when it’s raining out. I go to the grocery store when I run out of something, or am in the mood for something else. Being on vacation lends itself to a sense of timelessness. Nothing has a sense of urgency. I enjoy that. When school starts again I go back kicking and screaming…and eventually find myself on a much different schedule, and in a routine.

Monday through Friday begin at 5:30 am, and end around 9:30 pm. Between 3 and 5 I try to take care of errands and the gym. I try to watch the local and national evening news, eat dinner by 6 and start really winding down by 8. Weekends are for cleaning, and grocery shopping, other errands, laundry, and some sort of fun. Sometimes it includes a big Sunday breakfast, maybe Friday night dinner out, maybe a shopping trip.

That is, once I’m back to school I have structure again, and make good use of my time. I’m productive. And I get more done in a weekend than I do in a week on vacation. (As I tell Tamara, Gas expands to fit its container.) I balance housework and play. My weekend is my both my reward for making it through a week at work and my time to prepare for another one.

I love weekends. Almost as much as I love summer vacation.

[Heart] Note...to Arugula

I know. It’s redundant at this point. You know I love arugula. It’s the name of my blog. But I had arugula around last weekend and had it three different ways over the last few days and fell in love with it all over again…Sunday I had it dressed in lemon juice and olive oil as a bed for my mahi mahi for dinner, Monday I had it in a pasta dish with spicy sausage and last night, so as not to waste a single bit of it, I made a BLT with the last leaves. Make that a BAT. Bacon. Arugula. Tomato.

A piece of baguette cut to double as a hoagie roll and lighted toasted in the oven, mayonnaise, bacon, native tomato slices and arugula.

Sandwich perfection.

Heights

The Big E (The Eastern States Exposition for those unfamiliar)— that Mecca of overpriced carnival food (must-haves include mini donuts!) and infomercial merchandise—starts in a couple of weeks. Looking for a Cham-wow? They’ve got it. New set of Ginsu knives? Of course. In the market for a feather roach clip? They have that too. And chotchkies galore. Of course there are animals and exhibits, parades, and rides, like that famous yellow slide, too. It is a place I used to love to go when I when I was growing up, and now like to bring my nieces and nephews. It is also the place I discovered my newly developed fear of heights--while on the Ferris Wheel with my nieces and nephew.

There we were, Auntie Joanne and her monkeys (except Charlie, who wasn’t born yet), on the gondola-style Ferris Wheel, so that all four of us could ride at once, suspended above the parking lot when I came as close to a panic attack as I ever have in my life. Keep your cool, I coached myself. Look at the kids, not at the ground below. I was shocked. How many times had I been in an airplane, on roller coasters? And now, I was going to panic on a Ferris Wheel? With kids? For whom I was responsible? So not cool.

My next near panic attack came almost a year later on the Newport Bridge. I focused on the road rather than the beautiful scenery and made it across without incident. But I wondered about this height thing. What was going on with me? Had middle age (did I say that?) zap all the boldness out of me? Why was I a scaredy-cat all of the sudden?

Eventually I figured out that this fear wasn’t out of the blue at all. Just a little different.

My father loves to tell a story about when he was building a porch with my uncles and I, 4 or 5 years old at the time, got on a pile of 2 by 4s in the back yard and started crying because after I had climbed up, I was afraid to get down those 6 or 8 harrowing inches. Legend has it I wailed. And I’ve always hated ladders. I don’t mind climbing up, it’s the journey down that makes my heart race and that I avoid at all costs. And now I guess just looking down from somewhere high makes me anxious.

I wonder what that says about me. What might a therapist scribble in a note? Fear of falling, so avoids climbing and heights altogether.

And that's a little too much to think about without a bag of those Big E mini-donuts.