Dear Super-Coiffed Man on the Elevator,

Hi. Remember me? I rode the elevator with you this morning? I need to apologize for the way I acted toward you. You see, I thought you were hitting on me. And I'm, like, whoa taken, so I was icy. You were just so beeping friendly and I'm sort of a big deal, so how could I help but think you wanted this jelly?

In retrospect, the fact that you knew what "peep-toes" were ought to have signaled me. And if that didn't do it, then "I'm seeing a lot of turquoise this season" for sure should have labeled you star pitcher for the other team. But I was determined to ward off your...advances so I did a lot of mumbling and eye-averting and for that, I'm really sorry.

Turns out, I needn't have worried because waiting for us in the lobby as we exited the elevator was your partner...and your guyses baby.

My bad.

My regards to your husband. You make a cute couple.

XX
-e-

Have a good day

The alarm rings at 7:40. My arch nemesis. But I willingly climb out of bed today because it's Spring Break at the university I work for. And I love Spring Break. I wish it could be Spring Break all the time.

I also wish the undergraduates wouldn't immediately rip off their clothing as soon as the sun comes out. A girl can dream.

Twenty minutes later, I'm done fixing my face and hair and I leave the bathroom. Adam cat-calls me from bed. I cave and climb back in. I have no resistance. After 10 minutes of unabashed spooning, I fling aside his arms and legs and escape The Claw! I run to the closet, toss on a new-to-me dress that I scored from the Salvation Army for 3 clams, and yell at Adam to put on his pants and take me to the Metro. Quick!

Along the way, Adam, realizing that I've forgotten to grab breakfast and knowing that all I have at work is oatmeal packets, swings into McDonald's for two breakfast burritos and a diet Coke. Except he comes out of McDonald's with four breakfast burritos and drops two of them in my purse.

At the station, I board the train and settle into my seat. The man next to me keeps sniffing the air. Yes, my good man, that's sausage you smell and it's coming from my purse.

Off the station at Foggy Bottom, now it's my turn to sniff the air. It smells like banana Now And Laters! Yum! I gulp in deep mouthfuls of the stuff. Like inhaling [virgin] banana margaritas.

Adam phones to see if I want to have lunch. Um, lemme think about it, HECK YES I DO! We order Pita Pit and sit outside in 80 degrees. Lunch disappears in 20 minutes, but I tell Adam that I'm not done eating. Sometimes, I get to the end of a meal and think, "Nope."

We meander over to Sweetgreen and get a small frozen yogurt to share. Literally yogurt. that. is. frozen. Too healthy.

We take our yogurt that is frozen to the park on Penn and I. The sun shining on my overgrown roots seeps into my brain, runs down throat, fills my heart, and then spreads through my limbs, reaching the tips of my fingers and toes. Like morphine. And trust me, I know morphine.

I feel so happy to be alive that I lean over and kiss Adam right on the mouth in front of God, three homeless men, and a nun. Adam tells me that I only love him right now because the weather is so heavenly. I tell him that he's wrong. I love him more right now because the weather is so heavenly.

After lunch, while running an errand, I hear the campus bells giving a stunning rendition of Moon River. The same bells that only chime the hour and play the GW Fight Song. I tell my co-worker about Moon River when I get back to work. She's aghast. In her 35 years with the university, she has never heard the bells deviate even one note from the GW Fight Song.

I hear the bells executing Go, Tell It on the Mountain on my way home at 5:30 and I picture the old, dated campus with his gum-covered sidewalks and asbestos-lined buildings, stretching his overburdened muscles as he rejoices the absence of some 25,000 students. Go, tell it on the mountain that we are on Spring Break!

I'm so engrossed in my current read, Cutting for Stone, a riveting saga of twin brothers coming of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of a revolution (Yep. Pulled that off Abraham Verghese's website), that I nearly miss my bus stop. But I pull the chain at the last second, vault off the bus, dash across the street, and begin the short walk home.

It's 6:00. And as I trudge, my mind reviews the events of the day. My wonderful, gift of a day. I roll my eyes at my sentimental goop, but even my own cynicism can't dampen my sky-high spirits. Helen Keller was right: when you keep your face to the sunshine, you won't see the shadows.

I pass a group of playing children. Most of them observe me with the passive indifference of kids engrossed in launching their spaceship or saving the princess from her captors.

But one little boy, maybe three, raises his curl-covered head and waves at me. Rodeo queens, take note: he was enthusiastic and sincere, while maintaining a perfect elbow-wrist pattern.

I wave back and he starts toward me, offering me the stick he's holding. His older sister grabs his hand before he can get too close to a "stranger." They stand together, hand-in-hand, watching my receding back.

"Have a good day!" he calls after me.

Yes, indeed, tiny person. Yes. Indeed.

And now, my enormous mouth. Literally and figuratively.

Seven minutes of your life you'll never get back

Just when you thought you couldn't waste anymore time online then you already do, this Vlog came into your life, you watched it, and you hit your all-time low. But never fear! There ARE people in this world who are worse off than you! They film, edit, and post such monstrosities and THEN they watch it and hit their all-time low. Also, they refuse to do their hair on Saturdays. Really, though. Give Jer-my and Mrs. Grasso some company and share with us your childhood imaginary friend!

The Last Try

The mention of oatmeal in Tuesday's post reminded me that:

A friend of mine posted about it last summer on her blog. There was talk of much brown sugar and fresh peaches. She even called it "dessert for breakfast."

Another friend told me to try steal-cut.

Another friend named my mom told me to just give it up because it tastes like pig slop. That made me feel a little better. It's not my fault. It's my genetics.

Another friend came to work and cooked some up for breakfast and filled the whole place up with the most wonderful smell of home and Christmas and cookies and...can I have a smidge of that?

So.

I tried again.

I bought steal-cut, fresh fruit, brown sugar and cream. BLESSED CREAM!

Boy, those steal-cut oats took their sweet time. But I stayed with 'em like a loyal valet to his master. I stirred. I added brown sugar. I glugged in cream. I sang songs. I read books. I rubbed sore muscles. I fluffed pillows.

At long last, I dished two heaping bowls and topped them with more brown sugar and many, many fresh strawberries. It looked like a bowl of yum so scrumptious, I got a tad weepy.
I sat down, breathed deeply, and took one bite.

Then, I took another. And another.

Adam sat next to me, spooning the contents of his bowl into his mouth, wordlessly. Too wordlessly.

Another bite.

I sat my spoon down, propped my elbows up on the table, and rested my eye sockets on my fisted hands.

What's wrong, Adam asked.

I still hate it, I mumbled.

Me too, he said.

I'm done with this shat. Wanna have some grits, I asked.

Always, he said.

For better or worse, oatmeal is a regular visitor 'round these parts. Here and here, for example. I can't help myself. I must beat the dead horse.

With the exception of whole cream,

I've had this quote on my fridge forever. I wish I could say that this simple inspiration singlehandedly whittled me down to a size nothing, but it makes no difference in my eating habits whatsoever. I just think, Kate Moss or Whoever Said That has obviously never had [fill in the blank with whatever I'm eating].

And then I start feeling really bad for Kate Moss or Whoever Said That for living such a deprived life and not enjoying [fill in the blank with whatever I'm eating].

Unless it's oatmeal.

And then Kate Moss or Whoever Said That is super lucky.

It is a great conversation piece. Visitor: "So, does it work?" Me: "No." Visitor: "Oh." My grandmother asked me to make her a print. I did, of course, because I love my grandmother. And then I thought you might like one also! Because I love you, too!

After all, swimsuit season is two minutes away. Think about THAT while you're hogging down that forth Klondike Bar. And then invite me over to help you polish off the box because I like Klondike Bars.

Download the print right here. Print it, frame it, gift it, repost it, kiss it, spit on it, ignore it, feed it a Klondike Bar, but for heavens sake don't sell it. That's illegal. And mean.

Pssst! The actual quote is "Nothing tastes as good as SKINNY feels." But I HATE the word "skinny." "Skinny" is an unattainable and unhealthy idea made-up and rammed down our throats by the beauty industry. Maybe you think "thin" is too. But for me, I can feel "thin" no matter my weight/size/shape simply by the way I dress, think, and act. I can't be "skinny" unless I stop eating. Which makes me cranky. Which makes people around me sad. Regardless, here's a copy with the actual quote. If you wanna be like that.

Holes

Riding the Metro home after a really long day, I looked down and saw a hole in the arm of my shabby, old, faded, black peacoat. The same peacoat that saw me survive freshman year at 18, marry my husband at 20, move to DC at 23, and ride the Metro home from work after a really long day at 25.

Time for a new coat? Sure. And if you saw me walking down the street, you'd probably mistake me for a homeless man. (Yes, man.)

But I wasn't thinking about my shameful appearance in that coat. I was thinking about that hole.

You see, it starts with a hole. Usually in the arm of your favorite coat. Or the butt of your favorite pants. Or the armpit of your favorite sweater.

Then another hole appears.

And another.

And another.

And another...

I had an appointment in Baltimore. And it was pouring rain so hard, I started building a boat. The drive from DC to Baltimore up the Balt-Wash Parkway was like a scene from The Road. Overturned cars. Abandoned cars. Spinning-out-of-control cars.
A hole in my nerves.

Adam's credit card got stuck in a parking meter on our way to the Library of Congress (Ain't no thang; just stopping by our old stomping grounds.). 23 phone calls, six screaming matches, and two hours later, we FINALLY got someone to come free it.
A hole in my patience.

I'm a magnet for flying objects, lost children, and now, undergrads with Nerf guns who chase each other right into me, my husband, and his enormous keg of Diet Coke. We split the damage, but the impact of a 160 pound man-child, looking the opposite direction, and crashing into us caused the entire soda to soak the front of my dress, splash down my bare legs, and seep into my Target flats.
A hole in my good mood.

A homeless man did a dance to Michael Jackson's Pretty Young Thing directly in front of Adam and I while we were eating lunch.
A hole in my personal bubble.

Adam and I bickered all. week. long. Over big things. Over little things. Over real things. And over stupid things.
A hole in my happiness.

My cousin's young husband passed away. He was here one minute and gone the next. My heart broke into a thousand pieces and those thousand pieces each broke into a thousand more and so on and so on. I spent the entire week mourning for her loss, pondering the mysteries of the universe, and hugging my husband a little tighter (in between the fights, of course).
A [gaping] hole in my chest.

The eight-year-old boys Adam and I teach at church were extremely misbehaved. The kind of "misbehaved" that had me debating between a hysterical crying fit and a hysterectomy.
A hole in my temperament.

This downward spiral will continue barreling on and on. And it all starts with one, tiny, seemingly-innocent hole.

I can't let that hole turn into a sucking black hole. I won't. Not this time.

So I drag out my sewing machine. The third one I've owned, given to me by my incredible mother who patiently taught a very unteachable Emily how to use it.

Nothing I do will make that hole disappear, fade as if it never happened. It's there. It's now permanent. It's a part of my shabby, old, faded, black peacoat. Forever.

But I can mend it. I can close it up with a cloth scrap, lots of thread, and many stitches. I can't stop more holes from coming, but I can stop this one from getting bigger with a firmly placed patch. I can stop dwelling on this hole and the holes that will inevitably follow and wear my coat, without fear, again and again.

I thread the needle, I line the cloth up under the foot, and I begin to mend that hole.