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February 08, 2004

12:00 p.m.

A Little Water, a Little Salt

I just wrote a really long entry and when I tried to load it up, it slipped into a black hole. Now it's lost, lost, and I have to try and recreate it. DAMN. From now on I'm composing offline, saving, and copying.

Now I'm in a sadder mood than when I got up.

(breath)

(exhale)

After watching part of "When Harry Met Sally" last night and eating almost a whole bag of microwave popcorn, I dreamed that I saw all these old photos of myself where my face looked all elfish and angular like Meg Ryan's; however, owing to the about four cups of salt in the popcorn, I woke up looking like someone had injected botox into Mrs. Potato Head's eyelids. This was after the dream of losing my favorite gig clothes because Carol wouldn't answer quickly enough when I asked her if this was our train stop and whether a handler was going to pull our luggage off or whether we had to hunt for it ourselves. I saw the train doors close. They were my black boots, too. I wasn't just pissed; I was weeping, and so mad at Carol.

So I'm having a huge, partly-caffeinated coffee in my oversized Mickey mug, which says "Mornings aren't Pretty" on the inside (who "Pretty" is I don't know, unless there were just some extra capital P's lying around) and has a picture of, basically, me on the outside (looking like Mickey), with notations and little arrows depicting various a.m. attributes such as: Morning Ear Droop, Cheesy Robe, Twisted Tail, and Goofy old slippers. (Why "slippers" isn't capitalized I can't imagine, except the mug was made in Thailand and perhaps the makers didn't know what they were writing anyway.) (I imagine the Chopsticks Packaging Department across the hall: "Place happy chopstick between finger. Add second choptick ok like pencir. Now you can pick up anything.")

So I sit and contemplate the haircut I have to give myself today before heading out to New Jersey. And the fact that my sister Rose just had Lasek surgery (as opposed to Lasik, which, I learn, is slightly different). She's had a lot of post op pain but as of a couple days ago she'd gone from 20/200 vision to 20/50. I don't know if it continues to improve as the eyes heal. The idea wigs me out thoroughly but I'd love to be able to see without glasses.

Random thought: I recently learned that my old hometown in Massachusetts, my cute little Monopoly town where the bank and the town hall are the only two buildings higher than two storeys, has admitted a WalMart and a Starbucks. Sadly, I feel I got out just in time. By the time I moved in late '02, Super Stop & Shop had already put the local grocery out of business, which had better produce. It was replaced by a furniture store.

Yesterday as I was coming in from the grocery store here (yes, it's a Stop & Shop), I met my downstairs neighbor sweeping her front stoop. I only see her in passing sometimes because, though she lives below me, her apartment is accessible directly from outside, while mine is in a little enclave of four apartments, 2 up and 2 down, accessible through a separate door and up some stairs. She's from the Ukraine and speaks broken English, though her husband is American; they have two little kids. ("One of the lives we didn't choose," as Carol often points out.) She works at Pizza Hut. Her husband has some job but I'm told he's a bass player so I don't know if he also plays in a band. Sometimes in the past I've heard fights down there; usually the guy yelling at the kids, but sometimes at her as well. I was afraid he was torturing them sometimes. I spoke with my upstairs neighbor, Bob, who knows the father a little, and he more or less put my fears to rest. He couldn't imagine Downstairs Guy doing anything brutal. It's hard to discern through the floor; I only hear yelling, and emotion, and once the older boy screaming, "No, Daddy! No, Daddy!" which makes me imagine all kinds of things. Bob has a ten year old and said his son had gone through a wildly contrary and ornery phase where he was just unmanageable, but eventually had grown out of it.

Anyway, last week I'd suddenly heard a kid's CD playing incredibly loudly down there, I mean shatteringly loud, and I went down to knock and had to knock about eight times, even on the window, before she heard me. Finally she turned it down and opened the door, dustpan in her hand, and said her son had turned it up all by hisself! (There is an exclamation point at the end of everything she says.) I wanted to say, yeah, that was 5 minutes ago, and where have you been? Your apartment isn't that big! But I can't talk like that to strangers whom I don't know well, because people's lives are hard and there's no reason to be rude. Anyway, yesterday coming back from the store I saw her again, and we paused and talked for a few minutes. She fell on the ice yesterday morning when the weather was still ugly, and hurt her shoulder so badly she couldn't go to work. She had to go today though, because she needed the money. She had complained to the office, and they'd finally come out and spread dirt on the slippery parts, which had all melted now, and left a sheen of mud and grit that now was tracking into her apartment, so she was trying to sweep it all away from the front door, and her shoulder hurt so-o-o-o much. She apologized again for the music the other day, and said she thought the whole building must have heard it. She talked about her life growing up in the Ukraine, and how her mother had raised 6 children, and how had she ever managed? When her two kids were screaming at each other over toys, driving her crazy, she'd just be desperate to get them to be quiet. I can't imagine one day of her life. If it were mine, I'd have taken a machete to MacDonald's by now.

At that point Bob came down the stairs with some laundry (our laundry, which I've never used because I go to Rose's house, is down the walkway). We all chatted a bit, made a few jokes, and parted ways.

So I mostly ignore tv noises from downstairs, and music, unless it's ridiculous like the other day, but that's only happed twice in over a year; and besides, someday, somehow I'll have a house and won't ever have to listen to neighbors through walls or floors or ceilings any more. The lives we didn't choose offer lessons as profound as the one we did. Maybe that's a good thing to remember next time we wake up retaining a little water.


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