D & I went to the ballet last night. The last time I’d been to a ballet was a local East Carolina performance of The Nutcracker, some time in the far reaches of yore. So this was a bit of an experiment for both of us.
To get into mood of poshy classness, we went for dinner at Jardiniere first, which was lovely. I had a very nice lamb and artichoke dinner, which left that lingering arto-flavor of the choke that I do so covet.
Our seats in the balcony were *very* high up, enough so that it was almost unpleasant to look down. But seats had sold out for the most part, so we took what we could get. If we do try a ballet again, I think better seats would make a significant improvement.
Much of the show was a series of showcases: the court people do a dance, the peasants do a dance, the lords and ladies do a dance. Those bits I found a bit dull and tedious. But I loved the parts with the swans. There were about 20 women, dressed identically moving around the stage so that it was more like watching a pattern than watching people.
Monthly Archives: February 2009
Swan Lake
Filed under Up to Stuff
Why I might be insane
My car was stolen. I already wrote about this. Progressive gave me a check; I signed over the title of the car. Story over.
But then the police called on Monday and said that they’d found the car and that I had 20 minutes to go get it before it would be towed.
Interesting that it has turned up, and that it has turned up in Oakland. But technically, I don’t even own the car any more, and also technically, I don’t have the keys because I handed them over to Progressive. I called the insurance company and told them, and they basically just said “we’ll let you know if we find any of your stuff in the car.”
Today my insurance guy is calling me back and wants to know if there weren’t more keys to the car out there. Why? Because the car was parked a block away to where I live and does not appear to have been stolen. There’s no damage at all, doesn’t look like it was broken in to, and there’s all kinds of stuff still in there. So, um. Weird. Nice little theivies were kind to the car, didn’t take my stuff, and just brought it right back to me? Really?
Then he dropped the word “misplaced.”
How could I have misplaced my car?
So, let’s review: it was a Monday, at the end of January. The cold that I’d been incubating for 2 weeks had reached a crescendo of horror and I could no longer breath without making a sound sort of like blowing bubbles into your soda with a straw. I was feeling pretty darned heinous, so made a last minute appointment at my doctors, left work early, visited the MD, got diagnosed with walking pneumonia, and left with Px for antibiotics and a hefty codeine cough syrup. And then I went home and then I went to Walgreens.
Here’s where it starts to get a little fuzzy. Did I drive straight to Walgreens from the doctor’s office? Or did I drive home and walk to Walgreens? Did I fucking leave my car in the Walgreens parking lot?! Did I?! I have no idea!
What I do remember was that after waiting for 45 minutes in the Walgreens for my prescription, I begged the counter girl to please help me before I fell over from wooziness, she said it’d be ready in another 15 minutes and I said that I couldn’t wait, I had to leave. So I left. David went to pick them up for me a little bit later.
The address that I’ve been given for where the car was left is not the Walgreens parking lot, but it is definitely in the same neighborhood. I was told that the car was towed because it had been left somewhere residential – which doesn’t mean Walgreens parking lot.
But this story smacks of lunacy in the key of Maggie.
Nobody’s asking for the claim money back, so *now* this really is still the end of the story. Except that maybe it is the start of my descent into madness.
Filed under these are the days of my lives
8 Whole Months
Today marks the 8 month anniversary of my first date with David. I fiend for each of these month markers, hoping that as each one passes, that it will start to feel like a real amount of time. Significant time. I had hopes that 8 moths would start to feel pretty solid, but it still sounds rather new to me, with possibilities for transience. Longer relationships than this have gone awry in my glorious history of love. I just want to get to be in a place and a time at which I’m not just the teeniest bit paranoid that it could all just not work out.
I do very much feel like he is permanent and that he’s everything I could possibly ever want to have in a partner. While I’ve been known to have some wrong thoughts in the past, I think this thought is right. I just want the validation of time behind me. I want to be sitting on a porch, holding hands when we’re 80 already! Admittedly, I will be 82 when he’s 80, but whatever.
Instead of continuing to wax psychotic over my insecurities, I will leave at that and say that I’m ever so very glad that I found him. I’m pretty amazed that I got such a fellow as this one and I’m thrilled about how well the last 8 months have gone. And I will try not to think any more about how when the relationship has lasted twice as long, it will have been 16 months, which is less time than it takes to gestate a baby elephant.
Filed under The David
I’m an old broken down piece of meat
I didn’t mean to watch the Oscars, but I did. I meant to see more of the Oscar nominated movies, though, but I didn’t. Instead, I went to see He’s Just Not That Into You and Coraline. And I fully enjoyed both of those, dammit.
Evidently, a good movie isn’t enjoyable. Good means that it should be gut-wrenchingly dismal. Nothing says quality like kicking someone when they’re down. And if you can demonstrate a small ray of light and hope, followed by an utter squashing of that meager chance for happiness, then by golly, you should be nominated for an Academy Award! Consequently, I haven’t felt terribly compelled to go see ‘Revolutionary Road,’ ‘The Reader,’ ‘Doubt’, ‘Rachel Goes to the Wedding,’ or ‘The Wrestler,’ but I’ve been having this itchy nagging feeling that I should.
I’m not sure if I thought The Wrestler was good. It was very, very bleak. At points, it was disgusting. It made New Jersey look like the place where Boredom and Bad Taste go to have bad sex in a cheap motel and then overdose on crack cocaine. And Mickey Rourke is really weird looking. Kind of like some kind of deep sea fish from the murky depths. Or a lion with no fur.
I loved that he got into his job behind the deli counter, even though he’d completely dreaded it. But then he had fun and he interacted with people in a positive, real way. There was this hope that he could carry on, having a normal, although simple and modest existence. Then he has a hopeful moment with his daughter, planting a seed that he can be a part of her life and try to have a relationship. And then, sigh… as movies are wont to do, after showing us the path that could have been, they took it all away. We’re left wondering if he even survived 5 minutes after the final scene. And if he did survive, in as much as his heart managed to keep beating, what happened then? What’s left for this guy?
Thankfully, the popcorn was free and the Kernal Season’s Popcorn Seasonings, were plentiful.
Filed under Big screen, little screen
Apple Hat
This is my nephew, Max. He is 3 months old.
He is wearing the apple hat that I bought for him, because I am the best aunt ever. And by “best,” I mean that I now have a whole new outlet for my creative shopping endeavors.
The lady who made this hat has a whole slew of fruit and vegetable hats; I very badly wanted to buy several of them. Like the blueberry. And the beet. And the pear! Oh, the cuteness of the little pear!
Filed under Nifty things
The missing links
On my sixth day of attempted snowboarding, I could finally turn. I’m not winning any contests here, but I gathered a small sense of accomplishment, complete with stubborn bad attitude.
Filed under Up to Stuff
The opposite of half full glass…
I *get* to snowboarding this weekend. I am borderline mustering tears RIGHT NOW with the pending doom.
I said to Jessica the other day something along the lines of “no matter how much I like being alone, on the couch in my underwear, eating Baked Lays and watching endless episodes of America’s Next Top Model, if I have the choice, I pick to be with him.”
And because it’s true, I pick to go snowboarding. This will be weekend number 3 in my attempt at this endeavor. 4 days of attempt, 3 of which included lessons. And I just fail. The experience is characterized by overwhelming frustration and terror.
But I’m going again. Partly because I believe it just HAS to get better. Even I, the Ambassador of Suckitude, can demonstrate improvement. Probably. If I give up now, then I’ve donated 4 days of horrible just for the pleasure of giving up. There’s a teeny optimist nugget in my brain (which is probably cancerous) that suggests that it will get better and I just have to get through this badness. And the only way to get through it is to keep going until it stops being bad. And maybe that will happen this weekend. It could stop being bad this weekend. Oh god, except I thought this the last weekend…
And because I know it makes David really happy for me to go and I don’t want to fully expose the full blown curmudgeon that I can be.
As this week has gotten closer and closer to Friday, the dread has been looming nigh. I keep closing my eyes and chanting “have a good attitude. *try* to have a good attitude.” And then I think about how my dad has been swiping at me since the age of – 3 that my bad attitude was going to do me in. Well, daddy dear… you were right. Me and my bad attitude are going snowboarding this weekend. How about while I’m at it, I go ahead and slouch, as well?
Filed under Up to Stuff
I have an imaginary friend named Dooce
I’ve developed a huge internet crush on Heather Armstrong, based on her blog Dooce, which I’ve been reading daily for about a year. Recently, I’ve started going through the archives and just being immersed in her. And I love her! I love her the way you love a character in a book, ie Bridget Jones, and wish that said character could be your friend. So you get a bit obsessed with the author, but the author, while probably brilliant and clever and charming, is not the same as ficto-person. You settle for smoking Silk Cut.
But Heather is real, not imaginary. And only a year and a half older than me. And sometimes visits San Francisco. And she’s funny and snarky and creative and clever and sweet and judgmental. If I were in the habit of thinking up imaginary friends to fill my emotional voids, then she. would. be. IT.
I am despondent on days when she does not post. Because our relationship is so one-sided, I’m really dependent upon her to tell me some form of helloes. I don’t get to start the conversation from my end. And while I guess I could send her an e-mail, she must get at least 8 requests per day to be Suzie or Beth or Todd’s new best friend. I’m definitely better than any person who might happen to be named Suzie, but I can’t imagine Heather agrees to adopt new pen pals.
Although frankly, how would that work if she did?
Ok, so I lied when I said I couldn’t imagine it. Because I can. And it would be weird:
Maggie to Dooce:
Dear Heather,
I adore you. <List of reasons, ad nauseum>. I wish that you would be my friend. If you got to know me, I think you’d find that I’m kinda funny and charming, too. Be my friend?
xo,
Maggie
Dooce to Maggie:
I’m a sucker for a friend request. I’m in. You have an odd penchant for weasels and I like that.
Maggie to Dooce:
Yay! I’m so stoked! I will commence being your friend right now! But, um, this e-mail correspondence seems to be petering out, so… right. We’ll do more friend stuff later, yeah?
Dooce to Maggie:
Hell to the yes. Right back atcha. Look me up if you’re ever in Utah.
Filed under these are the days of my lives
Do You Wanna Ride in my Toyota Boy?
A strange thing has happened: my Toyota Echo was stolen and I simply don’t have a car any more. I had one. And now I don’t.
This past weekend, I picked up a check from Progressive, in essence, having sold the non-existent car to my insurance company. In a really disappointing turn of responsibility, I’ve decided to hand the check over to some credit cards and make a real concerted effort to do some debt reduction.
So I don’t have a car, and I don’t have a prospect for a new car, and I also don’t have a pair of Tiffany earrings or a trip to Greece.
That Toyota Echo was the first car I bought myself. Mom and Dad did give me $3000 for the deposit, but after that I forked over the $255 every month for 5 years. I cried in the process of agreeing to make the purchase, as I was terrified of the commitment. At 22 years old, 5 years of payments seemed like a very long time. But I did it. I even finished a few months early.
I keep thinking of the poor little Echo trying to make friends with the mean, scary cars in the ghetto. Or maybe the Echo has just been totally mangled and all of his important parts have been removed, leaving a sad little shell. And what did they to my Dave Matthews sticker?
This car mostly got me to and from Whole Foods, or the West Oakland BART station. It takes me to my weekly session of UGH, otherwise known as my cello lesson. Jessica and I drove it to Las Vegas once and another time to San Luis Obispo.
But when I start thinking of car memories, they generally go farther back… to Red Car and to Gordy. Both of those cars were 10 to 15 years old when they came into my life and they both died in my posession. Both of them were the types of cars to just crap out while I was driving them, leaving me frantically trying to restart as I edged through the toll plaza or down the main drag of my college town. Thus, was I motivated to buy myself a brand new car and never suffer the tragedy of car death again. So some cars die and others are kidnapped.
Filed under Momentousness
happy heart day
I have always found Valentine’s Day to be rather dreary, as a long standing non-Valentine holder. I generally make efforts to acknowledge my single girl friends and sometimes send cards or give flowers and stuff. But that was all just a ploy to stifle the pitiful little sorrows of my lonely heart.
Sniff. sniff. weep.
And this year, I am not single and I don’t live on Planet Suck, and I get to be with this wonderful person every day that I’m just so perpetually grateful to be around. I thought that having Valentine’s Day once I got to be in this place would be this perfectly romantic episode. But in the days leading up to it, I found that I wasn’t that excited. We already say that we love each other a bunch of times, every day. We always hold hands. We go out for nice dinners together. We snuggle on the couch. We linger in bed every chance that we can get. So cliched, but really, every day is Valentine’s Day.
I may have to either go have a sentimental sob to myself now, or heave a little.
It must be said, though: my sweet boy is great. I am amazed that I get to be with him, and that he wants to be with me. I love how he is so unfunny sometimes when he’s actually trying to be funny, and then just how funny he really is other times. I love that he’s astonishingly clever and knows all kinds of everything and if he doesn’t know, will do immediate research to find out. But he is always saying that I know everything, probably because I could say who Jennifer Aniston is dating at any given moment. I love that he is obsessed with working out and gets terrifically invested in his efforts, because it is impressive and inspiring, and he’s got a truly lovely body. I love that he falls asleep wrapped around me at night, even though it makes me swelteringly hot. I love that he will just decide what we should do or have for dinner. I love telling him how handsome he is and how perfect and just that I love him as much as I can.
Filed under The David
margaret edith 