Conversations with strangers

Monday, 11:55 am
Elevator

Young, short, geeky-looking man politely lets me enter first, though we have arrived at the same time.

Me: Are you going to 2? [Though he could be going to any of the five floors. I am immediately annoyed that I didn't confidently ask "Which floor?" like on TV]

Him: No, I'm going to 5, actually. Are you going to the dentist? [I've given myself away. I am so not Sydney Bristow.]

Me: Yes, unfortunately. [Cryptically, trying to sound elusive and competent to throw him off. Even though I'm wearing dirty jeans and scuffed mules and look anything but Sydney-ish.]

Silence for 3 seconds. The doors open.

Him: Good luck.

He didn't come to kill me. I get a filling, demanding 2 shots of novocaine so that I am uncomfortably numb for the next 4 hours.

* * *

Monday, 3:47 pm
Super Wal-Mart, Burlington, NC

I park in the handicapped spot, going against my policy of not doing so, since there are approximately one million cars in the parking lot, and I am in a terrible hurry to get to Blowing Rock - 3 hours away - before dark. I need baby-proofing drawer latches, so do I go in the food or the regular door? I can't really decide, knowing there's no rhyme or reason inside - choose the regular, grumbling already. I spot an actual employee in toys - a middle-aged, short woman missing some teeth.

Me: Can you tell me where the baby stuff is? [I say it so sweetly I am actually surprised at myself.]

Her: Okay, honey. You see that red line down there at the end of this aisle? [There are, for some reason, two red lines painted on the tile] Well, you go to those lines and turn left and it will be right there.

Me: Thank you so much. [I walk to the red lines, turn left, right into the aisle of baby dolls. Yeah, that's what I meant.]

* * *

Wednesday, 9:37 am
My computer in my office

Surfing, searching for the lyrics to Pink Floyd; many pop-ups.

Me: Stupid pop-ups.

The Pop-up: La grande casino du monde!

Me: Heh. It's French. Maybe I should go play poker . . .

Pass the Brie and Doritos

I was discussing a recent 5 star dining experience with my cousin Tierra last night. I was telling her about my perfectly tender, medium rare pork chop over butternut fondue, served with walnut spatzle, apple bacon, braised savoy cabbage, and pearl onions. It was so good that I didn't even pick out the canker nuts, and happily ate the spatzle without knowing what it was. I have since learned from a Google search that it’s like a dumpling, and makes a "wonderful companion to pork and sauerkraut."

The meal was fabulous in so many ways. Good friends, good lighting, white linens, and subtly nuanced food whose flavors each occupied a separate layer of taste buds in my mouth. Every bite was perfect. I even did a truly middle-class thing and stole the menu, since the choices change daily, mostly so I could remember what I ate and dream that I could one day know how to marry flavors as well.

I watch a lot of The Food Network and wish with all my heart that I could chop like Jamie Oliver or know which herbs go best with which meats like Sara Moulton, or believe that raw duck eggs could be a wonderful thing to eat, like the Iron Chefs. I want to be Nigella Lawson, and though he seems to be wildly unpopular, I’d really like to go on a date with Bobby Flay, even though his show is pretty boring. But imagine the food! And he's darling. (And I know he stands on the cutting board. I kind of like it.)

Anyway, I’m working on it, though I’m nowhere near a very good chef yet. I love good food, I appreciate both the precision and the instinct that composes a great meal, and love to make great food for other people.

But I am a walking paradox, because just Wednesday I bought lunch from a kiosk-type establishment with a green roof called The Dog House. They are strictly drive-up, and serve something called Cheez Spuds, which are frozen French fries with nacho cheese sauce poured over them, and a truly southern hot dog, which, for reasons unknown to anyone I can find, is a pink color I can only describe as magenta. As far as I can deduce, the color is added to the, um, meat sometime during processing, and doesn’t serve any purpose of taste. In fact, I find it deters me from appreciating the real cheap hot dog flavor, since I imagine it’s coated in something like pepto-bismol and red hots. This day my hot dog was advertised with cheese and bacon, and it arrived with the aforementioned Cheez and imitation bacon bits, strangely the same color as the dog itself.

Pinkness aside, I didn’t hate it. Because I love bad food. I can walk into a convenience store and be delighted by anything manufactured by Frito-Lay containing some sort of neon orange cheesy substance. I appreciate those fruit pies coated in waxy lard, I think Pepperoni Hot Pockets are divine, and at certain times I can honestly say I love the quarter pounder with cheese, the double version of which my meat-crazy Polynesian friend T once called "a burger she could respect."

The rural South is full of greazy little grills, where they serve up everything on an almost-stale bun and some pale iceberg. There’s always a lot of mayonnaise involved, and never any seasoning. At places like this, my food snob takes over, since there’s something about airy buns that make me think I might as well be eating brown paper bags.

But get me to a Maverick or a 7-11 and you will find me happily wandering the aisles of overprocessed, unnaturally-colored, misspelled food. I might even stop there on my way to a real store to buy some endive and shitake mushrooms for the appetizer I’ve planned to serve you later.

Cats in the office

At the risk of sounding like crazy cat lady by telling this story, I have a cat here who is the neediest thing when the weather turns cold. This cat's name is Rooster, he's gray and too fat, but manages to be quite pretty since he has a smallish, narrow face - not one of the giant pancake-flat variety that make big cats seem too large for their own skin.

He's always been the most curious, the boldest, and the most easygoing of the four cats that wander around this place, which makes him the most interesting and lovable. But the thing is, I'm not crazy to be in the cat-lover category, because it usually conjures for me the sickly sweet odor of litter boxes and piles of fur sticking to the furniture. The houses of cat lovers often involve drawings or photographs of cats, and cat jewelry and mugs.

And bad decorative taste aside, I'm not crazy about anything enough to want to infiltrate my interiors and fashion with it. And, frankly, I don't want animals living inside with me. Yet, somehow, I let these cats lounge on the furniture in my office all day long.

Lest the usage of "office" tricks you into imagining me in some sort of cubicle-filled paradise, let it be known that my office -- sometimes also called Pee-Wee's Playhouse, due to its, um, unique construction -- is actually a lean-toish addition to a questionably stable barn. The walls are rough-hewn oak, some covered in mold, I am quite certain; plywood, some with the added bonus of brand stamps showing; and the former outside wall siding. The floor is cement covered in astro-turf, and is full of normal office things, in addition to some trophies, a child's life-vest, a ceramic turtle, and a very expensive but effective Rainbo vacuum.

So, it's not inconceivable that a cat would be more at home here than a human. But still, it distresses me that I'm known to the FedEx, UPS, and water guys as "the girl who has cats in her office," because, Ew, for all the reasons listed above. No litterbox, thankfully (why would you need one inside when the barn is your litterbox?), but we've got the hair, and the dirty paws and the indiscriminate licking, and the general arrogance with which they wander the office and jump on things.

Rooster, in particular, cries every day at the door to be let in and then WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE, no matter how many times I rudely push or throw his chunk away from my Aeron. But then when I look at his face, I imagine I've hurt his feelings, so then I feel guilty and scratch and rub and say things like, "I'm sorry, baby, but you're dirty and I don't have time. But I love you."

Wait, that is exactly what I say. Oh dear.

So, I could also be known as the girl with a multiple personality disorder who either talks baby talk to her cats, or who chucks them outside when they put a dirty paw one too many times on her jeans.

I really don't know how it came to this. I used to have a good handle on my professional distance from animals. Now I kiss a cat's fur almost every day.

It baffles me that I look at this cat and say, "Can I help you?" and sometimes expect him to answer. I tell my sister stories like he's a person and just did the cutest thing. I know lots of people do this with zeal, but it unnerves me, not because I think it's okay to hate animals, but because it seems like there should be a definitive human/animal line in the way we interact.

Sometimes, particularly with Rooster, I step waaay over. I'm so afraid it's just a matter of time until my furniture is covered with hair and I don't even notice the fabric in shreds. I plead for intervention if I ever join a newsgroup through a website cleverly named iluvcats. But then it might be too late.

You should read: "My Widow" by T.C. Boyle, first published in The New Yorker on February 12, 2001, now anthologized. It will convince you to leave them outside.

Ice is falling from the sky

Sigh.

I hate it. I just watched the Weather Channel for signs that it would soon leave, but instead I was reminded that it's 60 degrees in Los Angeles. (Oh, Los Angeles, how I romanticize you. Not that he would, but if Donnie were to fire me, I would RUN to LA and BEG Jennifer Garner to let me be her assitant). Anyway, all I could think to do was come home from church and get into my flannel pajamas and enjoy the power while we still have it. Depending on your perspective, ice storms are either beautiful or horrible. Maybe they're both, if you're of a mind to be flexible in bad weather. I, unfortunately, am not.

Especially today, because while snow is at least tolerable (though, in North Carolina, any amount of snow might as well be the apocalypse the way people drive), ice is eerie and foreboding. It sounds like little beads crashing and takes the shape of whatever is in its path. Things become too heavy in their shroud and bend or, worse, break and crash to the groud, often taking power lines or crashing through roofs or cars. Liz tried to convince me in December - and yesterday, in anticipation - that it's really beautiful. It's true; the barren trees look like they're coated in glass and eventually the sun comes out and the reflection nearly blinds you. That's nice.

But right now I can't help remembering what it felt like to be awakened at 3 am to the sound of a 100-foot pine tree crashing on the roof, and how I'm seeing these skinny pines outside sway with every falling drop. And the grayness outside matches my melancholy inside. I guess I should be grateful I don't live in Philadelphia, where they're expecting 18" of snow today, and that, at least for now, I do, in fact, have heat and power with which to gripe about the weather. But I get more and more inflexible about the winter with every passing day, and so for now, I think the only option is to get in bed and pretend it's not happening. Because I heard that works.

Addendum :: 7:12 p.m. After a long nap (not THAT long!) and the happy realization that I still have power, I feel like I should give the weather a little break. It could be so much worse, and, let's be honest - I'm projecting some disappointment on the ice. Without revealing telling details, let's just say there is going to be a wedding sometime that I hate, and I'm mad that I don't have it in me to be gracious about it. Plus, I'm unproductive. My list of important things to do is loooong and goes untouched, sometimes, week after week.

That said, I'm not soliciting sympathy here, just working on putting my therapy to good use. My mood is not the fault of the weather. Carry on, ice. Just don't knock out the power, pretty please.

February 14th isn't so bad

When I was a freshman in college, I was in an irritating phase of pretending to hate males. Around this time that year, I made a sign of black construction paper and white crayon which read: "Crappy Valentine's Day." As if my cleverness weren't enough, I hung it in the window of my dorm bedroom, which was located on a sidewalk many people passed on their way to class every day. And attributable to an enigmatic HVAC, we kept our window open at all times, the better to hear the snickers and snark when they saw my love to the holiday. (This was also the year that we wrote backwards with dry erase markers on our kitchen window witty quotations and other nonsense, since it was beside a well-worn shortcut to the other dorms. I wish I would have counted the number of people who knocked and said something like "Right on!" as they passed by. These are things you love when you're 18, for reasons known to no one.)

So, two days after turning 27 years old, I am both amused and embarrassed by that public display, mostly because it's starting to feel cliché to hate boys and hate Valentine's Day, and to ironically offer to babysit, even if it is for the cutest boy in the world.

The truth is, I have never hated boys, I still don't, and though Valentine's Day is a little too much pink and red in the same space, how can I really hate a day that celebrates love in its many forms? Because, as Willie once said, "There's a whole lotta love in this house." It was a different house, under much different circumstances, but the sentiment is still true.

And I get a whole lotta love, too. My mom rules at holiday celebrations, and has always sent (on time, even) fabulous little gifts for whatever celebratory day comes next. My Valentine's treats always come packaged with my birthday present, and this year she sent a card from Hallmark, of course, with a smiling chipmunk holding a giant heart. On the back she wrote, "I think you don't love Valentine's Day so much, but I am always glad to have days to send love to my family." Aw. And, Rats! In spite of my apparent propensity to be alone for at least the next little while, my nice mom reminds me of my inner cheese, and I can believe that it's possible for all of us to get some lovin. I don't need my therapist to remind me that putting the sign in the window -- and telling myself (and anyone who will listen) that Valentine's Day is horrible -- is merely a device to cover up that I am sometimes pretty sad to be alone, and sometimes terrified that it's not temporary.

If my mom is reading this, I'm sure she'll be relieved to see in writing that I do want to be married, that my solitary trips to the symphony and the beach, and nights and weekends spent entirely with myself are bittersweet; I love my solitude, but I suspect I would want it siginificantly less if I found my own Benedick.

I'm happily going to be an aunt soon, and I have really vivid visions of myself being the cool aunt who is a competent and relatively happy single person, but whose parties with the nieces and nephews leave me sad about what could have been. It's not something I think about all day, but I get afraid sometimes that all my efforts to be a terrific alone person with a fabulous apartment are a formula for staying that way forever.

But that all sounds terribly depressing, and I'm really not depressed or bitter or even annoyed this year at the prospect of a calendar-mandated reminder. Occasionally, I'm made of equal parts fear and hope, but this year, in spite of my singleness, hope is winning out. Thanks, Mom, for reminding me. Let this serve as my official renunciation of hating V-Day. And of boys, wherever mine may be.

The one about the South

I just finished watching the more-charming-the-first-time Sweet Home Alabama, in which Reese Witherspoon's teeth looked strangely yellow on my television. But I really watched it for the darling darling Josh Lucas, whose character is more confusing the second time around. I understand the romantic comedy's propensity for the "pretend to hate he/she whom you actually love" formula, but it's a wee bit inconsistent on viewing #2.

But the story is hardly worth analyzing. Its potrayal of Southerners, though, got me thinking. So I came online to download the original Skynyrd version of the song (which is sorely missed in the movie - instead we get a Jewel cover? Disgraceful.), and thought to wonder aloud about the South.

When I was thirteen, I started my subscription to Seventeen magazine, which, in the late 80s and early 90s wasn't so much an ego-stroking for young, hot actors as a focus on fashion, pretty terrific fiction (may it rest in peace), and fairly well-written -- or at least well-edited -- pieces of nonfiction. I remember one entitled "The South and the Fury" written by a teenage girl from Georgia or Alabama - somewhere deep and truly Southern. That I didn't understand the allusion until probably this minute shows how much I ever thought about the South. I did think Southerners talked cute and that it was, supposedly, pretty hot in the summer.

I don't remember now exactly what she disputed, but I'm fairly certain her claims included "just because I talk slow doesn't mean I'm dumb" and "we're not all belles with white dresses and plantations." None of it meant anything to me then, a girl from Utah and California, and not until I started to study the late and much-beloved Flannery O'Connor did I even care. In her essay "In the Protestant South" she said this: "The South is traditionally hostile to outsiders, except on her own terms. She is traditionally against intruders, foreigners from Chicago or New Jersey, all those who come from afar with moral energy that increases in direct proportion to the distance from home." She captures some of the vitals of Southern life-blood: Be suspicious of Yankees, make sure you know where home is, and anywhere other than the South is "afar"; in my experience, "out west" or "up north" are your options. There are more: mind your manners, never forget your sirs and ma'ams, wave when you pass on a two-lane road, talk all the trash you want behind someone's back but you better be gracious to their face.

But, like all things easily stereotyped, the South as myth is about so much more than behaviors and clichés. Just outside of Lexington, North Carolina, for example, a boy in jeans and a red NASCAR cap ran to the car to pump my gas: "We always fill up for the ladies." My instinct, of course, was to refuse and assert my independence, but something about the way he smiled and quietly insisted made me realize this place is haunted by tradition. It is everywhere, and motivated, I think, by unique views on the still sometimes so-called War of Northern Aggression and what O'Connor described this way: "The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God."

Since moving here, that has struck me as dead-on. While not all people living in the South are religious or "Christ-haunted," as Flannery also said, there are a great number of those with roots who live a life that they hope will be judged good "when the time comes to meet the Almighty," as my friend Murch says.

Residual patriotism about the Civil War is a sentiment that still eludes me, not being a true Southerner myself, and I wouldn't have believed stories of small towns in which the rebel flag flies high over homes, and in which a woman who served me steak at a truck stop in Alabama wore jewelry made of rebel flag beads. I suspect it's a small percentage fashion statement, and a much bigger part staying wary of forces that may corrupt the place they will always call home.

I hate Wal-Mart.

Last night at 9:55 I needed spray primer. The reason is procrastination. (Though attributable to bad painters and terrible construction workers, my late-night prime and paint (tm Trading Spaces) turned out to be in vain. But that is an irritating story for another day.) I'll spare you the details, and instead get to the meat of the story: poor planning got me to Lowe's at 10:02; the doors were already locked. And I panicked - I really needed the primer and I sure wasn't going to find it at my neighborhood Food Lion. (Not that I was anywhere close to my neighborhood, such as it is, but that is also a story for another day). And then I remembered - Wal-Mart is open until midnight! Wal-Mart will save me!

But here's the problem with me and Wal-Mart: I really hate it. I am of two rather contradictory retail minds. The first likes to wear nice black clothes and stylish uncomfortable shoes and own things purchased from Macy*s and Nordstrom. It goes to New York and spends $27 on Shiseido liner and will still say it was worth it. It is perfectly willing to pay $3 for turkey trussing pins (stainless, mind you) when Mom gasps at the checkout, imagining how her own probably only cost 97 cents at MacFrugal's. This mind hates to wash and reuse Ziploc bags, thinks paying full price is just fine, thanks, and thinks that Lee Jeans and Cover Girl are about as bad as it gets. This mind is, frankly, snobbish, and not very true to its bargain-hunting roots.

The other mind likes money and is happy to save said money when purchasing things like Mitchum, 409, lightbulbs, and film. This mind is grudgingly willing to wander around Wal-Mart, from one end to the other, trying to remember if the primer would be near the bedsheets or the silk flowers. This mind, in its pressure to buy cheap - and let's face it, in its poor ability to plan well - tends to get very cranky. Sometimes this mind even says out loud in the Rubbermaid storage aisle things like, "Where in the aitch are the closet organizers?" only after weaving through nearly the entire store thinking they'd be near the plastic-veneer coated desks.

So, when both minds converge in the North Durham branch of middle America, they get mad pretty quickly. Wal-Mart's organizational structure consistently eludes me. Never mind that every store is set up differently, or that aisle markers are practically non-existent, or that the giant Paint sign in the center of the store was obscured so that I walked past, muttering and sighing audibly, twice. The bottom line is this: Wal-Mart stocks too. much. stuff. Nobody can think clearly when confronted with that much variety in one badly-lit place.

Wal-Mart's aisle displays, too, are little traps: that yellow smiley face - currently channeling Robin Hood and a patronizing "help the poor" mentality - practically screams at you in 100 pt. black letters "YOU MUST HAVE THIS BODY WASH FOR ONLY THREE DOLLARS." I get sucked right in for reasons any marketing expert could promptly tell me, yet when I get home with my 75 ounces of body wash, I'm usually fairly certain I didn't need it after all.

More than anything, though, I hate Wal-Mart because it invariably takes 20 minutes to check out. I know I ought to, in general, have more patience, I know The National Enquirer and Soap Opera Digest are placed within my reach to distract me from the 7 people in front of and behind me, and of course it makes no sense for all 20 lanes to be open at once. But maybe 5 or 6. Otherwise, you might do what I did last night: set that $5 candle I HAD to have right in the middle of the M&Ms and leave it behind, vowing never to return again.

Who ordered the exposition?

It has been bothering me since January 29th that the first entry in this diary jumped straight into political commentary. I suppose one strange reader in 2003 may, somehow, stumble upon this page accidentally while searching for a similarly-named 4 year old Male Silver Husky, or a vendor selling something in the world of software. "What, no introduction?" he or she might ask. He or she may click on "older" only to discover that there is nothing older, that Entry One dove right in.

I am similarly distressed, though I don't exactly want to begin as the students I tutor for the GED do: My name is Alisa and I stay in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I am 26 years and 50 1/2 weeks old. These facts are true, but they are also widely known and accepted by my, um, readers, who could also be called nice and supportive family members.

Also, it's boring. So, instead, I will make a list, like the fabulous Louise Plummer told me I should. This list shall be entitled Things alitris loves today, right now, and will likely have no cohesive theme and be in no particular order of importance:

1. My new car stereo. And you should always order from Crutchfield, because standard shipping was actually overnight, and they include car-specific instructions and the wiring harness for FREE. Well, at least you don't have to pay extra at checkout. And did I mention the aluminum detachable face? The perfect marriage of form and function.

2. Links. Make me stop.

3. Justin Hackworth's daily photo.

4. That I'm going to be an aunt! And that it's going to be a darling boy.

5. The short story "Drummond & Son" by Charles D'Ambrosio, from "The New Yorker," October 7, 2002.

6. Television Without Pity

7. Again, with the Alias love. A lot of love.

8. It's going to 62 degrees here tomorrow, and sunny. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon nap.

9. The Sunday Afternoon Nap, which deserves its own line.

10. Haircuts by Whitney Saia.

11. "Clocks," by Coldplay.

And not to end on a downer, but can I just add something that I do not like? In the news today, and so very sad: The Space Shuttle Columbia. I can't help but remember sitting in 4th grade with Mrs. Long and watching the last NASA tragedy. She cried and cried.