If living right is easy; what goes wrong, you're causing it: 7.7.09
To me, the lowest of the lowest dreg on ye olde human totem pole is the parking officer, genus/species: automotum ticketa, habitat: skeezing along the curbs of your fair city. Last evening, after one of those eye candy sunsets that hit the harbor water and rowhouse brick just so and frothed up a perfectly mediterranean wash of rose light against the cloudless sky, I sat outside on my steps and yapped to my leetle sister about her young prodigy (oh yes, and she is one too!). I saw the parking lady creeping about and, also seeing that my car was parked inches from the corner curb, flagged her over to inquire as to its legality. She tells me, "You're fine." Dear reader, I WAS FINE. I went inside and watched this (which you know I just love) until I fell asleep. It was a nice evening. I was fine.
But, as it turns out, perhaps I misunderstood. I was not fine. Because, I was in fact, fined. I was fined anyway, AFTER being told I would, in effect, not be fined. I WAS FINE. I discovered the ticket this morning, as I trotted out to go to work. It is time-stamped a few minutes after my exchange with the souless parking ticket lady. This is a horrible way to begin your day. May that parking ticket lady never cross my path again; although I plan to troll the neighborhood tonight in hopes she will.
In other news, it was the 4th of July the other day, and that was pretty fun. I spent part of that day lazily blobbing around, doing things that I completely enjoy doing. I got an iced coffee and read the paper, strolled around and bought shoes (bad me!), pored over the new Lorrie Moore short story in TNY while munching some sushi, took a bike ride and again berrated myself for not having my camera...and you know what? It was glorious. Solitary but glorious. And it reminded me of a few weeks ago when I decided one night to peek into the little lit-up teevee and found myself in an Oscar Wilde drawing room with Minnie Driver (shudder) and Rupert Everet (gurgle) who were performing "An Ideal Husband," a perfectly delectable nugget of a play. It actually contains some of the best Wilde-isms, including, "To love oneself is to begin a lifelong romance." Well, Oscar, I guess the 4th was a big fat soul kiss to myself then. Things are getting pretty hot and heavy over here. I really need someone to come and break it up. Please?
And also, when I was reading the paper on the 4th, I cried. Except I cried at the wrong thing, which just made me sadder. You see, the front page of the Washington Post had an article about a teenage Iraqi girl who has been chronicling the horrors of war in her diary for the last many years, a la another certain tear-inducing wartime young lady. This, though, was not what made me choke up. I read that article and moved on to a piece about a young soccer mom in a horribly yuppy neighborhood who, along with one of her young daughters, was killed when a tree branch fell on her car while she was taking her children home from the pool the week before. And (dear golly, I'm doing it again now...), this makes me cry. I mean, yes, it's sad. But is my social consciousness that warped? Is the complete crap-shoot nature of life just that wrenching all of a sudden? Or am I emotionally clogged up to the point that any slight prod is enough to bring on knee-jerk tears? I will be crying at doggie food commercials soon, like P's old wifey used to. Dear me.
Anyway, I guess today can't be all bad, parking ticket aside. It's hard to believe I was a sweet young 22 when their debut album was released. And it's even harder to believe their new album dropped today. If that's not a comment on how it's completely believable to think you can reinvent yourself as many times as you need to, I don't know what is.
