Sir Matt

There are days when I feel like my husband should be knighted for his awesomeness. Or maybe proclaimed to be a saint. Because most of the time he just can’t help doing the right thing without a single moment of hesitation. Saturday August 18 was one of those times.

Normally this knee-jerk reaction to him needing high fives for being a good-person-overachiever has to do more with the fact that he’s somehow managed to put up with my ass for the past thirteen or so years. But on Saturday Matt just jumped into action like there wasn’t a question about it.

Late afternoon on Friday my Mom came up and planned to spend the weekend. We hung around for a couple hours and chatted before Matt got home. While we were hanging out the movie “It Could Happen to You” came on and we ended up watching the whole thing sitting there in our bathing suits. We were getting in the pool but that movie is so dang cute neither of us wanted to stop watching.

So what does any of that have to do with Matt’s newly bestowed title? Well Nicholas Cage plays the leading man, Charlie Lang, a cop in NYC who never fails to do the right thing when it comes to being a decent human being. His wife in the flick (Rosie Perez) can’t understand how he could have promised half of their lottery winnings to some random waitress (Bridget Fonda). But Charlie doesn’t back down on his promise. He never stops being a kind, generous and wonderful person despite all the crap that gets thrown at him.

The movie came out in 1994. I promised myself after watching it that I would find a guy just like Charlie as the leading man in my own life. Maybe he screws up occasionally, maybe he isn’t perfect, but somewhere deep down in the depths of his soul he’s just a decent and kind human being.

Well by some miracle of fate, I happened to find the real life Charlie and even more odd, they’re both from New York!

On Saturday morning we all discussed taking a road trip to somewhere none of us had ever been before. With Sunset Crater chosen as our destination, we hit the open road and headed north toward Flagstaff. The place was pretty cool, lots and lots of lava flow rocks from the volcano that erupted only about 1000 years ago. But the place we really wanted to see was up the road – an 800 year old pueblo that was mostly still standing. Um, cool!

We made it there about an hour before sunset and headed up the short path to this former house on top of a rock. There were two other groups there at the same time as us (which was weird because it was in the middle of nowhere. On our way up the path the couple with the fancy-pants camera set-up made their way back to the parking lot with a scowl. I wanted to say ‘gee, sorry to interrupt your photo op in this public state park’ but kept my mouth shut. The other group was a mom and what looked to be her two teenage children.

Mom, Matt and I explored the various rooms and the last three people eventually left. We had the place to ourselves so we acted a little dorky and took a whole bunch of pictures. Like this one taken earlier:

We headed back out to see that we weren’t alone in the parking lot. The minivan with the small family was still sitting there. Which I thought was strange because they’d taken off at least fifteen minutes before we made our way back to our car. The daughter was walking towards us. All of a sudden I hear “Excuse me, can you help us with a tire? We have a flat.”

Oh no.

Here’s what it looks like out there:

Um…

Luckily they had a jack and a spare. But this was a minivan, not a car with a trunk or a Jeep with a tire mounted to the back. Take a wild guess where the tire was located? Give up? Yeah, it’s under the vehicle. You have to use this weird contraption that forms the shape of a T and release some cable – done from the inside the vehicle - in order to drop the thing down so you can access the donut.

Now my phone chose this exact moment to die so the most important pictures weren’t even captured. Stupid roaming killing my battery too quickly!

But here’s a free piece of advice for everyone out there – NEVER approach a writer who is currently working on a suspense novel when she and her family are in the middle of nothingness, without another soul around, the Ranger’s station approximately two miles away, and a situation that is way too obvious as a trap because she won’t actually believe all you need is help changing a tire until you’ve already driven away with a donut attached to your car.

Here’s how the situation went in my head – the teenage boy takes the contraption shaped like a T, knocks Matt over the head with it and then kidnaps Mum & me to sell us into some kind of underground slavery ring while Matt lies bleeding out at the end of a dead end street in the middle of the desert.

Yeah, I really gotta find a way to separate fantasy from reality.

Because the actual scene looked a lot more like this:

Yeah, yeah. Perhaps I’m just slightly biased as to the inherent sexiness of my husband in a crisis situation but I think all five of us who were standing there watching him jack up that minivan to replace the tire would agree that he’s pretty kick-ass.

And nary a tire iron swung at anyone’s head during the entire experience. Imagine that!

They thanked us profusely and said “can we give you anything for your trouble?” Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t accept a dime from someone in this situation, we were all just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, but I thought it was kind of them to offer anyway.

Matt said “all you can give me is the knowledge that you get home safely tonight.” Seriously, who’s in charge of the sword on the shoulder thing? I’ve got your candidate right here.

I Got the Ill Communication

I haven't been using the word "but" as much as I used to which goes right along with making no excuses this year. So far everything I've done has been something I either wanted to do or it was going to be a direct long term benefit.

Then there was the dentist last Friday and it was tough to remind myself how it could be considered a good thing.

About a year ago the tooth around the root canal filling I had put in many years ago, cracked. Because there was a root canal the crack didn't hurt or anything it just started becoming an annoyance and I knew the tooth really shouldn't be there anymore. It had to go but...and this is where I attempted to make an excuse...my fear of the dentist had me wanting to cancel and curl up in the corner instead.

But...and this is where I reversed the excuse on myself...I stopped listening to my nervous but(t) and made the appointment to have the extraction.

I won't go into detail all I'll say is my dentist said she never saw someone metabolize Novocaine that fast before. Yeah, I probably should have told her about my inner racing mind & body. Multiple shots of Novocaine plus one of epinephrine later and my poor little face had one more hole created inside it.

Matt was sure to be happy, I was finally going to keep the random babble to a minimum for a couple days.

Like I said on FB, pain is not my BFF so I picked up my prescription for vicodin on the way home & started taking it right away.  I felt no pain throughout the day but other than that benefit I started to wonder why people were clamoring for that on the down low.  I didn't feel anything.  Hmm, I guess maybe that's the point.  At any rate, the day went by fine, I drank soup and protein shakes, swallowed some strawberry yogurt, and ate cheezy puffs that dissolved in my mouth to stay nourished.  Truth be told I was starving (shocker), plus I wasn't allowed to smoke all day which was a nice side bonus.  I took my last pill of the day around 10:00 and went to bed around 11:00, glad to have the whole thing behind me.

Then at 6:30 Saturday morning I found out why I will never take that much sought after white pill again. I woke up so nauseous and with such heavy clammy chills and shaking body that I started to freak out that something had gone wrong with the extraction. I could hardly get to and from the bathroom without weaving all over the 8 feet between me and the door. 

It nerved me so much I woke up Matt, something I'd never do on his sacred weekend hours of sleep under normal circumstances. These weren't normal circumstances.  He rubbed my back for a few and then made a bunch of sense that I was probably dehydrated & lacking in protein since my body was probably using anything I'd put in the day before in trying to heal my face. I agreed and grabbed one of the protein shakes I had picked up for my liquid diet.  I drank as much as I could as quickly as I felt my body would let me and then went back to sleep.

I spent until about 10:30 in bed then until about 3:00 on the sofa purging that heavy medication out of my system through ingestion of lots of liquids. Luckily I never lost my cookies. It scared the crap out of me though and today I'm just thankful my pain is almost gone because I don't even want to take a Tylenol.

At least I found out and it will be quite unlikely I ever have the need to go on that stuff again. Guess I can add it to percoset as another prescribed med I just can't handle. And people wonder why I keep smoking and drinking, they're my only possible vices, no pills for me!

I'm back to my usual self today except a little achy pain but my plan for the rest of the day is to lie down.  For a while anyway. Enjoy your Sunday and I'll catch up with all of you next week.

It’s a Family Affair

Every morning I wake up with a different song playing in my head. Sometimes I can explain it, for instance, if I heard the song right before I went to bed the night before, while other times I have no explanation as to how it got there. Today’s is a prime example of the latter. Now I like this song but ask me to sing more than the four words in the title above and you’ll catch me scratching my head.

So you can probably see the dilemma here. The same four words playing on a loop over and over again as I sit awake, alone, until Matt gets up, is moderately maddening. But instead of heading off to the loony bin, I’m going to go with it and use the song title as a writing prompt. Hey, I’m all about turning the negative into a positive like that.

Speaking of prompt…as soon as I decided to write about it, I promptly lost all steam and motivation to do so. This has been a common problem lately. I think there are a few reasons for it.

First off, I don’t want to sit here and ramble on aimlessly about everything I’ve done lately because I won’t even be able to see the bored look in your eye as you drift off and start imagining what you’re having for dinner instead of absorbing the words on the screen. My life lately has been one long thread. Literally. Pretty much all I’ve done lately is sew.

Which brings me to the second reason. Sewing, unless you’re a seamstress, is a pretty boring topic. Wait, that was the same as the first reason right? Yeah, I guess you can probably understand the inclination to keep it to myself.

So (or sew?? Haha! Oh I kill me…) this is why I had all these grand plans to turn this post into some wonderful tale about my past, something awesome and fun from the 70’s and I would have woven it around my family like the song line had been written specifically for us.

For example, I could do a big story about how I was picked on in grammar school for wearing hand me down clothes that came from my much older cousins. Or I could talk about the time when my aunt tried to talk me out of drinking because my whole family was full of alcoholics but, not only was I not entirely surprised by the information, I think I surprised her by sharing that I just wanted to go to the party; I didn’t even have one drink that night. Perhaps a nice long post about the way two people is quite enough to make a family and that I don’t need to have kids to feel like I’ve achieved that feeling.

But every single one of those topics and more would just fall flat right now because that’s how I feel. As flat as the snowman ornaments I stitched up recently. Flat, listless, languid, lifeless, wordless and inspirationless. (Is that even a word? Probably not but it pretty much perfectly describes my overall brainwave right now so I’m keeping it. Suck on that Oxford Dictionary).

I think I know the reason. I’m saving it up in the imaginary bunker in my brain. The bunker is made of four foot thick concrete walls with a solid steel hatch that only I can access because it takes my fingerprint and retina scan to get in. Yeah, the thing is secure. And for good reason. It is storing the makings of my book inside its walls.

Imagination, inspiration and ability to share a fully fluffed up story, full of good old fashioned chewy bits like warm date nut cookies, will just have to wait until November. (Ooh, cookies…)

So what the hell do I do in the meantime? I guess I could regale all of you with tales of my grocery shopping adventures but somehow I think that might have me losing a few readers. Not that I couldn’t make it funny -- hell I kept everyone reading about me having a cold by sprinkling in crap about puffy heart key chains, local New Jersey townies and Pauly Shore movies -- but something tells me it would just be far too shameless, even for me, to try to add humor to a Peapod delivery. I mean, they weren’t even late and actually delivered everything I ordered so how could I ever twist that one ya know?

Plus I’d never want to insult us by writing an entire 875 word post full of absolutely no content whatsoever. That would just be…well, it would surely be random lunacy, if you will, and I wouldn’t dream of doing that to any of us! Honestly, what do you take me for? Geesh…

While I dye my hair and get ready to go see my mom’s work at the Arlington Open Studios, and then attend my uncle’s big sixtieth birthday party later today, I will leave you with this quote my drum instructor told me yesterday. Apparently it is from a cowboy movie he watched recently.

“Never hasn’t happened yet.”

Yup, you’re right. That quote has absolutely nothing to do with anything I’ve written here.  Just like everything else.

Too Bad The Clash Never Answered Their Own Question

I’ve shared in the past some of the issues with our current apartment -- creepy neighbors who seem to follow us from room to room, the fact that there isn’t a real door on our bedroom, the size and layout of the space -- but most recently we had a flood in the basement and after our landlords seemed to not only let it simply drain on its own but to also allow the dampness to fester, it prompted us to ask the age old question ‘should I stay or should I go (now)?’

You all know the next line and if you don’t feel free to check out the lyrics.

So we started looking at apartments with all of the amenities that we really truly would want in a space, mind you, some of which our current place does have but most it doesn’t. Two bedrooms plus a den (or study, loft, enormous extra storage closet, etc.), 2 bathrooms, a functional kitchen with a dishwasher and plenty of storage, decent closet space, a master bedroom sized to fit a king sized bed, a townhouse with no one above or below, parking for 2 cars and access to the T.

It all sounds easy enough, and truthfully it is, but when we started looking the harsh reality of the Boston housing market came to smack us around while it taunted us with dollar signs and 80’s décor.

The first place we looked at was in Norwood. ‘Where the hell is Norwood?’ you might wonder, don’t worry, I asked the same thing. Just south west of the city this fine town is located smack dab in the middle of the country. But we were encouraged to see that the property had everything on our list and then some.

The T isn’t just close, the commuter rail stops right at the community, the property manager told me I could faux every singe surface of the apartment (non-textural) as long as we painted over it when we left, washer/dryer in the unit, hardwood throughout, large private back patio with extra outdoor storage attached, and end units were available.

Those of you who know me know that I would likely spend little time on the patio because country = bugs and I just don’t do bugs. No matter how nice one’s patio furniture is spiders simply kill it for me. I shudder just thinking about it. Of course Matt would love it so that was a half a plus. It was in our price range but on the reaching end so neither of us were sure we wanted to reach quite that far to be quite that far from everyone; on a good day in no traffic it would take our family and friends at least 40 minutes to get there. Boo.

We went back on the hunt to look for communities and came across a newer complex in Southie. Right at the water’s edge and sort of next to UMass, the place consists of two really gorgeous semi high rise buildings. Based on their info online it had pretty much everything we were looking for but was a lot closer to our loved ones.

So we popped in and asked to see their 2+ bedroom unit. She quite literally frowned at us and said her next available appointment was at noon on Sunday. I referenced the ‘Open House’ sign on the front lawn and received no response. OK, thanks, bye.

On the same day we came across the find of all finds. A townhome community that had all the same stuff as the place in Norwood but it was located in Marshfield just a couple miles from Rexhame beach. Matt and I both grew up at the beach, the beach is where it’s at for us, and after spending a considerable number of years at the south shore, we know just where we’d love to land. Marshfield is a close runner up though so for a rental, it sounded perfect.

We saw photos online of the space and it looked great; nice community building, good size living room and bedrooms and their deluxe model even consisted of a front hall storage closet that was about the size of our current bedroom.

When we got there however, I instantly started singing Oh Mickey and was really bummed that I had left my can of Aqua Net and Balloons at home.

The kitchen was the first room on the left, half bath on the right. Both consisted of confetti and paint splatter style (?) rolled vinyl floors in shades of blue and pink plus white melamine cabinetry which could be doable but the rounded rectangle wood pulls really did nothing to make me want to sign a lease. In a final flourish, the countertops were squared off laminate. Oh yeah, and pink. Like, a grandmother’s bathroom, rose colored, pink. I hardly even noticed the deep pile, baby blue carpet everywhere once we got upstairs and saw that both full baths were decked out the same way.

No soundproofing between the units was a big concern of un-cosmetic proportions and although it did have 2 car parking and heat lamps in the bathrooms (score) it just didn’t seem worth the price considering it was only $100 less expensive than the country apartment.

Of course she did say that some units had forest green countertops and that they were just starting to remodel all of the community’s homes. Starting with the one bedrooms. I guessed we’d be almost retired by the time they got around to all of the townhomes considering the model was stuck in a time warp. We thanked her for her generous time and headed out on our merry way, a little dejected but hopeful.

On the way home we talked at great length about what to do. And then we continued to discuss it for the rest of the weekend. There are things about our current place that we just can’t change but one of the major draws of this apartment from the get go was the price. If we were to consider the place in Norwood, we’d be paying about $600 more a month, and I know that comes with a slew of ‘buts’ on the pro side of the page so it is a tough call.

With all that in mind we started talking about just renting a single family instead. Of course that conversation led right into buying a home. Now you all know we filed bankruptcy last year, as I’ve discussed in length before, so it will be a couple years before we’d be able to do anything about obtaining a mortgage.

So herein lies the dilemma -- stay here and save boatloads of money toward buying a home in a couple years but have to live daily with the creepy neighbors and a coin-op washer and dryer in a mold infested basement, or go and save a bit less money in the short term but be more comfortable in the daily flow of life.

As I type the question I am bombarded by what sounds like the people upstairs (the landlord’s son by the way) bowling in their living room. Sigh.

Matt plans to ask our landlord if we can make a few improvements around here (like new flooring in the kitchen, bath and mud room, a new vanity in the bath and permission to paint the stark white walls with the promise that they will be repainted when we go) and if they say yes to all of that we’ll likely just suck it up and stay for the foreseeable future.

I’ll just have to readjust my bathroom schedule so our neighbors don’t pee at the same time as me everyday, all the time, anymore.

Its Not You, Its Me

I am so, so sorry Random Lunacy. I wanted to write, really I did but it just seems like life has gotten in the way recently. Its nothing you did wrong. Truly it is all me. What’s that you ask? What is Facebook? Well it’s nothing to be jealous about, I mean it isn’t like I would ever give you up for it or anything. FB is just a fling, you are my oldest and dearest addiction, I promise there is nothing to worry about. Sometimes a girl really just needs her space, even from something as awesome as a blog like you.

Nothing has seemed to hit me that I feel like writing about lately. Clearly, since I have not posted since the beginning of the month. There is something kind of big going on with a friend right now but it is not something I want to put out there in full on detail so I feel like I am not able to really talk about anything since it is one of the more prevalent thoughts in my head right now. So instead of sharing some goofy story about my past or writing something clever about my neighbor who sings opera I have just abandoned my awesome blog for stupid note tags in Facebook.

Oh the shame.

Ok to be fair it isn’t all about FB, I have been really inspired to write Green Leaf Reviewer posts again and I started a very significant story back in December that is shaping up to become a novel. I guess there is just not enough inspiration to spread around and back here to my old dear blog. Well that and the ridiculous flu like cold that knocked me flat on my back for five full days.

After a week of being sick was followed up by a Saturday full of sunshine, it was time to get out of here last weekend and we kicked it old style.

Matt and I were the original random road trippers. It was not rare for one or the other of us to get home on a Friday night and ask ‘where can we get in six hours?’ then head out for that location packing up nothing more than a big bottle of water, an overnight bag and a camera. Last Saturday we skipped the over night bag and brought passports instead and Matt surprised me with a day trip up to Quebec. Yes, as in the Canadian province.

We took off to get lunch at about one in the afternoon and surprise, Matt had passports in his pocket and we were on the road. I forgot how cool the White Mountain range was.

Unfortunately by the time we got to Canada it was getting dark so the only photo I snapped was a slightly blurry picture of the solar panels on top of the border patrol building (woo hoo Canada for going green!) and the Quebec sign.

Now people who know Matt and I understand our propensity for taking off for far lands on a whim -- it really is no thing for us to say ‘yeah, we went to Canada yesterday’ -- but the border patrol tends to show their confusion at the fact that yes we came all the way from Boston to simply drive around Sherbrooke for a couple hours, no we don’t know anyone in Canada and no we are not planning to spend the night. But luckily even though they thought we must be total freaks they let us in with a ‘have a nice time’ and what border patrol considers a smile. Better known as pursed lips and handing back our passports.

On the two hour tour we both decided it would be a great idea to go back up some time in the spring or summer and actually spend a weekend because there were quite a few cool monuments to see, pretty architecture, adorable shops and yummy looking restaurants, nevermind some gorgeous countryside to explore.

On the way back into the United States we chatted with the border patrol dude for a few minutes when he made it clear he was a Boston guy transplanted up to Vermont.

Him: “Where are you folks from?”
Us: “Arlington”
Him: “AHHHHHlingtun!”
Me: “Oh you’re from Boston!”
Him: “Yup lived in Mission Hill for a while. You guys Red Sox fans?”
Us: “Of course!”

What I should have done is asked if that question was rhetorical because, well, you know.

Him: “Cold enough up here for you?”
Matt: “Its actualy warmer here than it was in Boston earlier today.”
Him: “Well it was 30 below up here a couple weeks ago.”
Me: Jaw drops, head shakes. “How do you live? I mean you can’t possibly even breathe when you go outside in that crap?”
Him: “Nah, a big thick coat and a furry hat and its OK.”

We also chatted about Varitek, who’s manager had come through the booth shortly before he finalized his contract, and Papelbon who had just extended and then he gave a customary “Eh” and told us to have a safe drive back.

We arrived home just in time for Saturday Night Live and even though we had spent over ten hours on the road during my recuperation time I felt better than I had in ages. Nothing like a fun day of music and driving and a little International exploration to bring the roses back into a gal’s cheeks and the inspiration back to her blog.