South Carolina

We have an author from South Carolina, and her Southern accent is so think and buttery that even me, a practically-Southern Midwesterner, has trouble understanding her and her colloquialisms. Though I still do tend to drop into a Southern drawl when talking to her. It's completely unintentional but I feel like I'm putting it on - not mockingly but not seriously, either, somehow.

Anyway, she calls often, multiple times daily, with little bitty questions. And, apparently she calls on her lunch breaks. We were in the middle of a conversation when she suddenly said, "Honey, let me put you on hold." and in the next breath, "I need two number twos, no pickles on number one number two, extra mayo on the second number two, a large sweet tea and a Coke. And two apple pies." I could even hear the "Please pull around."

Moral: Just saying you're putting someone on hold doesn't put them on hold.

Adventures in Self-Publishing

So we have an author that comes into our office regularly - he's a semi-retired local artist with nothing much to do. He's got a grey beard with bristles thick like pine needles, a bowed back, caved chest and a potbelly. He sniffles and smacks his lips when he talks, pulls the "hmm" with the rising old man intonation. He's one of a long parade of the slightly cracked that have published with our little company.

His nickname is ODB. If he were fifty years younger, I'd have a restraining order on him.

This is because every time he comes in, all he does is shuffle around and mumble vaguely inappropriate things about the female employees. The first time he came in, he interrupted a conversation about book distribution and author discounts with, "Do you have a boyfriend? Tell me where your boyfriend lives and I'll kill'im. I'll kill'im." Dead serious.

He also admitted to us that before his appointments, he gets nervous about talking to us pretty ladies that he regularly stops for a drink ("a little snort") before coming in.

He is never without his pinstriped fedora and when the conversation lags, he'll leer at us, rock his head side to side while twiddling the hat's brim and squinting lasciviously and mumble, "This do anything for ya?"

He once asked if he could use our phone and proceeded to call a woman and beg her for a date.

When his book came out, he crowed in his weary little old man voice, "It's beautiful! I wanna take you two ladies out for dinner right now, take you to a nice place, maybe have a few bottles of wine, get ya both a little drunk, how does that sound?"

Today he came in to pick up a box of books that he had ordered but it was too heavy for him. I ended up carrying the books out and putting them trunk of his junker station wagon. He reached in after me and started fiddling with a kind of glove compartment on the side of the interior. "You know, I'm coming down with a bad cold. It's making me feel terrible, just dreadful" he said. "You wanna know how I'm taking care of it? You wanna know my little trick? I'll show ya." He snapped the compartment open and it's filled with little airplane size bottles of vodka. He pulled one out and wiggled it in front of his face. "A little nip of this makes me feel much better."

I said, "Drive safe now" and ran back inside to tell the story to everyone there.

Oh, my job. My job.

A collection of impressions

Another Saturday at the farmers market, but a rainy one. My pants were soaked from ankle to knee, knee to thigh. I think I will like the rainy winter, if only because it mines and polishes the moments I love - the warmth of the first brittle spray of the shower, a sun breaking through heavy clouds, the sounds of traffic and leaves swaying.

Some tea trivia:

the most coveted form of oolong is called monkey-picked because the monks used to train monkeys to climb to the top of the trees to pick the young and sun-saturated leaves from their crowns.

Puer tea is a little knot of leaves, bundled in crisp, sheer paper and stored for twenty years in little rows capped with twisted paper tufts.

I love long, silent afternoons alone, wandering through streets and stores, imagining I see people from my past in the backs of others' heads - my grandpa's hat and gait, an ex-boyfriend's red hair and big ears - and being overly deliberative about produce, inspecting each apple from stem to its green fringed belly button, reading books in the aisles of the library while people maneuver around me, breathing soft apologies.

First thirty seconds of fall

I wake up to the surprise of cool, crisp air
the first break in the heat,
it's as sweet and smooth as brown sugar.

It makes me miss you.
More than the sultry, heavy heat of summer,
more than the cold twinge-bitter winter,
this crisp air, of new beginnings, of escape into blue
makes me close my eyes to thoughts of you.

A soft suede sky extends overhead,
flat, not arching and distant, but close, almost caressing the
tops of heads, touching the peeks of skin bared by cool weather clothes – hands, noses,
a flash of ankle on a steep hill,
a strip of back when a shoe is tied,
the white of teeth in a wide open laugh.

Little things

I get so expansive and caught up in little things - rituals and twitches and quirks of people I don't know, people I will never see again.

The Max is a great place to find these - there was a loud lady there, a talker, who relished hitting herself on the forehead, duh, and crossing her eyes. The eye crossing was especially strong - she did it three times on the train, to show how stupid she was, crossed eyes, tongue peeking out the corner of her mouth, old lady makeup and wispy hair.

The pug dog at the window where you could see that he had been there before, probably every day, his little lookout post that was smudged with his hot breath and wet nose.

A girl at work that has a white eraser that she methodically and habitually shreds between a thumb and forefinger - she quit smoking and this is what has taken its place.

Oh, it's a chick.

Went for a walk in the dark just to get up and out of my brain a little bit. It didn't much help. And it left me with a sour notion of my little midnight calm walks.

First thing I came across was a bum - one of those teen bums that has a sign with a riff on "I need money to get drunk" and a new looking emo outfit.

"Hey, dude." He said. Then looked at me again. "Oh, it's a chick. Do you have any pizza?"

Ok, so I was wearing my baggy sweat pants and a hoodie. But I didn't even have the hood up. And ok, so the guy was probably gone on something. But still, a stoner in the dark can't tell I'm a chick? I don't know why I cared but I did. A teeny burden on my mind, one that I was trying to escape by going for a walk - amifatandugly? Oh god, on paper (or screen) it looks so melodramatic.

Then I was circling Nick's work, halfway hoping to meet him as I came out, and two guys tried to start hitting on me - "Let's ask this lady where Henry's is. Hi, we're from Norway and Alaska (heh, right) and we were wondering if you knew where Henry's was."

"Actually, no, it sounds familiar, but I don't."

"You play lacrosse and you don't know? Wait, that's your boyfriend's shirt, he plays lacrosse and you don't know? Well you better get your own clothes and put on some shoes and find out where Henry's is." and then they walked (huffily?) away. Say what? It turned bitter and insulting quickly. Another little niggle in my mind, doubt and caring tangling up together. I walked home and wanted to have said something huffy back at them. Ah well.

Leaving things open

I guess this is an appropriate first post - Nick always yells at me for leaving things open. Mainly, it's the half dozen doors of our kitchen. There are twist-lock cabinets, squeaky sticky drawers, even every once in a while the fridge door (that was worse in our old place because the fridge was older and the rubber seal was unreliable). The more I think about it, the more I realize I do it everywhere. I always have three books lying around, spines cracked open or stuffed with a pincushion of markers. I leave my pants in crumpled heaps on the floor, inviting toes to step in and with a shimmy, be pulled up and zipped into use. I leave the bed unmade, hanging wide for easy entrance.

I realized this all when I left the door to our medicine cabinet yawning tonight, and caught myself in the reflection as I was walking out of the bathroom. It was one of those weird, it's a stranger in my mirror moments. I get them more often when I'm walking down the street and catch myself in a store window. I don't recognize my stride or the jut of my chin for an instant, see myself as a third party. A strange sensation, at best, a disheartening or disjoint-ing one at worst. I wish I could do it on a less physical level. People are easy to characterize by their foibles and habits. Oh, she would check her email at four in the morning, oh, he would forget to lock the back door, oh, she would be offended by the accidental eroticism of "every wife deserves a facial." How do people describe me? Oh, she would cancel after agreeing to meet at a party, oh, she would complain about people leaving candy out in the office kitchen. Oh, she would be too nice to stand up for herself.

Oh, she would leave the door to the microwave open all night.