The tent diaries 2

Part two of this adventure revolved around staying with friends and friends' families. 

For two weeks I traveled the Midwest, sometimes camping, sometimes staying with people I knew (or people of people I knew.) It turns out I know a lot of Midwesterners, and their company was a nice reprieve from solitude. 

In Macomb, Illinois I stayed with my girl Ricci's mom, Beth.  In Chicago I stayed with my old coworker Kevin. In Athens, Illinois (a charming little town outside of Springfield) I stayed with my old roommate Zac's family. Zac, in case you didn't read this post, is one of several reasons why I asked Joe out. He also threw me a sweet bon voyage dinner party the night before I left town, at which he cooked my favorite authors' favorite foods. (Hemingway's gazpacho was delish.) Zac's marrying us in September. I've also convinced him to MC the event. 

Without further ado, here's part two of my road trip, in which accommodating Midwesterners welcome the pug and I with open arms, scrambled eggs and bags of radishes:

Friday, June 08, 2007

Osceola, Arkansas
Osceola, Arkansas is as flat as my palm. The roads run like wrinkles in the land. Dry, dusty wrinkles through fields of wildflowers. For every stop sign there is a Baptist church. For every billboard there is a cry in capital letters to choose Life. The country stations play old country. Dolly. Willy. Merle Haggard. In between songs a man reads the obituaries of local residents -- the times and the places of memorial and burial services and what each person meant to their community. When I crossed the Missouri line I pulled off an exit for Sikeston to eat throwed rolls at Lamberts Cafe but the place had no outdoor seating, which is a problem since my dog cannot be left in the car for the duration of any sit-down meals, (thus my recent diet of cheese crackers from a Dollar General in Sevierville, Tenn.) So instead I pulled into a Piggly Wiggly to take a wee, was forced to use an old Post It note in my purse as toilet paper since the Piggly Wiggly's employees only bathroom had none, bought the Southeast Missourian, forced my overheating pug to drink water and continued on my way to Macomb, Illinois.
I had no idea what to expect.

--

Monday, June 11, 2007

Macomb, Illinois
This is Ricci's hometown: Macomb, Illinois.

Let me put it this way. There is something magnificent to be said for each and every one of our friend's hometowns. If you've ever traveled to or with a friend back to the place they came from then you know what I mean. Someone's hometown-- the place in which they became a person-- is an extension of their body. It's an organ really. It's this living, ticking, blood-pumping organ. And whether or not they still live there, the town will always be an organ.

Your hometown's tissues are your tissues. It's comforting in that chicken noodle soup kind of way.

About Ricci's I can say this: I drove straight from Mempis to Western Illinois. It took me six hours of I-55 driving and then two and half hours of US 67 driving. Taking an interstate clear across a state (much like I did in Tennessee) and taking a US highway are two totally different worlds. Whichever path you choose you will drum up two totally different feelings. Interstate driving is zone-out, steering wheel-drumming driving. Blinker left, blinker right.

Highway driving is rolling pastures, on-coming trucks, stop signs beside old gas stations with no names, baseball diamonds cut into cornfields, sweet potato fries and custard stands with bells on the doors so whenever you come or go you make an entrance or an exit.

My father would say it's like flying in a Cessna instead of a 747.

By the time I got to Macomb I was totally embedded in Western Illinois. I called my Oma and told her I felt like the state was a quilt and up until this point I'd only traveled the surface from square to square. This time on US 67 I had burrowed into the cotton batting between the layers. I was a piece of lint. And I was beginning to feel a little ... well, absolutely and disconcertingly ... stuck.

The farmlands of Illinois look exactly like my hometown. If I were to fall asleep on the side of the road in Industry, Illinois and woke up the next day unaware of my travels, I'd think I was in North Collins, NY. When this became amazingly clear to me I started to freak the hell out.

It took me hours to reach Macomb. I was back and forth with Ricci's mom every thirty minutes. "I'm driving through the town of blah-blah-blah. Am I close yet?"

"Nope. Keep going."

When I finally reached Macomb I was exhausted. Cubbie was antsy. I was starving. The only nourishment I'd had that day was an enormous cup of coffee that waged inside my stomach a small and unsuccessful war.

Ricci's mom, Beth told me to meet her at a friend's place on Pennyoaks Drive. She was helping some friends load a U-Haul truck. The friends were moving to St. Louis. There would be a potluck dinner and Ricci's high school friends' parents would be there. It was 7 pm by the time I rolled up the Bitner's drive. I opened the car door, a chewed-up apple rolled out of my car. The pug bounded from the passenger seat. I took a swig of water, smoothed by khaki shorts and walked up the driveway to a procession of Midwestern moms and dads loading a U-Haul truck in a u-shaped driveway. It was Midwestern hospitality at its best.

I was promptly offered water and homemade garlic cheese bread. I said yes to both. I was as curious of them as they were of me. Ricci's mother along with some of Ricci's highschool friends' parents decided to form a club after their kids took off for college. They still meet at least once a month. I happened to roll into town on such a day. There is no better way to roll into town.

Beth took me out for icecream at DQ to which Ricci later told me on the phone, "that's the old hangout dude. Like every one of my friends worked there growing up."

It's true. Now that Ricci's friends are gone the place is staffed by most of Beth's high school students (she's a math teacher at Macomb High.) I ordered a vanilla cone. Beth got a dilly bar. Cubbie begged for both.

When we got home Cubbie and I crashed on Ricci's old bed.

"That's so weird- you on my bed back home," Ricci said from Sarasota.

"I know! There are alot of posters of cute guys on the wall. Did your sister take this over when you left for college?"

"Yes."

Her mother piped up in the background. "She wasn't happy about it."

Beth scrambled me eggs in the morning (in the microwave because the oven broke recently) and sent me off with a baggie of radishes and nectarines.

"How do I get out of Macomb?" I asked.

She pondered it for a second.

"I'll lead you," she said. "I'm headed to Hannibal today. Follow me to the highway. Head north for Chicago." She looked over at the baggie of radishes in my hand. "You'll like those. They're fresh from the garden."

She stepped into her car and I stepped into mine. I strapped Cubbie into the passenger seat. We turned off Debbie Lane and headed out of town. Moments later we pulled up to an intersection. I looked over at Beth one car over. She pointed her finger north. I rolled down the dog's window.

"Thank you!" I yelled out into traffic.

"We forgot to get coffee," she yelled back.

"That's OK. I'll get some in Chicago."

"Take care. Drive safe!"

Cubbie snorted twice. I turned onto the highway. Tim McGraw was on the radio. Nectarines were in my cup holder as I burrowed north out of the quilt batting and back onto the periphery of the squares.

--

Monday, June 11, 2007

Chicago
I had no expectations for Chicago. Really.

I figured I'd get lost driving in. I figured Kevin would have a small apartment and that I'd be, at some point, coerced into eating a hotdog. I was right about the hotdog and the small apartment. But on the getting lost part… hot damn, I found my way so easily I figured I must have driven into the wrong city. (I was once lost in a mall parking lot in Sarasota, so I'd say my reaching Illinois is damn impressive ... not to mention my driving up Michigan Avenue at rush hour to pick Kevin up at work.)

My dad called earlier.
"Where you headed today?"
"I'm driving into Chicago as we speak."
"Well. That's a helluva city to go to."
"I know."
"Whatcha doin in Chicago?"
"I'm picking Kevin up from work."

He was right -- Chicago is a helluva city and KJA was a helluva tour guide. Apparently I choose the perfect weekend to visit. Street festivals. Art fairs. Book fairs. Tribute bands. Amazingly, beautiful, fantastic weather. I could go on. Instead I'll do this.

In my three days of Chicago sightseeing I participated/witnessed the following things:

• Gay Asian midget with a 6 foot 5 partner
• Man on subway w/ mouthful of Listerine which he spit out when the doors opened
• An earth-shattering episode of 90210
• Dave Matthews & U2 concerts (sort of)
• The "Batman" film set on the first floor of Kevin's building
• Impromptu dive pub crawl until 3 am
• Drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon (which would make me feel shiteous the next day)
• Pissing in a bush near Belmont Ave
• Eating a hotdog for the first time in eight years
• Enjoying the hotdog
• Not enjoying the sport pepper
• Kevin sniffing a bull penis
• Purchasing the bull penis for Cubbie
• Scouring Andersonville for funnel cake
• Drinking the debut Miller Chill (froufrou and eww)
• Walking Cubbie to Wrigley Field for photo op
• Walking Kevin to snake exhibit at Lincoln Park Zoo

--

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Athens, Illinois

I'm at my roommate Zac's family's house.
What is it about the Midwest?
When I rolled up to Zac's place in Athens, Il (pronounced A-THINS) Zac's adorable and super sweet mother was hosting a Gone With The Wind party for her Relay-For-Life team. The chocolate chip cookies in the midwest are by far the best chocolate chip cookies this cookie monster has ever had. (And I've had plenty. I once ate an entire jar of cookies back home. I sat on top of my kitchen counter crying to my mother about why I hated my job bussing tables at TGI Fridays.)

Zac- much thanks to your mom and Tina who contended with a four-dog-one-cat brawl in their backyard. My apologies go out on behalf of Cubbie who pissed on the side of the downstairs sofa. A little shout-out to Rachel (Zac's 17-year-old sister) and Marian (Rachel's friend who spends her summers working as a Civil War era reenactor in nearby Springfield) for taking me to see Miss Saigon at an outdoor opera. I forget what it's like to ride with two funny teenagers in a family-sized sedan giggling about nasty gym teachers and how flippin' cute Orlando Bloom is.

--

PS. The first photo is of the back seat of my car. (Note the picnic basket and gas station blueberry muffin.) The second photo is the pug's view from the passenger seat window as we passed through hauntingly beautiful Arkansas. 

Bite me, slice me, dice me

I'm suffering from a supreme case of writer's block. 

So what do I do? Well. As always, there's Lance. 

I come here more than I should whenever I'm stuck on a story; a paying story. It helps me get over uninspired humps. 

Sometimes.

Today I spotted my first big, red tomato hanging off one of two tomato plants I planted three months ago in the front yard.

If anything should inspire me, it should be this. I've never grown an edible thing in my life. Well, basil. But that doesn't count. The pug could grow basil in his food bowl if he slobbered on it every day. 

The tomato plants were my mom and Joe's idea. There were four big pots in our front yard when we moved into this house, in which the previous owner had planted squatty palms and purple ferns. When we closed on the property, the squatty palms and purple ferns were scorched from too much sun and wilting from too little water, so I pulled them out of the pots and stuck them in the ground, where they are much happier and healthier.

In two pots I planted tomatoes and oregano. In the other two, I planted marigolds and bushy pink flowers. Within a month my bushy pink flowers had tripled in size. And my tomato vines! Ah! I had so many little green buds I felt like Fannie Flagg. The front of my house had suddenly taken on a Better Homes and Gardens look. 

When a storm whipped through the neighborhood last week, I ran out the front door to stake my bent tomato vines to sturdy twigs. After much nurturing, whispering and watering, I couldn't bear the thought of losing my tomatoes. They looked so pathetic in the wind and rain, bent over like a child with a stomachache. I never felt so much like my Oma than when I called for Joe in a panicked yelp, to bring me scissors and string so I could tie my vines.

Now that I've got this big red one sort of poking out at me, willing me to pick it, slice it and serve it over mozzarella and balsamic, I'm freaking out. What if it's too soon? What if it's too late?

If you know anything about tomatoes, please share your wisdom. I'm a novice vegetable grower, whose new hero is this guy: former Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver. 

Weaver, the 5-foot-7 short-tempered, smack-talking "Earl of Baltimore," used to grow tomato plants down the left field line in Baltimore's old Memorial Stadium. He and head groundskeeper Pat Santarone had a contest every summer to see who could grow the biggest, juiciest crop. Rumor has it Santarone once grew a tomato so big it wouldn't fit in his ball cap. 

According to former first basemen Boog Powell, the mens' tomatoes were so large, "one slice would way overlap the bread." And according to Cal Ripken Jr., whose father worked for the Orioles in the 1960s and 1970s, Weaver used to fertilize his giant tomatoes in the Orioles bullpen using horse manure lifted from the Preakness Stakes. 

I wonder if pug manure would have the same effect. 

--

PS. To everyone who donated to my Ride for Roswell: THANK YOU! THANK YOU! In two weeks I raised $675 for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute – $175 OVER my initial fundraising goal. 

PPS. About Saturday's hair post: the top photo was the $50 haircut. In these trying economic times I suggest patronizing beauty schools. No one will ever know your 'do cost five bucks. Unless of course you blog about it.

A clothesline for my mothership

I aim to pay homage to my mother (a day late) with this post. 

I went to Ace Hardware over the weekend and purchased among many things, a clothesline. 

Nothing major. Just a piece of white nylon rope that I stretched between two trees behind my house, a span that runs the width of my tiny backyard. 

I did this because I'm green-washed and cheap. Since I live in Florida, where every day the sun shines, the birds chirp and Snow White kneels in my parched grass and summons Jay birds to her fingertips, I see no reason why I can't save some money (and the environment) by running my dryer a little less. Not to mention the fact that I love clotheslines, which is where my mom comes into play.

My mom can work a clothesline like nobody's business. 

Growing up I used to stand beside her and hand her wooden clothespins as she pinched sheets on our clothesline, or draped my father's heavy jeans over two lines at once so they wouldn't sag to the ground.

My mom's clothesline is enormous; an almost Amish clothesline that my father cemented to the ground beside a corn field, that in the summer gets spread with liquid manure so pungent my mother used to run like a gazelle out the back door to rip the clothes down whenever the spreader ran its course.  

"C'mon girls! Richmonds are spreading shit. Help me get the clothes off the line."

Anyone who grew up in the country with a clothesline knows this routine. I had friends whose mothers responded the same way, and some friends whose mothers did not. Hence some kid went to school with their Wranglers smelling like a barn.

Clotheslines also make me think of my Oma and my Nana. On summer evenings, I've stood beside either one of these women helping un-pinch my Papa's white T-shirts or my Opa's black socks. 

There's a therapeutic monotony to hanging clothes on a line. The act of pulling pins out of a bucket is repetitive. Utilitarian. Time consuming. Lending itself to the act of daydreaming. Even better, saving money.

My mother loves the way sheets smell after they've hung out to dry on her clothesline. (This is on non-manure days.) When my sisters and I were little, she used to pull our sheets off the line and sniff them as we ran around her legs, clamping our lips with the pins to see how much pain we could withstand, charging through bath towels like Pamplona bulls. 

There's a Zen-like serenity in the folds of sheets.  When they were hanging out to dry, I used to walk between my parent's queen-sized sheets and try to make out silos in the distance. Through the thread-bare flapping of off-white cotton the world looked hazier, safer, lovelier, softer. 

When a thunderstorm would roll in, we'd all help her pull clothes off the line. My dad too. Galloping out the back door, our black cocker spaniel following us like a shadow as we traipsed with armfuls of wet laundry into the house and down the stairs into the basement, where we had a second clothesline for winter drying, manure days and rain events.

As with any family whose clothes dry outside, there are were those embarrassingly awkward (or just plain uncomfortable) mornings when we'd pluck June Bugs out of our underwear. Or days when our jeans were so stiff from line drying they'd stand up like confederate soldiers and we'd have to pole vault our way in.

When my sisters and I were teenagers, we'd plead with our mother to tumble our jeans in the dryer. 

"It's like you STARCHED 'em," we'd piss and moan.

When we had boys over I remember running to the clothesline to pull my ratty Hanes off the line before anyone arrived. Clotheslines are quaint when all that's drying on them are T-shirts, socks and sheets, but nothing is more mortifying than watching your pair of flowery high-waisted briefs flap like a faded circus parachute while you and your 16-year-old girlfriends chicken fight with boys in the pool. 

So, here's to you Mothership: a late Mother's Day post, as I sit on my back deck, waiting for the washer to buzz, contemplating whether or not I should hang my baggy bloomers on the line, I am of course smiling and thinking of you.

--

PS. AND to both my parents: Happy 30th wedding anniversary. Do something sappy tonight, will ya? Dad: don't work on the roof. Mom: don't do laundry. You guys should rent two-for-one romantic comedies at Shurfine and cuddle with Uncle Homer The Pug. 

Hello, romantics. This one's for you.

IF YOU'VE BEEN FEELING SURLY LATELY...

HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS... 

FROM A WEDDING I PHOTOGRAPHED LAST MONTH...

ON CASEY KEY BEACH.

THESE FOUR ARE SISTERS.  

SUSANNE (2ND FROM RIGHT) GOT MARRIED AT PAULINE'S (FAR RIGHT) BEACH ESTATE...

NEXT DOOR TO HORROR NOVELIST STEPHEN KING'S HOUSE.

THERE WERE ONLY 25 PEOPLE THERE.

IT WAS SIMPLE & BEAUTIFUL & QUITE LITERALLY...

TOOK MY BREATH AWAY.

EVERYONE WAS SO CHARMING & PHOTOGENIC... 

I FELT LIKE I WAS IN A SCENE TORN FROM THE GREAT GATSBY.

I HAVEN'T PHOTOGRAPHED MANY WEDDINGS...

BUT IF I DO, I'M CERTAIN THIS ONE WILL BE MY FAVORITE.

EVERYONE WORE PAISLEY PRINTS AND BRIGHT COLORS.
IT WAS ALMOST A SHAME TO EDIT THEM INTO BLACK & WHITE.

THEY CALL THEIR HOUSE "THE TREE HOUSE..."

BECAUSE IT'S LITERALLY BUILT UP INTO THE TREES...

LIKE TOWN & COUNTRY'S VERSION OF THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON... 

TREE HOUSE.

I BARELY POSED ANYONE.

EVERYTHING FELT SO NATURAL...

TO ME. 

SUSANNE & PAUL ARE FROM MUNICH, GERMANY.

SO I ASKED SUSANNE'S FATHER (BELOW & ON THE LEFT) IF HE HAD HEARD OF THE TINY TOWN...

WHERE MY OMA IS FROM.

AND HE KEPT SAYING, "VHERE IS DEES PLACE?"AND I KEPT SAYING, "BAD SOODEN-ALLENDORF...IT'S A SPA TOWN SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF GERMANY."

A ROMANTIC POET NAMED WILHELM MULLER ONCE LIVED THERE.

IT'S A PLACE RIPE WITH MINERAL SPRINGS AND SHOEMAKERS' KIN... LIKE MY OMA'S SIBLINGS & THEIR CHILDREN & THEIR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN.

BUT SINCE I DON'T SPEAK GERMAN...I DIDN'T EXPLAIN THIS TO SUSANNE'S FATHER...WHO WAS WEARING THE MOST AMAZING SUIT COAT I'VE EVER SEEN.

INSTEAD I THOUGHT...

AS THE SUN SET ON THIS AFFAIR...I HOPE MY WEDDING IS AS AWESOME AS THIS ONE...

OR MORE SO.

Roaming minutes

Just called my father, expecting it to be my mother. Since I'm all lazy and easy-like-Sunday morning, I figured I'd sort out this Popple tail thing over the phone.

"Hello Mothership."

"(Snort sound) This is your Fathership."

"Oh, Fathership. What's up with you?"

"I'm at 2,000 feet."

"In the plane?"

"Yup. Flying over Lake Erie right now. It's frozen from shore to shore."

"I think you get better reception over Lake Erie than you do on Jennings Road."

"(Snort sound.) Yeah, I know."

My father has a two-seater Cessna named Isabella that he and my Opa bought when I was about 11 years old. He got it shortly after he got his pilot's license – the culmination of months of night school, instrument training, a bevy of other FAA-regulated requirements and a medical exam.

Opa doesn't have his license. 

When my dad flies, Opa sits next to him, living vicariously through the plane's passenger seat controls. 

Oma wasn't too thrilled about Isabella. Neither was my mother. Night school was expensive and logging miles with a flight instructor cost even more. 

The airplane however, when compared to what other men spend on less impressive toys, was cheap – relatively speaking. My dad had to entirely rebuild the engine. The labor cost nothing. He did it himself. 

My mother calls Isabella, "The Other Woman." In fact, she's the one who named the plane Isabella. I think it made the hobby easier to digest – my father nurturing something human instead of machine. We women personalize everything. I think I Lanced about this already. Oh yeah. Briefly, here. 

Anyway, my dad answered the phone. 2,000 feet in the air. Buzzing Lake Erie. 

"Whatcha up to kiddo?"

"Joe's got a cold and I'm lounging around, eating pizza. A photographer friend is taking engagement pictures of us and the pug tonight."

"Engagement pictures?"

"Yeah. I wasn't going to do 'em, but he offered to take them for a case of beer. I think he wants glamour shots of the pug for his portfolio." 

"What do people do with engagement pictures?"

"I don't know. Put them in a giant frame for people to sign at their wedding, I suppose."

"Hmm. Well that's pretty nice of him, to take them for free."

(Yeah. Too bad Joe is sick and the pug has eczema in his facial folds.)

"Dad, you're talking to me in the airplane, but I can barely hear the engine."

"You know it's great! I've got the cell phone stuck under my headset with both hands free and I can still hear the radio controls."

(And to think, he lectures me whenever I drive and talk on the phone.)

"Yesterday I was machining a part for your cousin Cory's truck and I figured I'd fly over his house to see if he was working on it today. Sure enough, saw him in the driveway, puttin' the alternator in."

"You were spying on him from the air?"

"Sure. I called him up too. Told him I was watching him from the sky. He looked up and started laughing."

--

PS. I took the first two photos about three years ago while flying one summer with my dad over North Collins, N.Y. (my hometown.) If you squint, in that first one you can see our house. 

PPS. The third photo is him and Isabella, sharing a private moment. 

PPPS. The video below is Joe's first date with Isabella. 

While my Opa was sleeping

Joe's in Hampton, Va. for Phish's first reunion concerts.

Me and the pug? We're at my Oma and Opa's place, enjoying an alternate weekend in Nokomis, Fla.

(Oma and Opa = German for Grandma and Grandpa.)

They live about an hour from me in a wooded mobile home park called The Royal Coachman – the quaintest retirement community on the Gulf Coast. And in my journalistic opinion, the best retirement community on the Gulf Coast.

PK will join me tomorrow for sun tannin' by the Royal Coachman pool and home cooked German meals in Oma's lanai. Until then, it's just me and the pug sleeping on a pullout sofa, listening to the sound of clocks tick and motorcycles rev muffler-lessly into the night.

Oma told me a story tonight that I'll share with you briefly before I fall asleep under these downy blankets.

It started first with Opa pinching his gray hair, which hangs in a kind of sparse dutch boy when it's freshly cut.

"Gerhard," Oma said. "The barber tuk a lot off dis time."

"Ja. That is because I told him to," said Opa. "Every time I go to him he schnibbles only a little around mein ears, so I have to come back two, tree veeks later. I told him to take it all off at vonce. I pay to get mein hair cut, so cut it mensch!"

Smiling, Oma reached around Opa's head and touched the bristled ends of his hair. She asked if I remembered tiptoeing up to him as a little girl – my sisters and I – clipping plastic barrettes in his hair while he was sleeping.

I remembered it vaguely.

Opa, who has a hard time remembering most things, remembered it like it happened yesterday.

--

PS. Photo by R., a 23-year-old aspiring writer and "general bohemian gadabout" living in Sydney, Australia. For her flickr photostream click here.

Roots

I'm frustrated and tired. I'm wringing my hands and drowning in the sound of Gordon Lightfoot. My pug is asleep next to me, with a pug baby clasped between his paws. He's snoring, and I'm wearing Joe's noise-canceling headphones.

In my living room, Bob Costas is commenting on Olympic marathon runners. Olympic marathon runners with bodies like spaghetti strings are running through my living room.

Today, Joe and I embarked on Home Tour No. 4 with Realtor Randy. And I must admit, I'm decidedly less starry-eyed than when we began this housecapade two months ago.

Of the two of us, I'm the hopeful one. Not Joe. He's the cynic. But today it was me who spent the duration of our real estate look-see with my hands on my hips and a bitchy scowl across my face.

My friend Liz, who reads this blog, wrote me an e-mail recently that said:

"After three weeks of my own house hunting, I found one. I put in an offer and wouldn't you know, it's been accepted. I'm gonna be a homeowner. One of my many dreams is actually going to come true. It's a ranch in the Lakeview Wanakah area off Route 5. I'm scared, excited and nervous all at the same time."

Congrats Liz. I take this as a sign that a house with four walls and a functioning shitter is bound to come my way soon. It's always excellent to hear from you.

(Liz and I played soccer together in high school. We were both forwards. Liz had better aim than me and was faster and more sprite-ly, but we worked in tandem for years, both on and off the soccer field. We were first clarinet chairs in band; clarinet partners until the day we graduated high school. Band geeks really. When all our friends decided they were too cool for band, we begrudgingly stayed the course.)

So why the sourpuss?

Buying a home is a huge emotional undertaking. For me it means planting roots, the likes of which I've not been very good at.

I can't help but picture a big old grandaddy tree when I picture the physical act of home-buying. Say what you will about the ease of buying and selling, and how your first house aint your last house. Buying a house means planting your ass somewhere for more than a year, and let's face it: I've not planted my ass for more than a year anywhere since leaving New York four years ago.

In my Oma's address book, in the spot where my name is written, Oma has five different addresses scribbled, four of which are scribbled out:

Heron's Run Drive, Hawkins Court, Osprey Avenue, Pattison Avenue and now 8th Avenue.

An address has it's own heartbeat. Arteries that run from your place to amenities. Veins that run from your place to neighbors. All of my Florida addresses have had their fair share of veins and arteries. Previous to playing musical apartments, I spent 22 years in one bedroom. The arteries were longer, fewer and more likely to clot in North Collins, which is why I moved.

Granted home buying and apartment-leasing aren't that different. Both mean staking out a spot on some street, on some corner on some dead end - your own earthly space in some earthly town - where at night stray cats moan and homeless men wander, where across the street when no one is watching, the cook from a Chinese restaurant dumps used vegetable oil in a dumpster, where Starbucks serves $5 Frappachinos and where Chipotle serves cheap burritos and guacamole.

It's just a bigger commitment, and other than my pledge last year to go fishing every Saturday morning at 8 a.m., I've never had problems making commitments. It's the owning-property-in-Florida bit that's got me going batty. Owning a house in the Sunshine State wasn't a part of my master plan.

We all have neuroses. Veering off course is mine.

I did a Google search for my hometown the other day and I came across this essay I wrote my junior year at Buffalo State College. My first thought upon reading my standard preachy prose was: Jesus H! What a hung-up old biddy I am. I've changed so little, it's ridiculous. I'm still making a fuss over some kind of rural paradise.

It's sick, folks. If you get your hands on my diaries from ages 9 through 18, you'd piss your pants reading things like: "By the time I'm 22, I want to be in Florida writing for a newspaper. By the time I'm 23, I want a pug. By the time I'm 25, I want to be writing a book."

Old souls die hard. Take this sentence from that same college essay:

"I was a sarcastic kid who thought my life was a big Jeff Foxworthy joke."

This was me at 19. And I tell you what, I'm not that different. Ask my parents. The only difference was ... well, I never once wrote about home-buying in a diary. Truth be told I had no idea where I'd land.

So to quell my anxiety I consulted with John Steinbeck, whose observations have always resonated with me.

This passage is from Travels with Charley:

"I had promised my youngest son to say good-bye in passing his school at Deerfield, Massachusetts, but I got there too late to arouse him, so I drove up the mountain and found a dairy, bought some milk, and asked permission to camp under an apple tree. The dairy man had a Ph. D. in mathematics, and he must have had some training in philosophy. He liked what he was doing and he didn't want to be somewhere else - one of the very few contended people I met in my whole journey."

I was lying on my stomach in bed around midnight when I started this post. The A/C in the apartment was turning my toes into ice cubes, and Joe, to heat me up, had brought me in a cup of hot coffee. As he turned to leave he blew me a kiss, which filled me with a kind of red mercury that anyone who has ever been in love, is familiar with. And I sipped from the coffee I was holding and re-read the Steinbeck passage I was typing, and determined that what I was looking for I couldn't seek.

Contentment is as exotic an adventure as any. I never wrote about contentment in diaries. I think from this point on I will.

--

PS. The illustration above is by Boston, Mass. artist Karen Preston. For more of her work click here.

A Tale of Two Toothbrushes.

And now for a story.

My sister Heelya is particular about her teeth, which is understandable. She's had so many teeth drilled we joke that her mouth is a member of OPEC.

Because we didn't have dental coverage growing up we rarely saw the dentist. He was a haggler anyway, or at least that's what my dad said.

Of my two sisters Heelya spazzes out the quickest over things like germs and toenails. My dad likes to joke that my youngest sister PK should've been a doctor. She was always operating on the family, always carrying around a satchel of medieval looking tools, offering to fix our skin ailments, ingrown hairs, blisters, that sort of thing.

It was disgusting. I partially blame my Opa who owned the exact same kit - a zippered pouch of metal nail files, clippers, tweezers, and whatever other crevice digging devices might accompany such things. PK coveted the pouch as a little girl and whenever we visited my grandparents she would help herself to it in the cabinet with the bath towels and immediately start picking at her feet blisters. She was a figure skater so blisters ravaged her feet.

Soon she assumed ownership of the best tweezers in my house, the ones my father filed into daggers with points so sharp you could pierce the skin in one pinch, or kill an intruder under hostage circumstances. Regardless none of this has anything to do with the story I'm about to tell.

We all shared one bathroom - me, PK, Heelya, my mom, my dad and on weekends whatever friends had spent the night. Our toothbrushes never fit in one of those cup things with the holes in it. No matter what cup thing my mom purchased there were only four holes in it. God friggen forbid someone use the same color toothbrush, the same no-name brand Reach toothbrush and risk mistaken brush identity. 

I pity my sister Heelya, but she should've known better when she purchased a blue toothbrush. My father had a blue toothbrush and unlike the time we all decided to label our toothbrushes with masking tape and my father labeled his Jerry Maguire because it was 1996 and all his girls had crushes on a pre-douchey Tom Cruise, unlike that time this time his blue toothbrush was not labeled.

For weeks, maybe months, my sister Heelya would wake up for school and brush her teeth with the same toothbrush my father had used to brush his teeth three hours earlier. By the time she grabbed the brush the bristles would be dry. She was totally clueless.

Until one day, she woke up earlier, reached for her brush and realized it was wet and the bristles were flattened. Over her morning bowl of cereal she asked my father, "Dad, what toothbrush are you using?"

Story goes he walked into the bathroom, reached for what he thought was his toothbrush and said, this one.

"Omigod," my sister shrieked. 

Or so I think this is how it ends. When I called my dad this morning to confirm the details he said, "Yeesus Christ. Did your sister call you complaining about some kind of mouth virus?"

A guide to pug babies.

Milk Bone. Smells like corn chips. Makes for a good game of tug-of-war and that's about it. Oma prefers this baby to the others because she says she can hold one end without it sliming her fingers.

Pug Baby Jr. A Ty Beanie Baby from Hamburg, NY. By far the dog's favorite toy. Smells like vomit. Makes for a good game of fetch. Is often lost under/in bed. When touched wet will disgust even the most hardy of dog lovers. Both eyes are gone. I sewed the sockets shut.

The Singing Cat. The only pug baby with a functioning sound box. Contrary to what you'd expect, The Singing Cat doesn't meow but rings instead. Whenever it goes off Joe thinks my cell phone is ringing.

The Hamburger Baby. Squeaks. Is the least favorite of the dog's pug babies. The Hamburger Baby is like the fat kid at recess. The last one picked for dodge ball.

Pug Baby Sr. The dog's second favorite baby. Eyes, ear,muzzle and tail are easily chewed off. Sewn three times, re-stuffed once.

Elfin Baby. Needs to be sewn. Not a favorite. Came from Japan. A present from my Japanese exchange student, Yuuki. Used to have a hat.