Category Archives: Splashes

Beach House Fantasy

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If I could afford it (it’s not just the cost of rent, it’s the kenneling of the dogs, and the paying of airfare, etc.), I’d be spending a week in one of those Outer Banks rentals that Anne Rivers Siddons writes so vibrantly about. I’ve got this longing to spend a week sitting by the shore reading and writing and drinking iced tea, and doing very little else.

The sea is in my blood. The tides call to me, even when I’m hundreds of miles inland. In my dreams I float on beds of soft kelp, carried atop waves of deep blue, and if sharks circle, they do so protectively, not out of malice or hunger.

I remember coming home from a day at the beach only to spend even more time swimming, or just soaking in the bath. I remember sand stuck everywhere – even in the part of my tightly-braided hair.

I remember the frosted iced tea glasses with the unfrosted leaves, like a reverse etching, and how my grandfather’s tea always tasted of cinnamon and lemon, and love.

I remember. and I miss it so.

And I want to wake up to the sound of shore birds, and go to sleep with the soft sound of the ocean lapping at the sand.

This summer, I will have my beach house fantasy.
Somehow.

Thursday 13: The Letter O – Revisited

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Thirteen Things about MISS MELISS
The Letter O, Revisited

Sara challenged me to list ten things that begin with the letter ‘O’ that are relevant to me, but since I hadn’t come up with a Thursday 13 in a long while, I’m giving her thirteen. Readers of my previous thirteen o-things from last summer will be pleased to know there are no repeats.

1) Overture: Whether it’s in the musical sense, as the preface or introduction to a larger work, or the social sense, the conversational dance we do at the beginning of a friendship, I like overtures.
2) Oceanography: If I was more math-inclined, I’d have wanted to be either a marine biologist or oceanography.
3) Opening Night: Whether I’m going to the theater to perform or to watch, nothing beats the magic of Opening Night. The anticipation, the tension, the release at the end when a show has been successful. It’s all bundled into two or three hours.
4) Observation: There’s a reason Harriet the Spy was one of my favorite books as a child. I never carried a notebook full of my friends’ secret habits, but I do tend to observe people, situations, things, before jumping in. I think it’s the writer-part of my brain that does this, because I often feel like I’m watching and participating at once.
5) Ozone: The taste of it in the air, just before a storm, just after a lightning strike, is something I can’t resist. One of the reason’s last year’s BPAL offering, “Thunder Moon” is among my favorites is the ozone note.
6) Onions: I still remember looking at onion skin under microscopes at school when I was a kid. I love the way green onions smell the morning after a rain – my grandfather’s lawn was rife with green onions and lemon grass and spring mornings always smelled like an amazing salad. I prefer onion rings to fries, and I love the marinated red onions that The Good Earth used to put on their salads. I do not, however, like onion breath.
7) Onomatopoeia: How can you not love a word that refers to other words? Specifically, of course, it refers to words that sound like what they are (Snap! Bang! Splash!)
8) Old: As a society we’re conditioned to discard old things, and, to a degree, old people, but old things can also be valuable antiques, or family heirlooms, old books hold ideas that are still relevant, and old people are the keepers of our oral histories, and warmest memories.
9) Oral History: Storytelling isn’t just for weaving entertainment, it’s for passing down knowledge, information, shared memories, legends, lore, and myths. There are nuances in the spoken word that text simply cannot translate, cannot preserve.
10) “Once upon a time”: Quite possibly the most magical phrase in the English language.
11) Olivia: A good friend of our family, writer, piano teacher, surrogate grandmother. She’s crazy as a loon, but also incredibly intelligent, vibrant, and generous.
12) Orion: The first constellation I learned to name. I still gaze at the stars, when I have the time, and the skies are clear.
13) Orders: I have a footlocker that belonged to my grandfather when he was serving in the Army in WWII. On it, with a box drawn around them in white spray paint, remain his stenciled orders – the address of his unit at the time. The rest of the footlocker has been repainted many, many times.

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This is only a drill

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Well, actually, it’s about a drill.
A drill, some resin composite, several filings, and a post.

I broke a tooth last week you see. As tooth-breaks go, it wasn’t bad, a chip that didn’t cause pain, just grabbed my tongue’s attention all too often, but after having the extraction from hell last year, I knew better than to wait for pain, made a call last week, etc.

While I was in the waiting room this morning, I had a great chat with a guy in a Monkees t-shirt. Gotta love the way some people interpret men’s fashion. On the way out, the other patient, a cowboy named Dave, teased me about my hair, but it was good-natured.

My dentist, Dan Ferraro, is a very sweet, engaging guy, perhaps eight to fifteen years older than me, with the strawberry coloring typical of some Italians. My family has similar genes (I was strawberry blonde til I was fifteen), and refers to the blondest among it as “Golden Guineas,” but I didn’t mention that to him.

He was kind enough not to lecture me for not visiting the office in roughly eighteen months, and got a kick out of my pink hair and pink sneakers. He let me control the suction thingy, and used copious amounts of novocain because I’m resistant, and began what was supposed to be just an assessment, but quickly progressed to, “You’re here, I’m here, the next patient canceled, let’s do this now.”

I’d known since August 2006 that I’d likely need either a filling and crown or a root canal and crown, and the cool sonic root tester still put me at the borderline, but I was hoping for the former, rather than the latter, but it wasn’t to be. Happy Wednesday, MissMeliss. Here, have a root canal.

As root canals go, it wasn’t awful. Dr. Ferraro works quickly, with deft fingers. He’s funny, but focused, and he’s flexible. I don’t like the foam things that keep your mouth open for you, so he didn’t make me use it. “Ask if you need it,” he said. I prefer to have the ability to close my mouth when he isn’t sticking stuff in it, and didn’t need it. He’s also anti-dental dam. I asked about one, and he said, “Oh, those things that make you feel like there’s an umbrella stuck down your throat? They were just becoming popular when I finished dental school in ’86. I gave them up in ’87. There are better ways to keep stuff from going down people’s throats.”

“And this,” I said, “Is why I came back to you.”

The root canal wasn’t that bad. He filled it, but didn’t crown it. I have another $2500 worth of dental work left to do, and we’re doing it in $599 – $700 chunks over the next few months. The root canal already killed my dental insurance for the year because we have a limit on total dollar amounts, but the rest of the work is crowns and fillings, nothing hugely expensive.

I got a jamba juice on the way home, then stopped at Walgreens to fill the prescriptions for vicodin and amoxycillin. There was no pain earlier, but then the numbness went away, and the pain replaced it. I took two ibuprofen as soon as I got home, which helped the headache I’d developed, but I took a vicodin as soon as I finished the article I had to write, and will probably take a second one after dinner, to make sure I sleep, because it’s been about four hours and the pain is back in my consciousness.

In other news, my autographed copy of Dreamland, the new cd by Brent Spiner arrived yesterday. Head over to Bibliotica, and read my review.

Would You Like Free Wi-fi With That Latte?

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As an AT&T user both at home and on my cell, and a frequenter of Starbucks, I was intrigued when a twitterbuddy mentioned that the former will be taking over the wi-fi presence in the latter, beginning in Q2 of 2008.

I mean, I have a cell card should I desperately need to work online from a cafe, but still…

I was a little dubious, however, so I did a quick search and found articles in MacWorld and the like all supporting this information, as well as this piece from Gizmodo.

Even better? Just having a Starbucks card gets you two free hours of access a day, no purchase required.

Q2 cannot come soon enough. (Oh, wait, we’re almost there.)

Thirteen

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Today marks our thirteenth anniversary, Fuzzy’s and mine. We took the day off work to spend together but stayed up rather later than planned and then I checked email.

One should never check email on one’s day off.
Well, not work email.
Except I work from home, and even though I have separate accounts…do I need to go on?

Anyway, we’re not doing gifts or flowers today, as Fuzzy just bought a laptop and I’m about to buy a new one, too. We decided that was more than enough.

And of course, I have to be all hormonal and crampy today, which means I’m not in the mood for mini-golf or Dave and Busters, but that’s okay, because we’re going to go get lunch, bring it home, and then watch I AM LEGEND in the middle of the afternoon. (We thought about an actual movie, but there’s nothing playing anywhere that either of us want to see. Or, rather, that BOTH of us want to see, which is completely different.)

In any case, for all the jokes I make about renewing the contract, Fuzzy’s the only person on the planet who could honestly put up with my moods, dreams, ideas, and constant need for change.

I love him.
He loves me.
It’s all good.

FrouFrou and Frippery

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Never underestimate the value of pretty underwear. I don’t necessarily mean hot lingerie in shiny flimsy materials, though those have their place, I mean, any normal underwear that comes in pretty colors and makes you happy.

While I never cease to remind my mother of the time she lifted her dress while driving some of my friends home to display the way her panties matched her outfit, the truth is, I’m just as keen on matching as she is, and I’ve got four new bras to prove it. Two of them are black, because my very favorite black bra finally had to be consigned to the land of dead clothing (which is largely populated by very lonely half-pairs of socks (but I digress)), and I wear a LOT of black, even in summer, so one plunges and one doesn’t quite. One is lacy and sheer and light. Hey, I like lace in moderation. And one is green, blue, and white, very springy and smile inducing. It actually matches the pajamas I also bought.

Speaking of which, why would you need a bra to match pajamas? Are there that many women who wander around in a bra and pj bottoms? Is it designed so that when you wear your green and blue bra and panties under a green striped t-shirt and blue jeans, you can still color coordinate when you switch to loungewear? I really want to know.

In any case, my grandmother, who always said you must always wear clean underwear in case you were in an accident, would be extremely pleased to know I’ve nothing to worry about after yesterday’s shopping excursion.

Got Zombies?

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Yes, it’s Easter, and what better way to celebrate than with the first teaser for 3 Days Later a movie-length parody of the famous musical Jesus Christ: Superstar?

Okay, chocolate would taste better, but would it catch you between laughter and fear of going to hell? Probably not.

A good friend of mine is one of the creative minds behind this, but even if that wasn’t the case, I’d HAVE to share:

I’m in Love with Alienware

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Or at least I’m in lust with one of their computers. It’s called the Area 51 m15x and it’s chassis is referred to as the “Ripley.” It’s all silver, and shiny, but you can customize the keyboard backlighting and command center lighting with different colors (is it any wonder I’m picking fuchsia?) and it even has this funky hybrid drive that I don’t quite understand yet.

But I will.

It also has lists of extra gear you can get – normal stuff like usb flash drives, and other things like a branded messenger bag or backpack.

Fuzzy was going to order a new Alienware system for himself, but a Dell ended up having more of the things he wanted, and we were going to replace my desktop, until we sat down and realized that I haven’t even USED it, except to print something, in over a month.

I work from bed, the living room, the dining room, the deck, more than I ever work in my office. (This also, by the way, reinforces my plan to get rid of my desk and put a day-bed in there)

In any case, yeah, I’ve got new computer lust, but I haven’t ordered it yet, and probably won’t be until mid-April.

I’ll let y’all know.