(Grades are in, and they're way better than we expected. Great.)
And so, finally, the great sigh of relief has been sighed. I'm taking everything in beautiful Super-Slow-Motion and eating fruit by the boxcar-loads. 5 pounds of grapes? 4 hours, followed by 2 pink lady apples, a peach, a banana and a handful of frozen berries. This is my adult fulfillment of my Childhood Declaration Number Four:
4: "When I am a grownup, I will eat all the candy I want. Candy until I'm sick. Because no-one can tell me not to."
My next move in Ultimate Summer Fulfillment was turning out to be a little more difficult. This time last year, Tiny and I were in NYC, living in a beautiful house that came equipped with a kick-ass hula hoop and a back porch. I decided then and there that 'Next summer, I will have a back porch, and a hula hoop.'
I moved into the Derby the month I got back, so presto, back porch. The Hoop continued to evade me. I knew it was essential to the next three months of my life, but no one carried them in big enough sizes.
I woke up yesterday and tapped on sleeping Cake.
"I can't find a hula hoop anywhere. What am I going to do?"
Without opening his eyes, he answered: "You're not looking hard enough."
And he was right. As Cake thumbed through the phonebook for toy stores, I googled "how to make a hula hoop" and found this awesome and informative website.
After the regular major trauma of visiting the home despot, I cut and abandoned half the tube in the HD parking lot and rode the rest home on my scooter like a bandelaro.
I made the first hoop yesterday, and painted it today. I think I'd like a 3/4 inch hoop instead, as the 1 inch kind of bruises the hips, but I can tell you that a ton of you motha's are getting a custom made hula hoop this summer.
I'll post pictures as soon as it dries.
SHE LET ME EMAIL IT!
Crap on a crapstick all. Lets breathe a big sigh of relief together, and get our Enjoying-Summer-Pants on.
Thanks for your love, loves.
I call my parents and my uncle answers the phone.
"Hey! Happy Father's Day!"
"Girl, I hate to tell you this, but this isn't your father."
"I'm aware of that, but you're a father, so the greeting stands. Is my own super great and funny dad around?"
-shuffle shuffle-
"HELLO!"
"Hey dad. Happy Father's Day!"
"Thanks! What're you doing tomorrow?"
--and I know what he wants to hear, so I'm delighted to say it.--
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going fishing out in the middle of nowhere at the asscrack of dawn."
"Really? Me too! What time do you want to go?"
"I can be ready by six, or earlier if you want, but I have to work tonight."
"What time do you get off of work?"
"Around midnight."
"I'll pick you up at midnight!"
Happy Father's Day.
You know those nightmares about missing a final?
Every have one actually come true?
I have.
(let the relentless self-loathing begin.)
Atomic bomb, that's what.
Over something trivial, I'm going to wreck it. Wreck it with my MF-ing. Atomic. Bomb.
I keep it in a suitcase. One of those old fabric suitcases like my mom used to carry. I think it might actually be one of the ones my mom used to have. It was a set of 3 plus a cosmetics bag. I keep the suitcase in the pantry next to the tubs of emergency flour. I think it's safer there, somehow.
It might be at the carnival. You might be telescoping your neck on the Ferris Wheel trying to get a peek down some cleavage on the ground and in the process accidently knock my ice cream bar which plummets to the earth below. You might do that.
And after the carnival I'd say I needed to stop by my house to get a change of clothes, and when I come out with a suitcase, you laugh a little.
Ha.
Or it might be in the livingroom. I might be feeling enthusiastic about the parenting skills of penguins and trying to tell you about their special fuzzy baby coves when you shush me for a Jack In The Box commercial.
It's not impossible.
And I'd still stay the night. I'd stay the night like nothing happened and sleep flat on my back like a dream. Beautiful mushroom cloud dream sleep. In the morning I'd take off for school like a B-52 and roar through all my classes like I'm on a mission.
I show up in the mid afternoon with a half wrapped sandwich in one hand and a ratty old suitcase in the other. It looks heavy. You ask if I brought you a sandwich.
Ha Ha.
Atomic bomb, for barely any reason. Tiny bomb, apartment size, blows all of our molecules into tornados of themselves. Mushroom cloud, 8 feet high and hotter than a zillion stovetops. I'll clench my teeth and close my eyes and hold my breath like a diver, then I'll pull the bigger-than-necessary lever and blow you and me and all your furniture into nothing.
Over nothing.
And when we're water vapor, evaporating like we do, you'll laugh at my pettiness and say I always make mountains of the same molehills, and you'll roll your vaporey eyes. I'll protest that if YOU had just called in the first place, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all! And I'll pout my vaporey pout.
It's happened before.
Snakes get irritable when they shed their skins. The muscles are all tight in the old one but the new one is going to be tender for a while and they just don't like it, the television tells me. So I must be shedding.
Pet Peeve Number Two: Having to hang out and act like I'm not angry so that I can prove that I wasn't angry back before you didn't believe me.
Oh man, if you pick me up, I am going to bite your ass. I am going to inject you with poison from my awesome hypodermic-needle-like fangs. If you call me snakeykins one more time I'm going to wrap myself around your head and squeeze till your hair falls out. I wasn't even hungry before, but my jaw is coming fucking UNHINGED.
A-drew edited my Piece! Of! Crap! research paper last night and, with a few easy changes, turned it into a Not! Too! Crappy! research paper. I'm writing Left Hand (bass) parts for my composition and considering the short stories of Gabriel G. Marquez this weekend, getting ready for the big Essay Question Of TERROR next week.
And then you know what? I'm taking the summer off.
That's right! No fundamentals of Geology. No introduction to Anatomy. No more teachers dirty looks. I'm going to shuffle doughnuts, wear out my bathing suit, and hula hoop like my life depends on it.
Not! Too! Crappy!
I've been thinking a lot
about evaporation
and deja vu.
This molecule of water is about to become me. Before me, it was in a pipe, in a creek, in a block of ice, in the sky, in the ground, evaporating off the back of an old man who sings in a language I've never heard. Rolling around to be spit out in a language I've never heard.
So when I breathe on a pane of glass to write my initials, that molecule comes out and for a second I'm 85 years old and singing. Rising to the atmosphere to sail across the ocean. Sleeping in a snowbank. Rolling down a mountain. Rushing through a pipe and resting in a waterglass.
When I fall on your head and slip behind your ear and down your collar, will you remember me?