voices

This weekend, I started hearing voices.

Tiny, tinny voices in barely audible bursts, piping up periodically over a long evening alone while I searched them out in vain, and then again the next night.

At first, I thought maybe we were picking up some interference on our landline cordless phone, but that wasn’t it. I put my ear to the wall, thinking maybe it was trickling in from the apartment next door. I double-checked the old digital answering machine in case the recorder had corrupted and was playing smothered bits of garbled old messages.

I checked the volume on my laptop, then on The Fella’s laptop; maybe one of us had left a YouTube tab open and it was, I don’t know, buffering and playing a few seconds at a time. I even bent down and listened to the cable box, wifi router, and TV speakers, wondering if somehow they were sending out tiny blasts of static that my brain was translating into words.

Was it coming from outside the apartment? Maybe someone was doing laundry in the basement under our living room and listening to a staticky radio down there. Maybe someone on the neighbors’ porch was wearing a walkie-talkie. Or maybe a cable-company worker was up a pole somewhere I couldn’t see, with his walkie squawking quietly down to me.

But here’s the part that made me so eager to find a rational source for these tiny little voices: I recognized them.

Yeeeeah. I would have shrugged it off, but I knew these tiny voices, and knew them well. I found them weirdly familiar, comfortable, sympathetic.

After two days interrupted by brief searches for the source of these voices, I shrugged and gave up, perplexed and a little unsettled.

And then on Monday morning, I grabbed my iPod and discovered it had been sitting on the living room table playing RadioLab podcasts at a low volume… since Saturday. Instead of turning it off, I’d turned it down. Every so often, Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich would get excited about something and RAISE THEIR VOICES — their oh-so-familiar and friendly voices — which I would juuuuuust barely hear through the earbuds.

Phew.

scrape

The scene: you’re sitting cozily under a blanket drinking your coffee on Sunday morning. Suddenly, you hear something scraping — repeatedly, insistently, roughly — against the ice and wooden planks of your front porch. Your mind fills in the blank by guessing:

A. the giant claws of some unknown, unseen beast that dares to venture out in the day only because it knows a warm and tender morsel is curled up inside the house, waiting helplessly.

B. It’s the guy they hired to shovel snow and ice, shoveling snow and ice.

If you chose B., carry on. You’re fine.

If you chose A., maybe lay off the Lovecraft for a while. And the caffeine. And get some sleep. But in the meantime, come sit over here by me. I’ll make coffee.

splat

Places I managed to drop bits of avocado from this sandwich:

- onto the countertop
- onto the cutting board
- onto the other-than-intended sandwich half
- onto the the plate
- onto the napkin
- onto the floor
- onto the MacBook trackpad
- into my cleavage
- down the front of my hoodie
- onto my chin
- I don’t know; I never found that bit. Uh-oh.

updated to add: I stopped typing, hit post, and went back to the second half of my sandwich, only to find a bit of avocado on the sofa next to the plate. And no, that was not the missing piece from the list.

tipsy

Even if you don’t feel tipsy during the Halloween party, look for these dead giveaways:

- A complete inability to remove the foil from the champagne bottle, or to figure out how to uncage the cork without removing the foil.

- Taking the stairs down from the hosts’ apartment ever so slowly, getting both feet on each riser ever so carefully before moving on to the next.

- Your partner saying “You’re doin’ great!” at least three times during the five-minute walk home.

- Shucking off your bra and tights from under your costume in front of a (curtained) window while cheerfully giving the finger to the hypothetical neighbors who might be offended by the unintentional display.

- Being ever-so-proud! that you remembered to wash your face before bed.

- Waking up late the next morning ravenous for every smeary, fatty mass-market food being trumpeted by TV commercials.

- When your partner reveals that he brought home a frozen pizza last night, you rush wordlessly to him, fluttering your hands, and finally manage “I’m so glad we got married!”

abundance

This small apartment is crammed full of stuff — most of it mine, and much of it so very crammed in that we can’t get at it.

I keep paring down. I dropped off several big boxes of clothing at Goodwill and still I can’t see the back of the closet. I gave away a food processor and I still have two left. If a guest admires a [book/scarf/toy/kitchen tool], sometimes I give it to them on the spot and thank them for taking it.

The place is still littered with toys, games, DVDs still in their cellophane, shoes I’m waiting to break in, shoes I stopped wearing, beautiful trinkets that we were given and don’t need, winter coats that are too fancy, winter coats that aren’t fancy enough, books jammed into boxes where we can’t read them, favorite dresses hanging in the back of a deep closet where I forget them, luxurious bath oils turning sour and stale on the shelf, down comforters balled up under the bed getting musty.

My mindset of scarcity creates so much sad waste. I’m saving those bath oils, that velvet dress, those perfect shoes, that lovely down throw, the most delicate wineglasses, the expensive bottle of spirits, the crisp linen dish towels handed down from my grandmother, the folded swath of uncut lilac fabric. I’m saving them for LATER. I’m saving them for BEST.

But if BEST never comes, if it is never LATER, then those luscious goods, those indulgences, those luxuries… they sit and molder on the shelf.

I’ve made a resolution for September: each week, I pledge to use or dispose of at least seven unused, underused, or forgotten objects: one every day, or a week’s worth all at once, however it works out. No matter how much I give (or throw) away, the count resets each Sunday: if I toss out or rehome 30 items on September 1st, I still have seven to go the next week.

Expect the updates to be excruciatingly dull for everyone but me. After all, I’m the one unearthing those velvet dresses, drinking the expensive spirits, giving away toys, and opening up space in my cramped home.

Though September hasn’t started, I have: some construction in our building forced us to clear out a long-ignored closet. I threw out a dozen spoiled, soiled, spilled, or otherwise unsuitable objects.

It’s official

In case you were wondering, it’s official: he just plain gets me.

Things I said to The Fella to identify an actor whose name I never remember. Note: I had had two drinks.

“Little dude. With the eyes.”
“Elf guy! With the eyes and the teeth.”
“Little elf guy who’s not Tobey Maguire!”
“Sunshine of the Forever Thingee!“

He said “Elijah Wood?!” just as I said,”The little elf dude in the movies you always want me to watch. YOU KNOW.”

exchanging glances

Several years ago, right after moving back to this small city, I was walking down the street when I spotted a strikingly familiar fellow walking toward me. As we got closer, I ran through the possibilities: is he another adult student from one of my classes? Did we go to high school together years ago? Is he a friend-of-a-friend? Is he a friend from my youth, all grown up? Is he a customer of mine at one of my previous jobs, or am I a customer of his?

Of course, I was running through these possible contexts so that I could greet him with the appropriate level of friendliness. Is he a passing acquaintance? Nod and smile or wave, and keep walking. If I’m a customer or client, I’d like to be friendly but still leave him some social space for privacy. But if he’s an old friend, it would be a little aloof to wave and blow on past.

I couldn’t place him, so I gave the tiniest of waves and the mildest of smiles and kept moving. He waved and smiled back.

And when I saw him a few days later, we did the same thing: raise a hand in greeting, give the half-smile, and keep walking. And this is what we did for the next dozen or so meetings: passing on the sidewalk, at the library doors, in the grocery store, wherever. We must have some similarity of schedule and taste because I bump into this guy regularly.

At some point, I noticed that he started looking at me more carefully. He couldn’t figure out where we knew each other from either!

And then I realized: I know his face but he doesn’t know mine. He’s an anchor from the local news. (I don’t have broadcast TV these days, so I haven’t seen him on TV since we started waving at each other. But I’d previously seen him on TV for years, so the face is very familiar.)

The next time I saw him — walking down the library’s long exit ramp while I was walking up the entrance ramp — I suppressed my impulse to raise my hand in greeting. C’mon, I don’t know this guy! And more to the point, he doesn’t know me!

And then he upped the ante: he waved and said “Hello!” And now, every time I see him, he gives me a hearty hello and I give it right back.

And that’s the story of how I accidentally trained a local news anchor to greet a complete stranger.

bananas

In a crowd of friends at the local bar tonight, The Fella and I met a friend’s beau.

Friend: These are two of the smartest people in town.
Elsa and The Fella in unison: Nooooooo. No no no. No.
Friend: This is Elsa. She knows a lot about bananas.
Elsa: [wincing] … that’s fair.

hairbrained

My new super-short haircut looks great, but on humid days it presents some morning surprises. This morning, it was standing up in vertical curls.

Elsa: ACK! My hair is — ack! — I look like I’m inventing something! I look like a mad scientist.
The Fella: I like it.
Elsa: You just want to come back to my lab and see my Tesla coils.
The Fella: I do.
Elsa: I look like Barton Fink.
The Fella: You look pretty.
Elsa: I look like a cockatoo.
The Fella: No! [approvingly] You look like Rod Stewart.
Elsa: …that’s not better than a cockatoo. Or different!

there, that wasn’t so bad, now was it?

So I went to my first of several appointments leading up to the Horrible Oral Surgery. This first visit was a long-overdue check-up with my regular, wonderful dentist and his staff… and to my astonishment, nothing much happened.

Oh, some things happened: x-rays and an exam, a referral to an oral surgeon, advice on dealing with dental anxiety before the surgery, another visit scheduled. But you know what I mean when I say “nothing much happened.” I mean that nothing happened that was painful or humiliating or even out of the ordinary.

No red light started flashing, no klaxons went AWOOOOOOGA, no oral surgery strike team arrived via helicopter to scoop me up and medevac me to the nearest maxillofacial unit. No one even gasped or clutched their pearls in horror or took away my official grown-up badge.

Indeed, both the dentist and the hygienist shrugged a little when I asked which should come first, my follow-up cleaning or my Horrible Oral Surgery. I somehow imagined the gaping pulpy painful HOLE IN MY JAW might constitute an emergency, but the dental professionals think otherwise… which is a-okay with me.

After my uneventful appointment I went home, where The Fella fed me my favorite non-crunchy take-out (asparagus tempura salad with spicy peanut dressing) and ice cream, stroked my hair, and told me I was soooooooo braaaaaaaave.

Whatever you’ve been putting off for too long, just brace yourself and do it. Do it now, do it soon. Forgive yourself for putting it off, give yourself permission to feel fear or anxiety, don’t shame yourself for it. Just do the thing. And when you do it, I’ll tell you the truth: you are sooooooo braaaaaaave.