Archive for September, 2005

Since we’re avid fans of all things Nickelodeon, there’s no way we could not hear about a great service project aimed at kids helping kids in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Nickelodeon and Do Something! have partnered to promote the We’ve Got Your Back campaign. I’ll post a picture of our backpack soon …

You can send a backpack through September 30th, so there’s still time to participate. It’s a unique way to teach a kid you know the power of charitable acts and get them involved. It’s also a good excuse to spend time with them, all while giving back to those who really need it. The project may also inspire you and your family to come up with other ideas for raising donations for the ongoing relief efforts and the rebuilding of lives that will be going on for months to come. A teachable moment for sure, but also a seed to plant that can start the idea of everyday charitable acts that can establish an awareness that will last a lifetime.

Relationship milestones are listed out and scrutinized by some of the finest research analysts known to the world … oh sure, there are sociologists and therapists, but we can’t forget Cosmo, Dr. Ruth and, of course, Ricki Lake. Over the years I’ve read a lot of articles on “Is He the One?” or “How You Know It’s Love” accompanied by the requisite guides, quizzes and cartoon diagrams of postures and facial expressions that can help even the hopeless decipher just where they stand in the jungle of dating and beyond. Surprisingly enough throughout my career of , I never once have come across a timeline or rating system that tells you what it means when you’ve hit the mark of “Running Out to the local Wal-Mart at 10:30 at night to Buy a Plunger”. Because that, my friends, is the hallmark of not only a really crazy night, but the prime indicator that you, in fact, are in love. Oh it’s love alright. And it’s “the one” and this is only going to get better. Because once you buy a plunger together, there’s just no telling what’s going to happen next.

Honestly, I’m not sure why more people don’t go on dates to Wal-Mart. I’m sure that caught you off guard, didn’t it? So let me say it again, for the record:

I’m not sure why more people don’t go on dates to Wal-Mart.

Because really, there are only a few things I can think of that are more fun. (And before all you Wal-Mart haters come to my house and beat me with your organically grown hemp television sets, I’d like to hear where else you can go at any hour of the night to buy Midol, ball-point pens, Secure Digital media cards, jock straps, Oil of Olay and windshield washer fluid all in one shot. And let me tell you, there are plenty of situations where those items find themselves badly needed. In other words, this ain’t that kind of blog … I’m sure thedailykos has a nice warm cot all ready for you.) Anyway, where was I? Oh, right …

I’m not sure why more people don’t go on dates to Wal-Mart.

1. It’s a public spot with all the amenities of home. Except my home doesn’t have a leaf blower or a custom paint tinting machine. Or a whole wall of batteries — but I’m working on that, you see.
2. It’s a well-lighted place with a lot of security cameras. And the comforting presence of big yellow smiley faces. Because if you’re on a date and something starts going wrong … either way, these items will serve you well.
3. Many times you can watch a good portion of a newly released DVD on many screens all at once. (Be sure to grab some popcorn from the snack bar!!)
4. If things are going well, you can buy your sweetheart some jewelry, then stroll over to the portrait studio for engagement photos. Or pick up a new digital camera and take your own candids — then have them printed in the photo developing center. (Don’t forget to stop on aisle 17 and pick up some nice frames and albums to share with friends and family!)
5. Sometimes the greeters let you try on their bright blue vests and aprons.
6. Two words: Frozen Bait.
7. Trying on cheap hats and sunglasses is a fun way to express your creativity. Plus, if you decide to pull a fast getaway, these make great disguises.
8. Carts! Wheee!
9. Two more words: Beef Jerky.
10. Karaoke CDs at rock-bottom prices. (Get it … “rock” bottom?)

I’ll be here all week — try the veal! You’ve been great!

Someone might get the wrong idea, you know … you and I running into each other this way. It’s not easy, of course, travelling … the turnaround … just when you think it might be turning into routine … well … let’s just say it’s not easy sometimes and leave it at that. Someone might take a look at this and feel like they know what’s going on here. Maybe they would, maybe they’d clue us in. They might see hectic racing, letters punched in one after the other, just like this … calls dropped, picked up, hungup, hangups, and answers where there are none … they might take a look and see this, this distance, this rewind, this and think we’re in love.

And so it goes, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who knows … Some weekends you think are just anomalies, the peaks of what can be a day to day life. Some weekends seem like vacations, escapes, fantasies and you can only hope for them to come around every once in a while, maybe you get three or four a year if you’re lucky. Maybe you get three or four in a life and still … you’re lucky. I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve a reawakening of this sort … what lottery I’ve won that lets me have a repeat of the best weekend ever. I probably shouldn’t question it, yet here I am, of course, questioning.

There’s something about nothing that makes you ache for it. The nothing that is … but naturally nothing is something. A lot of somethings that at a glance seem like tiny drops evaporating on the window. Disappearing so fast that you’re not even sure they were there, that they mattered … seeming so ordinary, fleeting, replacable … that you forget (or never thought) they were beautiful. Days are like this sometimes, a cup of coffee, a song, a minute of sunlight grazing you as you wake up. A laugh … about nothing, or about something you don’t remember anymore — but the laugh, you remember. The every day, the dishes, refilling the water pitcher, handing me a towel. Little gestures, moments, not even aching to be anythings, not asking to be remembered, not trying to hard but to be what they are.

And this is what the best weekends are made of, it seems … and I should know, having them so often now and all. A thousand tiny little things strung together by happenstance, by letting go, by being quiet, faint reminders can be heard in the background. Saying little things, doing little things, seeing little things … gesundheit, a glass of water, hearing something that reminded you of me … and then remembering to tell me about it. Just sitting, reaching over, touching, smiling, driving to buy the newspaper. Ordinary things, I guess. Yet each of these little things cover me now, and I will remember them just as sure as I remember meeting him, a birthday, a milestone, a major change. Driving to get the newspaper and deciding to go elsewhere for coffee … a milestone, for no reason and this is what I will remember. And I hope that I always will.

I’m not the only one, I know … you always hear “it’s the little things.” Well, yes, but there are also the big things and the in between things and the never in a million year things that still stick in the back of your mind like shadows of hope. But it is the little things, though we’re not supposed to “sweat the small stuff”, I’m sweating it alright. Because they also say “the devil is in the details”. Actually I never really understood that one …

Cabin fever does not apply and we spend much of the best weekends ever in one room, armed with only a little wine … ok maybe more than a little, the newspaper, coffee on occasion and haphazardly chosen music. And this seems like so much … an occasional meal, some bad television, some work even makes its way into the room and it is absorbed and transformed as one little piece of a fantasy. He is there and I am watching, drowsing in and out of sleep, each blink, each minute he is there and I feel that it cannot be any better than this. I even do laundry at some point and it feels like a dance, and we flirt as I fold towels and I laugh inside, or I think anyway, and then I hear him laugh and realize we’re tumbling end over end again …

It’s always so much pressure it seems, to plan, to set aside times and the big things creep up and are crushing at times But little things upon little things chain quietly around us and the world melts into a blur and it’s the weekend and I feel like crying, I feel like laughing out loud, I feel like seeing him and remembering coffee cups and newsprint, sunlight and rumpled sheets, the nothing and the something that binds us to this, the inconsequential strands that wrap around and never let us go.