Friday's Letters

Dear Friday's Letters: Are you the latest entry in history??? Just maybe. Golly. That's the last time I forget to upload pics until the end of the day . . . geez Louise . . .

Dear Furballs: For the love of all that is good in the world, STOP SHEDDING.  Please, I beg you. Shasta, you snuggled with me while I watched Netflix, and when you hopped down, the couch cushion was an entirely different color.  I can’t wear anything—fresh out of the dryer or hanging in my closet for months—without finding it COVERED in hair.  It does not help that one of my favorite colors is black and that the only one of you with a little dark fur is Navi.  This will not do. I have bathed you and brushed you to no avail.  Please tell me this just has something to do with the massive increase in heat and humidity. Please?

Dear Davie and Ellie:
I spent last Sunday evening with you cuties playing in the laziest lazy river in the history of lazy rivers.  You girls are officially not allowed to NEVER get any older. Nope. You’re too big already. You both should have stopped growing at age three but nine-years-old and six-years-old aren’t too bad . . . in fact, I still find you pretty dang adorable. Just no older, k? And sister sleepover/craft day/shopping day at my house ASAP. 

You know, after all that work staying IN the tube, she totally ditched it in ten minutes to swim like a fish

Good LORD the goggles! Love those goggles! And the "cheese!" faces! Can't get enough, I tell ya!

 Dear Hubs: I know you woke up and said you feel sick . . . but I still get the feeling you’re playing hooky . . . how is it that you can totally get away with this???? Well, if you really are ill, I apologize for all my doubts . . . but, know, until proven innocent, I’m watching you.

Dear Work: First off, thank you for keeping me past the summer program.  I know the pay decreases a bit, but, still, it’s work, and, with the move looming, I need the money, so thank you so much.  I love all of my coworkers, and it’s a good place, so there’s that.
HOWEVER
When I speak with my new supervisor, she asks, “So, what projects do you have with communications?”
“I think I’m pretty much finished except for some scanning, but that’s kind of an ongoing thing for their records.”
“Oh, ok. Well, I’ll see what projects I can have you do.  Let’s see if we can get you something more exciting than scanning.  For instance, Payroll has a filing project going on now that they could use help with.”
I’m still waiting to hear the exciting part . . .

Dear Sunsets: You are my absolute favorite. For real. In fact, you're so gorgeous, your photos don't need editing, and that, my friend, is an accomplishment. WOW!

Apparently, I'm a vegetable . . .

Last night, I was called a yam.
Yeah, like a sweet potato.
It’s partially my own fault, really. I made up a word: “yammish.”

I should have known that in cases like these, my own weapons are used against me. The hubs is a ferocious adversary, and, I, apparently, am the farthest thing from remotely intimidating.

No kidding: my first grader students—you know, little kids who break down crying at the tiniest thing—told me repeatedly that I wasn’t scary. In fact, they behaved for two reasons:
1. If they got a “fuzzy” taken away, they didn’t get to go to the treasure box.
2. If they thought I was going to lose my mind . . . One time, I put my hands over my ears, and one little girl started screaming, “Guys! Stop! She can’t take it anymore!!!”
So, anyways, they weren’t scared of me.

My middle schoolers laughed at me when I thought I was my most terrifying. It ended up as a running gag. I’d get all worked up, and they’d laugh, and then I’d laugh because they were laughing, and then one of my six-foot seventh graders would look down at me and say, “Mrs. B, don’t even try. You’re just not scary.”
Well, geez . . .

The hubs isn’t much better. The phrase, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” invokes no fear, no terror. You’d think that my monthly hormone surge might, but, even then, I’m not scary—I’m just emotional, and, for a man, quite perplexing. There is no fear, only frustration.

So, last night, I am attempting to insult Chris. When I insult someone I love, I call them “boob.” My cats are boobs, my dog is a boob, and Chris, believe it or not, is also a boob.
In case you were wondering, a “boob” is some kind of loveable idiot. Or something. Sometimes, I think I just like getting away with saying the word when it’s completely NOT necessary.

BOOB.

When he didn't react to the first declaration, I decided I needed to up the ante. I shouted the first thing that came to mind . . . and that was  "You're a yammish boob.”

You know exactly the kind I’m talking about.
I have NO idea what that says about my psyche, but it can't be good, right?
I mean, really, where does this stuff come from that's suddenly exploding from my mouth. "Yammish boob?" Really, brain? That's the best you can do? Golly wolly. I have no hope.

Chris isn’t insulted (big surprise). In fact, he’s never insulted. I just can’t seem to get the insult factor down. Just about every time, he laughs at me. After being called a “yammish boob,” he looks at me, mouth open in a grin only seconds from laughing. “A what?”
“A yammish boob. Ha! I just made up a word! It should be a word. Yammish.”
“You’re yammish.”
“*GASP!* I AM NOT!!! I am not a yam!”
“Yes, you are.”
“No! I’m not orange, and I’m not lumpy and odd shapes, and I’m not squishy.”
He pinches me. “You are a little squishy.”
“AM NOT!!!”
“And you are shapes . . . ”
“Everyone is shapes!”
He picks at a strand of my hair, “And, you know, your hair . . . it’s kind of perfectly . . . the color of sweet potatoes.”
“I am NOT a yam!”
“Yeah, I think you are.”
Pause.
“OH GOD!!! I AM A YAM!!! NOOOOO!!!”

Now that I think about it, Anne Shirley is lucky that she got away with just "carrots." I think being compared to a squishy orange tuber is far worse than a skinny orange veggie that helps with eyesight . . . maybe?

About ten minutes later, Chris said my Pipkin was yammish. I tried to defend her, but we both knew it was futile.

She is more a yam than I.

  Oh, and P.S. 
This morning, I received this message over our business IM:

Chris: i wrote a poem for you. would you like to hear it?
Me:  it's not the beautiful love type, is it? is it too much to hope for?
Chris:
There once was a man from Siam
Who ate himself into a jam
Along with his food
His poor wife he had chewed
Because she was only a yam
Sarah: you're awful

And, yes, I snickered despite myself . . . which is frustrating because he's in the cubicle next to mine so he can totally hear me . . . which only massages his ego . . . Clearly, we're the kind of folks who express their love through teasing, torment, and sarcasm.  It keeps life interesting ;]

The feet of people walking home

I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t miss London.

 Spring semester of my junior year of college, I arrived in London.  I had scrapped and saved for two years, and had been dreaming of this trip for over five years.  For three months, I studied, I went on tour after tour, and I wandered and wondered. I did so much of that--walking through the city, thinking, just drinking it all in.  I left friends, family, and boyfriend in the States, but, somehow, I was home. 

 “Die Alone” by Ingrid Michaelson plays and I’m walking down Baker Street, looking for my mother’s hotel, as she’s come to visit me for my 21^st birthday, and the world is bright. “Sad Sad City” by Ghostland Observatory comes on, and I’m dancing with Mark on the Tube like we’re the only people in the world. I still remember the hand motions we created. I play “My Moon, My Man” by Feist, and Kellye and I groove down the street on Russell Square, ignoring every stranger because we are young and alive. It’s all that matters.   There is a quiet, warming joy, the kind that makes you smile like you have a splendid secret, and you skip a little as you go, greeting every stranger like a friend.  I was at home, walking those streets. Some days, I miss the walking more than anything.

  

I walk into the hotel sitting room in my pjs where Mark and Billy drink beers, hiding them whenever someone walks by. Mark tells me I looked pretty, standing there in a cami and checkered pants, and I retorted, tactlessly, “It’s because I have boobs, right?” and he laughs.  The three of us talk about television, and, next thing I know, Billy is showing me his favorite Family Guy clips while I am perched in the chair beside his. After I had gone to bed Billy went into the basement and told everyone, “I’ve just been watching Family Guy for like an HOUR with Sarah Pete, and she’s actually really cool.” I was "in" from that moment on—the breasted girl without tact who loved Youtube and hated shopping.

Me, Mark, Kellye, and Billy's hands posing as one of the "Last Supper" pieces we studied in Art History. We ate lunch down in the hotel basement--miss that little place.

I love gray, dreary days because I’m back there, back on Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square. If it’s particularly cold and grim, I’m at Dover Castle, trying to spy the French coastline through the mist.  Almost every day in England is gray and sunless, with a chill in the wind and always the threat of rain. 

I am in the Tate Modern (that our art professor called “rubbish”), staring in awe at a Jackson Pollock piece or in the V&A Museum, adoring the marble sculptures, my favorite. Maybe I’m lost in the British Museum, soaking up history, or exploring the vast Science Museum with Melissa who devours the medical section.  God, there are no museums like there are in London.  I could get lost forever and be happy as a clam for the rest of my days.

A piece of the Berlin Wall at the WWII Museum

I am back in Piccadilly Circus at night, on my way to a play, and, suddenly, without reason I NEED a new book. I haven’t read anything new in a month and dart into a book store like a woman possessed, rushing downstairs into the basement where I am surrounded by paperback classics. I buy Frankenstein and Moby Dick and feel as if my heart is whole again.

When I want to walk in the woods, I remember Ambleside in the Lake Country, and it feels like a fairytale. I’m convinced it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world, lost in a forest that you know must be filled with faeries, if you’re looking in the right place.

I open a book by Lewis, and I remember the Eagle and Child.  I’m in Oxford, and it’s the worst kind of dreary—perpetually gray with rain that’s almost more a thick mist. You’re freezing and soaked only because it doesn’t stop. I separate from the group to seek out the famous pub, and I am hopelessly lost. I have no watch, no phone, and I am terrified that I will not only be left behind but never find my destination, my purpose for coming to England in the first place: to sit where they sat, to see where they smoked, and drank, and dreamed together, a group of brilliance who changed everything.  I found it, and everything was beautiful.

I’m on our coach, sitting up front with Paul our driver who is every bit Irish—witty and never to be taken seriously—trying to take pictures of the Scottish Highlands, again, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.  We travel up through Scotland, down through Wales, and then back to London.  The first place we visit is St. Andrews—the home of golf—and I know, If my heart were a place, it would be St. Andrews with its rocky seaside, where I perched for hours. No Spring Break will ever compare to this one.

Every time I see a picture or a shot of London, something in my aches a little.  When you find home, you’re always longing for it. It never stops, not even once, as the years go by.  It will always be my soul’s city.

“After all this time?”
“Always.”