three hours

a timeline of my afternoon last thursday, just to save others future pain:

1.45pm: leave house to go to DMV to get temp tags. planning on 30 minute travel, 1 hour wait for temp tags, and arrival at inspection station around 3.30, which is supposedly the best time to go. perfect!

2.05: chicken out and don't take the whitehurst freeway (got lost using it once), so i end up in georgetown. stick in traffic. follow a crazy taxi and find water street, which gets me to a good spot

2.19: find DMV. no parking. try to go around block, but accidentally pull into 395 entrance ramp. get off at the first exit south, but the exit ramp is full of parked cars. everyone angry, nowhere to go. many horns. find out a firetruck has blocked entire street around 2 corners.

2.33: eventually get moving. drive north across the mall. marvel at the majestic view of the capitol, then marvel that it's so difficult to follow the law and register a vehicle only 3 blocks from the capitol. the US CAPITOL.

2.37: realize that my previous thought about the relation between efficiency and the US CAPITOL was completely backwards.

2.38: find DMV again. no parking at the DMV. impossible, but true. everyone angry, more horns (not mine). slowly weave between vehicles parked randomly in middle of street and vehicles careening between the parked ones.

2.52: find a parking spot a couple blocks away. walk to DMV.

2.55: line is out the door of the DMV. can't even get in because there's a security screener. xrays and everything. (which i soon realize is necessary, because the impulse to KILL arises frequently at the DMV)

3.08: find the room for temp tags. take a number and wait. get coughed on by smelly smoker, but fortunately am not breathing due to heavy perfume smell of other neighbor.

3.22: lady announces that you must have your drivers' license out. worry that i do not have a DC license, although it never, ever said in the instructions that you needed a license to get temp tags. jump up to ask when the next number is called - find out, of course, that i need to have a DC license. choose not to argue that the requirement is not even hinted at in the instructions.

3.29: find the room for licensing and begin waiting in line.

3.37: make it up to the desk. find out that i can't even get my license today because i don't have my social security card. realize that means i can't get ANY bit of the registration done today. tell the lady that i am very sad. she seems unmoved by my disappointment.

3.42: make it back to the car, which at least does not have a ticket. eventually find a good road out of town, but it is somewhat surreal because all four lanes of the DIVIDED road are traveling north. end up somehow in rock creek park (i was keeping up with traffic, which was not slowed by the surreal traffic pattern, and didn't see how it happened)

4.14: get home, with only a headache to show for my efforts.

trim

she asked naiively for a 'trim', forgetting that DC runs on acronyms. within a few seconds, she realized her mistake and yelled, "whoa!", but it was too late - she got a Total Reorganization In Moments. ....it took only 5 minutes for him to do that shit.

learning to say no, or being mean at the appropriate times

a major problem in my life is the dichotomy of my outward self: the people who i like and who know me well know that i'm not very nice - but strangers and people i don't like think i'm sweet as peaches. oooh, just cute as a button. it's this little voice of mine, in tandem with my ability to smile and think hateful thoughts simultaneously - really throws folks off.

today, thanks to a dull-as-virtue colleague (almost said 'dull-as-sin', but that would make no sense at all. is that a real saying? that makes no sense.), i identified another piece of the puzzle: the people that i don't like are the ones who are simply not tuned in. at all. i can be as blunt as i like, and they don't pick up on it. i say something rude, they think i'm being cute. i can eat my lunch, toss the remnants, gather my stuff, and talk about needing to get back to work, and they'll sit there, slowly digging in the bag for another chip, and ask WHY i need to get back to work. [to be fair, i could be clearer and say "because if i have to talk to you one minute longer, you are certain to perish painfully", but i don't.] from the innumerable interminable 'conversations' i've had with such people, it's clear that they don't pick up on a lot of other things in the world, either.

the folks i DO like are tuned in enough to understand that this itty-voiced thing is capable of - nay, wallows in - pure nastiness. moreover, they understand that if there is a question of whether i'm serious or angry, i'm certainly not. and finally, they know that making fun of my voice will get you on a very, very bad list.

between the lunch 'dates' i end up accidentally having here and my elderly suitor who keeps calling from his home halfway across the planet just because i helped him on the train, i've realized that i just need to say no. no. no. no. no, i don't care that we work together, no i don't want to have lunch. no, it would be uncool to have coffee with an old stranger. oh, yeah - and no, you're my mentor's colleague, we will never sleep together, no. aiee.

new years' resolution: no no no!

old and creaky

ice skating a few days ago was super fun, but i hurt way, way more than i expected to. i am realizing that i used far more body parts skating than are probably necessary: what was i doing with my neck to make it so sore? what the hell were my INNER FOREARMS doing while i thought i was skating? leg-related pain is acceptable - but hipsandass? seriously, now.

skating

ice rink at national gallery of art

finally went skating today at the outdoor rink at the national gallery of art - on the mall downtown. we were there just as the sun was going down, so all the stately buildings were sunlit at the sky grew deeper blue. it's fantastic living here.

wish i could blame the speedy children for the big bruises i'll have by morning. BUT, bruises are worth it, because i finallyfinallyfinally learned to cross skates around corners!

morte

morte

no worse way to start the day than finding one's cellphone smashed in the road outside one's home.

(had just grabbed mine before leaving the house, but it still stopped my heart for a moment. had to pull it out of my bag to check that it was still alive)

crazy

a friend once told me a story about filling up a cart at the grocery store, only to get in line and realize that she had forgotten her wallet. she just pushed the cart to the side and left - and went to a different grocery store forevermore. tonight, i did even better. i did my shopping, unpacked my cart onto the belt, and let a few items be rung up... before realizing that i had no wallet. wooie! i'm senile before my time. it was 15 minutes before the store closed, and i didn't want someone to have to stay late to put my crap away, so i tore home - and made it back with time to spare before the storeclosed.

the part that worries me is this: i wasn't the least bit embarrassed. i'm sure that means i'm crazy.

carnage

carnage

there was massive carnage at my house today. limbs everywhere. i started to repot my mama violet, and then had to cut off nearly half her arms. she had gotten very lopsided somehow (where she got the idea that 45 degrees was an excellent angle for growing, i do not know), and there was no way to make her sit flat without a lot of trimming. i hope she will grow straight now. she's about 6 years old, and it's her 2nd repotting - first move to a much larger pot.

deicer

deicer

last monday was the first snow of the year here in DC. everyone was atwitter waiting for it - oh! so exciting! so horrible! snow!. tuesday morning at 5am i drove to the airport, and could not believe how much salt had been put on the roads - piles and piles of salt, possibly more dangerous for driving than ice itself. at the airport, they were using so much deicer, with so much gusto, that the puddles on the ground were bright orange (you can almost tell in the photo). and this was all for less than 2" of snow in temperatures barely below freezing.

when i got back on thursday night, my poor car looked like a barnacle.

thursday night, a tiny bit more snow fell, and friday morning there were cancellations galore - the federal government was listed as "2 hour delay or unscheduled leave".

i hope we get a big storm this winter!

triangle

this week i went for the first time to the triangle of raleigh, durham, and chapel hill. north carolinians are really nice, and they have the sweetest accents - this little soft southern edge that's not hard enough to be called a twang, and almost as quick a clip as normal folks speak. oops, i mean 'northern folks'. i could probably even raise a kid there without having to smack it all the time for slow vowels.

which brings me to my next point. i saw a friend one night, and met her husband and baby for the first time. within the first 5 minutes of meeting the husband, he asked me when i was going to get married and have kids. (there's nothing in the works, so i couldn't really give him a timeline.) the only problem i've had with being almost-30 is that near-strangers suddenly have no qualms about asking after my mating plans. another man i met recently asked me if i was worried about my reproductive capabilities as i age. holy crap. what happened to people asking if i had a boyfriend (the 'yet' being implied)? what's the rush? i'm happy and busy, and i'll settle down when i damn well please.

but i'm polite - i know they're only asking because they think it would be a shame to squander such fabulous genetic material.

gonna have a 6-pack with all these crunches

my stomach muscles are sore from so much coughing. i went to the drugstore to buy medicine, and had a coughing fit in the checkout line - i had to put the drugs down on the floor to wipe my eyes and cover my mouth. it's stupid - except for the coughing and voice (which is much sexier than usual), i feel just fine. but i had forgotten quite how ridiculously terrible cough medicine tastes - i haven't tasted it in at least 15 years - it's so, so horrid. i'm going back to my oldcough remedy (vodka).

great falls

great falls

it turns out that the potomac is a pretty big river, with waterfalls and everything. the falls are usually probably a little less roiled and muddy - but wherever this december flood came from, it sure was cool.

shit in the cheerios

those little upc price check scanners that the big-box stores have in the aisle must be really useful for...something. what are people always using them for? - the prices are right on the shelves. just for fun? are they hoping it'll ring up at a huge discount? are they using sharpies to alter the lines until it rings up as 0.00? i don't get it. they haven't really made it onto my radar. but of course, neither have dvds.

but the point is that one of those things ruined somebody's evening. a woman was standing at the hoobie, checking some prices. a goofy-looking white woman approached her and asked where to find something. goofy thought the scanner was an employee because she was wearing a red shirt (like employees), and making a scanner-beeping noise (like employees). goofy quickly realized her mistake - but instead of saying "sorry, i thought you worked here - red shirt and beeping noise and all!", she said "sorry, you look like you work here". LOOK like you work here. goofy meant nothing by it (she was clearly goofy), but scanner, who was black, took a second to register - and then got very indignant. i think everyone just walked away (i certainly did) - goofy having no idea how she'd offended, and scanner being angry and irritable for the next few hours.

i didn't get involved - i kind of wanted to explain to scanner that goofy was just goofy, and that the red and beeping did really make her look like an employee - there were no societal undercurrents of racial injustice at work. and i wanted to explain to goofy that you have to be careful what you say to folks - all folks, all the time - because you might just shit in someone's cheerios without meaning to, and you have to at least be observant enough to apologize if you do.

but most of all, i want to go back to the time i complimented a woman i had just met on her hair, and she berated me for half an hour about how she's an african american and she shouldn't have to explain to white people how she does her hair (i didn't ask, only said it looked really cool), and then went on to yell at me about a whole slew of other things and accused me repeatedly of feeling superior to her, but mostly she just exposed the size of the stacks of chips on her shoulders, because all i said was "hi, brandy, nice to meet you - your hair looks really cool". it completely ruined my night, and i want that night back, and i want back the ability to compliment african american women on their ridiculously cool hairstyles without being afraid of damnation. because there are so many cool hairdos around here.

dupont down

dupont down

finally got a picture of the metro escalators that looks the way i feel riding them - unbalanced, with no sense of depth or direction. (doesn't it look like we're going up the up? but no, we're going down the down...duuude..what if c.a.t. really spelled 'dog'? what if what i call blue looks to you like what i call red?)

peanut gallery

through circumstances too complex to explain here, i went to see 'pride and prejudice' in a theater with 9 other women. (all single, no less!) it was a small art theater on a weeknight, and we were nearly half the audience - which was otherwise older couples. i'm sure the other audience members were very glad we were there - if our group hadn't been laughing so loudly, the others never would have known which were the funny bits! it was actually a ton of fun - sounds very girly, and it was, but it was hilarious. the only thing that could have made it better: if we had also all sobbed andsniffled loudly during the emotional denouement.

but i couldn't relate to all the talk afterwards about where we can all find our own mr. darcys.