Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Invasion of the Fat Puppies, By Radar

Hay evrbody!

This is Radr. Im Gails dog. This is my secind blog intree.

Im writin abut these fat puppis somebuddy dropt off hear. Thay r fat! Thier r 2 of thim & thay r so fat I thank thay wil eat me!

I hat them becuz they whant to play with mee whin I don't want to and also becz Mommi liks them. I'm gellis! I hat is whin she petts the fat puppies. They r evl!

Im tryin to giv them way but if nobuddy wants them i wil run way frum home.

Othr than the fat puppies I'm ok. I wint to c my ant atam and unkil jermy in nort carlina becuz Mommy wint to sea olvr and hiz famly. It wuz fun. I playd wit the cats all day. Thay wer not evl lik theez puppys! I wish Momm wood of takkin me with hur but she sed no.

Mommi seems happy becuz she saw olivr and becz his famly wuz nice. shes stil lookin 4 jobs but shes not shor shes leving after all. Sumthing abut wate an see whut happins. Whut happins with whut? shes so wird. I dont care to much as long as i cen still eat lots of fud and their r no fat puppys!

Friday, April 07, 2006

The Week in Review

Because those who know me know that I love little more than I love lists:

1. I need only one dental filling after a few years' vacation from that whole dentist thing.

2. My dentist was really, really hot. This made me think of talking to a friend of mine a year ago on his back porch, and he told me a story about his fiancee, and how she felt guilty when she realized that she had developed a crush on a coworker. I wouldn't say that I feel guilty. But if things don't work out with my guy for some unbeknownst reason, I'm going after my dentist.

3. Speaking of the guy, we celebrated our one year anniversary of togetherness this past April 6. We celebrated by IMing at length about why I don't want to wear a hijab, and why I should. I figure that if that's my biggest difficulty in Islam (or my biggest failing), I'm probably not doing so badly.

4. I was thinking earlier in the week (shortly before the accident) that Islam is kind of like jazz. When I first started playing jazz piano in college, I was so abysmally out of my element that our jazz band director called me "Mozart Playing Jazz". Three years later, after practicing and practicing, I had finally developed a semblance of soul. But it was hard, hard work, and it wasn't something that grew naturally in me. It occurs to me also that I would never call myself a jazz pianist, but I don't know that it's accurate to push my analogy quite so far.

5. My sister and brother-in-law got a ton of money for the accident from their insurance company, and the punk's company all but admitted fault to me over the phone.

6. Sister and brother-in-law will be hosting their nephew, Radar, while I go to Ohio to visit the family of afforementioned boyfriend beginning next Wednesday. I'm not yet nervous.

7. Perhaps I'm not nervous about being rejected by boyfriend's family because already this week I've been rejected from a job that I wanted with my entire heart, one poetry magazine, and I received the official announcement that one of my former peers in graduate schools just won a prestigious poetry prize. (I'm not naturally annoyed by such things, but it was a peer whose writing didn't seem worthy of much recognition, much less winning several big prizes.) I live in rejection. It is my invisible skin.

8. But who's complaining? Only one cavity. And I'll go back to the dentist in mid-May.

9. If anyone knows of any English teaching positions in high schools, please contact me. I swear that I am good and smart, even though I'm not especially experienced. I also have good dental hygiene. Thank you.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Strange Light and a Vertical Rainbow, or How We Wrecked My Sister's Car

The good news is, nobody got hurt, unless you count my really sore neck, which I do.

This is especially good news because, knowing my sister and the fact that she did very little but learn karate for two years, there would have been some butt-kicking going on.

How did we wreck the car? That depends entirely on whom you're asking. Either I had "no idea where I was going" because I'm from "out of town," and I used a right turn signal and began to turn right when suddenly I veered to the left, and that's why the backwards-baseball-cap-wearing guy hit us.

Or.

I was turning left, which I've done probably a hundred times in going to either Pittsburgh or Virginia from my parents' house, and he hit us.

Regardless, the punk was trying to pass me in an intersection, which strikes me as perhaps the wrong thing.

However, on the way back from the scene of the incident (the car was still driveable), we did see the sky turn the darkest shade of blue I've ever seen, forefronted with white clouds; the trees turning red with their first budding leaves; the landscape turning pale orange with the strange light from the gathering storms; one perfect rainbow curving across the sky; another, later, shooting straight up into the clouds.

I would never have imagined feeling so content while driving in a damaged car. Grateful, maybe, but not content. But I was. I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

Except maybe a new car for my sister.