Moojinorbit

Random notes, in no particular order…

• I enjoy writing in this blog much more than I enjoy most of the zillion other kinds of writing I have to do on a regular basis. It comes easily and I can spend hours on it without noticing. What does that say about my chosen career trajectory?

• I’m trying to severely reduce the use of my car right now. This is not just to be greener but also because I feel increasingly annoyed with driving. Even when I breathe and listen to NPR, I just find it agitating unless I’m on the open road. People don’t know how to drive. Traffic seems unnecessarily congested. It’s gross to be in an air-conditioned pod on the boulevard surrounded by nasty fumes. I find the inordinate number of SUVs in this city disgusting, arrogant, and wasteful, not to mention a source of constant frustration from the driver’s perspective in a Honda Civic. And the price of gas right now just seems a good reason to quit buying it altogether.

• So now I take the Light Rail whenever I can and I finally got the mountain bike Marce gave me tuned up and running last week. It’s been fabulously liberating. Denver is a very bike accessible city, although that theory may be tested today when I ride to and from work, which is maybe 10-15 miles south of my house through a fair amount of commuter traffic. But Saturday when I was riding over to a friend’s place, on the first real venture of my tuned up bike, Serendipity put me in the path of this crazy parade of bicyclists. These colorful folks were dressed up in circus gear, riding all kinds of bicycles, blasting music, singing, and slogging beer! It turned out to be the Tour de Fat, an event sponsored by the New Belgium Brewing Company promoting environmental sustainability. On my way home I found them again in City Park dancing to live bands and having a grand old time. Very cool. Next year I want to ride in the parade.

• What about the fact that you apparently can’t buy watermelon WITH seeds in the grocery story anymore? Grandpa and I went to King Sooper’s on Wednesday to buy food for our private July 4th feast and I noticed this. There were hundreds of watermelons for the taking, every last one of them seedless. Now, seedless is fine for those who really have Issues with watermelon seeds, worrying that their babies are going to swallow them and grow watermelons in their bellies or something. But me, I like a sweet, juicy, fatass watermelon with seeds. It’s the 4th of July, for chrissake. That’s when you sit around stuffing your face with potato salad from a carton (which we did), chewing on steak or hot dogs or burgers (which we did), and, afterwards, plowing your whole face into a watermelon wedge, then spitting out the big black seeds on the lawn (which we were effectively barred from doing). I like to spit them rapidfire like a machine gun. Besides, even if the quality of seedless watermelons has improved, I really think the melons with seeds are tastier. What’s up with a culture so obsessed with unmarred “perfection” that we can’t even tolerate seeds in our watermelon?

• Speaking of Independence Day, Grandpa and I were pretty sure that a good 80% of the pops and bangs we heard in our ghetto neighborhood that night came from actual firecrackers. We thought about joining the other 20% and shooting off her gun, but weren’t sure what bullets are capable of when you shoot them straight in the sky. With our luck we’d kill a toddler with her face stuffed in watermelon.

• I rode to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival yesterday and tracked down that artist John Harris who does the amazing paintings of water, who I posted about back in May. I told him I’d been thinking about his work for a year and hoped to actually buy a piece someday, but meanwhile I was curious about the process he uses to capture water so well. He told me all about it. So now I can make a total dork of myself trying it out in August at the painting retreat Mom’s taking me to.

• After Cherry Creek, I took the bike path all the way down to Riverfront Park to enjoy the best iced chai I’ve ever tasted from Ink! Coffee. I was so looking forward to it; had even packed two books in my CamelBak to sit and read. My mouth was practically watering when I got there (and my sits bones were sore). At that point I remembered that I’d left my wallet and all other means of accessing money at home. Bummer. So instead I wheeled down a little path nearby and found myself on a sandy beach at the edge of the South Platte river. Dirty, but pretty. Totally great until a family came down with this muppet-looking dog that wanted nothing more than to plunge in the river and try to shake off on me. All in all, I had a lovely Sunday.

• My summer school class starts today–ouch. Three weeks, three days per week, four and a half hours per session. All on facets of power. My intentions are set for us to have a great time, but I’m already looking forward to it being over. I have so loved not teaching for the last month.

My “niece” Addie (technically, my first cousin once removed) thinks I hung the moon. Her little sister Nolie has no doubt that I’m The Grim Reaper. The combination is interesting on the ego.

Last night I babysat for the two of them at their house while their parents went out. When I walked in the house I was greeted by three year-old Addie running down the stairs, jumping into my arms, looking straight into my eyes and declaring solemnly, “Aunt Nancy, I have missed you very, very much.” Then she pursed her little cherry lips and kissed me to underscore the point. I wasn’t prepared for how glorious this bounty of little girl-love would feel. I was instantly spellbound.

Nolie I was a little more prepared for, because I had given myself a pep talk of affirmative thinking in the car on the way over. “Nolie and I are going to have a great time tonight,” I reassured myself. “This is an opportunity to have a breakthrough with her and finally bond. At long last, we are going to have enough one on one time together to get on track. It will be fun.” I walked in positive, but also ready in case God’s Plan didn’t manifest right off.

When Eric brought Nolie down, though, pretty much the same thing happened that’s happened for the last eleven months of her life (which is her entire life): she took one look at me and knew for sure that Armageddon had finally arrived. The Anti-Christ had come to claim her! Oh, the screaming and crying, the utter recoil! I almost had to check the mirror to see if a warty green horn was growing out of my forehead and snakes were squirming from my hollow eye sockets. I’m not lying; every time one of her parents got her calmed down, she stole a peek at me and exploded anew.

I don’t know why this happens with Nolie (but never with Addie), and analyzing is probably fruitless. She’s never been fond of “strangers,” and even though I’ve seen a fair amount of her I can only think of once that she let me get close enough to touch her without wigging. At any rate, God’s Plan for Nolie and me [read: my agenda for God] didn’t materialize in the approximately 14 hours I spent with the girls. However, being merciful, the Divine did put Nolie under a sleeping spell about 15 minutes after I arrived when Eric put her down, and she remained conked out in her crib the whole time I was on duty. Alternately, this is simply what pure terror can do to a person.

In the morning when I woke up and joined the family in the living room, Nolie was quite surprised to find that the devil was still in the house, and even Jen finally had to admit that, yes, it does seem to be me that freaks her out more than anyone. Which doesn’t make it personal, because babies aren’t being personal when they hate you. Right.

Okay, so not sure where to go from there. More babysitting, apparently, so that Nolie can spend enough time with me awake to realize I’m not going to feed her to the coyotes or, I don’t know, hang her from the rafters for a little while–although maybe she deserves it for being so darn rude to company, to family! I’m looking forward to us getting through it because I do love the little one and always feel excited to see how she’s grown, etc. and I’m not used to family members rejecting me (well, not to my face). Thank goodness Addie’s on my team. We had a wonderful evening hanging out.

The whole being-reviled-by-an-innocent-baby thing (like babies are innocent!) brought on a memory of this horrific experience I had at sixteen. My mom probably remembers, because she is the only reason I lived through it. Our tennis club annually hosted a stop on the women’s pro tennis tour called at the time The Virginia Slims Tournament. That year I was pretty active in the whole thing, working as a ballgirl, meeting Martina and Chrissy, staring slack-jawed at Gabriela Sabatini, the unbelievablly gorgeous mooj-goddess, and wondering where all these short-haired, athletic women in the bleachers came from. Anyway, I don’t remember how I got hooked up with this afternoon gig babysitting the infant of a player on the tour. I believe the player’s name was [Something, Karen?] Valentine. The baby’s name was Little Asshole or something.

The baby girl was adorable, bubbly, and bright-eyed–until the second her mama drove off to play in her match. Then she turned into a screaming monster and did not stop blubbering and hollering for a good five hours (or what seemed like it). I wasn’t one of those teens who practically ran a babysitting corporation, but I’d successfully done it enough to believe I could handle the situation. I was dead wrong. I pretty much had to hand the hot pink possessed alien over to my mom when she came home, and Mom initially didn’t do a whole lot better, but as I recall we both walked around with her until she went slack from exhaustion. Or was it that Mom walked in with her maternal pro-powers and the baby immediately calmed down, while I went in my room and bawled? Probably the latter. At any rate, Ms. Valentine returned not long after that and Little Asshole was peacefully asleep like nothing had happened.

Clearly, this made an impact on my baby-related self-esteem or I wouldn’t remember it. I couldn’t take the pressure of feeling like maybe I didn’t have the right “maternal instincts,” wasn’t “good with children.” I remember feeling, in front of my own amazing mom, like I should have been doing a better job, proving something about the woman/mom I might someday be (my stuff, I realize). I think my mom at one point said something about the baby being able to “sense your anxiety,” which absolutely scared the crap out of me even worse. Now I had to act like the pro tennis player’s screaming baby in my arms didn’t bother me in the slightest? But the truth was that all I really wanted to do was not let one of those incredible mooj tennis players down, even if Ms. Valentine was ranked like 109th on the tour.

Ah, well. I’ve had successes since Ms. Valentine’s baby. My nephew Reilly seems to think I’m pretty cool, but maybe that’s only because I have an industrial orange flashlight and two black cats. And most days I think I don’t look like Medusa. And I really do think I’d like to have my own baby and would be pretty decent at parenting him/her. Let’s just hope I get off on a better foot than I have with Nolie.