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January 19, 2005

Philly PD, at your service

So, I was sitting at my desk, finally getting around to finishing up my thank-you notes (just like Sars told me to), when the strong smell of gas, or something similarly noxious, wafted into the room. I sniffed a few times, realized how strong it was, and went downstairs to investigate. It didn’t seem to be coming from the oven, and the burners came on, so the pilot light wasn’t out. I opened the basement door and it hit me even stronger, so I started to freak out a little. Patrick wasn’t home, and he’s usually the one who investigates pilot lights and heaters and things like that, and I didn’t want to go poking around in the basement if there was a gas leak or something, but I wasn’t sure what to do. I totally blanked on who you call in situations like this. The landlord? The gas company? What if it was nothing? But what if I was about to die from fumes? So I called my parents. My dad told me to call the fire department, and I did.

(Tonight was the second time I’ve ever called 911. Oddly enough, both times it’s been about a gas leak. The first time was last spring. I was coming home, up our little dead-end South Philly street, and one of my neighbors was hanging out her window yelling. She spotted me: “Call 911!” she bellowed. “We’ve got a gas leak. Please call them for me!” So I did, but later I discovered that hers was a false alarm, and that she’d been getting people to call for her all day. Patrick, in fact, had already called the gas company for her several hours before. There was some sort of situation going on between her and her daughter that I didn’t quite get the full scoop on, and it seems that all of this gas-leak business was some sort of attention-seeking mechanism she was using to up the drama level.)

I explained the situation to the dispatcher, who transferred me to the fire department, and within a few minutes, two police officers and three fire fighters were in my living room and basement, sniffing. While the fire fighters investigated the basement, the two cops took down my name and phone number, and then the three of us stood there waiting for the results of the investigation going on downstairs.

And an interesting aspect of being a cop that I’d never fully thought about before is that you get to go into so many strangers’ houses. Sure, a lot of times you’re probably too wrapped up in the situation at hand to notice anything, but how many calls like mine are there? Routine, mundane calls, during which you can stand around and idly study the contents of a stranger’s home? I wondered what they were noticing about mine, what judgments they were making.

The house wasn’t clean, but it wasn’t its messiest, either. I figured they’ve seen far worse, so I wasn’t too self-conscious about it, until I noticed the one fire fighter who wasn’t in the basement glancing at the stack of CDs that was sitting on top of the stereo cabinet. Right on top, out of its case, was Neko Case’s album “Blacklisted.” Which wouldn’t be anything odd, except that the album art she happens to have chosen to adorn this particular CD is the word BEAVER in big, red, capital letters. I’ve never been clear on why, exactly. But now this fireman probably thinks I’m into some sort of weird 1970s porn or something. Thanks, Neko.

The determination was that it smelled more like paint thinner than gas, and the police officers asked me if I had been painting. I shook my head, feeling accused. “But are you a painter?” the tall, butch female cop asked. I realized that to her, this was not a loaded question about whether I chose to define myself as an artist, but a simple request for information. “Yes, I do paint,” I said. “But I haven’t painted anything for the past month or two, so I don’t think that would have anything to do with the smell.”

We stood in the living room, the two cops glancing around a little more. “Did you paint those?” she asked, nodding at the two little still-lives of an orange on the wall behind the couch. “Yes,” I said. Her partner, a boyish-faced cop who’s probably no older than I am, looked over. “They’re good,” he said. “Thanks,” I said.

I thought about how it’s funny how clear-cut the question of whether or not I am a painter becomes when it’s all about finding out whether I own paint-thinner. In that case, yes, of course I am. I own paints and brushes and turpentine and liquin and canvases. It’s a nice reminder that sometimes the existential definitions are all that matter; if I paint, then I am a painter. If I write, then I am a writer. I get so wrapped up in whether or not I’m good enough or serious enough about these various endeavors that sometimes I don’t give myself credit for just plain endeavoring.

The fire fighters trundled back up the narrow basement stairs. They hadn’t been able to find anything that was causing the smell, so maybe it had come from outside. Who knows. I think I remember hearing a car idling outside and then pulling away right before the smell hit; perhaps it had some sort of really ghastly exhaust going on that just poured into the house. In any case, it was determined that I wasn’t in any danger, so everyone filed back out. I thanked them all for their time and apologized for the false alarm. They said to call right back if I smelled anything else funny.

I live right by the police station. The corner where I wait for the bus is directly across the street from it, so often while I’m standing there I see various goings-on at the station; shifts changing, cops heading into or out of the building, squad cars pulling in and out of the parking lot. And while it didn’t occur to me as we were standing together in the living room, I just realized that I actually remember having noticed this pair of officers before, some night recently when I was waiting for the bus. I remember seeing them and thinking how young he looked, and that made me think about my cousin, exactly my age, who’s been a police officer now for the past couple years out in California.

Maybe I’ll see them again some day. They see so many faces that they probably won’t recognize me, especially not when I’m bundled up in a hat and scarf and winter coat. But I’ll recognize them, and I’ll thank them again, silently, for coming by and reassuring me, and maybe most of all, for liking my paintings.

Posted by sarah at 12:17 AM | Comments (3)

January 18, 2005

No motor lodge for me!

So, despite to my late-night fears to the contrary, described in last week’s entry, we were able to find a cottage for the week after the wedding. I think it may have been the cheapest one we came across in our searches, but it sounds lovely. It’s on Barter’s Island, which is a five-minute drive from my parents’ house, across an old-fashioned swing bridge. (FYI: I just discovered that, serendipitously enough, if you Google “swing bridge,” the first hit is this very one. You should visit the site because there’s a very cute set of pictures of the bridge operater opening it by hand; apparently it’s the only hand-operated swing bridge in Maine.) Our cottage will be on the west side of the island, overlooking the Sheepscot. In less than seven months I’ll be there. This is all getting real, all of a sudden.

Posted by sarah at 12:38 AM | Comments (1)

January 10, 2005

You know that old saw?

So last night, my head just wouldn’t shut up. There’s something about Sunday nights, this killer combination of factors: You’ve been staying up late and sleeping in for the past few days, so you’re not as tired as you should be at this hour. You suddenly realize there are a lot of things you really should have accomplished this weekend besides watching the commentary tracks on three episodes of Freaks and Geeks and learning how much you like gin gimlets. It occurs to you for the first time in 52 hours that you have a job during the week and there are about five things you need to get done on Monday morning.

Add to this the fact that I seem to be having trouble getting to sleep generally, and I was a little ball of tossy, turny stress last night. And once the focus of my stressing landed square on the subject of The Wedding, all was lost. I started freaking out about not having reserved a rental cottage for myself and Patrick or our group of friends and picturing us all being relegated to a motor lodge on the outskirts of town with a view of the miniature golf course, instead of a cute cabin on the water with a view of the sun setting past spruce-covered islands, and I was freaking out about not knowing what we were doing for dinner on the night before the wedding, and about not having the faintest idea where to register, and it built to a frothing, steamy storm of worry and I decided I was never going to fall asleep, not ever, and that therefore keeping my eyes closed was just making things worse, so I opened them, and looked over at Patrick, and damn it, he was asleep. Hadn’t he felt the psychic distress vibes? How could he be lying there, breathing in and out so peacefully?

Anyway, my eyes were now wide open, so I decided just to stare at him, figuring maybe he would feel my gaze and wake up. But it’s hard to focus your eyes on a dark face in a dark room in the middle of the night for very long without going totally cross-eyed, so I upped the ante. I opened my mouth wide and bared my teeth, still staring, like the stuffed tigers and bears in natural history museums, and I perched there over his face. I felt very much like a scene from Calvin and Hobbes.

Only then I thought about how I would feel if our positions were reversed and I woke up with someone’s teeth poised right above my head, and I started to feel bad. So I closed my mouth and closed my eyes and decided not to torment my sleeping beau anymore. But the problem is, I was thinking about how hilarious it would have been if he had woken up and seen me there in full-on taxidermy mode, and I started to giggle. Very quietly, but also kind of right next to his head. So a few seconds after I’d decided not to wake him up, I accidentally woke him up.

And what I’m realizing is that these entries keep being like bizzare versions of textbook illustrations for annoying adages. Yesterday, “Been there, done that.” Today, “Misery loves company.” Maybe it’ll just sorta keep happening, and then someday I can publish a hip comedic memoir called Aesop Rocks: The Timeless Truth of Truisms in One Girl’s Life in which the title of each chapter is an aphorism!

Chapter 12: A stitch in time saves nine!
Chapter 19: Every dark cloud has a silver lining!
Chapter 24: Don’t cry over spilt milk!
Chapter 27: There are plenty of fish in the sea!

Oh, lord, stop me before I make myself puke. ("Oh, you mean she was kidding? Damn, I was looking forward to reading that book, too.")

Looking at all of those platitudes, it occurs to me that I learned most of them through MadLibs. No one I knew ever really used these types of phrases in their speech, so when they started to pop up in the MadLibs my brother and I liked to play with when we were living in Mexico, I often had to ask my mom what was supposed to be funny about the sentence, “A toilet in time saves sandwich,” and she had to try to explain.

(So, the other funny thing about “a stitch in time saves nine,” is that I had just read A Wrinkle in Time when I learned the phrase, so instead of understanding it as simply being about mending a tear, and thereby metaphorically, you know, about catching problems early, I always pictured someone –- probably the three Fates, because they were kind of mythic and had needles and thread, and I was into Greek myths at the time –- sticking a needle through the fabric of time, gathering it into one of L’Engle’s wrinkles, and stitching it together –- thereby making the temporal distance between point A and point B nine times shorter than it would otherwise have been. That image still comes to mind whenever I hear the phrase.)

But meanwhile, back to last night. Tossy-turny me was now accompanied by a tossy-turny Patrick, since my giggles had woken him. We talked wedding stuff until we had satisfied ourselves that trying to make decisions about anything meaningful at 12:45 a.m. on a work night is patently ridiculous. So, yeah, for maybe three minutes, tops. Then we both tried our best to fall asleep, with what I suppose must have been eventual success, evidenced by the fact that I was asleep this morning when the alarm went off. But hey, at least we both had to get up. You know what they say: misery loves company.

Chapter 32: I’ve got a case of the Mondays!

Posted by sarah at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2005

I'm a daaay planner, a Sunday driver, yeah.

This past summer, I was in the bookstore in Boothbay Harbor, Maine with my sister and my cousin, browsing for art supplies because we’d gotten it into our heads that we wanted to play with crayons, when lo and behold, what should I stumble across but a cute, tiny day-planner for 2005.

It was about the size and shape of a cassette tape, with a plain black leatherette cover, and all sorts of information inside -- metric conversions, complete miniature highway maps of the entire U.S., first aid tips -- it seemed small enough and useful enough that even I, who have never successfully used a day planner for more than about a week, might be happy to tote it around. I knew buying it five months before 2005 was risky, because it could easily end up in the bottom of some pile or other, forgotten entirely until some time in 2007. But. Like I said; it was cute. And only about six bucks. So I bought it.

And you know what? I totally didn’t lose it. It’s right here in my hot little hand in the second week of January. I’m feeling good about that, like it bodes well for becoming a more organized person in the coming year. I can now always be the one who always knows the answer to those commonly asked questions, like, “How many scrupoes are in a dram?” (“Why, three, of course,” I’ll answer, after consulting the Apothecaries’ Weights section of my handy day-planner.)

Hey, you know what else this day planner has? It has one of those completely over-generalized, useless charts of average height/weight ratios. And apparently for a 25- to 29-year-old woman of 5’7” I am on-the-dot average. Who’d have thunk? I don’t know if I’ve ever been average before, at anything. This is a new experience for me. I have spent much of my life, past the age of 14, trying very hard to not be average. Ah well. You win some, you lose some.

Back to the day-planner. I’m very excited to begin using it. I’ve already gone through and filled in all of the key dates over the next eight months: my trip to Mexico in March, my brother’s graduation, Patrick’s sister’s wedding and Claire and Nick’s commitment ceremony, my wedding in August.

But the thing is, after that, I’ve got nothing. The horizon of my life just kind of drops off in mid-August, like those old maps of the flat earth -- drops off into a stylized ocean of swirling sea monsters and mythic beasts -- I can almost see the intricate calligraphy: The Great Unknown.

And the thing is, The Great Unknown could end up being The Great Mundane. Because it’s entirely possible that I’ll just go on a brief honeymoon and come back to Philadelphia and stay at my same job for another couple of years, until I go ahead and figure out what’s next. But see, I’ve pretty much been saying that “This job is what I’m doing until I figure out what I’m doing next” since I accepted it -- two and a half years ago.

This job was never something I decided on or strived for. It basically fell into my lap. And sure, it’s treated me well, which is why I’m still here after two and a half years, and why it really wouldn’t be the end of the world if I just came back from my honeymoon and stayed.

But there’s part of me that’s keeping that horizon blurry for a reason, and it’s that for now, I need to feel like change is still possible. Like there’s a chance that a year from now, my life will be new and exciting and completely different from my life now.

Don’t get me wrong. My life now isn’t a bad scene or anything. I count my blessings often: Great boyfriend who’s gonna be my husband soon, job that’s pretty interesting and that gives me all kinds of treats, like health insurance and a gym membership and free designer glasses. Cool friends, and a nice family, and Netflix to keep me well stocked with good movies to watch, and the Free Library with good books to read, and Fleisher to let me take all the art classes I want for 30 bucks.

I suppose it’s just something in human nature that keeps us searching. Perpetual dissatisfaction. Moments of real contentment and fulfillment come so few and far between, and the rest of the time we’re like junkies trying to score that one perfect high. But the recipe keeps changing. We tell ourselves that everything would be perfect if we just had a boyfriend, or a new house, or a new job, or if we lost 30 pounds or if we moved to Iceland. But then one by one, we get the boyfriend, we buy the house, we land the job, we lose the weight, we move to Reykjavik. And one by one, the initial high is followed by the inevitable “Aaaand, now what?”

I mean, people, there’s a reason why the phrase “Been there, done that” has outlived most other annoying catch phrases of the early 90’s. We’re not still running around saying, “Homie don’t play dat” or “Those jeans look great on you... Psych!!” No, “Been there, done that,” I imagine, will be with us for quite a while, because its truth is basic to the human condition.

And with that, I’m outy. This entry is so five-minutes-ago. Psych!!

Posted by sarah at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)