2003-01-05 10:48 p.m.

Some New Year's Resolutions, With Backstory

We had a blackout while I was watching my Precious. I was ok for about 10 minutes and then started to twitch from withdrawal. (It didn't help that I didn't have enough candles to read by.) After half an hour, I started having flashbacks to a couple of weeks ago, when we were getting hammered with storms, and some people in Marin were stuck without power for nearly two weeks. Echoing the plaintive cry of a Marin kid they'd quoted on the morning news, I clutched TheBoy's arm and wailed, "I'm tired of being Amish!"

TheBoy suggested breaking out a bottle of wine, which seemed like a fine idea to me.

The power came back on shortly after our pizza arrived. (No power + electric stove = hello, Pizza Rustica!) And my Precious and I were reunited once more.

-=-

The other night TheBoy talked me into going to Wal-Mart, since I needed new printer cartridges, he thought Wal-Mart might have them and the CompUSA was closed.

Wal-Mart's still a little exotic to me in a Middle America kind of way since we did not have one anywhere near us when I was growing up. (I didn't even make my first trip to a K-Mart until I was 19, when roomie J.W. broke the glass tray from C.'s new microwave and needed to replace it on the sly. We came home with a replacement microwave tray and two pink plastic flamingos. N., the roomie with intellectual pretentions, wanted to evict me over that one but was decisively outvoted.)

Also, I'm a total sucker for anything that's open 24 hours.

But I had misgivings the minute we pulled into the parking lot. (You know you're in the blackest heart of suburbia when there's a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery (Gallery!?) in the same parking lot.) I needed to hit the bathroom on the way in, and while I was washing my hands, a middle-aged, balding woman, decked out in Wal-Mart's finest polyester threads, ducked into a stall and let out the most noxious dump on record. You know those action movies where the hero's running away from a massive, roiling explosion and just barely keeping ahead of the cloud of debris? That was me. And it just went downhill from there.

By the time we left (with two out of the four required printer cartridges, both of which looked like they'd been chewed on by dogs), TheBoy was apologizing profusely, I was quivering from severe post-traumatic Wal-Mart stress disorder, and we'd both sworn off the place for life. It was like a retail minimum security prison, only with less care for the upkeep of the place and much, much less bathing.

Five minutes later we were in the Target down the road, and it was a Zen monastery by comparison. We heard another band of Wal-Mart refugees in the next aisle, complaining mightily about what a scary place Wal-Mart was and how happy they were to be in Target instead. And we left with the two remaining cartridges I needed (not to mention a buttload of candles for the next blackout). They cost a buck more apiece, but they hadn't been chewed on, and some things are worth paying for.

-=-

Several months ago I was looking at a house, and it turned out that the neighbors across the street were an old boyfriend and his wife, who turned out to be one cool woman. I haven't seen them since then, and today I got a photo card in the mail showing them... and a brand-new baby.

I'm very happy for them; they'll be great parents. But I'm so not mentioning this to my folks. It will just encourage them.

-=-

So, some new year's resolutions I can keep:

OK, and there's the bit about keeping a list of things I need to do so I can a) remember to do them and check them off when completed and b) have something to look at on New Year's Eve 2004, when I have the sinking feeling that I haven't accomplished a damn thing in the year previous. But that's so dull.

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