last night we went for dinner at my new nan's.
(justin's grandmother grace's house).
with his brother jeff, and soon to be sister in law shannon.
dinner was supposed to be at 6pm.
i got out of work at 5pm.
i was supposed to meet him at his house and
we were supposed to drive together.
what i didn't know was that a garbage truck
was supposed to flip on it's side & shut down my route
for two hours right at peak traffic time.
naturally, upon beholding the trouble
i Ued across the grass median even though
i wasn't supposed to. 

so i called and asked justin for directions,
saying, "i will meet you there, don't use this road."
he gave me directions to a bank near her house and
i was supposed to wait there.
but when i got there without incident,
i was feeling intelligent and independent and proud
so i called again and said,
"where do i go from here? i will meet you at the apartment."
i should have stopped him immediately
when he started saying things like,
"big stone wall, make a left,
playground on the right, knock on the second window to the left."
because landmark directions are very dangerous for me.
if you tell me to make a left on adams street, i've got it.
if you tell me to make a left after a big stone wall-
i will start painting beautiful pictures of medieval castle walls
in my minds eye and i will drive 500 miles and find nothing of the sort.
i should have stopped him immediately
but i didn't.  i started looking for a castle wall.
i still don't know what sort of wall he was talking about.
i drove 5 miles and called him again, irritated,
dissapointed to have found no castles,
& no nana's neither.
he told me to turn around, and furthermore,
"that wall was only 2 blocks from where you were,
if i tell you a landmark, not a distance, it means it's really close by."
oh. i was supposed to know that? oh.

by the time i got there i was fuming.
and my feet were red with fury.
my mind was running sentences like,
"there was No stone wall. where do you get off giving landmark directions
with landmarks that don't exist?  why didn't you say 'it's like 2 blocks away'?"
& then i started digging up old anger about last week
when he told me to turn left after a gas station
and i did.
but i was supposed to know that he meant right
and that he meant the same gas station company,
but a different one, one that was actually ten miles further down the road.

but when i saw him
he was sitting on the playground fence
with holes in his jeans' knees
and the corn flakes rooster on his t-shirt,
he looked so perfect squinting into the sun to see me
that i forgot all about it.  for a second.
until he said,
"you're feet are as red as your toenailpolish! what the heck?!"

_____

a break for: more on that.
i have an excess, much too much red pigment.
or too many blood vessels? something.
something that means any part of my body,
my face in particular, feet and neck on occasion 
are capable of turning blotchy otherworldly fuschia in milliseconds.
so much so that those unaccustomed to it fear for my life.
in middle school i used to lay in bed at night,
stare into the darkness and bargain with God:
if you stop my blushing i promise to always be good.
if you turn my skin a beautiful even skin color i will...
i know i've been taught that you created every detail of me
for your glory, but what glory is there in embarassing red skin?
and so on.
later, in high school, when asked what one plastic surgery i would get if i could,
i would say, "no nose job, no boob job, no eye job, no lip job, no lipo.
i would get red pigment removed. can they do that?"
_____

he knocked on the second window, "this is where she watches tv"
& nana came to the door.  she hadn't been watching tv.
she was a darling little tornado of dinner-making in the kitchen.
she continued bustling around, whipping potatoes,
"elisabeth do you like smashed cheese potatoes?"
cooking carrots, flipping one out of the bowl, "i eat the ones that drop."
making salad, "have you ever had it with balsamic & mandarins?"
and burning biscuits (or muffins, i'm not sure, she referred to them as both)
"ooOH! i thought i turned the oven off!" & ten minutes later,
when they had already been black ten minutes before, "ooooOH! i STILL didn't turn it off!"
we didn't eat those.  she said she had "mexican and american chicken."
the american was plain chicken breast, the "mexican"...
looked like buffalo chicken tenders. they are my very favorite.
and it was, buffalo chicken.  "too hot for my taste" she said.
and gave me the leftovers.
when i tried to say i didn't need dessert,
"you can't say no to orange jello, cool whip and green cherries."
after dinner she gave us each a scratch off lottery ticket.
i won- another scratch off lottery ticket.
justin won- 3 dollars.

_____

a break for: more on those.
a man came in to the bank today & deposited $1344.00
"can you believe that's all from scratch offs?"
i guess so.  but i didn't ask him how many.

_____

after dinner i followed justin home.
but lost him when matt nathanson started to sing,
romeo & juliet live at the point through my speakers.

i had buffalo mexican chicken for breakfast.

 

if this toothache turns out to be a cavity,
i will wish i had let the aflac guy give me his schpeel
before flatly declining his supplemental insurances.
(rinse and repeat that remorse if
it turns out that my migraines have
anything to do with my eyes.)

 

but alors!
something remorseless!
justin & i bought a CASA!
a half of a double house!
YES! tis so!

and if you live in a 50 mile radius
you can expect
to be expected
to attend our house gutting bbqs.
we feed you food, play cool music, &...
you help us tear out the nappy urine stank carpet
and steam off the nicotine yellowed paisley wallpaper.
what could be better?
no thing.
just wait
& see...

today (again) i got a peek
at how others might see me
and i didn't like what i saw
at all.

this isn't a sad post though
because peeks like this
are hopefully the catalyst
to change.

the only discouraging bit is
i got a similar view, not that long,
maybe six months ago.
in a somewhat darker light
and heeded it only a little
but for all i can tell
most of the ugly
is there even on a clear day.

also please
add to the above list:

-cold.
-flakey.
-vindictive.
-unforgiving.
-manipulative.
-unwilling to accept guilt when guilty. (vocab for 500: what's one word for that?)
-petty.
-melodramatic. (bonus: live! now showing!)