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Quick, someone call the child labor authorities

It’s getting worse. That thing where I can’t…uh… You know. Can’t remember. What is is that… Can’t remember… the… Aha! I know — can’t remember what I want to say. Saturday we were in the produce section of the grocery store and I walked up to Todd and opened my mouth and stood there for a minute, then said, “We forgot to get the… the… *sigh* The things. The round things that start with O.” Todd stared at me for a minute and said, “Are you kidding?” The scary part is that I wasn’t. It’s one thing to not be able to remember the word “profligate”, but to forget the word ONIONS?

Friday afternoon I was hungry and we hadn’t been grocery shopping for weeks, so I decided to head down to a nearby deli. There are three close by: the one which also sells pizza and the family who owns it is always up for a long conversation on any topic you can think of, the one which sells amazing french fries, and the most neighborhoodish one which is friendly but the sandwiches aren’t so great. Since I’d already gone to the french fries one twice last week and wasn’t feeling talkative I started walking towards the not-great sandwich deli. After three steps I realized how the wind was whipping around the leaves and trees and everything else not nailed down and it was too wonderful for a short walk. I would have slept outside in that weather if I thought the neighbors wouldn’t throw a fit about a sleeping bag in my backyard. (One of these days we’re going to put up a seven feet high fence with barbed wire and KEEP AWAY signs all over it, then we’ll be able to sleep outside if we want to.) So I changed course for the deli which has the most amazing sandwiches but is much farther than the other three.

I’m surprised that I made it all the way to the street the deli’s on without tripping, I spent so much of my time staring at the sky and the trees as I walked. I was in a tremendous mood by the time I got to the right street, and went up to the window of a new antique store that I hadn’t seen before. There was a tabby boy cat lounging in the window display watching the cars go by, and I stood in front of him and put my hand up to the window. I felt so rude and uncouth when, instead of rubbing up against the window or attempting to sniff my hand through the glass, the cat peered around me because I was blocking his view of the road. That’ll teach me. I all but skipped my way up the street to the deli and — you guessed it — it was closed. But! Mood unvanquished, I continued on my merry way back to the bad-sandwich deli, looking forward to blabbing to the deli owner about my adventures. (Happily it occurred to me before I actually got there that to say, “I went all the way to hell and back to the other deli but it was closed, can you believe it? That’s why I’m here, because I figured your sandwiches were better than nothing…” would not have been favorably received.)

I walked on, feeling self-righteous and gloating because everyone else was diving for their cars or into buildings and the weather wasn’t bothering me a bit. I listened to that time-worn Howard Jones song “No One is to Blame” which as a teenager I thought was wildly romantic but am beginning to suspect is actually about how it’s okay to screw around on people which is pretty disgusting and boy, talk about shattered illusions. As I walked by one house I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned expecting to see a cat checking me out as I walked by. What I didn’t at all expect was a full-grown black lab dog standing on the windowsill wagging his tail. I don’t mean that he had his front paws on the windowsill, I mean that he was actually standing on the windowsill. It was highly disconcerting.

When I actually got to the deli I walked in and there was a little girl behind the counter. I have SHOES older than she was. I looked around for the owner, thinking that perhaps his granddaughter, who was about six the last time I saw her in the deli, had aged much more quickly than I thought she would and was hanging out there, but no. It turned out that the little girl was in charge. So I gave her my order and then it was too Traigic, her entire extended family walked in to see her working at Her First Job, and then her mom called to make sure she was going to get home alright with the strange weather and all, and I felt guilty for making fun of her age in my head.

Then once I had my sandwich and potato chips I walked back outside and instantly stopped feeling self-righteous or gloating, because it was pouring, the kind of rain that can (and did) soak a person completely in just minutes. By the time I got home I was positively dripping and the cats scowled at me for getting water all over the place.

From the silliness file:

(Todd and Sage are playing a pinball computer game called Urban Decay. Wait, that’s not it… Aha. Urban Chaos, I knew it was something like that. Anyway. Sage and Todd are playing Urban Chaos and while it’s Sage’s turn Todd is looking closely at the screen.)

Todd: Look in the upper lefthand corner when you get a chance. Did they misspell “hearse”?
Sage *laughing*: Uh, no, that’s “hi-rise” you’re looking at.
Todd: Hi-rise?
Sage: You know, like a big tall building. A hi-rise. It’s okay, sweetie, you grew up in Vermont, you don’t have to know stuff like that.

We went to the Italian restaurant we like (I SWEAR they were playing the Godfather theme on the restaurant stereo) which we like half for the great food and half for the great people watching, and barely managed not to giggle when the owner told us to, “Go sit ohver theh in that boot.” So far no one’s said “What do youse want for dinner?” which is lucky because we’d probably laugh so hard they’d kick us out forever.

Ani saw, but she ain’t telling

so on and so forth