While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

He rotted before his time

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pumpkin head

 

Why I won’t have a pumpkin this Halloween:

Because the weather here in Florida is swamp assingly hot. Because I carved a pumpkin with my sister PK two Saturdays ago only to have it rot and fill with bugs one week later. Because I spent $25 on three pumpkins two Saturdays ago only to have all three rot and fill with bugs one week later. Because I even carved a pumpkin for THE PUG that resembled the pug and looked like Pikachu when it was lit. Because both of these pumpkins were so delicately rendered, so beautifully carved and cleanly gutted that I’d never be able to replicate them. Because replicating their faces so soon after their demise would be disrespectful. The grieving process has just begun. 

The day of the epic carving the weather dropped below 50 degrees. It was glorious. Crisp. Chilly. I wore a lightweight scarf and a long-sleeved shirt. When I gutted the squash, my hands were so cold I rubbed them together for warmth and then I saved the seeds, coated them in salt and baked them at 350 degrees. I drank warm tea and soaked my bones in PK’s hot tub. It felt like fall for 24 hours and then one day later, it was over.

For one day I was able to go without deodorant. For one day I was spared the onslaught of weird, random bugs that are STILL nesting under the hood of my car. For one day I was able to open the windows in my house and fall asleep to the sound of cicada bugs. For one day my pumpkin and the pug’s pumpkin sat lit in the front yard, their big round eyes fresh from carving, their pokey  smiles oblivious to the impending rot. 

The morning I tossed them in the dumpster I called PK for moral support. 

“Hey. How rotten is your pumpkin?”

“It’s not bad. I mean, there are bugs in it and it’s a little mushy, but nothing too gross.”

“Have you looked at this morning?”

“No.”

“Open your door and take a look.”

<Shriek.>

“Yes?”

“It’s a rotten monster!”

—

How about them apples?

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Wondering where I’ve been?

Yeah. Me too.
I feel like Angela Bassett trying to get my groove back. It’s 12:30 a.m. and I’m sitting on my couch, watching a rerun of Desperate Housewives, wearing Joe’s noise canceling headphones, my iPod on shuffle. 
I started several posts and saved them all as drafts. 
I started one about Joe’s Grandpa. I started one about Bus Stop Pete. I started one about Bus Stop Pete leaving his empty beer cans in plastic CVS bags on the street corner, prompting a post about bad habits and enablers and how Pete isn’t entirely to blame for littering since the city removed his trash can weeks ago.
I tossed around the idea of writing about my love affair with Stephen Colbert.
I started another chapter in my novel. I quit my job as a reporter. I flew home for a long weekend with Joe. I flew back Sunday night. On Monday morning, I started my job as a nanny for seven kids who live in a mansion on the water in St. Pete. 
I watched the latest Coen Brothers film. I learned that my friend Sam and his wife Beth are expecting a baby named Nevin. I saw The Smashing Pumpkins at Ruth Eckerd Hall. I listened to the first presidential debate from my bedroom while writing a story for the paper. I rushed my pug to the vet for what I later learned was E. Coli poisoning. I made an appointment with a therapist and cancelled it one week later. 
I watched my first best friend’s little brother tie the knot on Lake Erie Beach. Mesmerized by eight industrial windmills spinning in the distance, I was impressed by Buffalo’s push toward alternative energy. 
I sat bleary-eyed at midnight, curled in Joe’s lap, through so many episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm I lost track of the funny ones, which is a knock on my mental retention since most episodes are memorable.
I’m no fan of Desperate Housewives, and although I’m watching it right now, it came to my attention five minutes ago that Nicollette Sheridan’s character is named Edie and so is the protagonist in my novel. (FYI: My Edie is named after the two-for-one CVS ice cream Joe and I got addicted to when we started dating.)
And yes, Joe is asleep right now.
I’ve been scatterbrained and distracted lately. Save for writing one chapter in the second-from-the-last seat in a Southwest Airlines flight from Buffalo to Tampa, I’ve done very little writing. I’ve been clogged. 
This home-buying thing has turned me into a wordless ghost, paralyzed by momentum. Back when I lived in a tiny cottage without air conditioning, I had a neighbor named Matt Orr who liked to pop in with a bottle of wine every now and then. I remember once, the first time I quit my job as a reporter, he asked if I was sure I was making the right decision.
I had just ended an 8-year relationship with my high school sweetheart. Two weeks into the breakup, I had also quit my job. Why? Because neither one seemed right at the time.
“Oh well. Some people just do it all at once,” Matt said, sipping from his merlot. “You’re probably just one of those people.”
“What kind of people?” I asked.
“The kind that do it all at once.”
“Yeah maybe,” I said. “I think it’s better that way. If it’s going to be tough, it might as well be really tough, right?”
And then we toasted to being single and to air conditioning, and how climate control is overrated in the company of good friends. 
(Side note: Last year, around the same time I started back at the newspaper, Matt, a Realtor by trade, launched an events-listing web site. He leases office space under my old office, and without actually seeing his face in the window, I’m sure I walked past him every day on my way to work. It was nice knowing he was there. Even though I had moved some 40 miles away, we were still neighbors in a way, which pleased me. To save gas he now drives a Vepsa knock-off and his new company, this week in sarasota.com is doing really well. So congrats to Matt.)
The first time I left the newspaper, I took a job at a local marble yard. I received an e-mail last week from one of my favorite coworkers. His big sister has embarked on a solo cross-country road trip with her dog, similar in nature and gut instinct to the trip I took last summer, which is always inspiring news. Here’s an excerpt from that e-mail:

“So my sister Lori is traveling across country in a piece of shit car with her dog, sleeping in a tent and stopping in all the small towns. Does this sound familiar? I don’t know if you remember me ever talking about her. I think I may have mentioned once that you and her would get along great. Anyway, I’ve attached a couple emails that she has sent so far, I thought you might find them interesting. As I read them I found myself thinking about your trip. I hope everything is going good for you. Keep in touch. I want an autographed copy of your book when it’s on the best sellers list.”

Joe’s sister, Rosey, passed the bar exam last week. We helped her move into her new apartment today, drinking our weight in water, and cruising with the radio off on our ride home because there was so much to talk about, so much to plan and so much to be excited about.
As we exited the highway toward our neighborhood, with its cobblestone streets and hodgepodge roof lines, I noted the comings and goings of people in their yards. For the fuck of it, I made a stupid face, pushing my nose up in the air, curling my lip into Elvis’ trademark sneer.
“Would you still love me if I looked like this?” I asked Joe.
“No,” he replied. “Because with your sunglasses on I can’t see your beautiful eyes.”
I used to pride myself on my lightness of being. Infectious zest was my badge of honor. Irritating as it was, being bubbly was kind of my modus operandi, but somewhere along the line that gusto turned to fear and anxiety. I’m working on reverting. I’m working on being less selfish. Less brooding. 
For those of you who are interested in the first chapter of my novel, I’m refraining from posting it here. I’m afraid the opening line is too sexy for my Nana, who reads this blog. 
On second thought, my Nana is a fairly racy bird …
On third thought, I think I’ll keep the rest of Edith Armor’s story to myself. Some things are too exciting to share. 
—
PS. Photo by Joe – snapped while picking apples at Stonehill Orchard in North Collins, NY.

Grilling & drilling politicians.

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If you had lived in a synthetic bubble all your life, and one night were freed at about 8 p.m. on 8th Ave North in St. Pete (where I live) and heard what I hear now, you might think the world had ended or that aliens had finally arrived.

The cicada bugs sound like a dying game show buzzer.

If I were allowed to open the windows in my apartment I might hear them more often, but instead I’m forced to take in their grating mating call from my balcony, which is why it’s so important Joe and I find a house with a porch. (For more on our house hunting shenanigans click here.)

I love the cicadas. I love that they’re so obnoxious. I love that there are 2,500 different species of them and that they make the loudest known insect-produced sound in the world.

Cicadas are the one rural thing this city has going for it – another reason why I love them.

I’m sitting on my balcony with two citronella candles at my feet and a fire on the grill. The sun is slipping behind Kim and Russell’s gargantuan house and Cubbie is roaming the yard below. Joe is watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann, slamming together patties of ground chuck and my sister PK finally, doggedly got a job. It is a typical Monday night and I’m in a fantastic mood.

I have about two hours of tape to transcribe from an interview I had Friday with a state representative. That much I’m dreading.

But before I go, I think it might be fun to point out that last week I interviewed two state representatives in Sarasota, both republicans. The first one said he didn’t buy global warming and that plenty of people feel the same way. 

“Ambulences aren’t all of a sudden going to run on hydrogen,” he said. “They’re not going to run on nuclear. The technology isn’t there. At the end of the day when somebody wants to go to the hospital they want 300 horsepower under the hood. Not three horses … This is a capitalist country. We would have figured something out by now. Some entreprenuer would have figured out a cheaper way of producing energy and made himself a gazillion dollars. It’s economics.”

So I fired back something like this (minus the Toby Keith reference at the end):

“Don’t you think we’re seeing that now? Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is a big motivator. We’re beginning to realize it’s not the cheapest, most efficient way to power our cars so entrepreneurs are starting to perk up. (Hello T. Boone Pickens.) The market is ripe with money-making potential. It’s like when the Wright brothers first started experimenting with flight. Believe me there’s money to be made. Dependency on foreign-made goods ain’t what Toby Keith sings about.”

And then, after chalking up global warming to sunspots and volcanic activity, this same legislator said he supported state-funded research on alternative energy. What we should be doing, he said, is using service tax revenue generated by offshore drilling to support university research on tidal energy.

“I could see ourselves cutting back on fossil fuels,” he said. “Over the next 10, 15, 20 years I could see Florida getting 30 percent of its energy from tidal, 10 percent from solar, 10 percent from wind, throw in some nuclear, throw in some natural gas …”

I couldn’t believe it. Towing the party line is one thing. Tripping over it is another. And tidal energy, eh? Surely he got the e-newsletter from treehugger.com. 

Ugh. I’m headed to the couch. Dinner is through and it’s ice cream hour now. The cicadas have hushed and the mosquitoes are out. I’m off to itch my bug bites with credit cards and transcribe interview tape. 
Goodnight nation.