Fear the Pants and Other Stories

Mother Nature saw fit to dump several inches of varying types of precipitation on Boston yesterday. Precipiation is, of course, something that we need. Must keep those plants alive! Must keep that water table high! Must wash the bird poo off Gustav the BeetleBugCar! Really, it's more the variety of precipitation that I object to. Like, yo, Mama N., pick a precipitation and stick wit' it? Snow? Ok. Sleet? Ok. Freezing rain? Ok. Rain? Ok. All of the above? Oh no you DI' INT!

The interstates were nicely cleared away by the time I headed to work, so Gustav and I zipped along nicely until we pulled into the actual driveway of my place of employ. This, it appeared, had never been touched by anything that in any way, shape, or form resembled a snowplow. I crept along in second gear, nervous until I crested the small hill. Whew! I could relax now that I was on level ground!

Except that my car started sliding, sideways. Right towards another car. At about 3 mph. I was so completely and utterly annoyed. (I mean, what do you do when your car slides across the road and taps another car? Do you call your insurance company so the adjuster can come out and peer at your car as it gently nudges another?) In real-life slow-motion, I slid towards a Camry, practically rolling my eyes with the lameness of it all. How lame is that? *Slide-slide-slide......doonk* Luckily, Gustav righted himself before I could relive that scene in Sideways and headed on to the parking lot. Lame accident averted.

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I don't understand the phenomenon of people whose families read their blogs and react negatively to the content within. Hello. Your family knows about your blog? Mine has no idea. In fact, I'm not entirely certain that my family wouldn't think a "blog" was something icky, perhaps rather akin to a barnacle, that you get on your shoes when walking through shallow brackish waters.

Hell, I have entire groups of friends who have no idea what a blog is, or that I keep one. Frankly, I find that too much awareness of who is reading tends to influence content. And god knows, I wouldn't be discussing highway masturbation or secret farting or (shudder) kale if I thought Mom and Dad were reading. So they aren't. Eeeek!

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Arriving home from work, I was greeted by a stubbly Work From Home Sean. "Mathilda's afraid of my pants." he informed me with a cat-who-swallowed-the-canary grin. I shifted my gaze down to the offending pants. Ancient rustly windpants with snap-up legs ending in tight cinched ankles. Hmm. I might just be afraid of them, too.
"Watch!" he instructed, and did a psuedo-runway (Ok, I'm making that part up...) walk down the hallway, his precise location and speed highlighted by an insistent SWISHSWISHSWISHSWISH fromt he Ancient Pants. Sure enough, Mathilda darted under the bed, peering out suspiciously and emitting an occasional hiss of displeasure.

What can I say? She hates the pants.

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I can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that, as it is now 2005, this means 2000 was five years ago. Five. That's four times longer than a year, plus another year. God, that's a long time. And the funny thing is, I still remember like it was just a year or so ago--standing in Boston Common as the clock was about to strike 2000, listening to the raucous strains of a zydeco band and dancing around to keep warm. I left my hat on the T that night and had to rely on my hood; me being new to this whole-hat-and-scarf-wearing thing. When I bother to think about it, I'm struck by how very different I was then. I feel like I was so young, so impossibly young. Twenty-four for Chrissakes. What did I know of the world at 24? (Of course, the truth is that even then, I knew far too much about it. When I think of it that way, I'm surprised I was even able to dance around, dance merrily and not buckle under the weight of what I knew of the world.)

But I did, and I was. And now I'm looking 30 in the face, and I can't quite believe that, either. And I guess I've kept dancing despite the weight of the world, or maybe it's just that, at Almost-30, I've learned to sort through things and find the reasons to dance.

Happy 2005, everyone.