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Sunday
Sunday morning we met Debbie at the Kopper Kettle for breakfast. I had a garden omelet, and it was really good. I always forget just how much I like mushrooms and onions in an omelet. From there, Debbie and my mother and I went to Home Depot (I had to get a gift card for my father for his birthday, and so did Debbie), then over to Target where we spent about an hour browsing. In the meantime, my father went to Harpswell to pick up Mireya, and dropped her off at Target with us.
We went into Brunswick to the movie theater, and saw The Nanny Diaries. Debbie thought it dragged, but I kinda liked it – more than Invasion, less than Hairspray. I don’t usually care for Scarlett Johanssen, but I kind of liked her in the role. If I recall correctly, the book was better – but the books usually are, aren’t they?
After the movie, we went to the grocery store to buy a small plant, and then to the cemetery where part of my grandmother’s ashes are buried, to plant it (it was a mini chrysanthemum) in the ground and clean up around the family headstone. It was the first time I’d seen my grandmother’s marker since it was placed, and I’m glad I got to see it.
It would have been her 89th birthday.
We dropped Debbie off in Topsham and were on our way home when we saw an “Open House” sign and ended up going to check it out.
My good lord almighty, people. It was a “For sale by owner” house, and I will give you this little piece of advice: if you’re going to sell the damn house your own self, you do NOT FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST follow potential buyers around and talk their ear off about every little detail of the house. What you need to do is back off, give the time and space to look around, and chances are very good that if they have questions, they’ll find you and ask them.
We spent an hour walking around this house. It was in a good location, I suppose – 250 feet of water frontage on the Androscoggin River, and it was pretty and all, but they were asking $275,000, and the house? Not worth it at all, at least as far as I could tell. I might be spoiled by the housing prices in Alabama, but if I were to spend that kind of money on a house, I would expect it to (1) Be in far better shape than that, and (2) Have more than one – ONE – bathroom.
We finally extricated ourselves from the desperate grasp of sellers who’d already bought another house in the Harpswell area and are probably starting to get a little worried about the possibility of unloading the old house, and headed back to my parents’ house.
I had about ten minutes to cool my heels, and then Liz showed up to whisk me off for dinner and a movie. We had dinner at Governor’s in Lewiston (across and up a ways from The Big Apple, where I worked when I was 18, and the McDonald’s I worked at, on and off, for three years). I ended up having clams, and Liz ordered the same, although she asked for poutine as a side. I’d heard of poutine but never actually experienced it for myself. I mean, fries with gravy and cheese – does that sound appetizing? I think not.
Liz offered me some of her poutine, and in actuality, it wasn’t bad. Not something I’d want to have regularly, but kind of tasty.
I had a whoopie pie sundae for dessert, which was a mistake – I was mostly full from the clams, and couldn’t eat much of the sundae. It was good, though.
We made it to the theater only to find out that although I’d looked to see what time the movie (Superbad) started, I’d changed the time in my mind from 7:10 to 7:30. The lady selling tickets said that we’d probably only missed about the first five minutes, so we got tickets anyway.
I really liked the hell out of Superbad. Fred has no desire to see it – he thinks the trailer makes it look horrific – but when it comes out on DVD, I’ll be renting it to watch again, for sure.
We ran by Liz’s apartment to pick up Season 1 – 4 of Footballer’s Wives (which she’s lending me), and I helped her move some furniture down a flight of stairs (she’s moving – actually, by now she has moved, I guess) and getting rid of everything she can, so she has to actually move as little as possible.
Home, I talked to Fred for a while, and then went to bed.
Monday
Monday was my father’s birthday, so we met at our favorite Chinese buffet restaurant in Brunswick. I’d tell you the name of it, but I’ll be damned if I can remember. Tracy, Mireya, Debbie, Brian, my parents, and I met up there. We had a good meal, and the waitress must have heard us talking about it being my father’s birthday, because she brought over a piece of cake.
From the restaurant, everyone met up at my parents’ house to hang out and talk, and give my father his presents. Hopefully he liked those Home Depot gift cards – he seemed to, anyway – because he got plenty of them! He’d requested chocolate zucchini cake, so we had that and ice cream, and it was gooood.
Brian was making faces for the camera, so Mireya got in on it, too.
“Ah, zees lahf. So challenging. So painful. So deefoocoolt.”
“Ah can only deal with zee – how you say? – anguish by napping. A lot.”
Mid-afternoon, Debbie, Brian, Tracy, and Mireya left, and I hung out downstairs, packing and reading and checking my email and the like. Around 6, as I was discussing with Debbie the idea of just ripping down bitchypoo.com and starting up elsewhere (something, obviously, I decided against), Liz called to see what I was doing. She wanted to go for ice cream and I wanted to see her again before I left, so she came and picked me up.
I hadn’t realized we were going to Brunswick to Cold Stone Creamery, but we did, and though I ordered a size small of the Founder’s Favorite and that’s what they charged me for, the girl (who was new) made me a medium, and again I couldn’t even eat half of it. We ran over to Bookland, where I bought some more cards and post-it pads (you can never have too many cards or post-its!) and Liz bought… the New York Post? Maybe?
We’d been racking our brains ever since she picked me up, trying to remember Brad and Angelina’s daughter’s name (we could remember Maddox, Zahara, and Pax, but not the kid they had together), and Liz looked at an entertainment magazine (CHEATER) and reminded me that it was Shiloh. The funny thing is that when she walked up to me and said “Shiloh!”, I thought she was talking about the Shiloh Chapel in Durham.
Liz dropped me off at home, and I found that my father had managed to get the wireless router working.
That morning, when I got out of the shower, I found a spray bottle of Paul Mitchell Volumizing Spray Root Lifter under the cabinet, so I used some of it, and I liked the results. I need to get me some o’ that.
I was in bed by midnight, sound asleep.
Tuesday
Because my flight was due to leave Portland at 1:30, we left the house at 10:30. I was packed and ready to go by 8:30, so hung around outside taking pictures of the wild turkeys – an adult and a baby – who’d showed up to peck around underneath the bird feeder. When they left, I took other pictures.
Shade garden in my parents’ back yard. I’m thinking of putting something similar around the side stoop – hydrangeas, impatiens, and… those other plants that I cannot recall the name of. Ugh. What the FUCK are they called? (A Google search for shade plants reminds me that they’re called hostas. Duh.)
It takes less than an hour to get to the airport, but I’d rather be there early with time to burn, and so I was. They offered to come in and wait ’til I was through Security, but there was no point to that – I knew where I was going and what I was doing, and they didn’t need to park and come in.
I got my tickets, went through security, and was sitting by my gate in less than 20 minutes. As soon as I sat down, I remembered that I’d wanted to check the gift shop for a zip-up Maine hoodie. They had zip-up hoodies, and they had Maine sweatshirts, but no Maine zip-up hoodies, and that was the ONE thing I’d been looking for during my entire visit but just couldn’t find.
Ah well – always next year.
I surfed the web and emailed until my flight began boarding, then ran to the bathroom, checked my email one last time, received an email I perceived as threatening, shot off a reply (note to myself and everyone else: never respond to threats from a bully), and boarded the plane.
My flight landed early in Cincinnati, so I killed time looking through the gift shops, talked to the spud briefly (when I found out how much she’s going to have to pay for car insurance in Rhode Island, I clutched my chest and reeled around the store, because HOLY JESUS GOD IN HEAVEN!), bought a few things, and then it was time for my flight to board.
I landed in Huntsville, called everyone to let them know I’d gotten home, walked down to the baggage claim area just in time to see my suitcase coming toward me, grabbed it, and walked out the door, handed my bag over to Fred – who put it in the trunk – we stopped for dinner, and then we were home.
And my GOD is it nice to be home. You have NO idea.
9/6/07