movie night in suburbia

For CAM eyes, mostly....

I went to the movies tonight. Because Paul couldn't come and fix the car and I felt too shitty to go to the gym. And it seemed a little sacreligious to go for those reasons, but it was the only movie I ever remember really wanting to see my whole life, and I know we should have seen it together, but I'm not going to Baltimore, you're not coming here, and meeting in Colorado really isn't the middle, after all.
I wore pearl earrings, fake, left over from Friday's job interview, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap. Which is probably what I would have worn if it had been you and me going, and not me and him. It was warm out, unseasonably warm, and it was raining and smelled like spring even though the weatherpeople say that it will be below zero by tomorrow.

And I sit there in the old run-down place, very conscious that you are not next to me, and I am riveted, but not so much that I can't think. In my head I write a beautiful essay, all about the day you were born, which was the day I was born, and all of the April 1sts that I can remember. It makes me feel a little old to think that in two months it will be ten years since I spent your birthday snowed in in a shitty old motel room in Seligman, Arizona. I remember another time when it snowed and I took my new doll Molly over to my friend Lisa's house on your eleventh birthday, which was, of course, my eleventh birthday as well. Maybe someday I will write it for real, for your eyes only, or maybe just for mine. But I felt you there somehow, or maybe just felt you SOMEwhere, in a Baltimore hospital, maybe, or sleeping in your car.

I wonder if you saw the movie; I pictured you sitting in a theater like the old one I was in, in Maryland, or Boston, perhaps, Jasen beside you or maybe Jaime, too, or maybe just you alone. I watch those scenes on the big screen and think of the places we've been together, places that used to be ours, but are no longer, because I have been back to almost all of them with someone else. Except for Michigan, which will probably always be ours no matter who else I ever go there with, and I know I will. And you probably will, too, but I can't picture it and maybe I'll never believe it.

The movie ends and we walk outside, me carrying my coat. It's still warm. And he turns to me and I look away and we walk to the car and he follows me, of course, because this is how things are. And I'm glad, but I still make the conscious choice not to turn around. Sometimes life changes, or doesn't, because of a conscious choice not to turn around.

I try not to cry as we drive back to Saint Paul, through the suburbs and Minneapolis and Grand Avenue and along Lexington. And I am not sad because I regret any choices I've made, but just because sometimes the world is so beautiful and we have to leave some of it behind. And he understands and doesn't understand at the same time, and maybe that is why things have worked out the way they have.

kennel, anyone??

So my normally sweet dog Spiro, affectionately known as SpirShadow, has always had somewhat of a trash-surfing problem. But he's so sweet, and he really doesn't know he's doing anything wrong; he will happily show off his treasures of moldy cheese and half-chewed old toothbrushes with complete shamelessness. And poor Spirs has gone through some lean times before he lived with us, so we try to overlook his forays into the trash, after all, it's as much our fault for leaving trash where he could reach it as it is his.

But lately we have wised up a bit, closing bathroom doors when we leave the house and putting any other items of interest (as far as we can tell) up out of canine reach. This has frustrated the Spirs a bit, but apparently not deterred him at all. The following is a list of items the Spirs has consumed (or attempted to)over the past week:

-3 toothbrushes
-an entire loaf of bread
-2 remote controls
-1 bottle of Selsun Blue Shampoo (really, WTF??!?)
-2 kitchen knives
-2 boxes of rat treats
-a bag of rat chow
-half a pound of jelly beans
-a can of soup (can only)
-several Q-tips (the evidence is in his copious Spir-poos)
-several paper towels and tissues
-month-old rotten turkey salad (breaking a glass on the floor in that process)
-licorice herbal tea bags
-2 tupperware lids
-disposable razor (handle only, thanks for small favors)
-toilet paper roll
-salsa jar and lid (he gets into the recycling now, too)
-several bowls of Oscar's food and special enzyme pills
-probably more things that I haven't yet discovered and frankly don't even want to know about.

A certain brown SpirShadow is now going to be locked in a kennel whenever we leave the house in the future, as he has demonstrated a complete inability to behave when left to his own devices. And to think, this ISN'T the dog that we call "The Evil One."