Mumbling Madly

At 6am my husband greeted me on my way to the bathroom. He had been sleeping on the couch but had his laptop open. My new found, pregnancy-induced, snoring problem had provoked him to find new places to sleep. We embraced before I shivered out of his arms and into the bathroom. Sleeping has become so strange, challenging in a bizarre way, unlike any insomnia or apnea I’ve ever faced. “What’s wrong?” I asked him on my way back. “Are you sleeping here?” “Oh, I’m just around,” he said. And I went back to bed.

When I got up at 7:30am, Josh was still on the couch with his laptop open. He stood up to greet me. I asked, “What’s wrong? I know something is wrong.” Josh smiled sheepishly, “Well, there’s a drunk guy sleeping on our porch.” “What? No way,” I said. “Really? What? Wait…he has to go! Did you call the police? He needs to leave…I’m pregnant.” Josh explained that the fellow seemed harmless and that he was keeping an eye on him. “I think it’s best if he just sleeps it off,” Josh said wisely. I went to the bathroom feeling disturbed. “Where’s our camera?” Josh asked. “I want to take a picture of him while he’s sleeping.”

When I came to the living room, Josh was peering out the window, “Look! He’s getting up and leaving.” Sure enough…the drunken man was swaying his way down our steps and down the front yard. We half expected him to go across the street where all the day laborers live but instead he walked up the street. “Follow him!” I said, “If he lives nearby that explains everything.” Josh threw on shoes and disappeared out the back door into the rainy, dark, morning. I sat waiting for him, tired and floating on the strange cloud that is pregnancy in the third trimester.

When Josh returned he explained it to me: At 5am he heard all sorts of banging around. When he investigated he found a very drunk, heavily hiccuping, man rearranging our porch furniture. He watched as the fellow carefully stacked all of our plastic chairs, folded the plastic table neatly and placed it next to the pile. Then he rearranged everything, pulled apart the stack, then put it all back together, perching the table on the top. After admiring his work, he took both of our doormats and laid them out like a little bed, curled up on top of them, and fell asleep. The first thought was that he was from across the street and thought that this was his house. Or maybe he was at a party and he couldn’t make it home. “When I followed him, he was walking purposely away from the neighborhood…I don’t think he’s from around here. Or maybe he is…it’s a mystery.”

I made Josh examine the front porch for any signs of urination or vomit. It came out clean. Then we reassessed the situation. Should the police have been called? If it had been me who found a drunk man rearranging our porch furniture at 5am in the morning, most certainly. But Josh was relaxed about the whole situation. “I dealt with so many drunk men in Brazil,” He said. “Most of the time they’re so out of it that they’re really no threat at all. You should have heard the sound of this guy’s hiccups! I just hung out in the living room and kept an eye on him.” Wow. Josh also said he knew if he confronted the fellow it would be kinda messy and loud. “I didn’t want to wake you up,” He said reasonably. “I’m actually surprised this sort of thing hasn’t happened sooner,” I admitted. “If it becomes a regular thing then, yes, we’ll call the police next time,” Josh promised.

That evening we came back from our amazing co-ed baby shower exhausted and happy. I went straight to our front window and checked our front porch. No sleeping drunk man. I even checked this morning. Nothing. Just a figment, a strange experience, rare but strangely typical of the south side.

While perusing the internet for a body pillow for me, Josh came across this special Hug Me Pillow on overstock.com.

“This is the saddest thing ever,” Josh declared. The reviews are good, (“When I first nestled against the soft, but firm chest of my new “husband” I slept better than I ever had before.” and “I’m told the pillow was modeled after Brad Pitt, and I believe it!”) but you can’t shake the lingering loneliness…bottom line: this product is disturbing.

While riding the bus toward downtown with my sister, I looked up and this is what I saw:

That’s two buses dangling over I-5 off a Capitol Hill street.

Yes, I’m wearing a shag rug collar and the reindeer are constructed using pale, white sequins, and yes, Josh’s sweater looks homemade. After several stressful weeks, it was nice to kick back in a Belltown condo, eat meatballs, and be surrounded by friends wearing equally hideous sweaters. (Josh’s sweater actually became a finalist in the top 4). Bad Sweater pics can be found here.

The blue angels are practicing. I hate them. Call me unpatriotic, a noise-freak, etc. but screaming military jets messing up our skies bug me. Today the little boy I take of on Thursday was enjoying his swing when the jets screeched across the sky over his house. The poor little guy almost shit his pants (‘almost’ because I checked). He started shaking in his swing, his little heart pounding. I tried reassuring him, “Don’t worry, they’re just loud,” I tried reasoning with him, “They’re like a big noisy plane.” I tried empathy, “Are you nervous?” He looked at me with watery eyes, “Yes, they make me nervous.” I pulled him out of his swing and we went inside. “I not scared, I nervous,” he enunciated, clearly thrilled with his new word. He looked out the window warily. It was interesting trying to communicate with a two-year-old about fear. Clearly, he was disturbed by the noise of the blue angels. However, his lack of language left him helpless to communicate exactly what he was feeling. When I tried to talk strategy with him (“next time they come we’ll put our hands over our ears and look up”) he seemed distracted. Finally, the little guy curled up against me and we read book after book. I’ve never seen this kid slow down long enough to snuggle. Every time the angels went over the house he shouted, “I’m nervous!”

With all the attention on soft rocks hits in my life lately I started thinking: what song really made a difference in my life? What song really ’spoke’ to me? Other then the usual punk rock hits, of course, since I certainly didn’t lean towards that type of music typically. In fact, I was raised on a pretty healthy dose of nothing but classical music, opera, and my Dad’s old Beatles albums. It wasn’t until sixth grade when I finally got a little radio for my bedroom that my music tastes started opening up. During most of my early adolescence, you could find me in my room, blasting Casey Kasem on the radio, and drawing.

Recently I checked out the Casey Kasem cd set, “America’s Top 10 Through the Years.” This is a five cd set, starting from the 50s and careening through the 90’s. WOW. It’s amazing how much more tolerant I am of the 80’s hits versus the songs from the 90’s. It was just so, so, bad…like Amy Grant and Wilson Phillips bad. Anyway, I stumbled on “One More Try” and was immediately transported to my bed room during 7th grade. (His music was so true! I mean, if I ever got a boyfriend, I was sure that this song would sum up our inevitable break up). What I really love about this music video (and subsequent videos from the early 90’s) is the incredible styling, dance moves, and back up dancing. I mean, really, do we need several people swaying in the background? Do we need mock turtle necks paired with gold chains? Were white jeans on straight men ever appropriate? Apparently so…I mean we must have needed it because the early 90’s were my slow introduction to sub-culture. Anyway, I really love this video:

Side note: in an attempt to convince Mark to include this gem in our upcoming Soft Rock show I made Joey sing it with me at The Hideout last night. I sang it badly, but I’d had a few drinks and thought I sounded awesome. Josh pointed out the repeated rhyming of the word ‘you,’ and I think Mark might have actually considered it. Then I stumbled on this live version and OMG, the choreography is PRICELESS:

A day after my Big Block Watch Meeting I’m in Queen Anne, experiencing the awkward feeling of approaching my last few hours at the preschool, when I am approached by a man. He is a rough around the edges type of man, terrible teeth, scraggly hair, bleery eyed with a piece of lettuce stuck to his lip. He immediately launches in as if we’ve been having a conversation all morning, “My friend has lived at this house for YEARS and never had a single problem!” I said, “Well, that’s Queen Anne for you…I live in the south end and I wish I could say that.” His eyes brightened, “I lived there when I was a little boy! You’ll never believe me but I used to walk to school, down Rainier Avenue when I was in kindergarten.” I was amused, “Wow…that’s young.” He looked me over and said, “Are those your real teeth?” I smiled instinctively, “Yes.”
“They’re just beautiful,” he admired.

This is not my cat…however, this is my car.