Meanwhile, the Capitol Fringe has begun, and there are so many shows that interest me. But time constraints (ie, having to do a million hours of freelancing) have forced me to drastically reduce how many shows I attend. I’m trying to decide if I should squeeze in two shows on Saturday (Desire Caught by the Tail: a play by Pablo Picasso, and a play about depression called 4.48 Psychosis), or if I should just attend one of those shows. I’ve been quite indecisive about the whole thing. If only all decisions were this carefree! I mean, jeez, it’s not like I’m living in a Darfur refugee camp and I’m trying to decide if I should walk 10 miles to gather firewood (thus risking rape, mutilation, and/or murder) or stay in my tent and let me children go without eating cooked food.
Some weirdness: this morning I was driving to work on 270 North and I saw a cop parked on the shoulder. It’s a common sight—cops are always parked on the shoulder of 270, waiting to bust speeders and HOV offenders. But this time it was different, because a cop got out of his cruiser, walked right into a lane of traffic, put out his hand in a “stop” gesture, and ushered an SUV to pull onto the shoulder, which it promptly did. What was that?! Is this how cops are going to start pulling over people now? They’re going to walk into traffic—on a busy highway—and use hand signals to catch drivers’ attention? Um, okay.
And last night there was more weirdness when I took Plath into the yard for a bit of fresh air (okay, fresh is a misnomer, because it’s downright tropical outside, but the air is fresh when compared to the circulated air-conditioned air of my apartment; and yes, as always, I had Plath on a harness and leash). Wait, let me backtrack for a second and mention that I recently encountered an odd bird when sitting in the yard with Plath and Freyja. This bird had a very abrasive and persistent squawk, and he hovered very closely to us—unusual for a bird. Even more unusual: the cats made no effort to try to attack him (rest assured, if they had, I would’ve stopped them). And it sounded like they were having a conversation of sorts with him. He squawked, they meowed, he squawked, they meowed, on and on. I began thinking, “Are they communicating?? And is he trying to get my attention to show me something?” A ridiculous idea, to be sure, but he just kept squawking and sitting very close to us, like he was trying to tell us something. It was both fascinating and unnerving.
So anyway, last night I was in the yard with Plath and the bird came back. Well, okay, it could’ve been a different bird, but if that’s the case, both birds looked and sounded identical. Again, this bird stayed close to us and squawked repeatedly. And again, Plath meowed in response and made no move to go after the bird. When Plath moved to a different section of the yard, the bird followed. When Plath came back, the bird followed. After a few minutes of this, I swear to god, the bird started repeatedly dive-bombing Plath. He didn’t actually touch Plath, but he flew only an inch or so above his fur when swooping over him. It was the strangest thing! I moved over to Plath’s side to protect him and the bird stopped dive-bombing him, but still sat nearby, squawking and watching us. Baffled, I began wondering if maybe the bird was out to get Plath because Plath killed one of his relatives. (There were two times when I wasn’t paying attention to what Plath was doing and he managed to kill a bird and a mouse. I buried both of them and felt horribly!) It was surreal.
Sunday marks 15 years since I took my first-ever plane ride. Why is this worth remembering? Because that plane ride inaugurated a fab two-week trip to Europe. It was a chaperoned student trip which allowed me to travel with three of my best friends (Gates, Foster, and Missy) and our favorite English teacher, along with others from our region and from other states. We started off in London/Windsor, took a ferry and bus to Paris/Versailles, took an overnight train to Berne/Lucerne, and then took a bus to Florence, Montecatini, and Rome. I can’t resist leaving a jaunty little salute to the trip on this blog, because it was…well, memorable, to say the least. I mean, when you take a cluster of 16- and 17-year-old Pennsylvania Dutch kids—none of who had ever left the country before (besides hitting Canada)—and you dump them in Europe, you get sparkling results.
I inadvertently burned off the front of Gates’s hair in London, which is probably the most memorable part of the trip. There were many other great memories, though, and here is slender sampling of them:
- I was denied entrance to the chapel at Assisi, getting screamed at in Italian by an angry monk who didn’t like my shorts
- playing “Shave and a Haircut” on the fusebox in our Montecatini hotel, causing people’s rooms to plunge into darkness at a jaunty tempo
- Foster fell asleep in the lobby of our Paris hotel and when she woke up she groggily roared “How long have I BIN here?”
- one of our fellow travelers (a guy from my high school who was a year ahead of me) had a drunken birthday party on the roof of our hotel in Rome, where he sobbed about his fear of me cutting my feet on the broken glass on our bathroom floor (it had broken glass because earlier in the evening I’d lost control of the shower hose while washing my hair and it caused the lights over the bathroom mirror to explode)
- On top of Mt. Pilatus, while I was, like, on my knees weeping from the sheer splendor of the Alps, Bill G. walked up to me, looked around at the staggeringly beautiful vista, said, “This is dope,” and then sauntered away
- on our tour bus, Missy was reading a tabloid ad for a love talisman and remarked that maybe she’d buy it; Bill G. overheard her and abruptly said, “Shit, I’ll slip you the hoagie,” before walking away
- on the Tube in London, a drunken Bill G. loudly slurred, “I really like it here in the BK,” because he was too stupid to realize that England is part of the United Kingdom, not the British Kingdom
- I crawled out onto our window ledge in Paris and shoved our contraband fast food garbage (fast food was banned from our hotel, which is why the garbage was contraband) into our neighbor’s open window
- after our tour of Westminster Abbey, Gates and I accidentally got onto a Japanese tour bus, thinking it was ours; we only realized our mistake when the seats around us were suddenly filled with dozens of Japanese tourists
- Gates and I also got trapped in a supermarket in Paris; we literally couldn’t find our way out of there
- I had to walk around Berne looking like I’d pissed myself, because my water bottle had burst a hole on the bus, soaking my shorts
- we found Gates passed out on the floor between the beds in our hotel room in Rome— and she wasn’t drunk
- Bill G. got cactus needles stuck in his back in Rome and Gates had to pick them out with Missy’s Swiss army knife
- when on the Dover-Calais ferry, Missy and I ducked down into a lower deck of the ferry and performed Mame dances (we’d been in our h.s. production of Mame three months previously), kick-ball-chaining and jazz handsing our way across the English Channel
- much snickering ensued when we realized that the dinner cruise we’d be taking on Lake Lucerne would be on a boat called the Gotthard
song heard most recently before posting: Maryland—Vonda Shepherd
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