february 20
I don't know how many of you do this, but during a particularly obnoxious bout of insomnia the other night, I lay there thinking about what I wanted to write about today. I had this idea, stemming from the fact that I'd done something that I'd never done before, yesterday. Hang a shower curtain. Perhaps this isn't a monumentally exciting thing, but it's something I've never done before--ditto for actually going to the store to pick out a shower curtain. I just tried to find an image of what I picked out for the sake of you knowing exactly what I was talking about, but then realized that I'm not really going to talk about it beyond saying: It is a clear shower curtain with dots. The dots are blue and green. I like it. The shower curtain has nothing to do with anything, except to illustrate that as I hung it, I said to myself "Self, this is something you've never done before! A whole new experience!" and then I realized that I'd had another first this month: I went to the grocery store and bought a bag of charcoal. A bag of charcoal! Again, this doesn't sound like much, but it was pretty cool, standing there, debating which one, how much, brand. Is there a difference? I have no idea.
So, in bed, I was thinking that it might be interesting and hopefully funny to make a list of some of the house-related things I've never done, like hang a shower curtain or buy a bag of charcoal, but then I began writing. Starting with: "I don't know how many of you do this..." I went on to begin my list. Know what? It was just about not funny. The longer I wrote, the more I realized that I wasn't even being remotely interesting. This is not, of course, to say that I'm always fascinating, but usually when I set out to be funny, I'm funny. What I'd written? Not funny.
You know when your mind wanders to things just as you're drifting off--witty comebacks, perfect lines of poetry, the way you should have handled something, but didn't? The entry I wrote as I lay there was funny. It was. But we all make that decision: get up and write it down, and risk waking yourself fully or just say sternly "Remember this! This is important!" Neither work, of course. You either wake in the morning with indecipherable scribbles on paper ("first thing, the car. then, the tree") or a vague idea of what you wanted to say, and for me, no matter how hard I try, I can never write the late night thought the next day.
What this means for you is that you all only know that I've done two new things this month. Not how I thought this entry was going to play out ("Things I've never done/Things I do really well") and all the things I'd originally said, but deleted. Not why I hung the shower curtain or bought the charcoal, and really, do either of those things matter? Do you need the back story of either? Certainly, you don't, but do you want it? Here you go: in my bathroom, there has always been a shower door. Ugly. Emblazoned with leaping fish of some kind, they were there when Nick got the house. Who wanted to spend the money on new shower doors when the fish were perfectly functional? For years, we had the same shower doors. They came in handy when bathing unwilling dogs. Because they weren't smoked, I was always looking out the window in the morning to check the weather. A few months ago, tragedy. We saw a giant stain on the kitchen ceiling. The doors were leaking out onto the bathroom floor. Not wanting the bathroom floor to wind up in the kitchen, the doors had to come down. Rather than replacing them with a new, possibly equally ugly thing, Nick hung a rod, and bought a plain, opaque curtain.
The new one came from Target. Of course, we didn't NEED to get it, because how many people only go out and get what they absolutely need? What good would life be if we only reached for what we NEEDED, ignoring what we wanted? We didn't need it because, as I just said, we'd gotten one when we got the opaque one. The best thing about the new one, if you must know, is the way the dots cast shadows on the walls when the nightlight is the only thing on. Enough about that.
I got Nick a grill. It was sort of for Valentine's Day, but I gave it to him early, because I was amused by it. And really, for $9.99, you have no excuse not to go get one. I got it for 25. About a week after I presented it to him, I decided that it was time to grill something, and off I went to the market for porterhouse steaks and a bag of charcoal.
Nick did whatever it is you're supposed to do with a grill and fire, and I stayed within the warm confines of the house, marinating (and, by the way, if you pronounce it "marry-eh-nating", you are wrong and you make me want to claw my eyes out. It's MAR-UH-NATING. Thank you) the meat (which, after writing, I smirkingly noticed brought up my unintentional retarded sexual innuendo count up to two for this entry) and roasting the potatoes, while Nick shivered with a beer outside.
The steaks were perfect. The shower curtain is perfectly unremarkable. This doesn't even remotely resemble what I wanted to write, as I lay awake in bed, but isn't that what's cool about life? The thrill of not quite knowing how and where everything is going to end up, even if you're just talking about nothing. Which I unquestionably am.
the other day - home - email - tomorrow