I just returned from watching the Vikings blow their chance to make it the Super Bowl with the 55+ crowd (there was a copy of Eat, Pray, Love on the counter, which cemented the age bracket). The ladies were wearing all purple, furiously chain-smoking, and alternately wheezing and shrieking things like
"The HELL you smiling about, you SHMUCK!" (Better if you imagine the exclamation point as a middle finger instead of punctuation)
and
"I can't breathe...I think I'm having a stroke..." (Totally plausible.)
I mostly focused on making a rainbow out of peanut M&Ms. It was held at the apartment of the same woman who, when her cat chewed its stitches out last week, held the cat down and super-glued the wound closed. Never a dull moment.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
The Perpetual Tourist
So, I'm pretty sure I'm in an identity crisis.
I have always considered myself a rural girl. I camp for fun. I can use a chainsaw. Getting stuck behind a tractor while driving is routine. Probably 30% of everything I own is from LL Bean. My rural-ness was greatly underscored while on my winter break visiting Madrid and New York City, where I had to be led by the hand through metros lest I get overwhelmed, and one night bought pizza at 3am and didn't stop talking about it all week (3am!). Pardon my french, but Manhattan blows my goddamn mind. 1.5 million people all standing on the same 34 square mile patch of land. That is so many people on so little land. How do they all fit? I can't think about it or I get agitated. So many people.
And yet... I am completely out of my league in Ely. I don't hunt my own meat. I have ironic sunglasses and large headphones. I don't dogsled to work (my boss does). I don't carry four knives on me at all times (my boss' husband does). When apartment hunting I had to emphasize that I wanted both electricity and running water, which narrowed the search. Sometime I layer my clothing for style and not for warmth. I've never seen a wolf or the northern lights.
Thus, I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that I am a perpetual tourist, caught in an uncomfortable limbo where I can neither use a city bus nor skin a moose.
It appears I'm destined to stumble around, wide-eyed and in culture shock, for most of my life. May as well go buy myself a visor and fanny-pack to complete the look. Unless I'm in a smallish town with comprehensive grocery stores and a major airport within a three hour drive, but no tall buildings or public transportation or more than one movie theater. Also: Ely being what it is, I have to drive over an hour away to get my disposable camera developed, and I'm irate about this.
I have always considered myself a rural girl. I camp for fun. I can use a chainsaw. Getting stuck behind a tractor while driving is routine. Probably 30% of everything I own is from LL Bean. My rural-ness was greatly underscored while on my winter break visiting Madrid and New York City, where I had to be led by the hand through metros lest I get overwhelmed, and one night bought pizza at 3am and didn't stop talking about it all week (3am!). Pardon my french, but Manhattan blows my goddamn mind. 1.5 million people all standing on the same 34 square mile patch of land. That is so many people on so little land. How do they all fit? I can't think about it or I get agitated. So many people.
And yet... I am completely out of my league in Ely. I don't hunt my own meat. I have ironic sunglasses and large headphones. I don't dogsled to work (my boss does). I don't carry four knives on me at all times (my boss' husband does). When apartment hunting I had to emphasize that I wanted both electricity and running water, which narrowed the search. Sometime I layer my clothing for style and not for warmth. I've never seen a wolf or the northern lights.
Thus, I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that I am a perpetual tourist, caught in an uncomfortable limbo where I can neither use a city bus nor skin a moose.
It appears I'm destined to stumble around, wide-eyed and in culture shock, for most of my life. May as well go buy myself a visor and fanny-pack to complete the look. Unless I'm in a smallish town with comprehensive grocery stores and a major airport within a three hour drive, but no tall buildings or public transportation or more than one movie theater. Also: Ely being what it is, I have to drive over an hour away to get my disposable camera developed, and I'm irate about this.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Overheard in the Ely coffe shop
"You have a right to bear arms, and that's that."
"Honey, you can't say casserole. Here in the Northland we have hotdish."
"Good grief, I'm terrified that the government is going to pass that health bill and make everybody get universal health care. Do you know how expensive health insurance is? Plus you really don't need it. Last year when I slipped on the ice and broke my foot I just used a tuning fork to see if it was broken, and then wore a really tightly laced-up boot for six weeks and now I'm just fine. Health insurance would be a disaster."
Post Script: I glanced down at myself this evening and realized I was shuffling around the kitchen in hush puppy slippers and a hoodless sweatshirt, reheating tuna casserole (excuse me, hotdish) for dinner. Save me from assimilation.
"Honey, you can't say casserole. Here in the Northland we have hotdish."
"Good grief, I'm terrified that the government is going to pass that health bill and make everybody get universal health care. Do you know how expensive health insurance is? Plus you really don't need it. Last year when I slipped on the ice and broke my foot I just used a tuning fork to see if it was broken, and then wore a really tightly laced-up boot for six weeks and now I'm just fine. Health insurance would be a disaster."
Post Script: I glanced down at myself this evening and realized I was shuffling around the kitchen in hush puppy slippers and a hoodless sweatshirt, reheating tuna casserole (excuse me, hotdish) for dinner. Save me from assimilation.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Welcome to Winter Term
Ahem. I am dusting of my keyboard and resharpening my wit (ha HA!) and returning to the Northland. After a winter break even longer than the one my college gave me, I have returned to Ely for Second Trimester of Real Life. This time I'm taking Real Life classes in Working a Second Part-time Job (selling handmade anoraks designed for polar expeditions.... so you know, a lot like J.Crew), Editing Manuscripts, and Running a Marketing Campaign With No Experience. With hopefully dog sledding tossed in for a gym credit and more time devoted to making friends that aren't Hulu. All of them destined to be wild successes. Also, coldest temperatures in the lower 48 and Hawaii.
Welcome to winter term.
Welcome to winter term.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
