Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Overheard ... and seen

In the Las Vegas airport, waiting at the gate, over the public address system: "Will the Venezuelan aerobics team please report to baggage carousel 1! Venezuelan aerobics team ... baggage carousel 1! Thank you."

--------

In the San Francisco airport, waiting at the gate, from a early-twenty-something student doing some sort of high-tech internship, on the phone to him mom: "Frankly, Mom, I've learned ... wel, I've learned that Greg is not a very nice person. We're supposed to be sharing a rental car, you know, like you worked out with his mom, but he's always using it and never putting gas in and I don't even get to drive it. You have to call his mom, Mom. I've really changed my mind about him, Mom. I mean, well, I asked him to buy toilet paper because we ran out, and like, just to see what would happen, you know? And, it was like four days and he didn't buy any! What? ... That's not the point, Mom, don't even ask, okay? It was really gross."

---------

Munchkin, muttering to herself quietly, as she clambered up on a chair outside the C-B-, our weekend brunch spot: "This is the chair you sit in when you are sad. You sit with Mommy. On her knee. With a Kleenex. This is the chair you sit in when you are sad."

[Our brunch was marred by tantrums: when she would lose it, I would take her outside to sit on my lap and calm down, explaining that no one wants to listen to yelling toddlers when they are eating their brunch, and that she can't eat pancakes and cry at the same time, so we were just going to relax for a minute, and I would wipe her tears.]

----------

I put Munchkin's clothes on the line to dry. It feels good: the sun is warm and the wind is cooling and the grass is soft and damp under my bare feet; I remember my Mom hanging up our clothes when I was little; it's nice to take a little break from all the reading and writing and planning I'm doing, a simple physical task. I love how they look when I'm done:



A little line of shorts and tshirts and dresses, bright summer colours. I can see them from my kitchen, and from my office. It's soothing.

15 comments:

S said...

great vignettes, mimi. i like the photo, too -- so cheery.

Jenifer said...

I feel like I am operating in short, productive bursts and then the rest fades away.

I love clothes on the line, they smell so good and it does somehow relax you to see those little items fluttering in the breeze.

Amy Urquhart said...

Hanging out clothes to dry is like therapy for me. It's one of my favourite summer rituals.

Excuse me, I have to go throw on a load of laundry...

Bon said...

hanging clothes soothes me too. especially since it's been of the few tasks allowed to me this spring and summer...it made me feel virtuous, a contributor.

loved the "overheards." but seriously, did you get your mom to call your friends' moms when they disappointed you in your TWENTIES?!? is this generation weird or was i just unknowingly abandoned at a young age?

cinnamon gurl said...

Ha ha! I love those passive aggressive roommate toilet paper issues... he should have just stashed his own supply secretly.

To answer Bon - that generation is WEIRD!

kittenpie said...

The t.p. situation is cracking me up. NO pun intended.

But the laundry - how lovely. We have a tree smakc in the midst of our backyard, so not enough room to have a line, but I remember hanging up my sister's wee laundry as a teenager in the summer.

Beck said...

Poor tp kid.
My clothesline goes into a shed, where a raccoon spent the spring. Going. If you know what I mean. My husband cleaned it up, but it's just never going to feel clean enough for me to enter the shed again.

carlydee said...

*sigh* Oh, the spontaneity of airports!

That picture is beautiful. It made me want to close my eyes and think of sunny, cool Spring rather than sunny, sweaty Summer. =]

Melanie D. said...

Great post!
I would love to look at my window at those clothes too, alas, I have no line to hang them on.

Tracey said...

aww, those clothes on the line make me feel all warm and squishy inside.

Kyla said...

I'm glad neither of the twenty-somethings in this house have trouble remembering the toilet paper.

I've never hung clothes on a line!

Mandy said...

I like the line... We had one too. None here though. Maybe Vancouver's considered too rainy?

Run ANC said...

Ha! I can just hear the questions the Mom was asking the tp kid.

Cheryl said...

I like the tp thing-that's hilarious. And in to be twenty-something and ask mother to call another mother...that's pitiful.

Munchkin's little clothes are so sweet. I love the girly colors.

11111111 said...

Aw, I want a line in the back garden like my mother had, too. I don't have a convenient place for one, instead I use that rack-type deal--it's just not as good.