Atomictumor

Tonight, October and I will stay up past our bedtimes in the pursuit of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We’re both planning on dressing up; October as Hermione and I as Professor McGonagall. I was hoping to go as Luna Lovegood, but can’t locate a long blond wig at this late hour.

Bos first brought home Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in fall of 1999, when October was barely a year old. Bos and I read it, and then read all the ones that followed. And last year, seven years after Harry Potter came to our house, October began reading them for herself.

I am grateful that we have this final tale to experience together.

***

Update:  Had a great time last night - ended up bringing Spotz along for the ride as well.  He makes for a very convincing Malfoy.  October had a last minute wardrobe change and was the best looking Ginny Weasley there.  Photos can be found here.  We’re trying to read (at least) the first few chapters as a family, so we’re only on Chapter 3 right now.  I’m afraid to look at the internet or leave my home…

[Edit: I tried to post this at work today. That didn’t work. Here it is, later in the day.]

I had to run over to Kroger on my lunch break today. I needed to get some hors d’oeuvre type food for a meeting tonight. I wanted to get some fancy crackers and cheese.

Now I’ve been to that Kroger on Middlebrook Pike once before to get a rotisserie chicken, so I was vaguely familiar with it. I knew that the beer is on one side of the building, fruit and corn on the cob is on the opposite side and potato salad is in the rear middle. I didn’t need any of those things, as much as I wanted roast chicken, potato salad and beer for lunch. (Man, that sounds good right now.) I just needed fancy crackers and cheese.

So I get in this place and they’re remodeling it. Tile is torn up, there’s a painter painting an office door, little old ladies are wondering around. I have no idea where the fancy crackers and cheese are. After two walks back and forth I found the crackers over by the frozen foods. Mind you that the food goods are divided by batteries, notebooks, panty hose and the frozen dinners. Why is this?

Anyway, I get the fancy crackers in hand. Now, I’m off to find the cheese, but what do they call this stuff? I don’t want just any old velveeta. I want specialty cheese. Sure enough I find a sign hanging from the ceiling over in the produce section that say “SPECIALTY CHEESE“. Woot! I even got the name right. Then I notice that the cooler looks like Goliath got a hold of it. Shelves are laying empty, stacked helter skelter. There’s no specialty cheese to be found. Then I notice two women working at scraping the greasy remains of a deep frier off the floor over by the deli. One of them tells me that, “oh yeah, specialty cheese is by the deli meats.” Indeed, there where the speciaty cheeses. I got a cheese ball, paid and left.

Chicken sounds better to me now.

When I was in late high school and early college, I used to take these road trips down to Athens, GA. I would go alone and stay two or three days, visiting coffee shops, walking around downtown, observing the locals, writing in notebooks. These trips were great therapy for me. As a teenager, I felt burdened by social pressures and expectations; but in Athens, where I knew no one, I felt like I could be any Miss Eaves I wanted to be. And when I returned home from these trips, I could settle back into myself and my roles feeling refreshed and renewed.

Fast forward nine+ years to last Friday. Having felt especially droopy and stressed lately, I decided to take myself out of the house. Alone. No kids, no expectations. Lucky for me, Christabel and the Jons were playing at Alive After 5 at the KMA.

I’ve done very few things by myself since getting hitched and having kids, and going to this show was reminiscent of my Athens trips. Walking into the KMA in my striped knee-high socks and looking at the crowd, I was overwhelmed at the sensation of not knowing anyone (with one exception, the band’s violinist). I felt so wonderfully anonymous. The tables were already filled, mostly with older folks, so I got myself a glass of wine at the cash bar and chose a spot off to the side where I could people watch. And I watched and watched and watched. I blogged it in my head the whole time - unfortunately, my brain doesn’t have a ’save and continue editing’ feature.

After a little while, Christabel and the Jons came on. I must thank AT for introducing me to this band. I had heard of them before, having gone to middle and high school with the violinist, but hadn’t taken the time to listen to them until they were recommended by AT. I was positively giddy the first time I listened to their album, Love and Circumstances, and then, watching them play, became equally giddy. They are amazing. They inspire my droopy, stressed-out self to let go and just dance (or at least stand and tap my toes with a goofy, star-struck grin on my face).

Though I didn’t know anyone there at first, that changed as the night went on. First, I saw some friends of the ‘tumor…I’m sorry I didn’t come and introduce myself. Social anxiety can be a real bitch sometimes, and I don’t say that tritely. Later, I saw a girl from high school that I vaguely remembered, and finally, an old friend from high school. Despite the original joy of my own anonymity and the anonymity of the crowd, it was good to see familiar faces.

I had a great time. Fortunately, they play quite often, and I hope to see them again soon, perhaps accompanied by my dear Bos or maybe October. Having time alone is good, and absolutely necessary sometimes, but sharing things you love with those you love is good, too.

So, I mentioned that I needed to get the heater fixed, and lo, I got the heater fixed.  The HVAC guy, Chuck, just took off.

I was working at the time on a blissfully slow day (next week will be hellweek at work, so this is the calm before the storm, evidently), and was able to sit outside and shoot the shit while he worked.  Turns out, the problem was that the intake on the unit itself was all clogged up with 10 odd years of dust, so not enough air was making through to the whatsit, and it was going into thermal meltdown, or something.  Those are technical terms, now, so I don’t expect all of you to understand.

We had to take apart the attractive fence blocking access to the thing, which was fun.  Now I have to either put the thing back together again (Daco, looking at you) or leave it sitting in my yard as is my redneck wont.

As we were talking, I mentioned how the letter I got was kinda irritating me.  He told me he knew all about medical bills, that his first wife died of cancer about 6 years ago.

We talked for a bit of loss, and life, and how things keep going.  He was (as is everybody else) amazed that it was just last November, and that it was so sudden.

We talked of the experience of feeling somebody thats dead.  Feeling them in a way that you know isn’t in your imagination, but in a way that you couldn’t possibly expect somebody else to understand.

He wound up getting married again, and we talked about how thats going, loving somebody else when you still have a first love.  He says it works out pretty well, but I still have some reservations.

Still tho, its amazing seeing the kind of things that happen.  Its hard to believe in coincidences when they hit so close to home like this.

The bill was nice and cheap too.  Heaters workin fine!