It's a Strange World
As I headed out the door to physical therapy, the girl child begged to go with me. She didn't want to actually go with me to the appointment, she just wanted to go for a ride in the car, like an eager puppy. She just wanted to go somewhere that wasn't her bedroom. She just wanted to sit in the car. And so we went to the appointment, and she sat happily in the parking lot for an hour while I calf-raised and lunged and laddered and balanced and generally huffed and puffed and got ugly sweaty during physical therapy. (I've always wondered about the validity of the sordid stories about cancer patients not getting treatment, and heart patients not getting new valves, and patients with chronic conditions not getting seen, when I've steadily had in-person physical therapy twice a week this whole time with only a couple of cancels/reschedules. Are the other stories fabrications? Or is this a sign of my privilege? My zip code? The color of my skin?)
After the physical therapy appointment, there was a momentary break in the rain. We stopped at the park on the way home, to walk the paved trail for a bit and get some air. There were big fat daddy robins and blue jays and red-winged blackbirds lining the fence of the empty baseball field. The frogs in the marshes near the vacant soccer fields were in rare form, boasting their prowess loudly. We left the path and tiptoed through the squelchy grass to see if we could see any brave boys on the prowl. The cobra chickens nearby hissed and squawked and generally behaved as if they owned the place; the frogs dipped below the surface and continued their serenade.On the way back home, I thought about the things that were on my calendar for tonight. The girl child had derby practice. The boy child had his 5th grade concert. It should have been a night of fast food dinner in the car as we drove from event to event. Instead, we ate cheese tortellini for dinner. (The boy child ate a bagel, because...cheese.) We planned our upcoming Powerpoint party. There was a lot of "you know what sucks?" and "your life" and "you're in it" and "so's your face" sprinkled throughout the conversation.
After dinner, I walked the dog, carefully avoiding the angry man's yard. As we walked by his house, he cordially yelled out, "how are you tonight?" like we were friends and I tried to control my face like he wasn't an asshole. Dobby tried to avoid all of the giant puddles and generally walked down the center of the road. It didn't matter; no cars were coming. The boy child rode by on a skateboard, my phone in his hand, as he duo-chatted with one of his best friends and showed him the neighborhood.
As we neared the house, my next-door neighbor came running out of her door. "I have a confession to make!" she called out.
"Yes?" I asked. I thought maybe she had met the angry man, too?
"I've been reading your blog," she confessed.
"Wait, what?" I asked, surprised. "How did you find it?"
"Well, I've been hanging out on Twitter a lot, and I got a notification that someone near me was also on Twitter, and I saw your tweets about your blog."
I laughed. It's a strange world when your next door neighbor (whom you rarely talk to and who has no idea that you're a writer) discovers your blog via Twitter.
"Anyway," she said, holding out a jar, "are you still out of yeast? Because I have yeast."
😉
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