Shedding those unwanted pounds
When I picked up the Bean I noticed the vet had lost a substantial amount of weight but I didn’t comment on it because I was busy with getting her settled and greeted and then showing him my leg where I was attacked by the dog – leaving the house yesterday morning one of the two big German Shephards attacked me in the hallway and bit a chunk into my thigh. The dogs are being evicted according to the Can’s management – I’m not the first one they have attacked. But as I was checking out several women were around the counter paying their exorbitant vet fees and all commented to him how good he looked and he beamed and didn’t seem to want to leave the little round.
H was doing my hair and told me that his wife has lost her shape and that he himself spends two hours a day in the gym because he loves it and is almost addicted to it and said that if he doesn’t work out, he doesn’t eat that day and he said “do you think I’m obsessed?” and I was like, ur, um, slightly. And his next client came in and sat in the chair talking to us and said the driver’s ed teacher at the high school was given a DUI when he drove himself and the student into the canal the other day.
Lunch with BJ at Parkway and he ordered the catfish and shrimp poboy and it was mounds of both and he could barely finish one half – not the guy I used to know who could have perhaps polished off two in one sitting. He’s here on a competition that his firm won – a design for a building that offers nothing to New Orleans but a theoretical idea that will never be built, no one will be able to live in it, and yet the AIA bestowed their blessing and rewarded them for mentally masturbating over design. Fucking architects – how about building something that means something, that does something, that has a purpose – now is not the time for art – we don’t have the luxury of time when June 1 is pressing forward and lots of people still don’t have a place to live. My own contractor is moving around between properties not finding home in any of them.
Another flat bike tire replaced, several dogged calls about wood windows from the early morning meeting with K, my contractor, who is shipping her husband off to go work on a project so she can have some peace of mind. She shrugs “he’s codependent” and laughs it off. She tells me she has fired the woman who “didn’t” order my terrace decking material and what can you do? You gotta believe her and go with it because the decking materials mean little when it is a flasher I need the most. I told L, the plumber who reminds me of Ralph Cramden from the Honeymooners, that I need a flasher and he said “hey Walter, flash Rachel would ya” – ha ha, very funny – all my subcontractors are very funny. When I came back with BJ, L said, “showing him the tour of what hasn’t been done?” – ha ha ha.
Went to a party last night at N’s house – graduating poets – J, whose two sets of parents were there and who is adorable, “sit there Rachel, and I’ll take care of you” – I said “you are on buddy” – then his darling A who I just almost crawled in her lap she was entertaining me so much. And T, who G put in her radar, who is cute no doubt, but A is way more entertaining. And J was there having lost yet more weight and her Victorian face with those now larger eyes and her new curvy shape, she still watches from the sidelines wanting to join in but not knowing quite when the moment is to leap. And A came midway, with J still out of town, they are both enjoying the success of their well received books and have been doing tandem book tours, and her little pearl earrings and little necklace and her tiny waist and fingers from being a model for years before finding her author’s voice – N and I were sitting by her purse and I said “let’s go through it and see if we find something of interest” but it was crammed too full to dissect.
And the other J was engaging as he spoke about his three different structures of poetry and how he and others approached form – I told him I admire poetry most of all, along with singing and sculpture, as great art forms that I seem to have no entry into and he said, you write, so you could write poetry and I said no, no, no, it is a visual art and I don’t have talents in that area. And M was there with L, who sat across from me and wanted to tell me all the things that are wrong in her life and I said, honey, flip it, you have the power to change all of what you just said, and she said I know that but yet I still can’t, and I said you can, just say that and you will, and she was hunkered in a weird self-effacing stance but later into the night when she was leaving she seemed a little brighter – but she sounded like she wanted to dump M and didn’t know how to do it – why she would choose a forum where M was an invitee and she a guest to leak this information to me, an unknown, is strange but maybe natural, to seek counsel from somebody who listens. But it all revolved around her body, because it has caused her to gain weight she said – the whole ordeal – but I think it isn’t the 30 lbs she wants to lose, but instead the 200 lbs sitting next to her that will make her feel slimmer, better.
Weird dreams last night – could not turn on my right side at all with my aching tennis elbow and my new lump on my thigh from the dog bite – so trying to flip this way and that to get comfortable in the midst of weird psycho dreams and at one point I opened my eyes and staring back at me was a blue one and a brown one – Arlene – probably happy to be home but curious as to what makes me so restless at night – she thumped her tail and licked my left arm.
S is on his way down to LA to see his brother and babysit his niece and nephew this Saturday night – perplexing – we carved through yet more layers of our marriage and how the landscape shifted and he wonders now that I know my mind in the midst of all we have undergone, what is it that I am offering the other at the end of the day? Curious question.
Today we vote for our mayor and hopefully begin again.