I've got an airport shuttle coming for me at 7:15am sharp, spiriting me away to Denver on a work trip, so I won't be around for a few days, you see. As my parting gift, however, I've got a little something for you. You don't even have to water my plants in return.
I got back from Denver on Friday afternoon, and I was exhausted.
I have not, for a very long time, read a book that has made me need to take a deep breath and have a good old cry at the end of it, a book that has had me weeping---and yet simultaneously laughing, I kid you not---through the last fifty pages, a book that I have forced myself to ration out even as I tore through it, desperately dreading the moment it would come to an end.
Now listen, here's a question I've been meaning to ask, and it's a tricky one so hold tight: when someone makes one of your photos a "favorite" on Flickr, what do you do?
In the sleepy English village where I went to boarding school for seven years, there was a row of shops that we could walk to---at first just on Saturday mornings and then, as we grew older and earned our independence, on Saturday mornings and Tuesday afternoons (provided we were wearing our blue and gold school blazers---buttoned all the way up!---and traveling in a group of three or more. Oh, you wish I were kidding, but I'm not.)
Is there anything more soul-destroying than looking for a lost contact lens? If there is, I'd like to hear about it. Because when you're looking for a lost contact lens, you see, not only are you crawling about on your hands and knees, heart pounding because, oh my god, you've just dropped four hundred bucks---in tiny clear plastic disc form---somewhere in the (suddenly) vast expanse of your living room, but you're also forced to confront, up close and personal, WITH A FLASHLIGHT EVEN, just how disgustingly unclean your apartment is.
Please say you still get zits from time to time. You do, right? I'm not the only 28-year-old who occasionally gets a pimple that obliterates the sun, moon, and stars, and all but guarantees that Todd won't talk to me in the school cafeteria between fifth and sixth periods, am I?
I've got quite a bit of travel coming up over the next few weeks and months, and while I'm looking forward to it---I've actually come to the conclusion that I feel most like myself when I'm worrying about the whereabouts of my government-issued photo ID and whether security will notice that my Ziploc bag is just a little bit bigger than quart-sized---I do also find myself having an automatic reaction whenever I think about it, and that automatic reaction is this: simultaneous bone-crunching exhaustion and a rising panic at the impending change in my routine.
Every so often I think I've got nothing to post about, that I've come to the end of my material, that nothing is going on in my life that could warrant a mention on my website, and then all of a sudden, Brother Tom comes through for me like a firefighter with an oxygen mask, and sends me an email like this
Dear Luke and Susie,
I don't know what came over me, but about a month ago, I became obsessed with this corn. Obsessed, I tell you! I buy it by the armful (69 cents a can!) and eat it with everything: as a side with roast chicken and brussels sprouts, on top of tuna mayonniase and a baked potato (that's real English pub food right there) and even just scooped straight by the spoonful from the can. I CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF THIS CORN.
When the stupid alarm went off on Thursday morning, I thought it was a joke. The stupid alarm, you see, went off at 4am, and there is little in life more unpleasant than being forcibly woken up at 4am, except for being forcibly woken up at 4am when there is no coffee in the house. So that was a fun hour between crawling out of bed and crawling into the airport. Did you know how many new curse words you could make using variations of just one curse word?
