Porch Tales

I spent a large part of the afternoon on my grandmother’s porch. I am a big fan of porches, probably in part because my parents don’t really have one, at least not one to sit on. They are good communal gathering places, but also perfect for reading a book and being slothlike. My sister and I had just finished a rousing game of badminton and retreated to the porch to split a Pepsi and cool off. (I’m not kidding about the rousing part—we play some sort of made up badminton version without nets, or scoring, where you can hit off a bounce and serve however you want. Extra kudos for jumping, knocking things out of trees, especially graceful or dramatic arm movements, or stomping through pachysandra to get to the birdie. Also, my sister’s badminton “intimidation face” is not to be missed.)

Anyway, we sat on the porch, as we have innumerable times before. Since it faces the street, which is moderately trafficked, you can get in some good people watching. We didn’t see any crimes, ala Rear Window, but we did start making up stories about the people who were driving by. It turned silly fast. For instance:

--A truck filled with dining room furniture and five guys drives by: “The guys just graduated from JCC [which is the local community college] and they are getting an apartment. Only two of them are moving in, the rest of their buddies are just there to help. Once they are through moving in today, they will order pizza and have a beer and watch Fight Club.” (I started to say they would watch “the fights,” and then realized that it is no longer 1910 and people do not go to or watch “the fights” anymore, but I still got mocked for the Fight Club switch, especially since I ended up saying “the fights…Club.” Sigh.)
--Older couple in blue station wagon: “adorable grandparents go watch their grandson’s soccer game. No, baseball game, since it’s not the fall.”
--Sedate looking elderly woman in immaculate car: “That woman is drunk.”
--Younger skinny guy in blue car: “Musician on the way to a gig. It is his mom’s car, so he’s being especially careful.”
--Younger skinny guy in blue car, returning from the other direction with a child in the backseat: “Musician on the way home from picking up his cousin/sister/niece/daughter from school. It is his mom’s car, so he’s being especially careful.”
--A man bicycling by, wearing a tie-dye shirt, a fedora and tiny shorts: “Well, he is probably high.”
--Woman in blue car with loud muffler: “Her muffler needs to be fixed, but she doesn’t have enough money to do so. She will have to sell drugs/sell her body/sell Avon/work extra hours to pay for it. Also, she might be pregnant but she doesn’t know it yet.”
--Older couple in red car: “They just moved here from Wichita. They’re not sure what to make of it yet, but they like the lake a lot.”
--A red truck with a flatbed attached, followed closely by another car: “The man in the truck stole it from the woman in the car, and she is chasing him to get back the flatbed. She doesn’t care if he keeps the truck. It was her ex-husband’s. They just finalized their divorce yesterday, and she cleaned him out, which he deserved because he was a total cheater. The only thing he had left was the truck, but he left it at her house so he could go out and drink away his sorrows. He still hasn’t returned from the bars, and now his truck is gone too.” (My sister the English Major told me that this was needlessly complicated.)

After awhile, my grandmother came out to sit with us and got caught up in the act. We speculated about her neighbors, most of who have moved in within the last five years, so we don’t really know any of them. So now, the woman in the little white house and who never opens her shades is probably allergic to sunlight (or is a vampire!) The people in the tan house are hard to pin down because they come and go so much, and there seem to be about three generations moving in and out, so we conjectured about who was related to whom. The people in the gray duplex also keep their shades drawn, but maybe because they are participating in something illicit. The boy across the street’s backpack was too loose for him and kept hitting him in the backside, which can’t have been comfortable for him. A man returned with groceries, for his wife who will not go out in the sun. And so on.

In short: a perfect, sunny, giggle-filled afternoon.

Notes from the Homefront

I came home a week ago and have been a lax blogger, because, well, I've had non-computer things to do! (and thank the goddesses for that.) I've slept, had loads of fresh asparagus, seen a few friends, spent some quality grandmother time, and watched two of the Thin Mans (for about the 700th time, but those movies never get old). I went bike riding for the first time in ages, went to Wegmans (of course), played with the cat, and started Anna Karenina--and am for real going to finish it this time! Most importantly, I got to be a proud big sister when my kid sister graduated from college on Sunday, with a whole heap of honors and awards. It was a nice commencement, decidedly not as pretty as mine, but with a much better speaker--Bill Pullman. He talked a lot about the geography of WNY and how special it is, and how a sense of place is very important, all of which I totally agree with. I graduated from college two years ago today, egads, so I've been feeling very nostalgic this week as well.

More blog posts to come once I load some pictures--my family has been on a mini-vacation for the past two days at Griffis Sculpture Park, Letchworth State Park, the Jell-o Museum (YES), and Genesee Country Village, with a tasty dinner and a beyond-lovely bed and breakfast included.

I was going to say something cranky about how it would be great if it stopped raining, but my mom just told me that the clouds have parted (for the first time in quite a few days, here) and the moon is out. I've just been to look--what a moon! HUGE, and looking very cool and eerie with wispy clouds drifting across it.

Apropos of nothing--I'm listening to the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan as I read this over, and at the end of "Talking World War III Blues," he says, "Well nighttime passed and now it seems, everybody is having them dreams. Everybody sees hisself, walking around with no one else. Half the people can be part right all of the time, and some of the people can be all right part of the time, but all the people can't be all right all of the time. I think Abraham Lincoln said that. I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours. I said that."

Goodnight!

Blooming-ton!

My April posts, at least the recent ones, are not happy. Because I wasn't. However, May is already an improvement--I've laughed more in the past three days than I did for probably the last three weeks. Being done with finals has a lot to do with it, as is the fact that I am going home in a few days for all of May. I found out yesterday (after a lot of funding craziness surrounding the Fulbright, FLAS, and Congress) that I got admitted to one of our intensive language classes this summer. I'll be taking Arabic 1 from mid-June to mid-August, for four hours a day. We went bowling on Wednesday (I LOVE bowling, despite being genuinely terrible at it) and last night went to our usual (before we got so busy) Thursday hangout for $3 margaritas and cheese fries in honor of it being both cinco de mayo and Karl Marx's birthday. I've done a weeks worth of dishes and have to do about four loads of laundry tomorrow, but I am DONE being intellectual for a little while--I got a cozy mystery at the library and am going to a friend's in a bit for movie watching and pie eating, so those are all good things too.

I got my hair done this morning, and wandered around downtown a bit, and then on to campus to run some errands. It is graduation weekend and it is mental. I had 500ish in my graduating class, but it's obviously a much different ballgame here. I think the graduate graduations were today and most of the undergraduate ones are tomorrow, but there were people all over. It has finally stopped raining, and the plus side is that the grass is very very green. IU's flower budget is really big (I don't know how true that is, but multiple people have told me that) and today it showed! Here is what I saw today:Downtown, man selling art on the street. He's there a lot. It's nothing to write home about, art-wise, but not bad either.


Now, I should mention that my undergrad institution is stunningly pretty. However, it is not too shabby here either! There is no quad substitute, though (nor a substitute for the people I sat on the quad with).
Limestone and towers, and creeks and bridges.The fountain outside the art building--you're looking at the rare books library. The auditorium is to the left, which all these graduation-people were leaving.
And flowers! There are a lot of red and white hanging baskets, but all the graduation people were getting their pictures taken with those, so I went to the ground plants.

And looking at other things that are brightly colored:
My dinner last night--strawberry fool. It should be strawberry-rhubarb fool, but I didn't see any rhubarb (and would rather just pick it from my grandmother's garden when I'm home), so I just doubled the strawberries. Mmmm.
....and my hair is a little purple now.