Good Idea/Bad Idea Recap of Last Friday Night

It was hot but not so hot that I felt uncomfortable in a long sleeved blouse and jeans. Before stepping outside, I had changed my shirt into something a little dressier but not sexy. I tied a bow around my waist, put in some dangly earrings, touched up my eye makeup, slipped on some flats and left my room find some dinner at a restaurant a few blocks away.

Lit only by a few streetlights I passed a church, some government buildings, a dark café and another church. As I approached the shadowy rear of the public library I hear a cough and a low voice. The street was empty and the next light provided by the city of Tallahassee was a block away.

I like to think of myself as a rational person, not prone to panic but I heard the cough again and could not see the cougher. In this moment I immediately regretted all of the crime shows I had watched about serial killers and social deviants, by which, I am sickly fascinated. Attempting to banish the images of bodies abandoned along the side of the highway and (ironically) trying to protect myself from harm, I stepped away from the bushes and toward the street. Apparently this sudden movement alarmed an oncoming driver because they honked but I was more afraid of the person that sounded like they were inside the giant waste bin I was passing than the approaching SUV.

After that, I walked a little bit faster and was relieved to see two frat boys that smiled at me as I walked past. At least they could do some damage to creepy dumpster man. When I arrived in a plaza filled with light and co-eds, I was relieved to be with humans that looked safer than mystery monsters from Planet Dumpville.

I found the seafood restaurant recommended by the hotel and was told by the hostess that it would be a thirty-minute wait for a table. She recommended the bar, which is not really my style, but the idea of waiting around for a table seemed impractical. I sidled up to the bar, ordered my water with lime and asked for a menu.

Because I wasn’t completely wasted and falling out of my clothes, it took me some time to get the bartender to take my order. Granted, it was a Friday night, I was by myself, not drinking and sitting at a bar, not dressed like a prostitute and so I must have seemed like a low priority. When I finally got the barkeep (yep, I am a nerd, I just said that) to take my order he talked me into the Cajun jambalaya. It is the South, right? Who visits this region without tasting local cuisine? It turned out to be a dumb idea; it was greasy (I should have guessed it being famous local cuisine) and my body was not happy with me for even eating half of it. Feeling heavy and slow, I walked back to the hotel on a street with more illumination.

Let’s talk about “good ideas” and “bad ideas.”

(Seemingly) Good Ideas: finding food when you are hungry, exploring a new town, walking instead of driving, being seated faster, asking for recommendations, sampling local cuisine, not dressing as if you are looking for evening clients, taking a new route home to see the sights

Bad Ideas: walking alone at night through unknown neighborhoods or down unlit streets, walking into oncoming traffic to protect yourself from a cough, watching crime shows if you are a wimp with an overly active imagination, not showing some skin or drinking if you want attention from a bartender, eating a dish with three kinds of fatty meat late at night

Most of the ideas that seemed to be good at the time, turned out to be what we call, “experiences.” I guess that is life: trying new stuff and making mistakes- maybe a lot of them- but taking your chances that you don’t die while trying something different.

This Weird Morning was Brought to You by the Word: Stress

As a general rule, hair ties are very useful when you have long hair and serious work to do. They can be practical or give you the right, let's-get-down-to-business prop. I find it to be an asset. So before I left the house this morning, I went looking for such an article and found one sitting on the floor next to my bed. I picked it up, put it on my wrist and left for work.

On the brief drive over, I followed a white minivan for a few blocks. I was surprised when it pulled over and picked someone up off of the sidewalk. The second time it stopped and picked up an additional pedestrian a block and a half from the first person, I shrugged my shoulders and kept driving. Sometime during this interaction, I looked down at my wrist and noticed that I had two hair rubber bands, instead of just one. The time between finding one in my house and leaving was very short and I didn’t recall finding another one in the car. Somehow one had turned into two. I wrote it off as a weird morning; considering I was following behind the random, unmarked minivan bus.

When I walked into work, I put my purse away began to organize a pile of receipts that resembled the dimensions of the Sears tower. (This was a busy month.) As I looked down at the stack of papers my hands were sorting through, out of the corner of my eye I noticed something beyond comprehension: three elastic hair bands.

Sometimes it feels like I am watching a bad edit of my life where the script supervisor wasn't paying attention and there are continuity problems all over the place. Recently, I told a friend that I have lapses of memory. For example, I will be sure that I haven’t filed a report and I will remind myself repeatedly to get it done only to find out I have already done it. Or I will swear I clocked-out only to find that I need to make a correction to my time card. My friend was nice but responded with something like, “Oh dear, that’s bad.” Which, although delivered kindly, made me feel worse.

Right now I am attributing all of this weirdness to stress and not to a brain tumor.
At least I hope that is what the problem turns out to be... the stress not the cancer.

Full Moon over the Water

Every time I look out the window of an airplane, I feel like a kid. Flashbacks of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” come to mind as I see the cars and buildings pass below me. To those around me, I must look like a newbie to the flying scene, staring intently as we make the final descent. This time it was dark outside and Tallahassee and the outlying towns were just clusters of light broken up by marshland reflecting the most romantic full moon I have ever witnessed.

There is something quiet and small-town about Tallahassee even though it is the capital city. As I was driving from the airport into the downtown area, I began to expect familiar sights, a strange sensation, feeling like I had come home but not recognizing any neighborhoods or buildings. My mind was registering that this was North Carolina and that I should be seeing the Beltroute if I would just drive a bit farther.

But it wasn’t home. I checked into my hotel, had some dinner and went to sleep.

Today I ate lunch in what is labeled “Old City Cemetery” on the map. It sits behind a Baptist church and is full of wrought iron gates, palm trees and squirrels. I walked past the graves of a husband and wife. One inscription read, “Forever with the Wind and the Sea,” and the other, “She made the Earth more Beautiful.”

I passed by the graves of children and then that of Thomas Baltzell, Jr. An obelisk sitting alone surrounded by a rusting gate was carved with, “Born March 19th, 1832. Died Oct. 30th 1858. He was drowned in the Harbor of Apalachicola in the endeavour to rescue a child. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” I don’t recall wild daisies growing anywhere else in the cemetery but on his grave. Maybe it was Nature’s subtle way of honoring this young man on his birthday.

I munched on my gyro and looked at the marker then I drove to the beach, stuck my foot in the harbor of Apalachicola, climbed to the top of an adjacent lighthouse and looked over the water lit again by the fullest moon I have ever seen and drove home.

Capital "E" for Experience

Bobsledding has been described to me as "being strapped into a garbage can and kicked off a cliff;" having experienced this for myself this week, I would say that is a pretty accurate description.

Thursday morning, I arrived at Olympic Park and signed a waiver saying that I would excuse their organization from any liability including “DEATH.” (It was in bold capital letters on the document in the case that you think I am being overdramatic.)

When the time to sled came, I was put in what looked like a motorcycle helmet, told to keep my feet flat in the sled, shrug my shoulders to keep my neck from bobbing around, hold my back up straight to let the 3-4 Gs of force to stack my spinal column instead of push it so that I wouldn’t slip a disc. They told me to hold onto the ropes inside of this enormous fiberglass shell and then they pushed me down 40 stories of ice.

At first it felt manageable. I was keeping my spine stacked and my shoulders shrugged and I thought I was going to make it but as the speed picked up I began to feel this pressure on my back that I could not fight. It was as if someone was pushing my body flat in the sled. I kept hitting my head on the person in front of me and eventually on the sides of the fiberglass can as we got whipped around curves. I remember thinking, When is this going to be over? Death is probably around the next bend.

Upon arrival at the bottom I had vertigo and when the sled operators told me to put my arms in the air and stand, I could hardly tell which direction was up. My brain may have been a wee bit jostled. I was grateful that there was no food in my stomach as anything in my belly would have been on the ice after that ride.

When I tell people that I went bobsledding, they are jealous and say, “That must have been so much fun!” The consensus among those who also rode with me, including those who sat in the fourth position like me, was that it wasn’t fun but more of an Experience, with a capital E.

Water with a Lime, Please?

This week I spent some time in a tiny town, shooting a segment for the show I am production managing. To describe this place I would say, “Imagine the middle of nowhere and then think of a place twice as remote.” And there we were, after hours of driving through winding canyons and past billowing smokestacks, we arrived at the local high school and introduced ourselves to the principal. He was delighted to walk us around the school and show us the trophy cases that gleamed with impressive athletic awards including several state championship trophies and an Olympic torch. We were led into the new gym and I swear it was like stepping into the 1950s. Twinkle lights, columns, painted stars and tulle framed the entire junior class as they learned their dance for the promenade.

Do not do a double take. You did read that last sentence correctly; the class was learning a synchronized dance for the PROM. The whole scene was so charming I got my face stuck with the corners of my mouth lifted for the rest of the day.

After shooting in the high school we went to the only non-chain restaurant in town. The parking lot was filled with potholes and the sign outside advertising soup and ribs also read “Big Mamas.” We walked past the counter behind which you could see the grubby kitchen, then the “salad bar.” We sat down an were approached by a waitress. I ordered water with a lime and the woman looked up at me from her notepad, cocked her head, nodded and walked away. Tony said, “Well, any hope of blending in was just destroyed.” Paul raised the pitch of his voice and said, “Can I have a water….. with a lime?” Then he looked at me and laughed. I punched him in the shoulder.

When the waitress returned, balanced on the edge of my glass were two wedges of what could hardly pass as a lime. The peel looked like the skin of a dying iguana: brown, rough and spotted. I have quite a bit of experience with limes and I am pretty sure they have to sit out for six months before they could even hope to look as sickly as these did. “Sailors used to pack limes on ships prevent scurvy. Those things had to be on the ships for months, right?” More mockery ensued and continued for the rest of the afternoon. I folded the limes up in several napkins so I didn’t have to look at their rotting skin. The waitress must have noticed because she glared at me the rest of the time. She took our orders, “Would you like a salad or fries with that?” I said, “The salad please.” “You can go up and help yourself whenever you like.” Remembering the aforementioned salad bar in quotation marks, I quickly changed my order, “Maybe I will have the fries after all.”

When we walked up to the front to pay the bill (it took me a long time to figure out I had to walk to the counter to pay… it has been so long since I have been in a restaurant where that is the custom) the girl huffed and puffed as I asked her to write me an itemized receipt. So, by this time I had made myself into a public nuisance.

I used to love the idea of living in a remote place. The serenity of small town life and the beauty of the open sky always enchanted me. However, visiting a town 100 miles past Nowhere this week, reminded me that I have become more fond of civilization than the wild countryside. I think I am okay with that, mostly because sometimes a girl just wants a fresh lime with her water.