Barb’s Burblings

My boss brought in flowers for a celebration we had this morning in honor of my two latest books. They were quite pretty, and she gave them to us after the party was over. Luckily, I had driven to work, so I didn’t have to take the flowers with me on the bus. And, I discovered, they fit perfectly into my cupholder:

Isn’t that pretty? I thought about just leaving them there, but my car gets no sun when parked in front of my apartment.

Now I just have to hope the cats don’t eat them.

At night, Colin usually sleeps snuggled on my legs, except during the summer, when it’s just too warm. (Though if the air conditioning is on enough, even then he’ll join me.) Pem usually winds up somewhere on the bed.

But the past couple of nights, she’s been sleeping on me, which is definitely unusual, except when it’s very cold–which it hasn’t been. So, because it was night and my brain had nothing better to do, I started thinking about those stories about the animals that sense that someone is dying, and goes in and stays with the person. It got to the point that I was a little freaked out at the prospect of going to sleep, for fear that I may never wake up.

Of course I did wind up falling asleep, and I did manage to wake up in the morning. (Barely. I was sleepy.) Yet another indication that I really should come up with new things to occupy my brain, because apparently, my life at the moment just isn’t enough.

In my second bedroom/office/whatever, I have a futon (now 90% less sleeping on the couch!) (I still nap on the couch) and I have a tendency to leave the futon in bed mode after someone’s slept in it. Part of it is that I’m just too lazy to take the sheets off, but part of it is that the cats love it. It’s like a bed of their very own. (Of course, they only get part-time access to it; I keep the door closed when I’m not using the room.)

So the futon has been a bed since my mother stayed here about a month ago. Yesterday, the cats accidentally knocked the pillow from upright, leaning against the back rest, to horizontal. And now they have discovered the joys of sleeping on the pillow.

Colin usually gets the pillow; he’s bigger and he sleeps more. (As I type, he’s asleep on the pillow and Pem is chasing a foil ball around the room.) I have to say, it is super cute. On the other hand, he gets very cranky when I kick him out of the room now.

I’m not sure when the last time I had ridden a bike was. Middle school? High school? In any case, it had been a long time. A long, long time. But for a while, I’ve been thinking that I should get back on a bike. I look around and think how nice it would be to go for bike rides. I even flirt with the idea of buying a bike.

With the gorgeousness of the weather the past few days, though, I knew I had to get outside and do something fun. Steve, knowing of how long it had been since I’ve been on a bike, suggested renting some from a place in Alexandria and riding along the Potomac. Perfect!

I was nervous, though. Can you forget how to ride a bike? When I got on the bike yesterday morning, I wasn’t sure. I was pretty darn wobbly, but I had the balance thing mostly down. Although for the first, say, 20 minutes, I looked like I was bike-riding while drunk. But I got the hang of it after a while.

And it was just super, super nice. Honestly, I can’t imagine a better way to spend the first day of spring. We biked down the Mount Vernon Trail to Teddy Roosevelt Island (which Google Maps tells me is 7.3 miles), where we realized we had no locks for the bikes and thus couldn’t really go over to the island. Ah well. We headed into the city and ate lunch near the Lincoln Memorial, then biked over to the Jefferson Memorial and back to Old Town. It was all very lovely.

Well, except two things. One, we forgot about sunscreen. My forearms are now a bright red. Two, I’m now sore in the area that sits on the bike seat. I’m thinking it’ll get better quickly (right? RIGHT???), but it’s a bit ouchy right now.

Even so, I can’t complain. It was a fabulous day.

I have a cold. Well, I guess that’s what you’d call it. Luckily there’s no coughing (I left that to the half of my department who have some upper respiratory infection; they were out the end of last week and have been in the office this week, walking around like zombies); it’s manifested itself mostly in an insanely stopped up nose. I’ve been living off of Sudafed nasal spray, which works so well that I feel fine, so I’m convinced that I’m no longer sick, so I stop taking it…and then I lack the ability to breathe. And then I get winded walking to the elevator at work.

But after a couple of weeks of this, concerned about the warning on the bottle that I shouldn’t take it more than 3 days and convinced that really, this thing has to have run its course, right?, I decided to stick to my regular Nasonex. So the past couple of days have involved me blowing my nose a lot and having brief periods of being able to breathe normally. (Huzzah!)

The strange thing is, even though sometimes just walking around makes me feel crappy, I was still able to go to tap and dance to a medley of songs from High School Musical over and over and over and still feel pretty good.

I don’t understand my body.

Most nights after I climb into bed, Colin jumps up so we can play an exciting game of Pounce on the Hand Moving Around Under the Covers. Generally, Pem follows at some point, then just watches as Colin frantically runs around the bed, trying to get my hand, which is sneakily hiding under the covers. At some point, he gets tired and plops down between my calves and goes to sleep. Pem generally winds up near my head.

(Which led me the other night to start wondering if that’s where the term “catty corner” or “cat a corner” or whatever the heck that expression is comes from, because they frequently wind up diagonally across from each other on the bed. I’d look it up, but I’m lazy.)

Last night, though, during the exciting hand-pouncing game, Pem decided to take the coveted spot by my legs. A bold move on her part. And the thing is, Colin totally didn’t fight her for it! Once he finished playing, he went over to my legs, found Pem there, and retreated to the other side of the bed.

I was convinced that there was a profound shift in the balance of power between the cats. This lasted about 5 minutes, until Pem got up and ceded the spot back to Colin.

Growing up, we always called our parents’ friends by their last names–Mr. and Mrs. Whoever. A few years ago, the wife of my dad’s best friend passed away. In a couple of months, my dad and I are going to go to an O’s game with his best friend and the best friend’s new lady friend. And I just realized that it’s going to be strange–not only meeting her, but…what do I call her?

The best friend will always be Mr. Best Friend to me. There’s no way I could call him by his first name. I can’t change after 31 years of calling him Mr. Best Friend. But I’m an adult now, and generally, when meeting other adults–even adults my parents’ age–I call them by their first names. I guess once you go to work and start having coworkers whose ages run the gamut, you kind of get out of the habit of the formal “Mister” or “Missus” or “Miss” or “Ms”. (Yes, obviously, there are times when I do still use “Mister” or whatever. Hmm, and I guess if I were to meet the parents of a future beau, I’d probably use “Mister” and “Missus” in that situation, too. But for the most part, it’s first names.) (I mean, really, a lot of my coworkers are near my parents’ age. Ditto people in my tap class.)

But I can’t imagine being able to call Best Friend’s Girlfriend by her first name. So I think I’m going to do what one does in this situation…just never address her directly as anything. Make eye contact when talking so I never have to figure out whether it’s “Girl” or “Miss Friend.”