They’ve given me the middle seat again and the lady to my left has a tremendous dimple on her elbow. It makes me feel nostalgic because that’s what Cookie’s elbows looked like around eight months, when she was at her deliciousest. The hair length is also about the same, except this lady has a buzz cut and Grace didn’t have to pay to be bald.
I realize with a certain amount of surprise that she appears to be married to the man across the aisle, an assumption based on their mutual familiarity and annoyance. The guy to my right has the most appealing-looking shoulders I have ever seen. Soft, padded, and rounded forward. I am very tired. I thought maybe I should ask if I could rest my head on his left pillow, but what if he says no? That would be embarrassing. So I just shut my eyes for a bit, sitting perfectly upright in a relaxed way. Thankfully the seats recline half an inch. Makes all the difference.
I opened my left eye ever so slightly to see what kinds of movies short haired ladies are into. Oh, James Bond, No Time to Die. I just watched that with Graeme a few months ago. He thought I wouldn’t get home for a while and was watching it by himself when I got back from my book club, where we discussed in detail a book I didn’t read.
Graeme was embarrassed to be found watching James Bond, especially since I had just been at The Finer Things Club and Bond, James Bond movies aren’t known to be intellectually stimulating. But they’re fun. For instance, there’s that one part where his lady friend whom we will call Conchita, has just woken up and is still lying in bed when he gets all up in her face and asks,
“Where do you want to go?”
She scooches over a little closer and says,
“HHHHOME.”
I loved that part. She just woke up, man. Her breath smells like arse and she breathes the word “HOME” directly into his open mouth. I just got a little sweaty laughing about this all over again. Home. The worst word to thrust up the nostrils first thing in the morning.
Then there’s that other excellent part where he realizes he’s been trapped (seeing as he’s never watched any of the movies, he never sees it coming). Realizing his French lady with the potty mouth might be in danger, he pulls out his flip phone, which probably has that cool snake game from the early 2000s, and dials Conchita’s number. Beep…goes the phone. “Conchita!” He cries. Beeeeep…no answer. “CONCHITA!!” Beep…Doesn’t he know how phones work? James Bond doesn’t know how phones work. You have to wait for her to pick up, man.
All in all, it was an entertaining movie that reminded me of Little Caesar’s pizza. Kinda nice at the time, but I wouldn’t have it again. It’s too bad he explodes at the end. I guess he did have time to die after all.
My short haired friend got bored with it and switched over to an e-book. Ooh, I think. I wonder what kinds of books short haired ladies are into. Still pretending to be asleep, I take a cautious peek through my eyelashes because I respect her privacy. At first I thought it was a news story.
“He had come close to losing his life for his country,” I read.
Hm, what a good man, I think, fighting for my freedom.
“She could see it in his scar.” Um, wut?
“The outdoor shower was…” Skip, skip.
“He had resisted her for too long…” Skip, skip, skip.
“She ran her fingers through his hair as his hand went lower…lower…LOWEST…”
As our war hero’s hand made its way to the floor, the sweaty lady’s hand self-consciously went tap, tap, tap, on the screen, suddenly realizing there are other people on the plane and hoping if she skips enough pages, this book will eventually turn into a work by A. A. Milne. I stretched a little and she jumped, simultaneously turning her phone off. I have two questions about this:
1) Where is Dwight Schrute when you need him to dump a bucket of water on a fellow passenger? And 2) Who brings a horny book on a plane?
Short haired ladies. That’s who.
I am on my way back to California after spending four days in Oklahoma helping my good friend Charissa decorate her new apartment because I have a thing for interior design. My feet are sore and I only got about three hours of sleep last night. I lost track of how many stores we went to. Probably close to twenty. So I am exhausted but also perfectly content, like a kid who has just spent the day at the zoo.
Not that there are any similarities, my dear lady, between your house and the zoo. Although…now that I think of it, there was a good amount of roaring from Ava (Jude, across the hall is very proud of his noise cancelling headphones), meowing from Sofie, and Tourette’s grunting from Zoya. And Ava did fling her diaper at Bus Driver Dave that one time, didn’t she?
And then there’s Joey.
Sweet, silent Joseph, with his love of Ziplock bags and incredible ability to tune out his roommate’s roaring. Besides Ziplock bags, 17-year-old Joey also likes girls, naturally.
The whole family was invited to a wedding not long ago, and when it was his turn to congratulate the bride and groom, he stepped forward, not with open arms but open hands to give the bride’s chest a good squeeze, squeeze. Can you blame him, though? Youthful boobies in a glittery white dress. How could he not? The girl was embarrassed, of course, but not offended, on account of Joseph’s extra chromosome which allows him to do many things that would normally be frowned upon.
Charissa, that saintly lady with the patience of Jesus and sense of humor that comes with having seven children (three of them with special needs), looked at the groom, laughing, and said “He beat you to it!”
At another wedding, Zoya, also seventeen and sitting in the front row, cried “No! Don’t marry him! Please DON’T MARRY HIM!”
A week at the Urban Funny Farm (that’s their WIFI password) is more eventful than a month at your average American household.
I would like to go back to Oklahoma soon and spend most of my time listening to Charissa tell stories about their overseas adoptions, the 30+ foster kids who have been loved at their house, and that time a hyperventilating lady ran after her at the church parking lot.
She had just done a little twirl in front of John, to make sure everything was in order and she looked nice before walking into church. She still remembers like it was last Sunday. He smiled and said, “You look beautiful.” Satisfied, Charissa starts walking towards the sanctuary doors when this lady calls out to her in a frantic voice, “Ma’am! MA’AM!!” She turns around, and the frazzled Samaritan, slightly out of breath says,
“Ma’am, your dress is tucked into your underwear.”
I wish I had had time to hear more stories, but there were picture frames to hang. I did get to spend several hours in the hot tub with the two older Urban girls, Hope and Liesel, seventeen and twenty-one, and both perfect examples of homeschooling done right. If Forest was sixteen years older, I would encourage him to take one of these ladies out for coffee.
Jude, 20, is also proof that homeschoolers don’t always turn out weird. His lady friend is also named Ava, like his sister across the hall, which is both confusing and amusing. Once, Charissa said to me, “Don’t worry about Jude’s room, he told me Ava wants to decorate it.”
Trying not to appear alarmed, I remembered the story of Ava finger painting the bathroom walls with poo a few years back. How kind of Jude, I thought, to let his little sister with Down’s syndrome go to town with his room. Seeing the look on my face, Charissa understood my concern and reminded me there’s another Ava in Jude’s life now and he never has to wear his special headphones around her.
There was a lot to do and I didn’t have enough time to finish, so this is still an ongoing project. Thankfully, a lot can be done online and with a bit of Photoshop.
I hung these frames the night before I left, and they are still empty, but now, with some guidance and links to downloadable art, Charissa will be able to re-create this wall gallery in real life!
We’re still waiting on a few things before the apartment is done, but it already looks amazing. I will have a post with before and after photos of this second Oklahoma project soon!
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