Firstbasawassa

Coach Conrads Sit-up Camp for Shirtless Boys

I Ransacked My Landlord's Garden

You charged Joanie downstairs for heat and water
for the washer everybody, including you, uses.
You yelled at Ali for not composting eggshells.

And when I asked you to replace the backdoor eyehook
with a deadbolt
you told me that such paranoid vibes
sent forth into the world
will only serve to attract rapists to me, and
by your inaction, you declared you deemed
a lock
unnecessary.

You didn’t tell me that squirrels nest
in the vent ducts in the cold and will
break into my house and might
smash my stained glass art,
pee on my bookshelf
and claw the window sills so they look
torn, like the work
of a crowbar
which sent me screaming down
the stairs to the neighbors
There's A Man In My House
when it was just three stinking rats
with bushy tails.

Yes,
it has been a while, I know, but today,
I ransacked your garden.
All summer you have been bent
yanking and digging and sweating and I
have watched you
from my comfortable chair on the balcony,
sipping wine, grilling burgers and now,
Steve,
A half-dozen red ripe tomatoes
sit in my bowl.

Three hot peppers,
the only yellow squash,
several cucumbers (there are a thousand),
a head of lettuce, five carrots,
a most beautiful violet eggplant with
waxed-shiny skin and
a spongy core fresh
and white,
like a daisy.

I wonder, Steve, if you put some
fear-of-people-steeling-your-vegetables
paranoid vibe
into the Universe
because
I blame your vibe
for making me hack through
enough rhubarb
for twenty-seven pies.

I do have one regret.
I did not not take
the lovely lone melon.
The cord, too strong
for me to break
by myself.

Jackpot.

I picked up my new car last night. The sellers and I went to the DMV together to with our sickle’s (for the red tape), and after nearly keeling over from the amount of taxes I had to pay (there is no sales tax in Oregon, so what a surprise!) and dealing with a guy who didn’t want to accept my out-of-state check (Yes, I’ve lived here 2 years and still have Oregon checks. Sue me.), and filling stuff out and all that jazz, I have my new car. Well, it is new to me.

My old car—well, dears, my old car is very old. If my old car were a person, she’d be named something like Matilda and would be someone’s 80-year-old grandma who wears fuchsia polyester pants, smokes 3-packs of Parlaments a day, complains about her aching liver and spends far too many late nights drinking cheap gin through a straw in front of the slot machines at the casino. She’s not stylish, has a broken tape deck, coffee stickiness on the dash (no cupholders), and no cruise control. She wheezes and coughs and clunks and exudes a puff of smelliness every time I turn left. And like said granny-lady, she’s been there when I needed her—gotten me around in my underemployed days, made it through a snowdrift in rural Wisconsin, blasted through Chicago toll roads without (accidentally) paying, remained relatively rust-free, and recently survived being driven into an (almost) flash flood. Matilda, she’s a trooper when she isn’t groaning about her aching CV joints and asking for insanely heavy buckets of change to be dropped in her engine.

My new car, if she were a person, her name would be Ruby and she’d be dressed in stylish yet comfortable designer shoes she found at a consignment shop. She’d belong to MPR, vote, pluck her eyebrows and occasionally date a motorcycle. She would see Paris while she’s young, eat chocolate ice cream in her pajamas and escape to the boundary waters for the weekend. She’s pretty but not too frilly. Practical, safe, and zippy enough to be fun and free-wheelin’.

I feel like I just went from a college-age futon and milk-crate coffee table to Pottery Barn. Not Ethan Allen, but happy to have it.

Word of the day: Phhhhht.

Things that suck:

Family issues that I won’t bother going into and some other unfortunate crap.
Dreams about hurt friends and burnt love letters in the toaster (Hey, it was a dream).
Schlepping boxes and stuffing 250 marketing launch packets.
Heavy boxes.
Incompetent people who say they’re going to do something (that is ON a DEADLINE) then don’t do what they said they’ll do, and to fix it, you must make 42,000 phone calls like this: “Dial 1 for loans, 2 for contracts, 3 to wait on hold for 5000 more minutes only to be connected to someone COMPLETELY useless who will just fuck up your paperwork even MORE.”
Eating cheap take-out lunch while trying to assemble 250 shipping boxes.
Clowns. Okay, clowns have nothing to do with today, but aren’t they totally creepy?
My boss, who got in at 9 and left at 4.
Cute shoes that really hurt.
Stupid people who demand stupid unreasonable things and change their mind at the last effing second and don’t understand what you do enough to know you can’t just freaking whip out jobs in two seconds by command.
TWO presentations on poets that may or may not be due tomorrow but must be prepared anyway.
PMS.

Things that do not suck about today:

French Meadow’s Almond Croissants and my friend Kate.
Getting home from work.
Flannel pajamas.
Purple. I just like purple.
The 42,000-phone-calls-stupidity working out in the end.
People who help stuff 250 packets and assemble shipping boxes.
Overtime.
Fall. Fireplaces.
72 hours until I leave town for a north woods cabin.
Myself, who has good work ethic. Except for that whole personal-emails thing.
Good. Boxed. Wine.
Cheesy chick TV shows.
Quality frozen pizza.
My new car. Well, new to me. I pick it up on Thursday.
Phones with an off button.

Oh, more good things on the list than bad things. That’s good.

-Deborah Keenan

Your job is to add
To the river.
You might be
a drop of rain.

If you break down, I'll drive out and find you...

I spent my actual b-day in Indiana with my family—my whole immediate family—and that is exactly what I wanted. My older sister and I drove out to the country to our masseuse friend’s house for massages. After my massage I dozed off in a patch of tall grass next to the big red barn while I waited for my sister. There were chickens and a big green cornfield and a little pumpkin and sunflower patch and a big blue sky. It smelled like home.

I also went to see my 96 year-old granny and my aunt and uncle and cousins and parents and cousin’s babies came over, and I played with little Autumn who is 3 and when we parted she gave me a kiss and made the I-love-you sign with her hand—her mom is teaching her sign language now—and it was all very sweet. Then we barbecued in my back yard and had really yummy cake and wine on the screened in porch of our big old house and talked about our lives, and how blessed we are and how fast time goes. On our refrigerator there is a picture of my father at age 5 on his bicycle just outside that screened in porch. My family’s been in that house for almost 3 generations now, and he grew up in it too.

Back in Minnesota, Voix and Frances threw a killer party for me with all of my favorite stuff and all my favorite people. We drank champagne and had the best cake ever and red curry for dinner (fav) and went to a swanky place where we drank drinks that end with –tini. I got presents: a journal, salt and pepper shaker, litjo subscriptions, a set of golf clubs, a great ACDC t-shirt. It was classy and fun, and Voix’s cooking totally kicks ass.

I love my birthday time because the sun is high and bright and people are jamming the last bits of fun into the rest of summer and then we get to calm down, rest, harvest stuff, turn inward, get the sweaters out of the closet, turn on the fireplace, pick apples, read and write more, and the life cools down. This time of year, school starting and things ripening and everyone resting from a busy fun summer. It is good. Being 30 is good.