Spring Follies

So it was an exhausting 64 degrees today.  The weather changed too quickly and I think everybody felt dozy and too hot today.  Never fear: "Vulcan" is coming: is coming.  It will be in the 20s on Thursday.

Swell.

I did four loads of laundry today.  I got in trouble for leaving hairy machines behind, so I'd been putting it off out of anxiety (leaving the Bat Cave to go downstairs), fear and sloth.  I wiped the machines down with a dark towel to see how much hair I left behind and followed with a Swiffer cloth.  Did my best, folks.  & by the way, can anyone in my building read??  The bottles and cans go in the dumpsters next to the elevator and the paper goes in the cans on the other side and Styrofoam in a box should be removed and placed in the trash before recycling.  Somebody had to straighten that out so forgive me if there are some dog hairs left behind.

I also hauled your packages in.

I'm weary and on edge.  A friend told a story on herself that left her feeling vulnerable and foolish and while I was walking her dog I noticed the Jogger was still stretching and talking on her cell phone outside the St. George apartment building.  When I brought her dog back, I said, "You know, there's a big difference between being an idiot and an asshole."  I described the jogger's belt, which was in the colors of the WWII British Army in North Africa.  It was molded plastic with four or so somewhat grenade-shaped water bottles clasped to it, something like this:

It is an asshole accessory.   You either have to be jogging from Brooklyn to Central Park or have thigh gaps to get away with that.  She had neither.  With her swingy pong tail, light-hearted chatter and one leg braced on a planter, I expected something and she was very plain, verging on unattractive.

Am I being mean?  You betcha.  It was performance art gone wrong, someone who'd looked at too many copies of Self or Women's Health and mistook herself for a model. 

So if my friend was berating herself for a mistake, at least she wasn't play acting some glossy magazine's dictation.

I don't much like joggers.  They often run in twos, which means I an the dogs end up on the street.  If they come up behind me and Daisy on her side, she's like to bark and lash out at being startled.  Joggers have the most terrible sense of personal space of anyone over the age of eight, and because I was late taking Daisy and Honeybear out today, we got to experience the full joy of kids weaving around on their scooters, walking backwards while talking to their Spanish-speaking nannies who were talking on their cell phones instead of telling the kids to watch out, and up to all those assorted high jinx that are fine in Appleton, Wisconsin, where dogs stay in the back yard and old people live in communities but which tears the rights of everyone else apart for their Yuppie Princess Scum privilege. Why can't all children be Jane and Michael Banks following behind Mary Poppins?  Mary would never have a cell phone.

I'm grumpy.  A day of laundry will do that, as will a day when I was overheated.

All of this grumpiness is making me the asshole.  It irks me because my dog in unpredictable and because I so often feel I have no right to walk on the sidewalk with normal-sized people.  I definitely do not envy the jogger's ammo belt but...  I envy something.  I envy the body I once had that could have taken her savings and gone to Amsterdam this spring but is too frightened of airplane seats and walking to attempt it.

But it still doesn't excuse the ammo belt.

And yes, I was obsessed with Mary Poppins as a kid.  The movie came out when I was in 2nd grade and my mother bought me this Mary Poppins dolls that had the chalk painting outfit, including parasol, the traveling outfit, including carpet bag, and the blue-and-white pinstriped nursery outfit.  She was perfection.

God, I'd love to have all my toys back in good condition...

Or be in 2nd grade again, weaving crazily down the sidewalk from the bus stop, on my way home to Sandy and Jet, the dogs who were up for anything...