Without the light it gives

ALL MOVED.

Today was day two of the moving effort and it was looooong! and I knelt on a thumbtack and it GOT STUCK IN MY KNEE and made an audible popping noise as I pulled it out and that was GROSS and when I instinctively fell back and went into Nancy Kerrigan Mode I almost sat on ANOTHER TACK and that would have been awful and it took forever to get the truck loaded and I had to ride home with my crow in my lap the whole way because there was nowhere safe to put him the back and now I'm tired.

And I am also, once again, an official occupant of this house. I miss uptown already. At least the worst of the move is over, and now I can focus on the next phase: actually having a room. This could happen quickly or it could take a very long time, depending. I tell you what, though, a few more nights on this couch and I'm going to clean out the office with a flamethrower if I have to.

It's like we've been playing a really long, drawn out game of musical chairs in this house, the way the rooms have passed hands. Mom and Dad started out in the room that later became Katie's and mine shortly before it became solely mine because after Katie and I moved out of the room that was to become and remain Mom and Dad's, Ben was moved out of the room next to the room that would once be mine into a room built for him downstairs while Katie took that room, which was later to become Ben's room again after I moved out and Katie claimed mine and Dad claimed Ben's old built-for-him room as an office and junk room, which I am now trying to elbow my way into. Follow? So now after sharing an apartment with Mara and Erik and then moving on to sharing an apartment with Jayme and then just myself and then Katie very briefly and then back to myself and then finally landing my own apartment and then giving it up so I can, in the future, smell awful in Israel for a thousand kilometers, I am now trying to evict a bunch of stuff so I can take its room. I don't care how the stuff feels about that. This is a dog eat dog world, people.

But here on Earth there'd be no life

This may be my last update ever from the Tea Garden. I'm sad about that. I had one stamp card all filled, which I used today, and one two thirds of the way done that I gave to Ben. I'm still managing to remain blissfully ignorant about the fact that I move on Monday. I mean I can say to myself, "you are moving on Monday!" and my response will be to nod and smile and completely and utterly deny the existence of any Monday ever in the history of ever. Monday? Ah ha ha, what is this Monday of which you speak? You people are so cute, you and your made up days.

Fortunately Mara is coming up tonight and knows perfectly well when Monday is and will beat me into packing if necessary. It may be necessary. I hate the idea of leaving Minneapolis so hard. It's not really like I get into the nightlife, or even the daylife for that matter, but I did manage to sort of semi-establish myself. I mean, I got an apartment in Uptown, I learned the bus system pretty well, I can go grocery shopping at one in the morning like it's normal and I can walk anywhere I want to. I think that's really the kicker, the fact that I can walk so much. Between the buses and the fact that I consider less than an hour to be within "walking distance" I can go anywhere, and that's not something I can really do so much in Rochester. Rochester is a driving town, and I am not a driver. So I kind of lose my last vestige of independence that way. I'm not really looking forward to the old "mom can I have a ride" routine again.

Oh well.

Anyway, Savers started doing this thing last year where every store gets two big foam skulls, which are decorated and auctioned off. Last year I got the skulls, and Mara and I decorated the daylights out of them, and then I discovered they were too hard to take on the bus and I ended up never giving them back. They're still in my kitchen. This year Ben and I got the skulls and we decided we'd better hurry up and do the stupid things before I leave, so he came over last night and we sat down with a pile of art supplies and every intention of actually getting work done.

You know me and intentions.

So we did get one done, his, which had a clockwork orange theme. Then he left it at my apartment because I was going to have to take mine over to the store at some point anyway, and this morning, I stepped on it. WHICH WAS AWESOME. SO GLAD I STEPPED ON IT. OH BOY. The damage isn't really bad, but it is kind of right in the front, and it's going to look even stupider if I never get my skull done and all we have to show for, like, twenty five hours of collaboration is one badly painted, slightly stepped-on skull.

It was refreshing having him crash at my place, if only because it meant that I got to be the one with a decent night's sleep and he got to try his luck with an uncomfortable couch, for a change. I also learned an exciting new way to wake people up using a laser pointer and Bambino. This may seem mean-spirited but I think it's a lot better than the other method I thought of, which was just a lot of hitting and yelling and really wasn't very innovative at all. Against all odds, I probably am going to miss Ben. Oh well, it's just half a year before I have three loooooong months in Israel to get so sick of him I'll be ready to go home by the end of the trip just for the sake of being on a different continent. That'll be fun.

The sun is not a place where we could live

Around six thirty, Saturday night, the phone rang. It was Ben.

"Hi, get over here, we're going to the Ren Fest in the morning and you should crash here so we can leave faster. Bring a costume. Pirate theme."

"I...What?"

I'd known his family was planning on going to the ren fest but not when, or even that I was invited to come along. Ben had only just found out, minutes before calling me, that Sunday was going to be the day. I considered declining, then dug around for something sort of piratey and packed a bag and left. Why not.

The day started out cold and rainy but a clear sky had broken by the time we arrived and the sun shone brightly as we passed the main gates. We met up with the rest of our party inside--three of Ben's mom's friends and their assorted children, bringing our group total to about 15 or 500 depending on how fast the kids were moving during the head count--and then Ben and I took off on our own. His mom suggested we all try to meet up at the jousting area around 4 o'clock and we both smiled and nodded before disappearing into the crowd, knowing full well neither of us had a watch and I had forgotten to bring my phone along.

Ben's costume was a pretty easy affair, with billowy gold and white striped pants, sandals, and a bandanna, and nothing but two gold necklaces for a shirt. Mine, as it turned out, was a little more challenging: the dress was fine and the boots stayed pretty comfortable for a lot longer than I expected, but the bodice was pure evil. I'd picked it up at Savers for a song last year, recognizing by the quality that it had probably come from the ren fest originally, but had never really had occasion to use it before now. Because it's strapless, it's designed longer than the sleeved bodice, and because it's long the boning dug into the tops of my hips all day. It's also a size too big, so while it laced snugly it wasn't as tight as it should have been and had just enough leeway to gradually slide down, biting painfully into my hipbones and making me stop in the middle of the crowd and hike the stupid thing up periodically. And it was too tight to let me eat a whole turkey leg.

The bodice wasn't that huge of a deal, though, and was nothing I couldn't handle. As it happened, the day's biggest irritation was Ben himself. He'd been talking excitedly about the renaissance festival for some time in advance, and now that he was here, he was going to let nothing stand between him and fun...except, of course, for everything. Costumes weren't costumey enough. Mead didn't come in big enough cups (although I agree with that one) and hats were too expensive. The jousting wasn't fun to watch because it wasn't potentially lethal. The weapon stores wouldn't let him play with the spears and nobody wanted to swordfight him.

At one point I noted to him that he'd spent most of the time grumping that he could outbellydance the bellydancers, breathe fire more impressively than the fire-breathers, be a more obnoxious pickle-seller than the pickle-sellers, make better walking sticks than the walking stick vendor, and do a better Irish dance than the troupe of little girls who were dancing on the Irish pavilion.

"I did not," he said.

"Yes you did. I was right here. I heard you."

"No, I mean, I never said I could dance better than the little Irish girls. I said they sucked."

Oh. OK.

I suggested that maybe some year he could rent out a vacant lot somewhere, build a few themed storefronts and stages, and hold the Benaissance Festival, celebrating and starring Ben, and see how many people want to come to the Ben Fest to watch a shirtless hairy white guy bellydance vs going to the Ren Fest to watch a group of attractive women in small, spangly outfits to the same thing, only with slightly inferior skill. He didn't seem amused.

He also spent most of the day walking erratically, swaying and flailing and stumbling, which he called a "swagger" but really only made him look helplessly drunk. It's embarrassing enough to be out in public with real drunk people, much less some kid pretending to be embarrassingly drunk, but every time I told him to quit walking stupid he got all huffy and insisted he needed to "stay in character."

Privately I felt that "staying in character" was another one of those activities best relegated to the Benaissance Festival, but I kept that one to myself. It didn't seem quite worth it.

It actually wasn't too bad of a day, all in all. Even when he's complaining, Ben is endlessly entertaining, if only because he seems to have subconsciously taken ADHD and made it not just a diagnosis, but a life philosophy. Trains of thought rumble past on restless tracks, and no sooner has one derailed than another one is crashing past, and his mouth is running almost constantly about life the universe and everything according to wanna go ride bikes. I'm a passive enough person that so long as there's somebody leading, I'll follow along for a while, especially when I get to do so with such complete morbid curiosity. You might be able to figure out where he's going, but what he's going to do when he gets there is anybody's guess. Will he do a cartwheel? Will he pee behind a tree? Maybe stand on one foot and hum? Who knows!

Yo ho it's hot

There is, I'm learning, no elegant way to attack a whole chicken with a fork. I wanted to buy fried chicken but apparently there was a fried chicken famine under way at Rainbow, so I had to settle for the "classic rotisserie" option. This means I will have a partly forked chicken in the fridge for the next few days it'll take me to finish it off, which is pretty standard for me but is a habit I'll have to shelve when I move back home. Same for drinking milk straight out of the jug and doing laundry by standing in the shower with a full set of clothes on.

Ok, I'm not going to miss the laundry bit. But I will miss swearing at my cat and eating cake for breakfast because nobody's nearby to stop me. It's going to take me a while to reintegrate when I get back to Rochester. Much like when Tarzan decided to try on polite society for size, I will need to readapt to a set of arbitrary cultural norms. The Noble Savage must adjust to the restricting demands of civilization once again.

Well, all right, maybe not so noble. And only savage insofar as I hope nobody wants to use the stick of butter in the fridge because I licked it last week.

Well it was butter.

At a temperature of millions of degrees

Last day ever at Savers today! I feel so free. And employee discount-less. I think the loss of the discount hasn't really hit me yet. That's gonna be intense. Good thing I've got two weeks ahead of me with plenty of time to be sitting down, so I'll be ready.

I've also finally gauged my ears up to my goal, size 0, which means two things: I can stick my little finger in the hole, which is sort of gross and endlessly fascinating at the same time, and I can't answer the phone. I spent all day yesterday saying "Thanks for OW calling Lake Street Savers where your donation benefits ARC this is Betsi how may I OW help you?" The OW being the part where the receiver banged against my swollen ear.

Actually, I say all that a lot faster. In terms of relative speed, it's the Hail Mary of phone answering. "ThanoofocallinlakestreesaverswhereyerdonshionsbenfitARCthisBetsihowcannihelpyoo." It's a wonder, and perhaps a testament to how well anybody's paying attention, that more people don't respond to that with "...what?"

Nine times out of ten, people were calling to ask if we were open, it being Labor Day and all. Which, I think, is sort of like calling somebody to ask if they're alive, or perhaps if they have a telephone. No ma'am, we are not open today. That's why I'm answering the phone. It's just this thing I do.

Labor Day was also supposed to be my last day of labor, which I thought was a nice poetic touch of closure. And then last Friday I had just finished telling somebody about how Monday was going to be my last day, when Ben walked by and complained that he'd forgotten to take Tuesday off and had obligations to be at the RNC at the same time he was scheduled to work.

That first time I tried to go to Flogging Molly and ended up spending the entire evening on the lawn of the capitol, they were, I don't know, practicing for this event. He'd been working at it long enough that I knew it was a pretty big deal to him. Samira was the only person who could have covered his shift, and when I told him she'd declined, Ben stomped a little bit and snarled some and then announced the whole thing was In the Hands of Fate.

So what could I do? Something about Ben triggers my Big Sister reflex. Of course I had to tell Dan I'd cover for him.

Somebody had to cover his stupid butt on this, because he can't really afford to get fired. He signs his entire paycheck over to his mom to help pay rent every month. I've seen her flip all to pieces over an unmopped floor. It was terrifying. I can't even fathom what would happen if he got fired over poetic license. Three years, and I had to saunter out into the wild blue yonder on a senior day. I hate senior day.

As Ben explains it, he and his fellow hippie associates will be providing a non-hostile zone for peaceful communication, which, if you want a brief peek into the maladjusted Visualization Center of my mind, looks something like this: Jeering throng of protesters, stage left; sneering horde of protester protesters, stage right; both factions attempting to attack one another in a Braveheart rush, armed with plastic forks, and frustrated in their efforts by the fact that stage center is taken up by a circle of seated people, garbed in flowing raiment and humming like they mean it.

Actually I am told it's called toning, not humming. I should probably start taking notes. Maybe make some flash cards.

And no, I can't really explain the forks.

Anyway, all that is well and good, but there is one basic visual flaw in this picture: through an awe-inspiring laundry mishap, Ben ruined his own flowing raiment and will instead be wearing a sheet.

One minute you're doing a favor for a guy so he can promote peace and tranquility amid potential chaos, the next you're helping him stand around outside the Republican National Convention in nothing but a bedsheet. A slightly sticky bedsheet, even, as there was a minor maple syrup mishap in his backpack. We can really only hope the syrup splotches will help hold the damn sheet shut.

It's the difference between covering a shift for somebody so he can run a marathon, and covering a shift for somebody so he can run a marathon in clown shoes and a beret. I could have been free of Savers forever, but instead I'm working an extra day so Ben can wear a sheet and hum. Tone. Almost twenty three years of this and I still manage to be surprised at the way things go all cattywumpus on me.

On the bright side, though, I get to feel a little bit like Mara, who came up again this last weekend and announced, in no uncertain terms, that she was going to do all my dishes, which hadn't been done in months. I was cordially invited to watch, or perhaps sit on my bed and sulk, but there would be no stopping her. Someday Mara is going to make friends with somebody completely self-sufficient and competent, possibly even helpful, and I don't know what she's going to do with herself. I had been trying to weasel my way out of having that garage sale, but I couldn't just lounge around and watch her scrape small civilizations out of my tupperware, so I started pricing stuff.

Concerned mothers of the world would do well to find Maras to befriend their idiot children. I spent Saturday intentionally getting sunburned at the State Fair and then being sternly lectured about skin cancer and the benefits of sunscreen, Sunday was her telling me to go take a nap while she ran my garage sale for me. Someday Mara will call me up and say she needs my help with something and I will be there with bells on, if only I could imagine what she could ever need my help with. Help me, Betsi, I need somebody to burn some popcorn. Help, twelve across is a six letter word for "mess," the third letter is "a" and the last letter is "o." Help, I'm not completely miserable, I need to accidently go on a twelve mile hike. Help, there's this very large centipede, no come back why are you running away.

It's not quite a Mara level accomplishment, but if it means Ben gets to fulfill his obligation to stand around in front of the RNC in a 200-thread-count toga AND have a job to come back to, I guess there are worse things I could do than tack another day on to my paycheck. It's sort of just an entry level position, but maybe I'll make a Mara of me yet.

Besides, I'll have all of Israel to milk that one dry. "Ugh, I'm so thirsty, and I'm all out of water...you still got some there, huh? Remember that time when I..."

Where hydrogen is built into helium

Last entry, I detailed my sturdy plans for an afternoon of conscientious and responsible choices. I would tidy things up. Dishrags would be used. Elbow grease reserves would be tapped. By the twilight's last gleaming I would crack a beer and gaze with quiet pride at my humble, orderly home.

Raise your hand if you believed any of that had a paper dog's chance of chasing an asbestos cat through hell. If your hand is raised, hit yourself on the head with it.

Less than thirty seconds after I hit "post" and parked all my fancies on the internet, my cell phone rang, and the afternoon's good intentions evaporated as I walked toward Lyndale to meet up with Ben at Sacred Rearrangements. They were driven closer toward outright extinction as I decided to just go over to Ben's house as we came back from the mall, and the fact that it was a dark and stormy night was the padlock on the casket. I have a weakness for dark and stormy nights, especially so when they occur on dimly lit, tree-lined streets next to parks which, while a bit dull in daylight, become a fantastic mess of puddles in a good fierce rain. One field flooded to a depth well over knee high. There was a wading pool, and a slide, and the power even went out to the house for a few minutes. Ben spent a lot of time walking around and chanting, but I have learned by now to take these things as normal. I zoomed up and down the street barefoot, stomping in puddles to send a volley of droplets back up to meet the gunfire rain, and never mind any chanting in the background. It was fairly fantastic.

It also left me soaking wet in a white shirt and heavy jeans, which was a bit of a problem. I eventually talked him into lending me dry clothes, which turned out to be a pair of basketball shorts and a giant black t-shirt with a motorcycle on it, but my own clothes weren't dry by the time I woke up the next morning, and decided then and there I wasn't going to go to work smelling of cat and rainwater, decked out in orange shorts and a shirt the size of a circus tent, all while running on the four hours of sleep I caught on the couch. So I called in for an unprecedented second day in a row. Then we made banana pancakes, and I learned some valuable lessons about eating avocado with eggs (don't), and I didn't head for home until 7 that evening, which dropped another pseudo sick day straight down the tubes. In forty-eight hours of misappropriated time, I had succeeded in needing a shower really really bad and bruising my leg from failing to gracefully hop a short fence.

I think, given the right circumstances, I could really excel at middle management. Anybody who's ever seen me struggle with a common household tape dispenser may well marvel at the thought of the messes I could make with red tape. Tack an "acy" to the end, and my last name even sounds like bureaucracy. Give me enough disinclination, and there is nothing I can't not get done.