Fancy

There didn't seem to be any point to this when I wrote it, but a point occurred to me today during my lunchtime walk. Just like how everything old becomes new again; sometimes, everything that was once too-new can become charmingly old , with only the passage of a few decades or so. When it was built, Twinbrook must have seemed garishly new and modern to the Victorian-home dwellers of Rockville. Now it's settled and quaint, with its patina of World War II history and its architecture reminiscent of the late 1940s and early 1950s, which are after all part of a previous century. It's like strolling through a day during the Eisenhower administration.

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As I walked, I saw two little children get into a car and drive away. Well, teenagers. It was 12:30 in the afternoon, and I wondered why they weren't in school, but wondered even more how it's possible that people who were born during the Bush 43 administration are now driving cars. I've become almost accustomed to watching my own son get in his car and drive to school every day, but when I see other young people driving, the whole thing  just seems ridiculous and improbable all over again.

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My husband is Korean, in case you didn't know that. One thing you learn when you're married to a Korean is that Korean people don't necessarily plan family visits--they just show up.  Once a year or so, my mother-in-law will call us, and tell us that relatives from Toronto or New York (but not Korea--not many left over there) have arrived, and that we need to drop what we're doing and commence with the family visitation. And so we do. When I was younger, I might have seen this as an inconvenience but the older I get, the more I realize that nothing matters more than people, and whatever you have to do to accommodate them is worth whatever inconvenience results.

So on Tuesday afternoon, my husband called me at work and told me that his cousin was in town for a conference, and that he wanted to have dinner with us that night. We met him at my sister-in-law's house, and went to our favorite local restaurant.

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When I first started shopping at Korean grocery stores, I discovered Shilla Bakery. Shilla Bakery is a small chain of stand-alone bakeries that serve the Korean communities, but the company also sells products through Korean stores, like Lotte and H-Mart. We once bought a Shilla Bakery cake to take to a party, because I liked the slogan printed on the box: "Shilla Bakery. It Make a Deep Impression on Your Mind." The cake tasted like a stick of butter mixed with confectioner's sugar, and then lightly dusted with flour. Ten years later, I can still taste it.

So wait. That box was telling the truth!

Anyway, my husband's out-of-town cousin came bearing gifts, including a box of giant Korean pears (which are a story all to themselves) and a fancy cake from another Korean bakery. I knew that it was a fancy cake, because it said so, right on the box:

Any questions? 

Most of the box is in English and French. I didn't check the French grammar, but the English is idiomatic, to put it kindly. I do love the little truck drawing in the upper left-hand corner. With almost 20 years of experience as a Korean by marriage, I'd have recognized this as a Korean product even without the very small Korean label on the bottom of the box. Bon appetit. 잘 먹겠습니다. 


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Every year, on Memorial Day weekend, I joke hat I have no problems that summer can't solve. But a family that I know--not close friends, but friends--have suffered something so awful that nothing in my life can even aspire to problem status. So for now, I have no problems, period. Happy Summer.

Dum-Dums and Bolsheviks

My husband, as my sons and almost-5-year-old nephew settle down to watch "Guardians of the Galaxy 2": Be careful with this movie. It might not be appropriate for him.

Almost 5-year-old nephew, loudly, about five minutes in: Showtime, A-Holes!

Me: Too late.

Next time I have to run a meeting for the government client (oh my God, the meetings and the PowerPoint presentations), I think that will be my introduction. In fact, "Showtime, A-Holes" might be my first PowerPoint slide.

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I work in a pretty large office building that sits on the edge of the Twinbrook neighborhood in Rockville, Maryland. Twinbrook was built just after World War II, as the flood of returning soldiers gave rise to a housing shortage, which was mitigated by construction of what used to be called "tract houses." The streets are named for World War II sites and battles and military figures: Ardennes Avenue, Marshall Avenue, Farragut Avenue, Halsey Road, Midway Avenue.

Most of the houses in Twinbrook are small; 3-bedroom saltbox-style houses on 1/4-acre plots. After 60-plus years, the neighborhood, filled with mature-growth trees and shrubs and flower gardens (some better-tended than others) is a riot of growth during a rainy spring.

The residential part of Twinbrook gives way very suddenly and abruptly to a burgeoning business district surrounding the Twinbrook Metro stop. For people who don't live in Rockville, I suppose it's just the opposite--the place where they work turns very suddenly into a mid-century residential neighborhood filled with the kind of homes that some journalists would condescendingly describe as "modest." I don't live in Twinbrook, but I live just 15 minutes away in a neighborhood not unlike it. So for me, it's the former--it's as if I'm out for my usual walk and I turn the corner and there's a 10-story office building two doors away from a neighbor's house.

Oddly enough, the business district doesn't appear to encroach upon the neighborhood, nor the reverse. A residential neighborhood is very peaceful during the middle of a weekday, and I like to walk for a few minutes at lunchtime, both for exercise and to gather my energy for the afternoon. Just a few steps away from the building, the street feels completely suburban and residential, so much so that more than once, I've turned around to return to the office and feared for a moment that I walked too far to get back in time for an afternoon meeting. It's the trees--the curtain of green completely blocks the view beyond a few steps, making it impossible to see the rest of the neighborhood beyond the block where you're standing. It's like you can't see the forest for the trees; or more accurately, you can't see the trees for the lack of forest.

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All of that? Apropos of nothing. Description for its own sake.

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Me to coworker: There's a big basket of candy in the kitchen.
Coworker: I saw it, but it's just a big pile of Dum-Dums.
Me: There's a lot of good stuff in there, too. You just have to dig past the Dum-Dums.

And is that not a metaphor for life itself?

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I'm reading A Gentleman in Moscow, as my friend recommended. She didn't steer me wrong. I'm only about 20% in, and I'm all agog. It's like reading a Wes Anderson movie: A quirky Russian nobleman befriends a sassy 9-year-old Ukrainian girl, and the two of them explore every corner of the huge Moscow hotel where the nobleman is under lifetime house arrest. It's all fun and games now, of course, but I'm afraid to keep reading. No good ever comes of a Russian nobleman once the Bolsheviks get hold of him.

It's Saturday morning now. I watched some of the royal wedding, though not live. In 1981, I watched the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana live, but I was a teenager and it was summer. Full-time working mothers don't wake up at 4:30 on Saturdays unless we have to. Anyway, it was lovely, and the gospel choir singing "Stand by Me" made me proud to be American. If pressed, I couldn't come up with a single reasonable practical justification for the existence of the royal family. But not everything is meant to serve a practical purpose.  If the Bolsheviks had understood that, then a lot of suffering could have been avoided. But as Isabelle Sallafranque tells Princess Luba Couranoff in another of my favorite novels, there had to be a revolution.

Packed and ready

When I was little, I was sure that the ground beneath my feet was 100% constant and permanent. Not in a figurative sense, of course. Quite the opposite, in fact. Figuratively, I was always sure that the world was about to end. Some things never change. But in the topological sense, I believed that any surface that was covered with asphalt or concrete (I lived in the city, so most of the outdoors as I knew it was covered with one or the other) was firm and solid, right down to the core of the earth. How could it have been otherwise?

I don't really remember how or when I came to the realization that the manmade ground on which I walked was anything but stable. But I thought about it today, as I left work. The government building where I work has a three-level parking garage beneath it. Thankfully, I don't have to park there--my company buys inexpensive monthly parking passes from the little community church across the street, where we can park our cars outdoors, as God intended. The building also has a small parking deck, supposedly for visitors only, but usually filled with employees' and contractors' cars, despite the threatening "we'll tow your car, we're really serious, not kidding at all" signs that are posted everywhere. As you walk across the parking deck, you can clearly feel and hear the hollow cavern underneath.

I have to assume that the parking deck is constructed properly, and that it's able to sustain the weight of several dozen cars in addition to the weight of the many people who walk across it every day. It feels and sounds as if the asphalt-coated concrete is only a few inches thick, and that the whole thing could cave in, at any moment.

That's a metaphor for something, but I don't know what. Pick something. It's DIY day.

Oh, and good morning, good afternoon, and good night Pittsburgh.

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I have wanted a backpack for a long time. I love handbags and purses in general, but I've secretly longed for a colorful but practical and sturdy backpack. But I didn't buy one, because I thought that a middle-aged lady would look silly carrying a backpack to her job as a technical writer for a government contractor. I suppose it shouldn't matter if other people thought I looked silly, but it does matter. Now, however, backpacks appear to be all the rage, and not just among college students and tech nerds and would-be iconoclasts who are determined to show how little they care about fashion. Some of the most stylish people I know are now carrying backpacks to work.

This trend couldn't come at a better time. When I worked at our company headquarters, I usually left my giant 40-pound laptop on my desk. I used Google Drive to sync everything (and don't get me started on why why WHY they replaced my beloved Google Drive with FileStream) and so when I needed to work at home, I could just use my own computer, and everything would just magically sync. Oh, the wonders of the cloud.

Now, however, I have a GFE (Government-furnished equipment) laptop that I have to carry back and forth every day. It's actually a much nicer laptop than my company-issued laptop (well, it's much smaller and lighter, which to me means that it's nicer) but it's still more than I want to carry back and forth in my tote bag, which also has to accommodate my lunch, my phone, my wallet, my little cosmetic pouch, my power cord, my notebooks, and my water bottle.

I guess I could carry less stuff.

Get outta here. That's crazy talk.

So although all of this stuff is very hard to fit into my work bag, it fits with tons of room to spare in this lovely and cheerful backpack. In fact, I can carry even more stuff if I want to! Who knows if I'll need an extra pair of shoes, or a change of clothes, or maybe some gardening tools--and if I do, I can carry it all. Go ahead and laugh, but when it all hits the fan and you need some water or a band-aid or some kleenex or a granola bar, you'll want to be with the person carrying the giant backpack.

Yes, I know: Dora the Explorer called, looking for
her backpack. Bitch is going to have to buy a new one. 

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I haven't posted about books in a while. My friend Megan, whose judgement I trust, recommended A Gentleman in Moscow, so I'm going to read that soon. Early-revolution Russia--all fun, all the time. I can't wait. Meanwhile, I just finished Plum Sykes' Bergdorf Blondes, a silly novel which
A. Took me forever to read because I couldn't stand more than a few pages at a time, and
B. I had already read, a long time ago, and didn't remember until I was halfway through it.

In a shocking and unpredictable plot twist (spoiler alert), the young squire whom the protagonist's social-climbing mother had been pushing her to marry and the hot young movie director whom she's secretly dating are--THE SAME PERSON. So there you are--listen to your mother, because she has your best interests at heart. Happy Mother's Day.

Burn baby burn

Monday: It's a beautiful day. And almost 20 years to the day after this happened, I was walking across Twinbrook Parkway in Rockville, returning from the badging office in one Federal government building to the Federal government building where I work, when a man drove past me and shouted something too obscene for me to repeat here. Three construction workers, walking away from a food truck where they'd just picked up their lunch, all turned their heads, as shocked as I was.

There was nothing I could do, of course. It was 11:45 on a Monday morning, and he was driving, fast. Later, when I told my husband about it, I couldn't even remember what the car looked like.

One of my government bosses has nicknamed me "Liam Neeson." He says that I'm like Neeson's character in "Taken," because I have a special set of skills, honed over a lifetime. Unfortunately, they're not the kind of skills that make me immune to public harassment and humiliation. But that's fine. I'll just use this little episode to fuel my rage. I'll need it someday.

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Speaking of bosses, can we talk about how many I have now? Four. I have four bosses. Fortunately, I like all of them.

But still. Four bosses is a lot.

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I didn't think about what happened for the rest of the afternoon. Then I went for a walk after work, with the iPod cranked up to 11. I skipped around, looking for a song that was angry enough to sing along to, and settled on Erasure's "Hallowed Ground," which doesn't really sound like an angry song, at least in terms of melody and instrumentation. But what's angrier than "Who will be the next victim of the criminal dawn?" I sang along, like I do. I can be loud on the street, too. I also sang along to the Pretenders "Talk of the Town:" "Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday. Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday. You'll change..." And maybe I will. Maybe someday, I'll change into a person who can have an upsetting experience, and then just let it go, like it was nothing; like the proverbial water off the back of the proverbial duck. Maybe.

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Saturday: It was a bad week, and not just because of the stupid man and his stupid verbal assault. But it got better.  My son had a baseball game today, during which my husband was nearly chucked by the umpire. He never argues with sports officials or coaches. But he did today. Too long a story to make short, but five years from now, we'll refer to the whole episode as the infield fly rule incident, a day that will live in infamy. But that's another story, for another day.

After the game, I was running errands and listening to the radio. It's almost never so bad that singing along with "Disco Inferno" can't make it better. The Capitals just won Game 5 against Pittsburgh, and April is over, finally. Burn that mother down.