Fantastic at 56

Tomorrow I leave for the four-day national Scrabble Championship in Orlando. You can click here to see all the exciting action:

http://www2.scrabble-assoc.com/sublinks.asp?id=58&sid=186

This morning I was listening to the news, and there was something about J-Lo followed by a news item about A-Rod (apparently he is linked to Madonna). Anyway, it made me wonder how famous you have to be to have a nickname like J-Lo, A-Rod, or Brangelina. So I hereby declare that in referring to me in the third person, I shall be called B-Dix. Not “Mom” (so uncool), not “Aunt Barbara” (sounds about 102), not “Sister Dixon,” not even “Sweetheart.” just B-Dix–got it? B-Dix.

I have spent 28 of the last 30 days by myself and have had a lot of time to think about whether or not I like it. It has made me realize that I have a tendency to be a little bit anti-social. Yesterday, for example, Paul was supposed to be home, but his dad got pneumonia and they have been stuck in Pennsylvania for 4 extra days. I had at least 4 offers to go to people’s houses for barbecues, followed by fireworks on the hill, and I didn’t want to do any of them. I opted to stay home. What would happen if I were permanently single? Would I lose my friends one by one because I would never want to do anything with them and they would eventually just give up on me? Would I get a cat? Who would I sit by at church (would I go to church?) Would my eating habits get weirder and weirder? Right now I’m eating vegetarian corn dogs at least once a day. I ate hummus and pita bread every day for 10 days. Would I stay up later and later? When Paul is here I go to bed about 11:15 every night. Right now I’m heading to bed about 2 am. Would I become more of a Scrabble nerd? I am spending time every day at the moment studying my stems–in other words, I’m memorizing all of the most common bingo words for stems like SATIRE–a little memory device (BAD SPEECH REVIEW: FLAMING WIT) lets me know that every letter in that little sentence when combined with the letters in satire will make a 7-letter bingo–giving me a 50 point bonus in a Scrabble game. For instance, B is baiters and rebaits; F is fairest; A is aristae. Do I need to get a life or what?
Anyhow, I like being alone a little too much. I am definitely a more normal person when Paul is here. He once said he is my donkey in my stable. He had read that they put donkeys in with thoroughbreds to calm them down. I need my friendly donkey back again (I mean that better than it sounds).

Well, it’s official. I need to study the word lists. I went to Detroit over the weekend for a Scrabble tournament. I played 14 games (ah, heavenly!) but only won 7. My rating will go down by 30 points or so. I had quite a few good bingos–WAYFARES, ETESIAN, REEKING, and more. My high game was 490, and my low, low, low game was 268–that was a tromping!
One of the interesting parts of the weekend was going to a bar that had karaoke and watching the scrabble folks make parodies of songs and giving them Scrabble words. It was fascinating, and maybe a tad bit uncomfortable for me. First, I have not spent very much time in bars, and second, the parodies were, for the most part, really bad–with bad singing to match. Still, I was proud of myself for getting out of my comfort zone a little bit and going–since I went by myself to the tournament and didn’t know a lot of people there.
There was a guy there who was not part of our group who was participating in karaoke and he was REALLY good. I heard him sing about three songs, and I do declare, his rendition of “Young Girl” (Gary Pucket and the Union Gap) was smokin’. Speaking of smoking–people were smoking in the bar (not used to being around it any more) and I ordered saganaki and it was smokin’ as well. I thought the whole place might go up in smoke! A good time, and I’m going to start a study routine.

Addendum: to anyone who I called when I was worrying about my brother, Paul (Including my brother, Paul)–sorry! I have a very vivid imagination, and in said imagination poor Paul was under a rock trying to gnaw off his own arm trying to get to safety and wondering why no one was looking for him. As certain kids tried to tell me years ago, I need to take a chill pill sometimes!

I just finished reading Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and I have been struck by many of the themes. I had read it as a teenager–as an assignment–and so I came to it in a very different place. I think it is a brilliant book. It was considered immoral when it was published (Frank Norris was a reader at Doubleday and accepted it, and then when Doubleday himself read it, did not want to publish it and did so only under duress–and made no attempt to market it). I don’t think it is immoral, but it is certainly amoral–it’s typically called naturalistic. In other words, characters who do “bad” things are not necessarily punished. Carrie ends up prospering in the novel, even though she has “sinned” by living with both Drouet and Hurstwood without being married. Yet Dreiser is masterful in how he shows how limited her possibilities are. She doesn’t make moral choices as much as she just drifts from one segment of her life to the next. It’s interesting to me how well Dreiser portrays how luck sometimes has a part in what happens to us. We like to think that we are in control, and think that if something good happens to us it is because we deserved it, and worked hard for it–and if someone is out of a job, ergo they must not deserve one. It’s very easy to fall into that mental trap–I’ve done it.
The other thing Dreiser does so well that it hurts is describe poverty and privation. When Hurstwood is standing in the cold, waiting to have a 15 cent bed, with the wind whipping through his thin clothes, I FEEL it with his description. In fact when I was reading it, I turned the air conditioning off!
Carrie is uneducated, and has no moral compass. It’s interesting to me that there is just one mention of her father and no mention of her mother. There is never a mention of the possibility of children for Carrie–it is an absent idea. Motherhood and family don’t play an important part in this novel.
I have to admit that it was a little depressing to read it. It’s scary to think about spending your money down until you have nothing left and you are on the streets. We have all kinds of social safety nets that will catch us in 2008 that didn’t exist in 1898. But I think it’s good to be depressed sometimes. It reminds me that poverty exists, that I need to help do something about it, and that I may be closer to the streets than I think.

Yesterday was our neighborhood hollyhock festival–not to be vain, but it was pretty much conceived and executed by yours truly. I got the volunteers for the food and games, bought all the prizes, food, paper goods, etc. and it went really well. I was on tv for the second time this week. I didn’t watch the first time, because it made me realize I look like someone who has had a stroke and needs plastic surgery. I watched it this time, and it wasn’t too bad, and I didn’t sound totally retarded. But I don’t want to sound like I can’t get people mobilized. There were a bunch of us who set up tables, chairs, cleaned, got the popcorn machine, and so on.
I would say about 100 people came–free sandwiches, drinks, popcorn, cookies. Can’t wait for the 3rd year.
The hollyhocks were not blooming as fully as I would have liked at the park–mine are in full bloom. The photo above shows my blooms on the side of my house.

This is a new plant in my garden–foxglove, otherwise known as digitalis. It’s right next to some coral bells (another favorite). I planted them from seeds last year, but they didn’t bloom until this year. It was definitely worth wating for.

This interesting photo was taken a couple of days ago when we were unloading the previously mentioned two tons of stuff from my dad’s house. One of the things I brought was a round oak table that is in perfect shape, in part because the round table top was protected from damage by round plastic tablecloths with elastic around the edges. Well, as we were unpacking, said tablecloths were found by Mike, and he said, “What the heck are these? Giant shower caps?” This necessitated the three goofballs (otherwise known as Liz, Mike, and Patty) to wrap towels around themselves and put the tablecloths over their heads. At least the neighbors already know we’re crazy.

In the background you can see the cool ABF relocube that our stuff came in–kudos to ABF–they were wonderful! All I have to do now is drive Sarah’s stuff to Dayton and all will have been distributed. Liz and I will do that on Saturday.

I love Fridays. It’s the end of a week–and I work hard (usually) and really look forward to things I want to do over the weekend. The other thing I really like about Friday is that we almost always go out to eat. My very favorite thing to get is the vegetable plate at the Akropolis: broccoil, cauliflower, lima beans, carrots, and potatoes all boiled and then covered with oil and lemon. Yum. Served with pita bread. Double yum.
I once was eating lunch with someone where I had gotten broccoli, lima beans, and brussels sprouts and she said that she didn’t know anyone ever ate any of those things unless they had to. What?!
So this weekend I am going to:
Finish reading Atonement–it is so very very good that I will be happy and sad at the same time when I finish.
Mow the lawn if it doesn’t rain.
Go grocery shopping.
Clean out a room to house all of the new boxes of stuff that will arrive on Monday.
Figure out a way to get the family of squirrels to abandon the home they have found in our attic (Paul said to me this morning: “That squirrel is mocking me.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but there was somebody on TV at that moment who had a goatee, so I thought he was saying that the dude’s beard was somehow mocking him. I don’t know if that’s any stranger than that he thinks a real squirrel has it out for him). Greg had a friend in high school with a goatee who used to say, “You can’t get the girl if you ain’t got the squirrel.”
Take a very long bath and try to get my back to stop hurting.

The week in Utah went really well, but it was really hard–both physically and emotionally. My sibs are great–what nice people. I’m glad I’m related to them. It was really hard to throw things away that my dad had saved–and yet it was impossible to keep everything. I will be the keeper of the genealogy and many of the family papers–about 15 boxes of them.

Now comes the really scary part–literally two tons of stuff is now in South Chicago and will be arriving at my house on Monday morning in the handy “relo-cubes” (ABF you-pack cubes that are 6×7x8 and get loaded onto a big truck by a very cool three-wheeled fork lift that can get itself up and down from the truck). Where am I going to put all this stuff? Sarah will get some things–books, fruit dryer, table and chairs, pie cabinet, dishes, and more books. Liz will get a pie cabinet, two brass rubbings, all of my mom’s brass rubbing equipment, and some dishes. Patty will get a couple of chairs, a lamp, a box or two, and a futon. That leaves me with lots of stuff. I need to get rid of the things in my house to make room for them.

I also need to plan to live forever so that nobody will ever have to clean out my house…but I don’t think that can be arranged–I just need to take REALLY good care of myself to at least delay the inevitable.