charlotte harris

“Swimming Pool Temporarily Closed”

The front desk guy got new eyeglasses.  Now he’s even cuter to look at while he explains that the pump is broken and won’t be fixed until Friday.  Oh well, I’ve only got my swim gear, so I won’t stay to work out.  Can’t spin in a bathing suit.  Well, I can, but people would look at me weird.  Or maybe not.  Like the time I thought everyone was looking at me, but it was just the clock behind my head.  

Hmmm, now what?  Well, it’s only 5:30, so I have time to get to my “backup” gym before the pool there even opens.  Ooh!  It’s Wednesday, I can say hi to my old coach and maybe even practice with my old team.  I hope I get there before that weird old lady with the suitcase and the snorkel and the heavy perfume. 

OK, drive drive drive.

Oh!  I forgot how much this old gym smells like a trash can full of dirty diapers.  Hopefully the water’s not too cold.  Nobody I know over there in the workout room.   I wonder if my old trainer is here.  Oh yeah, I have to pay a quarter for this locker.  Guess I hafta go back upstairs to trade two dimes and a nickel at the front desk.  Oh, I remember this attendant, she’s so nice.  If I was like 20 years old I think I’d make friends with her.  Why do I have a weird feeling that the lady who I passed when I was getting a quarter is going to be changing in my row of lockers. 

Yep, here she is, piling her stuff on top of mine on the bench.  Oh and she wants to chit-chat about how we should get bonus points for making it to the gym.   Polite nod, fake smile, and an “mmmm hmmm” in return.

Better throw on these flip flops before I take another step, don’t want to catch a fungus.   Do-dee-do-dee-do, OK guess I’ll head out to the pool.  Wait!  Towel!  I don’t have a towel!  Why did I come all the way here without a towel.  It’s because the pool I *thought* I was gonna swim at today has a towel service.  Didn’t think I needed to throw a towel in my bag today.

Aaargh!  All I want to do is swim!  Look how persistent I’ve been about getting my workout this morning and it all comes down to no towel.  How long would it take me to drip dry after my shower?  Or maybe if I have an old t-shirt or something in the bottom of this gym bag, I could just dry off with that… Crap, the only thing in this bag that I’m not wearing again this morning is my track pants.  Not very absorbent.

I can’t believe I woke up at 5:06 am only to have my workout foiled.  If I’d known I’d be thwarted at every turn, I’d have slept in.  And oh what a good sleep it was last night, with that breathe-right strip on my nose.  So here goes, put back on all those clothes I just took off.  At least I never put the quarter in the locker.   Oh, I gotta walk past the front desk girl for the third time now and she’ll probably wonder why I asked for a quarter only to pack up and leave 5 minutes later.  She’s gonna think I am loopy, and she would never want to be my friend if I was like 20 years old.

OK, drive drive drive. 

Back home, oh that bed looks so comfy… but I will resist temptation and instead take a shower and just go to work.  Ahhh, hot water pounding on my back, scrubby washcloth on my skin, slippery conditioner in my hair, best shower ever… let’s crank up the heat in here.  Turn the knob and… the whole thing comes crashing off the wall.  Cold cold water pounding on my back, pieces of metal in the tub at my feet.

I have no idea how to put this back together so I am just going to leave it here.  And not think about it again, ever.  I will leave it there and never fix it and from now until eternity, take every shower at the gym. 

So that was the point at which my brain short-circuited and the narration ends.  BUT!  The one good thing I can say about this morning is I didn’t waste a quarter! 

It was loaded with veggies: crisp strips of red pepper, whole sweet basil leaves, and vibrant green beans sliced on the diagonal.  I spooned the soupy curry all over a pile of sticky white rice and tasted a forkful of the coconutty chicken.  The menu had listed it with two red stars, meaning “medium spicy.”

Mmmmm… it was just right.  So much flavor and the right amount of heat.  I continued to savor bite after bite, loading those healthy green beans onto every forkful.  I shared a spoonful with my date, who placed the green bean to the side of his plate. 

“Why don’t ya eat your veggies?” I asked, but at that very moment, it hit me.  He needn’t have answered me, because in an instant, I saw the seeds, felt the heat, and understood exactly why he had avoided that bite.

It was not a sliced green bean.  There were, in fact, no green beans in my bowl of Thai curry.  They were slices of long skinny HOT green peppers.   And I was suddenly overcome with extreme pain.  My tongue, my gums, even my teeth!  My entire mouth was on fire.  The back of my throat burned where a seed got hung up.  My teeth felt like they were cramming together in my jaw, my gums receding into my brain, and I fought the urge to chew the sides of my tongue off.

I shoveled the rest of the plain white rice into my mouth to, I hoped, neutralize the heat, but there was approximately a 20-minute chunk of the night during which I think I might have been hallucinating on hot pepper.  Tiny devils danced on the dinner table and red flames raged where a small romantic dinner candle had once burned.  A three headed dog sat across from me and the tiny little waitress spoke with the big bad voice of Vincent Price.

And I have finally recovered sufficiently to share this tip: do not eat dinner in a dark little Thai restaurant and stay away from the “green beans.”

I have a dozen excuses why I’ve been neglecting one of my favorite hobbies: reading!  What I mean is, I haven’t been reading for pleasure in the traditional sense: flat-backed on the couch with my feet up, novel in-hand and a plate of crackers on my chest. 

But I have been reading.  Textbooks, magazines, blogs, and online news stories.  I surf the web, reading, all day long.  So textbooks aside, I figured I’d share with you some gems I have enjoyed over the past year. 

Humor:  My favorite Vermont author and his snake grinder.  Read his blog, read his newspaper column, read his novels!

Politics:  Barack Obama’s speech about race.  Take the time to read this if you didn’t hear the speech.  Read it, feel validated, get inspired, and move forward.

Media:  A DC blogger’s thoughts on Journalism and jumping to conclusions.

Self:  A runner blogger’s personal take.  I like this because it could mean something unique to every reader.

Food:  A zillion (OK, just 101) quick and easy meal ideas from the Minimalist himself.

Fitness:  When I read this triathlete’s journal entry about swim training last year, a lightbulb went off in my head.  It was a pivotal moment.  Relax!

My mom was telling me the story of how my niece, who’s going to visit her in Vermont this weekend, thinks the Easter Bunny is going to come down the chimney and bring her presents.  That made me giggle of course, but also made me wonder how the Easter Bunny is going to get into my own place this Sunday. 

So I asked MF, “you gonna hide me an Easter basket?”  He looked at me crazy and said, “you don’t hide the basket, you hide the eggs.”

Ummm, OK, so I guess we do things different.  At lunch the other day, he and his mom were teasing each other about how she’s kept the same chocolate rabbit in her freezer for years, takes it out every Easter to give to MF, but then puts it back.   Egg hunts were their family tradition. 

In my house, two little girls would go to sleep very excited on Saturday night, having left empty baskets out for the Easter Bunny to find and fill.  Then on Sunday morning, we’d wake up and go searching for them.  Opening closet doors and peeking under tables, we’d eventually find them hidden behind the stereo speakers or on top of the hutch, overflowing with jelly beans and chocolate and green plastic grass.  That green plastic grass we’d continue to find ourselves vacuuming up all Spring. 

My basket had a thick handle and pink and green and yellow weave.  Sis’ basket had the skinny handle and multiple colors woven throughout.  Other details are fuzzy… Would we have dared tell each other if we stumbled upon the wrong basket before finding our own?  I don’t eat the black jelly beans now but can’t remember if it was always that way.  Did my Dad taste test the candy to make sure it was “safe” the way he did at Halloween? 

Anyway, I guess the Easter Bunny will not be finding me this year.  But I know it’s only because I don’t have a chimney.

“You’re so little!”  “You have such nice breath!”  “You wash your hair every day?”  “You don’t have hair on your feet?”  ”Why do you brush your teeth if you’re just gonna drink some coffee?” 

Each time he makes remarks like these, I smile a little and think to myself… wow, he’s impressed that I have good personal care habits?  Awesome!  Because in a crazy way it all serves to augment my mental image of his ex-wife.  I reason that if he thinks it’s cool and unusual that I am fit and clean, I can only surmise that she might have been the opposite: obese with greasy hair, hairy feet, gunky teeth, and bad breath.  And in a twisted way, that makes me very satisfied.

So when we awkwardly ran into his ex-family (but not his ex-) in the mall yesterday and all six of them were so good looking and happy and friendly… I got a little bit bummed.  People usually resemble their family, so now of course I think she must have been petite with porcelain skin, silky straight shiny hair, and big blue eyes.  And a nice person.

Why do I think about things like this?  I don’t know.  I just sorta needed to picture her as big and greasy.  

So by the time MF and I left the mall and arrived at the restaurant for brunch, I had become a little quiet (I was busy inside my head erasing the old and creating the new mental image!).  I tried to pretend I wasn’t distracted, but he could tell the whole awkward encounter upset me a little.  He thought it was because he didn’t introduce us, after all it was uncomfortable for him too.  So, while we waited in the bar for his parents,  I ordered a big bloody mary and spilled my ridiculous little secret. 

“That’s it?  That’s pretty funny,”  he said.  He was relieved, I think, that I wasn’t at all upset about not being introduced.  So I told him like I just told you here, “Babe, I just really needed to picture her as big and gross.” 

He laughed and explained to me that his ex-wife had, in fact, been “fat.”  But that she went and shed all those pounds, only to shed him and their life together with it.  She changed her image… and changed her mind.  

I asked more questions and got more answers and he held my hand just like he’d held my hand the whole time we stood there in the mall with his ex-family.  It turns out I didn’t need to imagine her ugly just to make myself feel better, I simply just needed to talk it out.

OK, so who is cuter?  Me or my vivid mental picture of her?  With a twisted up, lips pursed, chin to neck, eyes rolling face like this? (how do I repeatedly let myself be captured on film like this?) Say me anyway. 

And if you don’t know by now that I am kidding, please just don’t say anything at all.

I watched two cops hiding behind the bushes on the opposite side of the street.  Each with a radar gun, but less interested in pointing them at any moving vehicles than they were with hanging out there together, cracking each other up. 

From across the median, I could see them gesturing and hear them laughing but couldn’t make out their conversation.  All I knew is they were probably a couple of good-humored guys.

I was out for an afternoon run, so as I jogged by I had a funny thought.  “Hey!” I waved and caught their attention.  “How fast am I going?” 

Hi DC Blogs!

At the pizza parlor in the neighborhood I moved away from last year, you could always tell the regulars from the newbies.  Years ago they had signs hanging from the ceiling that marked two distinct zones: “eat-in” and “carry-out.”  When they remodeled, they never replaced the signs, yet the old rules still applied.

On occasion, I’d be standing there, waiting for my pie and watch as first-timers walked up to the carry-out register and order a meal to eat in, or vice versa.  I’d smirk a little and think to myself ”clearly not a local.”  I was a local pizza parlor snob.

The tables turned on me a couple weekends ago.  One Saturday I was shopping in Arlington and decided to head back to 29/66 via Kirkwood.  When I approached the light at 29, I realized “Ooh!  It’s lunchtime and I’m right here!  I can finally eat at The Italian Store!”

I have been hearing about this place for years but never ate there.  When I actually lived inside the beltway, I didn’t eat there because I assumed it was just an Italian grocery store.  By the time I started learning about the cold cuts and heroes, I was living way out in the ‘burbs.  So this time I decided to finally check it out.  I parked and approached the sidewalk and people were spilling out all over the place.   I elbowed my way inside and slithered through the maze of people all standing facing the deli counter, but at a polite distance.  The crowd was 5 people deep in places. 

I looked around, trying to decipher the local protocol.  Where is the end of the line?  What if I want just a sandwich, no groceries?  Where did all these people get the numbered slips of paper?  Ooh The Milano sounds good!  Do I need a number if I just want a sandwich?  Why is everyone in Arlington eating lunch at the same place at the same time?  Am I the only one who doesn’t know what she’s doing?  I felt like the newbie in the pizza parlor dining for the very first time.

My sense of bewilderment, combined with my low tolerance for crowds,  pushed me to decide that I just wasn’t hungry enough or curious enough to deal with it all.  I left there, sandwich-less, vowing to return sometime with the help of a regular patron, or at least after having a how-does-The-Italian-store-work conversation with a seasoned veteran. 

So, can anyone give me the quick lowdown on how to order a damn sandwich at The Italian Store?

I’ve been swimming more than anything else lately.  It’s often too cold to run, and I’m going through a spin-class-sucks phase.  So I smell like a pool… all the time.  I scrub and scrub in the locker room shower, but it’s permeated my skin and it’s deep in my pores.  

On Friday I crammed in a quick swim after work and before my date with MF.  I left work and went directly to the pool.  I left the pool and went straight to MF’s house to pick him up to go to the movies. 

“I swam today, babe.” I told him and he crinkled his nose.  I tried to convince him that the scent of chemicals on my neck is the new musk.  No luck.  That it’s a small tradeoff for doing something good for my body.  That got a nod of recognition.

At least it smells better than, say, the time I made a pasta dinner for two with 8 cloves of garlic.  The next morning I went to spin class and sweated it all out.  Poor people on the bikes on either side of me.

So we went to the movies.  The concessions guy let me layer my own butter (don’t make me explain) but he made the popcorn layers uneven.  So halfway through the top layer of popcorn, I was out of butter.  MF laughed when he saw me elbow-deep in the bag, trying to get at the other layer of butter towards the bottom.  I gave up but not before I was covered in greasy goodness.  No joke, my skin was shimmering with butter under the dim theater lights.

Oh by the way, this was all before the movie even started. 

So we were sitting in the theater, chatting through the ads and movie trivia, flirting and joking, and I teased him about spilling Pepsi all down the front of his shirt.  He claimed that the cup was leaky, I told him it was user error.  Oh, he wanted to zing me back so bad, so he blurted out the best thing he could come up with, “oh yeah, well you smell like chlorine and butter!”

Hiya pals!  Sorry I have been missing in blog action, but there’s not a single unique thought happening in my brain these days.  I have just been too busy.  Busy with what?  Well here, let me share with you my updates.

School:  I finished and handed in the first two chapters of my thesis.  I’ll write the rest next winter.  Whew!  I still have one more exam this quarter, but seeing as how I currently have a 101.08% average, I can probably draw hearts and unicorns all over that test and still get an A in the course.

TV:  One of my classmates gave me his rabbit ears, so now I get two channels, ABC and CBS.  I can watch Lost on Thursdays if I am home.  When all the seasons are done, and it’s packaged up in a nice little DVD box set, I will buy it.  Is my TV gonna work when broadcast TV switches to all-digital?

Running:  I am way behind in my training for the Cherry Blossom 10 miler.  I’ve not been putting in the miles per week that I should be.  I did get new running sneakers, though, so at least I don’t have that distraction. 

MF:  The whole reason I signed up for the dang race was so MF and I could run it together and motivate one another to train in the meantime.  Well, he hurt is knee in a mosh pit (I know… don’t even get me started on that…), his dog had surgery,  and then he came down with some bronchitis/flu thing that just wouldn’t quit.  Needless to say MF hasn’t run at all since New Years Day, and I’ve been running less because I have been distracted falling in love.

Love:  Yes, I said love.  We are in lovey-dovey. 

Ovary:  I was diagnosed with a complex cyst a month ago, I had another ultrasound yesterday to determine it’s size.  Will have to wait to find out if it’s grown or shrunk.  I do feel fine, and the more I learn about it, the less significant I realize it is.  In the meantime, the latest ultrasound tech insulted my uterus even further… 

Uterus:  It’s “tilted,” it’s “retoverted,” it’s “backwards.” Or as she put it, “God put you together upside down, is all.”  I am reassured this does not affect my “baby-makin’ abilities.”

MF again:  And so when I called MF and told him that they found a cyst, the first thing he said was, “Oh no sweetie!  Was it caused by us having sex?”   He later took it upon himself to study everything he could find on the internet abour ovarian cysts and reassure me that I am going to be OK.  “Most of the time they just go away on their own,” he offered, along with other sorts of cyst trivia.  It all circles back to the falling in love thing.