2010 August

Famous People Who Want To Be My Neighbor

August 31, 2010 By The Well Read Hostess 7 Comments

Catchy title, huh?

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. And clever with titles.

Brendan Fraser would love to be my neighbor. I just typed “neighbro” by accident, which sort of works, because I can imagine having a sibling-kind of relationship with him. I cannot explain WHY he would want to be my neighbor other than that. I think we’d get along. He’d like my family. He’d hang out on the back porch. He and my husband would help each other trim tree branches and paint stuff. He would like my cooking and frequently filch cookies from the counter before they’ve cooled.

Heather Graham would also love to be my neighbor. My husband thinks this is an excellent idea, by the way, but I suspect his reasons are different from my own. As my friend JennRuss would say, AHEM. Heather would constantly be barging in the back door at all hours of the day and night. At three a.m. she’d show up and ask, “Did I wake you? OH MY GOD! I’m so sorry!!!” And it would be impossible to be annoyed with her because she’s freaking adorable and fun and so Heather Graham-y. Plus she’s be holding a bottle of Vicodin and asking, “I think my dog ate a bunch of these. Is that bad?” Or she’d show up at nine on a Sunday in a sequined mini dress from the night before, asking if she could just sleep for a few hours because she’s locked out again. But could she first borrow some bandaids or maybe some gauze because she tried to break in but cut her thumb. Then we’d end up in the Emergency Room. Heather would often need to borrow a plunger. She’d be a regular last minute Thanksgiving dinner guest.

Joe Scarborough would LOOOOOOVVVEEE to be my neighbor. I, on the other hand, would hate it. He would love it because he would get a huge charge out of coming to my house every damn day and trying to convince me that he’s smarter than I am and that he’s right and I’m wrong. Every once in a while we’d agree on something and I’d think I’d be safe for a while, but he’d only be encouraged and come back with some ridiculous statement about immigration or Rahm Emmanuel and we’d be yelling again and I’d be waving my arms and rolling my eyes so far back in my head that I’d get a migraine and TWGH would just sigh and go in the house (smarter than both of us by miles). Scarborough’s wife would call him on his iphone, “Get the hell home for dinner, Joe. Leave the Dunnings ALONE.” Eventually, he’d just be like Mr. Roper. Always around and making noise, but a familiar presence.

Angelina and Brad. But only because kids love to play at my house and theirs would just roll on in and make themselves at home while Brangelina jet off to make movies somewhere. Hello free babysitting.

Wanda Sykes practically IS my neighbor. And is my goal to get her to Wednesday Spaghetti. Hello Wanda??!! We’ve got a big one coming up! Call me! Wanda and I would be best buddies. She would drop in all the time just to say hi and to drop off her kids when she needed some “me” time. I would do the same with my kids. Soon, my kids would call her “Aunt Wanda,” and tell outrageous stories about the nutty stuff “Aunt Wanda” does. They wouldn’t even know that she’s a big star, because she’s grounded and real and shops at the Acme just like we do. Wanda would come over and just hang out, and before we knew it, it would be midnight and we’d have killed a few bottles of red wine and our stomachs would hurt from laughing so much. I know I could count on Wanda to pick my kids up if I’m running late, and she knows that if she’s out of town on business, and her pipes burst, I’ll make sure the plumber comes and everything is fixed up by the time she gets home. Because that’s what neighbors do.

This is only Part the First of my list, because I can’t finish it now. I left my wallet at Target and have to go retrieve it. I’m blaming adult onset ADD. Or dementia. Or the fact that I’m back at work after the best summer ever and am so depressed about it that I’m contemplating taking the dog’s sedatives to get through the day.

Filed Under: Celebutaunt, I Just Make Most of This Up Tagged With: Angelie Jolie, Brad Pitt, Brangelina, Brendan Fraser, Heather Graham, Joe Scarborough, Wanda Sykes, Won't You Be My Neighbor

Doesn’t Everybody Have One?

August 24, 2010 By The Well Read Hostess 6 Comments

Everybody has place to go with a creek. Right? Or a river? Or a stream? Or a run? Or a something?

Maybe not. I guess people in New Mexico or Arizona or Nevada or East Texas or some other dry place might not. Poor saps.

Everywhere I’ve ever lived has had one, though. And this summer, I’ve been every day.

The creek. The woods. The place you go when you’re a kid and catch frogs and splash around and pretend you’re a pirate and build a fort and get filthy. The place you go when you’re a slightly older kid to brood after school and sneak cigarettes and beers and hopefully not much else on the weekends with your friends. And the place you go when you’re over all that for a walk, or a jog, or to clear your head, or because your dog needs exercise, or because your kids need to get out of the house, or some combination of all of the above.

Today we went to the “college woods,” through which Crum Creek flows. These are the woods of my youth, located one town to the right of us. I was craving variation from our regular haunt, The Old Mill – Ridley Creek runs through those woods. When we lived another town over, before we had kids and before this dog, we frequented Rocky Run and Chester Creek. When I lived in Chestnut Hill it was the Wissahickon.

Each has its own atmosphere, psychic temperature, and offerings – there’s a great rope swing at The Old Mill, and we sometimes find fossils. Crum Creek yields plentiful pottery, some truly old and interesting (although I did have to spend some time convincing one intrepid future archaeologist that “Yuengling Bottle Circa 2009″ was really not such a rare treasure). Chester Creek is clean and cool and full of trout. The Wissahickon has the Indian statue and secret bridges.

My favorite will forever be Greenough Park in Missoula, Montana. Maybe because of when I when was there, but maybe that’s not it. I ran then – and it’s almost exactly a one mile loop. My big Bernese Mountain Dog and I would go, planning to run it twice, but never did. Once was good. Parts of the path were paved and perfectly maintained and parts were wild and overgrown. My best friend’s neighbor used to threaten to go rake it when her life was feeling out of control. You’d go one day and the leaves would be on the trees, and the next you’d be knee deep in snow. Rattlesnake Creek runs through Greenough Park. The name wasn’t chosen to sound all “Wild Westy;” it’s more of a descriptor.

The second summer I lived in Missoula was “a hot one.” One day Dexter (the dog) and I showed up at Greenough to find that someone had damned up a section of Rattlesnake Creek to create a pool at its widest point – about 25 feet across – about four feet deep. My Swiss Mountain Dog, a previously non swimming dog, swam in slow, languid circles, using his tail as a feathery rudder for hours.

God, how I miss that park. Almost as much as I miss the dog.

Filed Under: Back to Nature, Facts of Life, Synecdoche Tagged With: Chester Creek, Crum Creek, Dexter, Greenough Park, Rattlesnake creek, Ridley Creek, Rocky Run, the water

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Has Got Nothing On Me

August 13, 2010 By The Well Read Hostess 6 Comments

The ocean is different every day.

I’ll pause here while you recover. That type of laser-sharp observation is often unsettling to average people; sort of knocks you off kilter for a while and takes you some time to process.

I’m not good with change. I don’t like periods of transition. But when I’m spending a week at the beach, I wake up each day itching to see what the tide will be like – will it be windy? Will the waves be rough? Will the beach be flattened out and washed clean? Will there be ledges and ripples in the sand carved by waves from the night before? Will the water be cold? Will there be jellyfish? I guess the changeable nature of the sand and surf is about all I can handle; the explanations for the variations in weather and water temperatures and what they bring to bear on beaches and dunes and waves is all complicated and remote enough to feel entirely out of my control. There isn’t anything I CAN do other than sit back and watch it unfold. Plus, other than how I position my beach chair and how much time I spend in the water, the conditions at the beach don’t much effect me. As far as change goes, I love that the ocean is different every day.

It’s an exercise in futility to try to write about the ocean, especially in short form with no plot, and successfully avoid using cliches. On a Friday evening, sun setting over the Currituck Sound, it’s an exercise not worth the effort, frankly.

The ocean is all kinds of wonderful, in its many incarnations one day to the next, but best of all it’s the backdrop for other kinds of changes, changes that might otherwise be a little harder to take for the change-averse among us. We used to drag an inflatable kiddie pool onto the beach and fill it with buckets of salt water for the toddlers to splash in so they wouldn’t get bored when they were too small to go in the ocean. This summer they mastered bodysurfing. The “boys,” now teenagers, used to play in the sand and catch frogs and fish in the bay. The last time I saw one of them, about an hour ago, he and his girlfriend were getting ready to cook dinner for us all. The other one just whomped my husband in a tennis match.

It was windy today, but the sky was blue. The water was warmer than it was yesterday, and the beach was flat. The ocean was rough, and we kept the kids out of the water unless one of us was with them. Yesterday the ocean was as calm as a pond, but very cold. A wide sandbar was easy to reach and provided the perfect starting point for catching bodysurfing waves. Tomorrow is our last full day before we go home. I wonder what the beach will be like.

Filed Under: Back to Nature, Facts of Life, I Just Make Most of This Up, Synecdoche Tagged With: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Change is Bad, Gifts from the Sea, Outer Banks