Chirky

My family got our first computer in the early 1980s. It had a hideous quad-panel Windows system and came with a programming book that taught us how to code in DOS to create swirls across the monitor. And though it was low-tech compared to today's standards, it was the most amazing thing we'd ever seen. (Technologically speaking, I mean.)

Soon we graduated to playing family Quest games - namely, King's Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest. (And guess what?!? Roger knew how much I loved those games and got them for me last Christmas! The games have been reprogrammed to work on Windows XP. Long live 1985!) Then there were the educational programs, like Macon Beavis Typing. (Or was it Beavis Macon? Whatever.)

Ever since then, I've been (a) obsessed with inserting two spaces between every sentence I type and (b) traumatized by having to push the Shift key opposite the letter I'm attempting to capitalize. Does anyone actually use the Shift key on the right? Because I can't be the only one who feels this way.

In my new job I'm being re-programmed to use only one space between sentences, and it's almost killing me. How do I conquer this? For now I have turned on that little paragraph-icon key so that I every time I hit the space bar it inserts a mark. And then I painstakingly look for double marks and delete one of them. By the end of the day my nostrils are flaring and I can begin to see permanent creases across my forehead.

So I'm taking a survey: Do you insert one or two spaces between sentences?

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Did you go shopping on Black Friday?

Roger and I did.

Let me tell you: I never thought I would be so excited to buy a new vacuum cleaner. For the past several months I’ve been more and more frustrated with our old vacuum because it just pushes dirt around the carpet. It smells like a wet dog when we turn it on, and we’ve never owned a dog. It doesn’t even make lines in the carpet because it simply doesn’t work. I still try to vacuum, just for the sake of feeling clean, but it’s kind of depressing when your carpet looks dirtier after you’ve vacuumed it. We’ve changed the bags and the belts and still nothing. It just sucks. (Well, not literally. The problem is that it doesn’t suck at all.)

When Roger assembled the new vacuum, he realized that the bag-less dirt container can double as a machine gun. A transparent machine gun.

We also bought a mini-vacuum – the dust buster kind – for small jobs, like cleaning all the debris in front of the fireplace after bringing in logs.

We purchased a humidifier, which we expected to use immediately but instead had to wait 24 hours while we soaked the filter. It’s got an auto-shutoff function that triggers based on the humidification sensor. So far, the humidifier has been running for 36 hours straight. Apparently our apartment is extremely arid.

We also bought a new ironing board to replace ours, which is so old that it was causing a rust transfer from the board onto our clothes. Through the board cover and pad. Roger outfitted our new ironing board with an inch-deep layer of cushy foam, and I can’t help but press my hand into the board every time I walk past it.

To top it all off, I went to Target and was given a coupon for free Duncan Hines freezer-to-oven brownies! Free. No strings attached. They’re in my freezer now, but I bet they won’t stay there very long.

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There is something about me – something deep within me that believes all things and hopes all things that are for the greater good. There’s something about me that faces reality, cocks my head to the side, and then examines that truth from a different perspective. A perspective of hope. Of trusting beyond hope for what seems insurmountable. I dream of big things, of the unlikely, of miracles, even. I do believe in miracles, because my life is full of them. I’m a walking testimony of everything that is good in this world, despite the evil that lurks…waiting. And tonight I was reminded of that good.

When I saw my brother’s name on my caller ID, I didn’t think anything of it. It’s not common for us to call each other and chat, aside from the occasional question about plans to get together. With Thanksgiving approaching, I figured he was calling about our plans for the holiday. Which is why I was surprised when he put someone else on the phone, without much of an introduction at all.

In fact, when I first started talking to the child, I didn’t even know who it was. And I do mean “it” – I wasn’t even sure if I was talking to a boy or a girl. At first I thought my brother was at my sister’s house and had decided to put my nephew on the phone. And then the little girl told me her name was Lexi. The name plundered through the accordion files of my mind – I had heard that name on several occasions before. I even recalled repeating it to myself, long ago. Was that his next door neighbor’s daughter? Why was I talking to her?

And then she started telling me things she knew about my childhood. Stories that had been written in hot Texas summers and cemented in the minds of my cousins, my brother and myself. It occurred to me who Lexi was: the daughter of my oldest cousin, Rachel. Rachel was more like a sister to me than a cousin. I had always looked up to her. She was someone I had shared my room with for several months while she was in high school and I was in middle school. Rachel. My heart fluttered. Could it be? I hadn’t spoken to her in nearly thirteen years.

Thirteen years since her father, my uncle, had died.

Thirteen years since our families had a falling-out over something that my teenage mind couldn’t understand. I still don’t.

Thirteen years of life, of memories, of time lost.

I had written her letters that went unanswered, never knowing why. I still don’t.

My brother, while traveling near her home on business, spent his evenings searching for her.

He found her.

Thirteen years later, and her voice sounds just the same. I can picture her freckled face, her straight button nose, her high cheekbones, her arched eyebrows. My ears get hot, a lump forms in my throat, my face flushes. Before I can prevent it from happening, my forehead wrinkles and lips purse. My bottom lip juts out, tears spill from wells in my eyes. Something in my heart feels broken.

I’ve wanted to talk to her for so long. I’ve wanted to reconnect for more months than I care to count. I wondered if I, too, was being written off with the rest of my family, punished for an argument from so long ago, an argument that I wasn’t even a part of.

If marriage to my husband has taught me one thing, it is that it’s okay – healthy, even – to articulate exactly how I’m feeling. And so I did.

I told Rachel that I missed her. Hot tears fell. My voice cracked. She missed me, too. Her voice cracked. She asked if my hair was still long. Long, and curly, I replied. I told her I married three and a half years ago. Fresh tears rolled down my cheeks. I wished that she had been there for that.

We talked for forty one minutes. The phone beeped, then disconnected. I stared at it, willing her to call me back. Call me back. Call me back. Call me back.

She did.

The battery had depleted and she had to run outside, climb in my brother’s rental car and plug the phone in to continue the conversation. We talked for another forty nine minutes. I cried the entire time.

I mourned the loss of our relationship. I sobbed because she was found again. I can’t stop crying, off and on, off and on, and now I’m not even sure why. I have high hopes for redeveloping our friendship. I dream of the day our families are reunited. But for now, I’m content just knowing that she’s still out there, thinking of my brother and me, telling her children about the fun we used to have together.

Miracles happen every day. Even if they don’t occur to me, or to you, they still happen.

Tonight was mine.

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While washing dishes this morning, something inside the disposal caught my eye. A lemon! I love lemons, especially in my disposal, because when I grind them up the entire kitchen smells citrus-y clean and fresh.

I wasn’t sure where the lemon had come from, since I don’t have any on hand, so I assumed that it must have been in a take-out glass of tea or water. I thought that perhaps someone dumped the leftover ice and lemon down the drain. Without giving it a second thought, I turned on the water and hit the disposal switch.

When the disposal began grinding, an odd smell wafted through the air. A fleeting memory of something that had fallen down the drain the day before flashed through my mind. It wasn’t lemon. It was garlic.

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There is a lesson to be learned from me, and that is: Don’t run three miles - okay fine, two, but it felt like three with all those hills – just a few days after you throw out your back, because chances are it isn’t entirely healed yet, and chances are you’ll be limping around the next day.

You’ll also probably find yourself icing your back every morning and every night and popping muscle relaxers in between. But at least you’ve learned another important lesson, and you’re lying in bed watching TV while you ice your back, instead of lying on the bathroom floor while staring at the ceiling.

You see, there's always an upside to everything, you just have to know where to look to find it.

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This morning, while lying on my bathroom floor, I thought up a new weekly blog series called As I See It. It’s all about (wait for it, wait for it...) HOW I SEE THINGS. Quite literally.

You see, I woke up this morning at 4:37 a.m. because I had somehow managed to partially throw out my back. I laid in bed for two hours, hoping that if I remained very still, not moving even an inch, the pain would subside and my spine would go back to normal. The thought of being paralyzed and in pain for the next four days sent me rolling off the mattress and limping to the freezer. I grabbed the icy gel pack and made my way to the guest bathroom, where I threw the finger-numbing bundle on the floor and covered it with one of Roger’s t-shirts. And then I laid there, on the frozen pack, staring at the ceiling.

It was kind of boring, lying there for twenty minutes with nothing to occupy my thoughts other than how I thought the Internet might also want to see my ceiling. So I took a picture of it with my camera phone. As I See It was born.

I don’t know why I decided to lie down on the cold, hard bathroom floor and stare at the ceiling. I could have iced my back anywhere, perhaps somewhere more comfortable (and warm), like my couch. Or in bed. But lying on the bathroom floor made sense at the time, and you must remember that the time was very early in the morning – earlier than I’m accustomed to, anyhow - and we all know that drunk ideas and early morning ideas are rarely ever good ones.

I’ll illustrate that last fact with the next picture, which I took because I thought maybe the Internet needed to know what I looked like As I Was Seeing It. Why I thought this was a good idea, I don’t know. My hair looks like it was combed with an eggbeater, my mascara is smudged all around my eyes, and my bathroom floor? Well – my floor I haven’t cleaned in a week. Wait, no, it’s been longer more like two weeks.

Don’t judge me, Internet, because it was very early in the morning and I obviously wasn’t thinking very clearly, and also because there are people out there who haven’t cleaned their bathroom floors in, like, three months. Or worse, they’ve NEVER cleaned their bathroom floors. And if that is you, Internet, just don’t tell me. I don’t want to know if you have never cleaned your bathroom floors, because that will make me think you’ve maybe never cleaned your entire bathroom, and if that’s the case I might be afraid to come over to your house one day, for fear that I might need to use the restroom while I’m there.

And you should know that my floors are typically so clean you can eat off of them – seriously, you could, because I scrub them on my hands and knees, Internet, with ANTI-BACTERIAL WET WIPES. Screw my Swiffer Wet Jet, I’m armed with Clorox.

Well, I’m typically armed with Clorox, anyhow. Right now I’m just staring at the ceiling.

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I can always be bribed with food.

The Latin team brought in authentic tacos – the real kind, not the variety from Taco Bell or Dairy Queen (no, seriously: a friend swears by Dairy Queen tacos) for breakfast this morning. Homemade white corn tortillas. Homemade hot, hot, hot salsa. Limes. Steak. Marinated pork (al pastor).

Have I mentioned that I love my new job?

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