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Last year: (the technical term is, I believe, a "doo-hickey") |
Much to my surprise, because I actually wanted it, the Christmas-y colors I wanted were in stock, though they were almost out of green. I bought two skeins each of red, green, and white, and debated for a while over some darker shades, but eventually discarded the idea because they weren't quite the right colors.
I wandered through the clothing section on my way to the register, and much to my surprise saw a few things worth buying (especially since they were all on clearance). I picked up some leggings (I go through at least one pair every winter) and some nice grey pants, a fantastically soft purple chenille sweater, and a blue top with some embroidered flowers accented with beads. I'm wearing the shirt today, and trying to decide if the little wooden beads actually add any value whatsoever to the top, because it's a half-sleeve shirt (they sleeves come just past my elbows) and every time I have to reach across my body, the underside of my forearm gets scratched. I have a beaded vest like that, but if I took the beads off, the vest would look sortof stupid. So I only wear it over long-sleeved shirts. I'm really thinking this shirt wouldn't be hurt if I carefully snipped off the beads.
Anyway. I piled my purchases into the car, and headed home. As I pulled into our cul-de-sac, I remembered the notice we'd gotten in our mailbox the previous day: something about keeping the street clear because they were going to be repaving the roads in our neighborhood. As I pulled toward the house, I saw the whole circle was full of gooey tar and men raking it smooth. One of them waved at me to stop and shook his head. I rolled down my window.
"Which house?" he asked.
"That blue one there," I said, pointing.
He turned to look, and regretfully shook his head. "If I let you go now," he said, "You'll mess up your car and your driveway. Come back in about half an hour." And he would not be gainsayed.
So I backed the car into a neighbor's driveway and turned around. Where was I going to kill half an hour? Well, I needed a few more craft supplies for a Hallowe'en decoration I've got a pattern for. I drove to the little craft store that's just around the block from us.
I explained to the woman minding the store about my situation, and warned her that I was mostly there to kill time. That said, I wandered around for twenty minutes and picked up about fifteen dollars' worth of supplies. (Craft stores exist for people like me, I swear.)
Finished there, I thought I'd go to the drugstore next door and look at the Hallowe'en stuff. I usually avoid the Eckerd drugstore, but I want to color my hair some outrageous color like green or purple for K.T.'s Hallowe'en party, and so far I've only been able to find red and black. Eckerd didn't even have the red and black, but they did have candy corn, which I'd had a craving for earlier in the day. Roses hadn't had any (what kind of sick store doesn't carry candy corn this close to Hallowe'en? It's criminal!)
I bought some candy corn, and then figured it was probably time to head home. Amusingly enough, I turned onto the street next to ours right behind Matt, on his way home from work. We waved at each other as we headed down our street. He, too, was stopped by the workmen, but was waved through. When I pulled up and rolled down my window, he said: "You can go down now, but don't turn sharp!"
"Slow turns," I repeated. "Gotcha."
Matt chortled at my bulging bags of crafts, and I ate a few candy corn, and then we changed clothes and headed out to play Ultimate Frisbee.
For those of you unfamiliar with the sport, Ultimate Frisbee is sortof like a cross between frisbee, football, and basketball. You throw the frisbee to your teammates, and the object is to catch the frisbee in the other team's endzone, like a football touchdown. Like basketball, once you've caught the frisbee, you can't "travel" with it (there's no dribbling equivalent, of course, so once you catch the thing, you can't move until you've thrown it.) Matt and Braz and Jeremy have all been playing for about two months with some guys from their offices and some college student at William and Mary.
Partly because it sounds like fun, partly because Kris' schedule is making regular tennis almost impossible, and partly because I'm tired of sitting home alone three nights a week while Matt's playing, I decided I'd give Ultimate a shot. It's a game that involves a lot of running, and I wasn't sure I could handle that part of it, so I decided to go first on a Wednesday, which is when they spend more time on warm-up and throwing/catching games than the actual game itself.
I warmed up with Matt and Jeremy and Braz, and switched to throwing in a triangle with Matt and another girl, Catherine, who was tiny and very very fast. I was almost relieved to discover that she wasn't a much better thrower than me. By the time they'd gotten around to deciding to actually play, though, I was pretty winded. I decided to sit the actual game out.
It's a good thing I did, too, because I didn't have the slightest idea what was going on. The basics were as I told you above (though I didn't know when it started about the travelling rule) but they were yelling arcane things at each other. Another girl showed up and sat on the sidelines, so I went and sat next to her. "Hi," I said. "I'm Liz."
She looked up at me. "You're... Braz's wife?" she guessed.
"Matt's," I corrected, sitting down next to her. "I thought I'd come play, but I'm way too out of shape to do anything but the warm-ups."
She laughed. We chatted. She was a lot nicer than merely polite. She explained the arcane things they were yelling and some finer points of the game for me, taking my perhaps absurd questions in stride. She complimented Matt's playing - "He's fast, and he's learned it really quick." When I said that I had enough energy for throwing a frisbee back and forth, but not all the running around the players were doing, she offered to throw with me. I've never learned anything but the "standard" easy frisbee toss, so she showed me the harder "forehand" throw.
By the time my arm started getting tired from the unaccustomed motions, I felt comfortable enough with her to risk looking patently absurd and throwing left-handed. I was surprised to discover that I threw better with my left hand than my right. She tried it, and had similar results. We postulated it was because right-handed throwing was automatic and unconscious, but we had to actually think about the motions our left hands went through, and therefore made them more smoothly and carefully.
After a while, I got tired again, so we sat back down to watch everyone else play. Eventually, they stopped, and we stood around chatting while they caught their breaths enough to head back to their cars and dorms.
I had fun. I'll go back. I'll be trying to talk Kris into coming, too - that way I know I'll have someone to simply throw and catch with while the game is going on. One day, maybe I'll even play.
This morning, I'm sore all over. Muscles that don't see any use in my arms and shoulder are throbbing. My back feels like it's on fire from half an hour of sitting on the ground without any support. My butt hurts from the throwing lunge. But my knees and feet are no worse than usual. I can do this. I'm happy.
Word of the Day: gainsay - declare to be untrue or invalid; contradict
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