The Things that Distracted Lizzie Last Week
LIZZIE
Jane dazzled me with her distractions. When Jane is distracted, expect a wealth of links and funny pictures of Dick Cheney looking somehow both sly and precious. My distractions, I’m afraid, will never qualify me for punditry. Yet, like my friend Jane, I found mid-January to be riddled with unusual distractions. Here’s my own list:
1. Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth
I’ve had some commuting time to kill this month (More on that in a moment), and I had the bright idea to begin the book by downloading the unabridged audio version. By the end of one day’s commute, I was completely hooked on the characters and the story. The desperate, ambitious cathedral builder, Tom; the witchy, golden-eyed, enigmatic Ellen; the displaced, destitute young aristocrat Aliena; the pious, compassionate (but very shrewd) prior Philip. And the villains make my skin crawl: the effete and thoroughly corrupt Bishop Waleran and the vile sexual psychopath William. It’s been about half audio, half reading–but I had to have my dose of Pillars every day last week or I got a little bit cranky.
I will comment more on this book as the story unfolds, but for now I can point to it as the most engrossing of last week’s distractions.
2. Back to School (Again) for Mom. For the last couple of years, I’ve been chipping away at a Web Design program at my local community college. Last week was the second week of the semester–the week when the syllabus has been demystified and homework hits and you realize the commute takes way longer than it should. And…as you sit in DMV purgatory on a Saturday writing referential integrity constraints for database tables…you realize all over again that learning new stuff is a very time-intensive endeavor.
Oh, but how I do love to be on campus! Especially those weeks when everything is starting up and possibility hangs in the air. I just can’t stay away. When I’m not teaching, I’m taking classes. Last Wednesday, I stood in the crowded hallway before class watching my classmates (and trying not to be too obvious about watching them). They clustered in groups according to the languages they spoke—Vietnamese, Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Arabic. Interspersed with their jokes (that I couldn’t understand) and flirtations (that I could pretty easily understand), terms like “C++,” “VisualBasic.net,” “parseInt,” and “World of Warcraft” flew through the air.
The door kept opening with blasts of icy air. And, as students strolled in, the hallway became full of the smells of cigarettes and coffee—the 15-minute lunch substitute, taken together in the 25-degree January air between classes. I absorbed the nicotine- and caffeine-enhanced optimism around me and smiled. I felt young, not a bit middle-aged (even though I AM one of those annoying, hand-in-the-air, overly excitable, returning-to-school-due-to-midlife-crisis students who probably makes everyone around me think in Vietnamese or Hindi, "GOD, I wish she would just chill.") Somewhere down the hall a flute was playing–not well, but with gusto and lots of happy trills. Unusual for the Tech building, but why not? That’s what I love about the distractions that come with heading back to school. The prevailing question seems to be an energetic "Why not?!"
JANE
I am envious of Lizzie’s back to school experience. I too loved the heady atmosphere of a new semester. One of my favorite things is a new box of markers/pens/crayons… Of course, back in college this was not only for the endless educational possibilities, but also the more "social" ones (and I don’t mean tea parties). Lizzie, you brought me back to the campus building where all of my lit and psych classes took place… Not a bad place to be at all. Someday I’ll return there.
LIZZIE
3. The Snow Cat. My final distraction of the week was of the vehicular sort. The purring, white, mountain-ascending vehicular sort. While we were all in the mountains of West Virginia for a ski weekend, poor George had an unfortunate run-in with a patch of black ice. He came through unharmed, but our poor, crunched, noseless, SUV limped disconsolately down off the mountain and was towed off to Pacifica heaven.
What to do? There was no way we and the four kids were going to get down off the mountain without a 4-wheel-drive vehicle. No car dealerships closer than 60 miles. No car rental agencies closer than 90 miles. I opened my laptop and sprang into action. There are few things I love more than the combination of laptop, WiFi, and a pressing need to spend money. I discovered on Saturday that there is one more thing that rates right up there with those three ultimate, life-affirming joys–and that is having two men enter into competition to give me what I want.
Within minutes, I had two fine salesmen in Buckhannon, WV, engaged in a duel for my hand in check-signing. A glittering, remote-locking key beckoned. The conditions: the winner must prove his love by bringing the mount (An elegant palfrey? A graceful Arabian? What would it be?!) up the treacherous mountain where the maiden (who lost her maidenhead 25 years ago, but oh well, just indulge me, dear Reader) awaited with her valiant, black-ice-fighting knight at her side. Would it be smooth-tongued Randy of Ford or gravel-voiced Jeff of Toyota who would win the contest? Jeff looked pretty good at first. His noble black Highlander appeared to be a comfy and reliable steed worthy of the maiden’s fair behind. But then Randy emerged to take the lead.
The Mountaineer was a sleek, feline-looking beast. And the color was described on the dealer website not as white, but as white chocolate. Mmmmmm. Feline AND chocolatey. And included in its reins and bridle were integrated GPS, iPod sync, satellite radio, and sweet little automatic up-and-down running boards to aid in my graceful dismount.
Randy and his tech-drenched Mountaineer won the duel. My sister Gina stood waiting at the tower window with me at the appointed time that afternoon. Slowly, stealthily, with a barely audible purr, the Mountaineer ascended the slope that led up to the driveway. Gina laughed and said, "Just look at it coming right up the mountain, all white and purring and majestic. Just like a snow cat! Rrarrr." And she held up her hand, pawlike, in a confident feline, go-get-em gesture. I laughed with her and realized something: though I am 43 years old, this is really the first time I’ve ever been the one to pick out my own car. It’s always been a decision guided by practicality, finances, the accommodation of six people, and the negotiating skills of my husband. This imperious cat is all mine, and that is a good feeling. Rrarrr
JANE
Dueling car salesmen… only Lizzie could make a car accident, and subsequent new car purchase sound so gallant, dashing and of course, romantic. Mr. Darcy himself could not have wooed our dear Lizzie into a new vehicle with more chivalry.
The classes in a totally new subject (for the very literary Lizzie); the gas guzzling but totally tricked out, plush ride… you are having a well deserved fine time, aren’t you? Bravo!
LIZZIE
And so I listen to my voice-activated Pillars of the Earth audio-book while commuting back and forth to campus in my white-chocolate lioness of an SUV. As I sit on the Beltway, I think about the vanity plates I just ordered at the end of that two-hour wait in the DMV: SNO CAT1.
Not a car but a lithe, mountain-skulking snow leopard (with appropriate, DMV-issued identifier). Not West Virginia salesman on opposite sides of State Highway 33 but chivalrous dueling swordsmen (and, all the better, not a single fatality!). Not an audio-book but a heaven-reaching Gothic cathedral in process. Not a Beltway but a highway to the Royal Academy. Not a tech class, but a flute-accompanied, promise-filled interlude. All in all, my distractions (while oblivious to the major events taking place in our nation and containing not even one Photoshopped Cheney/Strangelove pic) turned out rather well.
