Idiosycratic Life

Hey La, Hey La...

So Stephen is on his way to DC to visit his brother's family, and I have the place to myself again. Now my dog can stop making her most pitiful Sad Face at me when I get out of bed every morning, since as she resumed her rightful sleeping place (hogging the best part of the bed between the body pillow and the air-conditioner) and since "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" is not running on the TV with anywhere near the frequency it has been these last six days, she will have to find something to do besides barking gleefully every time Ryan Stiles rings that doorbell for the "Party Quirks" improv game thingy. (We've never had a working doorbell here. It is ALWAYS the TV doorbell. It's never anything Bella needs to bark at. Ever.)

What else? I took the scenic route to Norwalk CT today. It was fun. Connecticut is such an odd state. It's so small that nearly everything is about 45 minutes away from anything else, but everywhere I've been in the state is pretty different from anywhere else. Stephen's hometown was smallish and WASP-y and quaint, and Wesleyan (Middletown) was also very pretty in a "visiting Gwen at radical liberal college" way, and the Danbury/Trumbull area, where Steve's friends were married/relatives buried, is pretty run of the mill HomeDepotBigMallTargetAmerica, but Old Greenwich, where Steve and I spent some time driving around yesterday, is so. different. from any of that. They actually have sections of white picket fences with flower boxes staggered in the MIDDLE OF STREETS that lead to the private beaches that keep poor people out. You have to go all slow to navigate around them, so rich people can stop you if you try to get out of your car and walk on Yacht Club beach territory with your impoverished feet.

This is true!

We pulled over to the side of the road by a vacant lot, and we were about to go down this little path to walk on the beach, which we knew was not open to the public, (but it was a Thursday evening! Who would care, right? We weren't going to litter or use metal detectors to find and plunder their gold or anything. Besides, the "no trespassing" signs are so tasteful, they're easy to miss, you know?) and this man came out of his castle to ask if we were having "car trouble." Apparently, this is "Connecticut" for "You people are not in the right tax bracket to walk over that sand dune." Luckily, I pretended to be rummaging in the trunk of my car for anything but that picnic blanket, no sir, no sir, and Stephen instantly produced an ear bulb syringe (it's mine, don't ask) and told him we were looking for "my medicine."

We went to the park instead.