Sticky

You're right: I should have updated sooner. I mean, it's not like I'm actually doing much in Houston. I go to work, and then most of my evenings are kind of spent bumming around. I'll get dinner once or twice a week, go to the gym, but there's been plenty of time to update.

I'm glad I didn't, though. I wouldn't have wanted to be hasty about anything I wrote, hasty about assumptions or susceptible to falling into moods that might pass.

I've been down in Houston for about six weeks now, and the humidity is already warning me that I'm going to be a greasy, sweaty mess for at least half the year as long as I live here. Memories of three years in Florida, including my first two years of high school, swim in the back of my mind when I wake up and it's sort of mildly cloudy and damp. Tonight I came back from the gym and found a mosquito sitting on the outside wall of my apartment; thankfully, it wasn't nearly as big as the mosquitoes in Alabama, that sticky place I spent my senior year of high school.

Tonight I also finally started hanging pictures on my wall. It's to make my little apartment feel more like home and less a place I happen to sleep when I'm at work, ticking away hours between trips to Fort Worth.

I left Fort Worth after four years, the longest I've ever consecutively lived anywhere. The city was good to me—it gave me an education in college, when I was there for school but left at every chance to go home and be with Topper. It gave me a job, a career start, a place to let Topper live with the pony, an epicenter where my friends and eventually family would be. It gave me the love of my life (Dutch's burger, in case you were wondering . . . oh, and my guy, too). It gave me a place to really work on growing up.

The most peculiar thing about this move is that I'm going back. I've written before about how going back to places I've once lived is an extremely rare opportunity, which makes me often feel like my past is imaginary. I'm going back to Fort Worth frequently on weekends—my family, my friends, my soulmate (Topper) and the love of my life are all there. It's four hours up the road. I have a car, I have cash, I can return.

And it's almost as strange as never returning.

Every time I'm driving north on the highway that leads toward downtown Fort Worth, I have to check my mental state. Am I happy? Am I relaxed? Am I unnerved? Do I realize I don't live here any more? It doesn't matter that I'm not gone long enough to miss much, that I read the newspapers every day and most of my life is still there: I am not there. Not really. I am just a visitor.

I really like most of what I've seen of Houston so far. I'll delve more into my work, my neighborhood, all that stuff in the future, but I still haven't realized it's home. Maybe I'll somehow keep deluding myself that Fort Worth is still home, or maybe it's that place that I'll call home from now on. People will ask, Where are you from? and I'll answer, Fort Worth. Right now, I just say, I moved from Fort Worth. I don't claim it yet. But it looks like maybe I can, maybe I will.

It's hard to tell.

First Of The Last

Tomorrow is my last day at work.

This is, I guess, my first grown-up job, which doesn't include having back-up income from student loans or nannying or something like that. My freelancing when I first got out of grad school was pretty fun, except for the whole barely-able-to-pay-rent-why-does-the-daily-only-pay-once-a-month-this-is-bullshit part, and when I quit that I basically called the metro editor and told him I got an offer of a full-time job. He told me I should take it. I told him I had.

So tomorrow, really, is the first of what I'm sure will be many (hopefully not too many) last days of work. I've already turned in all my stories, already contacted all my favorite PR people to tell them how much they've helped me over the years and how I only know like three phone numbers by heart (one is Dan, two others are PR people), and so if I end up in a car accident and they can't find my phone and they need an emergency contact and Dan's not around, I'm calling them. Tomorrow I'm basically going in to finalize a list of contacts and story ideas for my editors and to pick up items and drink beer.

I'm still processing this whole thing, the whole "holy shit, I'm moving to Houston" thing, but I'm feeling calm now. My work here will be done. I'll have a week off. I'll go with Dan to the North American Handmade Bike Show the weekend before my first day, and then I'll be going back and forth until I can move everything with the much, much-appreciated help of my parents. I went down over the weekend and found an apartment, and I'll be signing the lease and getting keys and paying for a place that includes all bills, and you know what that means in Texas: I can crank my AC down to 62 in the summer and not have to pay extra. Bonus points for also being able to not feel the guilt for slowly killing the planet one fake Fahrenheit at a time, since I won't have to pay more for it.

Today I cut out of work an hour early and checked in on a fossil site near the office, since it hadn't rained in a while and I figured the creek bed would be nearly dry. I wandered around picking up sea urchins and snail shells for an hour and a half, because clearly I need more rocks before I move halfway across the state. I just realized yesterday that I could perhaps find more recently deceased (or live) sea urchins or snails near my new home, since Galveston will be nearby. I've often been close to the shore -- D.C., Boston, Florida's Fort Walton Beach -- but it will just be so different after living in Cowtown for four years, which is Texas prairie.

I guess I mean that to say that yes, it's all going to be a big change. But some things don't change. It will still be Texas, and one thing I've learned about this state is that it does have the power to continually surprise me. I look forward to the next surprises, and I'm crossing my fingers for lots of pleasant ones.

Change It Up, Change Them Out

Last week I sat on this panel for a marketing association that was holding an event to show PR and marketing people how to get their health care stories into newspapers. The panel had been scheduled last year in November or something, and I'd consented without thinking once I figured out a reporter from the daily would be there as well as people from the daily and business newspaper in Dallas.

The week before the panel, I get an e-mail from the reporter at the daily who said she was starting a new position in the newsroom and couldn't come. I sent her back a congratulatory e-mail; she'd edited me once or twice when I was a freelancer, and I frequently saw her around at events once she started reporting (after layoffs). Then, later that week, and just days before the panel, I see on the Dallas blog that the editor from the Dallas Business Journal who was supposed to show at the panel got canned.

Needless to say, I was pretty curious how things would work out, and I showed up at the panel early and saw the health business reporter from the Dallas Morning News, a really nice guy that I think I could learn a lot from. (I have plans to befriend him and absorb all his wisdom by osmosis.) Then I find out the other health reporter from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is going to show up, since the woman I was used to seeing around town was presumably in her new job. I was glad also to see that the health reporter from the DBJ was able to come, since the editor who was originally scheduled was off cursing the heavens somewhere.

Ok, I don't know if he was cursing the heavens. But if I'd gotten canned, I'd sure as hell be shaking my fist at the sky and bellowing, right?

So there were four of us at the panel, all representing the four big papers in Fort Worth and Dallas, and I was pretty proud of the marketing group for making it look like everything was seamless, even though I know they were probably panicking in days leading up to the event, when things started falling apart.

And even though I had jack shit to do with any of it, I was proud of the four of us panelists as a whole, for showing up and representing, even in the face of the merciless and unpredictable journalism industry.

As a sort of side note, the health reporter from the Star-Telegram who showed up told me that evidently the woman who got switched to a new position got moved back to her old position earlier that day. How fucked up is that? A daily can't get its shit together enough to move a person without fucking it up? And having to move her back? Again, if I were that person, I'd be cursing the heavens. It's not like the newsroom is so huge that there are too many people to keep track of. They've laid off practically half their staff, so it shouldn't have been that hard to keep everything in line. Ugh. This is why journalism is a cold hard bitch.

Now on to non-journalism things. Spring appears to be making tentative progress here, and I have high hopes that pretty evenings will be back in about a week and a half, after the daylight savings change. We're in March right now, and after March comes April, and in April comes my favorite event of Fort Worth: The Main Street Arts Festival.

(I know you're ask yourself, Wait, she doesn't love the Stock Show the most? Really? Buckle bunnies and calf scrambles and Future Farmers of America goat judging? But no, my friends. I like art more, and walking around in sandals, not worrying if I'm stepping in pig shit. I am that yuppie liberal, I guess.)

(Whatever. I totally voluntarily and willingly walk around in horse shit. I'm not going to feel bad about liking flip-flops for the time not at work or at the barn.)

(I do not have anything else to add and so will end awkwardly and with parentheses, because I heart me some punctuation.)

SNOMG

No kidding--SNOMG was the title Dan's TV station used when a record amount of snow fell on North Texas Thursday. It was beautiful, ranging from nine to 12 inches, and while it's not unusual for there to be a hard freeze or snow around Valentine's Day, this was more than anyone expected.

So anyhow, you can see why the news is going down the crapper. When it comes to print, we can't turn down a pun, and when it comes to local TV stations, they inappropriate and unironic uses of textese.

The good news is we all got sent home early on Thursday, and then Friday was declared a work from home day. The work I did? I sent an e-mail. It was awesome.

Before everything turned into a disgusting mess of slush and mud, the way much of the Northeast is for much of the spring, I went out to the barn to let the horses out of their stalls for a while. They have played in snow in New Mexico and in Virginia, but this is the first serious snow in Texas that stuck around long enough for them to (safely) play in. (Topper slipped on ice below snow once and tore a hole through a ligament, part of the reason he's no longer jumping, so I'm always pretty paranoid about when to take him out in it.)

Anyhow, here are some pictures. No real frolicking, since they were on lead lines the whole time, but you can see Topper eat the snow and see Pony push his way through it to eat the grass underneath. You can guess which one of them would survive in the wild. And apologies for the bizarre blue color of some of the Po's photos; I was having flash/no flash existential crises.

Art Form

I've worked a long time, many years, to perfect the need to blog. It only comes when I have something else I should be doing. Tonight, it's my stories for the paper, but what the hell. I'll take 10 minutes before I do anything real.

The holidays were a bit of a whirlwind of bad weather, long weekends, time wasted at work when no one else in the city was at their desks, and spending time with family and friends and the horses. Dan got off a few days, and for the first time ever (in five years, no less) we saw each other for Christmas. Well, ok, it wasn't on Christmas, but it was Christmas Eve, and you can tell it was true love because it was a disaster on the roads, took 40 minutes to see him, we spent 40 minutes together and then each took off for two-hour drives to our respective families when each of those drives normally take only a half-hour in good weather.

Anyway. Last week was a long one, primarily because of a frigid spell that froze up the pipes at the barn and required me to drive out twice a day to haul water buckets for the horses to drink. It was a pain in the ass, but in some ways I liked it. It gave every day a structure. I'd get up, pile on layers, pull on a hat, lug buckets back and forth, feed the horses treats, go home and do it again in 10 hours.

This week I've been seized with the urge to write again. After a month and a half off from the novel from National Novel Writing Month, I think I'm ready to return again, mostly to add more scenes, more background, more cursing, more bad decisions. I know November has come and gone, and a lot of things since then, but I'll admit it still makes to proud to know I can do it. I can write a book while having a full-time newspaper job, a relationship and a horse. Granted, it was probably crap and I didn't sleep much for the whole month, but who cares? That's what they make Diet Coke for. To keep you churning out crap.

(Coffee is the thing that keeps me churning out newspaper story crap. I applied for a fellowship in Boston after being encouraged to apply by the director, and then they chose to give the Texas spot to the Dallas Morning News. The fucking DMN, who has far more resources and more reporters than our paper will ever have. An aside, I know, but I'm still angry. And turning out crap. At least a fellowship may have given me some help in the crap department. And it would have been in Boston. This month marks three years since I moved back to Fort Worth from Boston. Fuck.)

I don't remember where I was going with any of this. I guess I don't have a point. I'm kinda scattered at the moment, which means I probably shouldn't sit down and churn out a story, but who gives a fuck? Maybe it makes me a more brilliant writer.

I think I'll get back into regular blogging soon, as soon as I settle into a routine again. I converted myself into a morning person (que horror!) with daylight savings and have been going to the barn to ride at daybreak, since there's no sun or light by the time I get out there after work. Now I've added a gym routine to my post-work hours, and I'm still working on getting that to fit with other things, like reading, blogging, watching inordinate amounts of Showtime dramas with Netflix.

Some thoughts before I go:

I'm terrifically happy for Andrew and Annie, who got engaged. He was a freshman photographer when I was a senior editor at the college paper, and now he's finishing grad school. We're still friends. He makes me feel partially hip and with it, and partially just like fucking old balls. I'm excited for both of them!

They started mysterious road construction outside my apartment. While not as bad as the jackhammers that would occasionally grace the road outside our place in Boston, it's still pretty offending on the few mornings I can actually sleep in and not go to the barn.

I'm crossing my fingers for Dan on Friday. I don't want to get into it, and I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but I'm hopeful. Wishing. Hopeful. Not the same thing, but I guess I'm both.

I don't want to jinx it, but I think the paycheck we get next Friday will be the fourth one that is normal and non-furlough. I will still have to move out of my apartment when my lease is up, though, and go back to roommates. (Fucking roommates.) The furloughs did a number on my savings (wiped it out) and credit card (ran it up) and it's just not smart to stay here.

Dan got me Eddie Izzard tickets for Christmas. He's in Dallas Jan. 21, and I'm expecting greatness--when we saw him in Austin a few years ago, I nearly keeled over from the awesomeness of it all. I'll report back then and hopefully have some bizarre quotes to share.

(Last time we saw him perform, I took a notepad. Yeah. I know, right? In my purse. And wrote down quotes that I thought were hilarious. Maybe I'll do the same, since goodness knows I'm no less dorky than I was then.)

(My 'thoughts' are as long as the actual blog post body, I think.)

All Together Now

I'm not exactly sure where this year went, but I do know that three weeks of it were spent on furlough. I also know that our parent company firing our publisher and bringing in a new person to run the place about two weeks before Christmas was not the kind of end-of-year surprise we wanted, but what can you do, right?

Work has been a whirlwind, mostly because it's a rushed time of year anyway--deadlines are shorter because of the holidays, you try to work ahead so you can have days off (and to accommodate the bigwigs in town who take off about three weeks and are impossible to get ahold of for interviews), and, if you're me, you're so jumped up on processed sugary foods that it's nearly impossible to concentrate. No lie: Some company delivered an entire massive cookie cake to our office. This is why I will probably die of a heart attack at 35.

And in the middle of this, our publisher was fired on a Thursday and we were told a man from our parent company and a new publisher would come down on a Monday. This gave us an entire weekend to worry about getting laid off. It was a pretty anxious weekend.

But somehow we survived it all and still have jobs (so far). It's Christmas Eve, there are snow flurries outside, and I'm sitting on my living room floor with Fenway, who's got one eye on the window above which some sparrows have a hangout. He talks to the birds every morning, and they disappear about midday and he lies waiting for them. Most days, the spot where he sits is a big patch of sunlight, where he can warm himself and look ridiculous, but today's it's chilly and the windows are a tiny bit fogged up.

I'll be going out to the barn later, giving the horses some treats and making sure they have warm blankets for the night, then driving out to Dallas to spend the night with my parents. I'll take a timeout in the evening to see Dan when he gets off work, and I admit I'm excited about that. We've been dating for about five years but have never yet seen each other on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, since my parents always lived halfway across the country. I would usually see him on his birthday, which is Dec. 27, but I think it will be nice to give him his Christmas gift actually on Christmas and his birthday gift on his birthday. That, and I hope I can convince him to drive me around the ritzy parts of Dallas to look at Christmas lights.

Spending Christmas with my parents in Texas is a bizarre thought. I think part of the reason work has seemed so frenzied lately is because usually I just check out and leave, using up most of my vacation days to take a luxurious trip back to Virginia. This year I actually had to be at work during all those days I'd usually be gone. (Actually having to work--what an indignity!)

This Christmas will also be the first one without any family pets. Our last childhood pet, a cat named BC, had to be put to sleep over the weekend. She was about 16, I think, and we got her when I was in 5th grade or so, and she was getting old and the vet had said before that she seemed to have some kind of slow cancer growing. I don't know what exactly happened--it happened on Saturday morning, and my mom still doesn't want to talk about it yet--but when Mom sent a text message to tell me (I suspect because she would have started crying if she called), I found myself crying pretty hard.

BC was a good cat, and we all loved her and all her weird quirks, but her death was also the final one of all the pets we had when I was growing up. Sugar, the yellow lab my parents got for themselves as a wedding present, had to be put to sleep when she was about 11 and I was in fourth grade. Taffy, the cocker spaniel we got when I was in third grade or so, was put to sleep when I was a sophomore in college. He'd actually been diagnosed with a bad heart condition when I was in middle school, and the vet told us he'd die that year, but he was on daily heart medication and lived until he was about 10.

Ginger was the cat we adopted while we lived in England. At the time, taking animals to the U.K. was just a pain because of the rabies quarantine laws, so Sugar lived with my grandparents the three years we were there and Ginger was a tiny orange kitten when we got him from a farmer who was going to drown the litter if he couldn't give them all away. Gin went through the embarrassment of being called a girl for several months before we figured out his sex, and he was a loving but very vicious cat. He killed every bird and rodent he could get, leaving feathers strewn in the back yard, before we moved back to the States and he became an indoor cat. He was put to sleep when I was a senior in college.

BC we found under our car at the barn one night in San Antonio. The back pastures were patrolled by coyotes when the horses weren't turned out. While the animals never posed a threat to the big horses, every barn cat and most barn dogs disappeared, and we were going to leave the barn one night when we saw this little kitten under the Suburban. She wouldn't move, so we hauled her out and took her home and named her BC for Barn Cat. (Just as we named Ginger for his coloring as a big ginger cat, as the British called their orange tabbies, we named BC for something obvious. We're an original family.)

BC was referred to as a vampire cat for the first few years with us, since she largely lived under my parents' bed and only came out at night. She finally got kicked out of the house for two years when we lived in Alabama--she wouldn't quit peeing on people's shoes and clothes, so she was relegated to the barn. We were out there every day for several hours with Rio and Topper anyway, and she adjusted well and became a great mouser. She came back into the house when we moved to Virginia, and she never peed on people's clothes again.

As I said, I'm sad about BC, but I'm also sort of sad because she's the end of an era. She was one of the last things about my childhood still around, and it's sad to realize they're all gone. They had good lives with us, and we dote upon animals like nobody's business in our family, but it's still painful. Fenway is my own cat, so he's a bit of a different thing--I got him as an adult, as someone with a job. Rio and Topper are also something different, since they're not exactly pets and since horses are generally so long-lived. I expect them both to be around for a long time yet, and still BC's death just reminded me of how much I dread having to one day say good-bye to them.

Now that I've dragged this post down with talks of death and everything--sorry!--I'll wrap it up. The snow has picked up outside, and it reminds me of what it looked like one white Christmas in Albuquerque, when we trekked out back behind the house to the barn to let the horses out to play in it. Topper ate the carrot nose off the snowman and startled himself when a piece of the head fell off. Christmas isn't quite the New Year, so it's not a time yet to look toward the future and make plans. Instead, Christmas to me seems more a time to remember the past, remember the good things that have happened, and try not to forget.

The Same But Different

When you put your foot in your mouth, you've embarrassed yourself (or someone else) with what you say. I don't know what you'd call a foot-in-mouth action--something you do that doesn't require words but still feels the same--but I totally pulled it on Friday.

(Maybe they just call that a "fuck-up." For a journalist, I'm having a crap time with words today. Anyhow.)

Friday afternoon I got out of work, went home and changed clothes, grabbed an apple to eat, plugged my iPod into my car's tape deck (and yeah, I have played tapes on it, and I feel like I'm 8 years old when I do) and headed out for the barn. My parents, after being in North Texas for a few weeks, were going to come out and meet me there and watch me ride as well as see the horses. It was their last chance before work caught up with them, as well as all the mechanics of a move, since they bought a house, and they were looking forward to an easy evening.

I meet them at the barn, where they fawn over the horses, since they haven't seen them in a few years, since we moved them out to Texas before my senior year of college. They fed the guys a bag of carrots, I let them split the apple core I had from the drive, and brought them both in from their paddock to get groomed. I tacked up Topper to take him out for a ride, and went out to the arenas while my parents took the pony out on his lead rope to let him graze outside the arena.

The large covered arena had a sprinkler set up in it that was taking up half the arena, and a full course of jumps meant it was pretty crowded when it came down to dodging obstacles as well as sprays of water. I went into one of the smaller arenas at first, but Topper's afraid of it because it's close to the road and the number of 18-wheelers and jackasses in souped-up pickup trucks is pretty high. We walked around once and the footing was crap, all dug up into trenches for some reason, so we went to the covered arena instead.

Topper takes a long time to warm up, especially now that he's recovering from a third serious injury. We took a good long time walking around, and then did some trotting and kept things light. The arena was pretty cramped--there was another horse out there sharing the fraction of space with us--and he was spooky because of the sprinkler and a bit sore with his front feet. I let him off easy and we're walking around next to the other horse and rider. Her horse is stabled across the aisle from Rio and Topper, and she's a middle-aged working professional, so we get along better than me and the middle school girls. I let Topper's reins out long and take my feet out of the stirrups, and we're just relaxing and talking, and all of the sudden Topper's halfway out from under me and I'm precariously balanced in thin air. I held on for about two seconds, my ass hanging out in the breeze to his left side, and I finally come down with a thump.

Topper, like most horses, wants to get away from a dropped rider. He puts one of his hind feet down directly on my foot and pivots to canter off a few steps away from me. I landed almost immediately behind the other horse, so I'm incredibly grateful he was calm and didn't step on me or kick me in the face. (When I was in middle school I knew a girl who ended up brain damaged by getting kicked in the face, and it's always been one of my rotating horse horrors since.) I bounced up immediately, because it was an easy fall and the adrenaline kicked in, and went over to where Topper had stopped a dozen yards away, his ears back in alarm and his eyes rolling. I calm him down and lead him back to the mounting block and we get back on and finish cooling down.

"I hope that wasn't for our benefit," my mother said when we rode past the section of rail where she was standing.

"Trust me, if I could have avoided it, I would have," I said.

It was pretty humiliating. I know my riding has gotten sloppier since I was younger; I haven't been with a trainer since I was 16 (holy shit, that was a decade ago), and there have been lots of time-outs from riding (like semesters at college, studying abroad, Topper's year-long stints on the disabled list, graduate school in Boston, etc etc). I'm still a good, solid rider, but I don't have the same grace and technical skills I used to. I was already nervous about my parents seeing me ride, and I was thinking I got through it well until the last lap or two around the area, walking and cooling off. Then off I go.

It was like putting my foot in my mouth.

Speaking of the foot, it did swell up and was really tender. Flip flops were ok, and walking wasn't too bad, but any pressure on the top was painful. I got myself drunk at a party on Saturday night, though, so that helped. It was the first time in a long time I'd had any substantial amounts of liquor to drink. Usually I'm a beer and wine person, but this was a Big Gulp Coke and Bacardi (thanks, 7-Eleven!) followed by several strong screwdrivers, a cranberry and vodka, and a dobblebock named Lobotomy Bock. I don't remember what it tasted like, since it was the last thing I had to drink, but the name alone will probably prompt me to buy a six-pack of it in the future.

All in all, embarrassing, but not as bad as some of my verbal foot-in-mouth incidents, like making a joke about death in a cancer treatment facility, my second day on the job as a full-time health reporter. Rock on.

Ballpark, Boston-Style

It's been almost a week, but let me take a dorky sports-moment to tell about the Red Sox-Rangers game Dan and I went to last Sunday.

That whole week had been cool and nice, so I thought we'd have good weather for the Sunday afternoon game. The tickets came from work--we had four season tickets to the Rangers, and when they were announced back in the spring, I asked for two tickets to some Red Sox game. This was the last game of a three-game series, and I have been looking forward to this for several months.

Dan and I got totally geeked out for the event. I went and bought baseballs on Friday, so we could go to batting practice before the game and hopefully get autographs. Dan bought a giant bag of roasted peanuts, and we picked up drinks. We each wore a Boston shirt, and I wore the hat I bought at Fenway. We arrived about 10 minutes before noon (game had a 2:05 start), and then stood outside the gates until 12:30 before they let us in. Don't trust everything you read on the Internet! We found a schedule that said we could get in at noon, but that didn't happen.

What did happen was at least half of the people going to the game showed up in Red Sox paraphernalia. Once we got in, the teams were doing some easy field work, and there were four times as many people near the visitors' dugout waiting for autographs as at the Rangers' side. We got spaces on the rail and had our baseballs and Sharpies in hand, but no one really came over except one player, David Pauley, who very graciously signed EVERYTHING that people handed him. He worked down the rail, then took a seat on the bumper and let people keep bringing him things.

After a while even Pauley disappeared, and the security guys urged us to take our seats. We did, and we were in great seats, just past first base, but right smack in the sun. I could feel my skin burning. Soooo thankful Dan convinced me to wear a T-shirt instead of the halter top I'd been planning on.

The game was good; the Sox won, 7-2, and I got to see everyone that I really loved. I didn't get the chance to confer with Ellsbury about our future nuptials, but I did get to see him, as well as Youkilis and Pedroia and Ortiz and Papelbon (who I call P-Bon). It was funny to see all the little tics in person, like Youkilis and his goofy batting stance, and Papelbon's pitching. (The pitching is hilarious. He takes this huge sign, rolling his shoulders down, then his head--while down--rolls around to look at the batter, he breathes out again, gives them the Look of Doom, and then pitches. Love it. It made me laugh.)

My knees got sunburned, and I ate way, way too many peanuts. We only got one signature. I was sweaty and gross afterward. But it was fun, and even if we had paid for those tickets, it was a helluva lot cheaper than if we'd gone to Fenway, which is where I last saw the Sox.

Heated Discussion

From the National Weather Service about today, Friday, Aug. 1:

"Late Afternoon: Isolated showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny and hot, with a high near 102. Heat index values as high as 108. "

Oh, it's only a high of 102. Puh-leese. That's nothing. Tomorrow is supposed to be up to 106, and Sunday up to 107 before it cools back down to 101 on Monday and Tuesday.

There are so, so many things wrong with all of this. And yes, I realize I live in Texas, and I cam here voluntarily--no one threatened to hammer nails into my eardrumbs with turnips or anything unless I moved here after grad school. But I think I got spoiled last summer, when it rained and rained and rained and would not stop and flooded and killed small children.

The sick thing is that when it's 100, it really doesn't feel that hot because it can get so much hotter. I work out after work usually three days a week, going to a local high school and running stairs, and yeah, it's gross, it's hot, but you're working out anyway and you expect to sweat. So even if I'm working out in 105-degree weather, it doesn't feel that bad.

Even going out to the barn after working out and adding a layer of hay dust, stable dirt and horse hair to the sweat doesn't feel that bad.

What really feels bad is the work day. It's gross to get up and go to work in the morning and you're sweating just from walking from your car into the building. (And it's not a long walk, a huge trek across some forgotten stretch of tarmac. It's maybe 50 feet.) I feel disgusting, wearing a skirt and heels and cute blouse and having to worry about sweat marks when walking from my car into buildings for interviews.

This has been the worst summer of my life in terms of heat, barring the one summer right after college where Dan was at the Lance Armstrong Foundation in Austin and I was nannying and waiting to move to Boston. That summer was brutal, but I was charged with watching an 8-year-old, so we could go spend the day at the pool and I could wear tank tops and gym shorts all summer.

That was actually my first summer ever spent in the North Texas heat. Despite going to four years of school here, I never spent a summer here. I always went home (aka where my parents lived at the time, which was Alabama and Virginia), and then my summer internship in grad school was here in Fort Worth but I don't think it was quite this bad. (Plus, it was an unpaid internship, so if they'd made some comment about what I was wearing I would have just laughed at them. You don't own me!)

When I was a kid we lived in New Mexico and it's totally true--it's a dry heat, and it makes a helluva difference. I spent all day outside playing in the summer and was fine. Sweaty and gross, but in no danger of heat stroke, like here. We lived in San Antonio, about four hours south of Fort Worth; bad, yeah, but not tooooo bad. And Florida--humid, muggy, yes, but there was a thunderstorm almost every day that cooled everything off. Ahh, the perks of living on the water.

I guess maybe I just have a crappy memory for heat stuff. I really don't remember ever being grossly hot as a kid, whereas as an adult, I have semi-scary memories of nearly passing out on a bike ride and feeling nauseous after working out. (That's why I've relocated from the university to the high school: TCU's stadium was one, giant, aluminum-and-whitewashed mixing bowl to work out in, and it got sweltering in there. The high school is much smaller, with lots of natural grass and dirt to absorb some of the heat.)

Then again, I don't remember ever being really cold as a kid, either, and I spent an entire winter and a half bitching in Boston. Hmm.

Hey, check it out! Only 100 right now in the late afternoon with a 104 heat index! So glad it cooled off in time to go home.

I'm spending my evening in a movie theater, where it's cool and dark.