Odds and Ends

Last Sunday at the jam we sang the Bonnie Raitt song Love Me Like a Man as "Love Me Like a Ham," for Easter! I nearly died laughing, tears running down my cheeks.

I love soap, I love washing with a plush wash-cloth. I love skin! I hate perfume. I loathe perfumed detergents and soaps and other artificially scented things. Let the real smells in! Baking bread, breaking a sweat, cooking collard greens, breathing in my dog's breath.

The guys at the jams have discovered my weakness for suspenders, and now every week they wear them to the jams and tease me. I blush all night. There's always a new kinky undiscovered corner of my brain. But actually I'm really boring. I prefer solitude and work.

Last night I noticed that my friend's beauty mark, right on her face, was forest green. I had never noticed it was green! How cool is that! My husband has a few red beauty marks. I love dimples, strange blemishes, scars, all the skin glitches that make us unique. I am fascinated when people have a gap in their front teeth. I get vertigo and feel like I am getting sucked in! It's like my Aunt's cleavage coming at me when I was five, and she'd bend down to pinch my cheeks and I'd notice that her lipstick line went over her lips. All the things that people try to hide about themselves are usually the things I appreciate and remember.

In Rhode Island if you have thick hair they charge you double at the barber shop! My lady mail-carrier just told me the same story I have heard from other thick-haired friends! Little state, big ideas. I impulsively trimmed two inches off my mane the other day and I am traumatized. As a 13-year-old I had monthly hair choppings, against my will. I love my hair wild and long. Now it's turning gray and I love the way it sparkles and swirls in cubist robot ringlets.

I have a friend who told me years ago he was so desperate for an audience he'd put a dime in the phone booth, dial an arbitrary number and then play harmonica tunes into the phone!

I love to swim long distances. Twenty years ago I swam across Mallett's Bay on Lake Champlain while Bill was in a rowboat beside me. I loathe competitive swimming or racing. I prefer to look across a lake and say to myself, I'm going to swim over to that red house.

One year I swam the circumference of Spring Lake in Burrillville while people were celebrating the Fourth of July, and it was like I had the fish-eye view into everyone's family as they picnicked in their back yards and sat on their lawn chairs. But my favorite thing is to get up at 4am in the summer to swim when the sky is just getting light. Not many people will go along with this early morning stuff, and I won't swim long distances without a rowboat spotter and my dog!