The other night I was standing in line at the post office, waiting to pick up a package. A woman wearing baggy pants, a deeply creased face, and bright red lips shuffled up behind me. She tapped me on the shoulder.
“Is that for text?” she asked, gesturing toward the iPod in my hand.
“Oh no, it’s an iPod,” I explained. Then, to clarify: “It’s for, uh, music.”
She squinted at me. “You got your earphones in?”
“Yep!” I said brightly.
“You better watch out, you’re gonna brainwash yourself,” she muttered.
Thanks for the tip?
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It’s been cold in Santa Barbara. I know, I know. “Boo hoo,” you’re thinking, snowbound. But while there is no snow here, granted, Monday it was stormy and blustery and the last couple of nights it got down to 34 degrees. I finally resorted to turning the heat on.*
The heat in our house comes from a ancient gas unit that lives under the floor of the living room. The warm air rises up through a vent near the far wall of the room, next to the drafty, boarded-up fireplace.** That’s all we get in the house, is this one vent. Needless to say, this is a highly efficient heating system, provided you are standing directly on top of it.
You cannot actually stand on the vent, because the metal grate is kind of flimsy, and besides, it would only be a matter of seconds before the soles of your footwear started to melt. So you have to kind of straddle the vent, legs akimbo, and balance there with your arm braced against the wall. There is, unfortunately, room for only one person on the vent at any given time. Which means that on Monday night the beau and I got to revive one of our most cherished and sacred winter traditions: vying for vent space.
Vent space invariably causes us to revert to second grade.
“Get off of my vent,” I say.
“This is my vent,” he insists.
“Yeah? Well, I was here first,” I whine.
“Oh yeah, well your mom called, she said to GET OFF MY VENT,” he demands.
“My mom doesn’t even know your phone number!” I shout.*** A brief struggle ensues.
Which is all well and good, because by this point I’ve usually reached the maximum length of time one can tolerate hovering over the vent before one’s clothes feel like they are on the verge of bursting into flames. “Ow ow ow ow ow,” I say, hopping over to the couch, where it’s always drastically colder.
You don’t stay warm for long after an interlude with the heating vent. Luckily, the hot/cold cycle roughly corresponds to football broadcasts: one and a half minutes of play, five minutes of commercials. So I can watch football from the vent where it’s toasty, then retreat to the couch to cool down during the commercial break, which I spend intermittently shouting at the television screen (“WHO BUYS SOMEONE A LEXUS FOR CHRISTMAS??”) and silently cursing the fact that we are actually watching a live broadcast instead of just DVR’ing the damn thing.
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At the very least, this cold weather has put me in the mood for the holidays. Ah, holidays. I love this time of year, despite the stress of gift shopping and the running to the post office and the persistent chill and the mock fighting over the heater.****
I keep thinking we should feel more stressed out about the wedding planning. It seems like that is what everyone talks about: oh, the stress and the hair-tearing and the sobbing on the floor. I realize that we are still have a great deal of time left; distance makes the heart fonder and all. I also realize that if you were to talk to me seven months from now I might be singing a different song. Like a song that sounds like sobbing, while lying on the floor.
But here’s the thing: I am actively trying to avoid that. I don’t want the last several weeks before the wedding to be one long blur of sleeplessness and worry and tears. There is a two-pronged system at work, here: perspective and planning. Planning is obvious. Deep in my blackest of hearts I am a tried-and-true procrastinator, and I know that not falling into that trap will save me a lot of heartache at the end. But the perspective is just as important, too. What I mean by this is giving a matter attention that is proportionate to its actual importance. Is the color of the tablecloths one of the memories I will hold dear in the coming years? No? OK then, just pick the cheapest option and forget about it.
I want to research a wedding item, make a decision, move on. And repeat that ’til all of it’s done. That can’t be so hard, can it?
I’m tagging this post “things I might regret saying later.” And I’m coming back to it later, when I have some months of perspective under my belt. Just you watch. We’ll see then. We’ll see.
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* Every year I see how long I can hold out. I did fairly well; last year I wussed out in November.
** Our house is about to fall down, pretty much. Next big earthquake, boom. I will be under a pile of rubble for sure.
*** Actually, I’m pretty sure she has it written down somewhere.
**** This is actually really fun. You should try it sometime. With your own heater.
man. ok. i have like 5 million things to say about the heater thing. must stop and organize thoughts!
1. i love your heater vent. when i was a kid, we lived in a small house on F street that had a wall heater in the back and a floor heater in the center (in the middle of the short hallway that connected the front bedroom and the bathroom). i have many fond memories of getting up on winter mornings to find my mom standing akimbo over the vent and letting the warm air flow up her flannel nightgown. i also remember the time my younger brother, probably about 6, tried to jump over the grate on the way to the bathroom and instead landed smack on it, while it was on, with two bare feet.
2. i have a wall heater. i suppose that’s good. however, here are the things i do not have, by and large: insulation; carpeting; a thermostat. my heater has a manual on/off switch, and that is it. so when i cave and finally turn the thing on (i made it all the way to december this year, too!), one corner of the living room and the part of the kitchen that is near it becomes about 80 degrees; the rest of the house remains freezing. in fact, if i wander past the heater to get a book or talk to the cat, and then return to my desk, i swear there is a temperature discrepancy of like 20 degrees. and since i obviously do not let the heater run all night, my apartment is FREEZING COLD in the morning. painfully cold, even. to the point where scalding myself with the hottest shower possible actually feels good.
okay, that’s only 2 things. basically i just wanted to say i loved your little story about the heater vent.
ooh, was that by any chance a package from me? hopefully intact?
Yes. ZOMG!!!!!!!
whoop!
I love your vent story. My two cats used to have this fight all the time when I was a kid.
Ha. I fought with my cat about the vent last night. And complain about cold all you want – our SoCal homes weren’t designed with insulation in mind (nor were our wardrobes.) I swear I was warmer when I lived in Boston.
Also, re: procrastination, perspective and lack-of-stress… I think you’re in my brain again. I’m blissfully unstressed by this whole wedding thing (except when WIC-y things and budgets make me ranty) but I am also a massive procrastinator. I keep telling myself that time and perspective will help with the last-minute bs. At which point, I will be tossing multiple unfinished DIY projects, I’m sure.
Dude, I am almost afraid to begin DIY projects. Because then I will have to *let them go*. Because as much as I procrastinate, I have a dreadfully fierce commitment to *seeing things through*. Gah.