Observations

In the last 24 hours I’ve observed the following.

Today on my way to work while stopped at a red light a woman in exercise attire, obviously out for her morning run, galloped across the street directly in front of me. When she reached the other side she stopped jogging just long enough to take a sizeable bite out of the super sized bear claw she was carrying in her right hand. I only mention here so that we can all stop and reflect for a moment on the human condition.

Also on my way to work and also stopped at a red light (not too far from the snack food jogger) a guy pulled up beside me with his windows down and radio blasting. The twangy song I heard coming from his car seemed familiar so I turned my radio off in the hopes of identifying exactly what I was hearing. It was Alan Jackson’s Chattahoochee song (sorry I don’t know the name, but I think everybody knows the song). So here’s this guy who lives in Seattle proudly enjoying a country song about the Chattahoochee River. I imagined there was probably someone in Atlanta driving down Roswell Road by the river listening to Pearl Jam or Nirvana at exactly the same time. Funny how sometimes we always long for what’s foreign to us.

My final observation is about maturity. Yesterday while Amanda was upstairs on the phone I decided to make a couple of Margaritas (no surprise there right). Anyway, I got distracted by the TV while my ice machine dutifully continued to drop the frozen chunks into my glass – I overfilled. The last cube, which was one too many, slid out of the glass and onto the floor. It really wasn’t a full ice cube – it was more like a sliver of ice that had separated when the ice hit the rim of the glass. So there I was holding a rocks glass in each hand looking down at the sliver of ice that had slipped onto the hardwood floor. In that moment, instinctively, I pushed the sliver under the refrigerator with my foot. As I watched the ice disappear underneath the appliance I suddenly felt something inside of me change. “What’s the problem”, I silently asked myself. “When ice hits the floor you kick it under an appliance”, I reassured myself. “What is the problem?”, I asked again. The problem was twofold. First of all instead of the linoleum I’m used to having in my kitchens, this kitchen is hardwood. I don’t think leaving water on hardwood is a good idea, but that wasn’t all. Even more importantly, in the brief time that passed between my foot pushing the cube-lette under the fridge and now, I had realized that this is my floor. I’m not renting this place from somebody for a year – I own it. I’m pouring water onto my hardwood floor. So in the span of out 5 seconds I had a complete shift into homeowner mode. I quickly freed my hands of the glasses, grabbed a paper towel, rolled it in half to make it more sturdy, laid down on my stomach, and with paper towel in hand fished the sliver of ice out from under the refrigerator. It was a trippy experience. I think I still have some maturity issues to deal with, but I think the whole ice under things trick is behind me forever.