thatnight.net

As I gear up for October, and what I hope will be the month of the most haunted house visits ever in my life, which I will go on about later because I could create a whole website covering that weird obsession, I’ve realized that my current schedule leaves less than an hour’s worth of computer time each day. On top of that, my second job kicks in again in a week, which means I’ll once again be traveling on weekends.

That being said, my entries tend to have to happen before 7AM or after midnight (which is fine, as long as you’d enjoy dazed details pertaining to Bello’s ear hair or a half-asleep cultural criticism of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry).

So to save us all from those undesirables, and also to muffle the explanations of how busy I am, I hope to intersperse my (ir)regular blog posts with ones highlighting writers from around the internet that I newly adore. I spent what seems like years reading the same dozen or so personal websites, and while my love still stands firm for the lot of them, I think that my newer favorites are some great sexy examples of how blogs can be shaped and transformed from the common this was my day model and sent off in different directions.

(And if you’d like to call attention to a favorite blogger, or for that matter, yourself, feel free to leave a note to bulk up my, and everyone’s, reader. We need to prepare for the holidays.)

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Apparently Ike tired of pummeling Texas and sent his windy minions to slap around Pittsburgh yesterday evening. As the storm rolled in, I was leaving to take my sister home and slammed into a parked car behind me. Luckily, they were parked backwards, so it was back bumper to back bumper. I talked to the guy I hit and we determined that no damage was done, but I was shaky the rest of the way home.

By then the winds had arrived, and immediately after making a left turn onto a wide street we heard a violent snap, and a tree collapsed across the road ten feet in front of us. I slammed on my brakes as a cloud of brown and gray dust swamped over my car and we sat there for a minute with dropped jaws until I turned us around and found another way home.

And just as I was finally nearing the house, a massive black cat passed beside us, stopping to stare us down, all you got lucky…this time.

It continued into the evening when the lights of a Giant Eagle, along with the power, flickered out just as Derrick and I were approaching. I then had the brilliant idea to watch The Shining, even though I anticipated a power failure, which occurred about halfway through the movie.

The Shining, though? Not all too scary. Especially after a near death by tree.

We spent the remainder of the night with an oil lamp, and I was tempted on several occassions to hold Bello in my arms, run out into the front yard, and whimper oh Toto, I’m afraid…

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This picture was taken around this time in 2006 in Ocean City, Maryland.

I’d just left a job on the Chesapeake Bay and was accompanied by a guy from Turkey who was leaving the states in a few weeks and wanted to absorb as many American cities as he could. We decided that before kicking off a tour of the East Coast we would settle down in Ocean City for a week. Having no place to stay and very little cash, the majority of our time was spent on the public beaches. My hair was perpetually tangled and loaded with sand.

As we walked one afternoon on the main strip, he saw a tiny Turkish flag hanging from an old yellow and blue house and immediately called out to the few people hanging out on the front porch. The group of girls living there spoke very little English and cleared a bed for me as soon as I was introduced.

I remember not saying much the entire time I was there, and somehow learned about Islam and gender roles and how to cook and belly dance. I sometimes wonder if I could forgo a couple of my college’s mandatory diversity credits and just relive that experience a few more times.

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I was walking through the rotunda, a stretch of hallway at the end of the building that circled around several classrooms and back to where it started, looking for Derrick. It was 7:50AM, before first period, and even as I searched, I was hiding.

We weren’t supposed to be wandering around during homeroom, although it wasn’t the teachers I was avoiding. During that time, I prided myself on listening exclusively to the X and dressing like Avril Lavigne circa Sk8er Boi, and hoped that if the pottery teacher saw me passing his classroom without the little pink slip of paper that allowed roaming privileges and yelled after me to get to where I’m supposed to be, young lady, someone important would be nearby to witness my crazy rebelliousness.

When I finally saw Derrick, I was as giddy as I always was when I was with him, hopping around and acting like a fourteen-year-old, the age I was when I first met him three years prior. And as happy as I was to be talking to him, to be near him without being pulled along by a tide of the thousands of kids in our high school, I was constantly glancing over my shoulder, standing near the outer wall to achieve the best perspective down the corridor.

The bell rang and I turned to leave, smiling back at him as I walked away. Not ten steps later did my heart drop and legs freeze when the one person I prayed wouldn’t find us passed by where I was standing, his emotionless stare remaining locked on me even as I stood still and he kept going.

Shit.

For the next four hours, I sat at my desk, tense and anxious, hoping the day would end without incident despite the mistake I made that morning.

Just as I glanced out the door of my precalculus room, there he was, bounding with excitement, the same weird daze in his eyes. I left the class, ran into the hallway, and yelled his name. He slowly turned and smiled at me and I was immediately horrified, which, on his part, was intentional. If I would’ve glanced at his right arm I would’ve noticed that it was blue and red and grossly swollen, surrounding a shattered wrist.

At that moment, the bell rang, dismissing the hoards of students in the cafeteria who just finished lunch. A chubby blond acquaintence rushed up to me, proud of herself to be the first, stammering something just happened with Derrick. I think your boyfriend hit him.

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