Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-08-23 - 3:43 p.m.

Even More Random Than Usual

I better not ever get murdered.

I'm reading another mystery, and in all those murder mysteries if a woman gets killed, the cops go through all her stuff - her purse, her bedside table, everything - trying to figure out who she was and who she saw and what she did. Man, the last time I went fishing for an ATM card in my purse I pulled up a pair of thong undies. I don't know why they were in there. I must have had a reason. Maybe I was remembering what my mother said about having clean undies if you get hit by a bus, thinking if I saw a bus start to go out of control I could just whip on my purse spares. Now, of course, they're all covered with tobacco bits and purse scurf. If I got killed in them, the police would have to figure out what sort of bizarre fetishist wears underwear full of tobacco.

I think I'd better go clean out my bedside drawer, too.

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Lena next door feeds the hummingbirds. I ought to remember to thank her for that. Our trees are always full of hummingbirds. I could never remember; I'm not very faithful even with my seed feeder. But I have hummingbirds, even if they're only borrowed.

We borrow a lot of animals these days. "NO! We're not getting a cat! Go play with Lucky next door!"

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The woman waiting next to me at the pharmacy today was asking for "para-soap" which the nursing home had requested she provide for her father. She doesn't know what it is, except that you don't have to rinse it off. The pharmacy clerk is clueless; she brings out some no-rinse liquid soap, but it doesn't say "para-soap", and they're all confused. So I said quietly, "If they asked for peri-wash, or something to do peri-care, that will work fine." Anyway, we exchanged a few words about elderly parents and other middle-age responsibilities, and she said, "They ought to teach this in school - they ought to TELL you what's coming."

And I said, "Man, if I'd known what was coming, I'd be living in Bali under an unlisted coconut tree."

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I watched "Castaway" for the second time, this time with the kids. I have a crush on the leading man. No, not Hanks, although he's good; I want Wilson.

Wilson would be happy on my kitchen counter, I think. We could converse while I work. "What's your point?"

He didn't really drift away and drown, I reassure my children. No, that's just the movies, they fake all that stuff. Wilson is fine.

Perhaps he washed up on another island, one where a bunch of unruly schoolboys were torturing a pig, and scared the living bejeezus out of them, and they let the pig go. It could happen.

I wonder, is he looking at other scripts? Does he have a few projects in the hopper? I hope he hasn't been typecast as the second-banana sidekick type. I hear it's a rough business, the movies.

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A friend drops a note that he's off to the Cape. I write back that this is profoundly disturbing. Now I know people who go to the Cape.

Of course, I did Cabo this year...that's bad too. I'm never ever going to get to buy my beat up VW van with the Indian print curtains and the beanbag cushions in the back and set off to see the US with my little girls. They don't let you do that if you have friends who vacation at the Cape, or if you do Cabo. It's in the rules.

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Alice got a job. Lena next door got a job. I'm thinking I should get one too. I don't really want one, but I hate to be left out. Damn.

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