2001-07-14 - 10:52 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

I am falling apart at the seams.

I have a headache.

I have a wisdom tooth coming in, which is putting pressure on my jaw, making it hurt to eat sometimes. I can't see the oral surgeon until the 25th, so I'm just hoping it doesn't get worse so that I have to go running around finding a surgeon who will fix me quicker. Argh.

And lastly, and most annoyingly, I seem to be having an allergic reaction or something to a heart-shaped piece of coral I picked up in Biscayne Bay over a week ago and handled for what was apparently far too long.

It makes no sense, I know. But I had the same symptoms that day, although they went away after an hour or two. An itchy feeling in my fingers. It's worse today -- redness, swelling, and pain if I try to do stuff that puts pressure on my fingers, like cutting food or opening bottles. Argh. I'm typing with my fingernails.

The redness is exactly in the places where I touched the coral when I held it in my hands. There's some on the fleshy pad below my thumb, and on the side of my ring finger where my fingers curved around the heart (I was thinking about that beating-heart scene from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when I held it).

Anybody know anything about this? Searching on the web for info about coral only says that stinging coral (and I don't even know if that's what I touched) stops stinging after a while. Nothing about reacting to it nearly two weeks later. Vinegar is supposed to help dissolve the proteins and stingers. I've been soaking my fingers in vinegar occasionally with no luck.

Did I mention how goddamn GORGEOUS the weather is? I still can't get over it. It's like springtime. Or California. Every time I go outside I am surprised and delighted all over again.

You know that saying, "There's a silver lining in every cloud"?

Well, I am good at finding goofy-ass silver linings in everything (I call it "accentuating the positive"), so here's a good one:

The reason our house was flooded was so that Poindexter would meet our general contractor, who would see Poindexter's dirt bike in the garage and direct him to a popular unofficial riding area out near Sterling, allowing the bike to serve a purpose other than being a very expensive paperweight taking up space in the garage.

And, oh yes, a chance for Poindexter's face to get very dirty and light up with joy because he's having such a great time riding. He hasn't really ridden his bike and enjoyed it (Tasker's Gap was too rocky) in over five years.

We had a tough time with the directions, since they had no street names. It was stuff like "look for the trail on the right, after a fence, just after the gravel road turns into paved again." Due to a misunderstanding at the beginning of the directions, we ended up completely in the wrong place at first, yet we still found things that matched the directions. It was wacky. I guess in an area where fences and gravel roads are common, this can happen.

On our way out, we had to stop in Vienna to look at replacement vinyl flooring for the kitchen. I said, "Y'know, I feel like Vienna is so far away from our house, but it's actually not that far." Poindexter laughed, and said he had the same weird perception. It probably has something to do with the fact that we are an hour away from Vienna (at least) when it's rush hour.

And when we get out west and I see the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance, I feel like I've reached the edge of the world. As though beyond the mountains is a great untamed wilderness. This is ridiculous, of course, but it's kind of a fun thing to imagine.

When we were out wandering, we took the truck along a dirt road (actually just a pair of tracks in a meadow alongside the highway), and I saw wild berries. Black and red ones, similar to raspberries. I seriously wanted to try a few, but I don't know anything about wild plants and figured better safe than sorry.

There's nothing out there but office parks. I thought I was going to have to eat lunch at Wal-Mart. But we discovered a casual restaurant in a small shopping center that was incredibly good. Brick oven pizza and sandwiches with Boar's Head meat. The owner is from Iran and has never advertised the place, yet it is (according to a review on the wall) enormously popular in the area. Even if we hadn't been able to find the dirt bike place it would have been worth the trip just for that.

I love little finds like that. A place where you find food you really enjoy on a little trip out someplace you've never been. There's a sandwich place like that somewhere in the Great Falls area that Poindexter, my brother, and I discovered when we were looking for a Christmas tree at a farm out that way. It was a gorgeous day (warm, I remember), I was happy to be with two people I love, the road was rural and interesting, the food was good, and our tree was wonderfully big and bushy. My brother still talks about that trip and the sandwich he ate.

I'm digressing again. Where was I?

The road where we parked was directly under the flight path for airplanes taking off from Dulles. I had to stick my head out the window of the truck and look at every one. I love planes. I miss living close to an airport. It's pretty amazing to see such huge things flying just over your head.

Bumper sticker on the way back: "I do everything my Rice Krispies tell me to."

Yesterday I had the cockamamie idea that I should go out to a bar to hear a cover band I like, which was having an 80's night.

Sigh. One of these days I will remember. Bars are noisy, making it hard to hear the higher pitches I have trouble with, and the bass is so loud it hurts my ears (since I can actually hear low-pitched sounds) and I worry about losing more hearing.

I went by myself. Poindexter hates, hates 80's music, and I already sat through one other evening where he accompanied me just to be nice, watching him grimace at the music, so I wasn't going to drag him along again. I also didn't want to bring anyone else, and have to worry about whether they were having a good time or wanted to leave or if they would want to leave before I did, or whatever.

Tangent: Why is it so uncommon for people to go certain places by themselves? It's almost taboo in some cases. People rarely go to restaurants alone. But damn, if I want to eat something and nobody's available to go with me, I'm not going to deprive myself of food I like!

The band is extremely popular, and despite the large size of the venue, the line to get in wrapped all the way around the building.

I am mystified as to why people go out to loud bars and then sit around and talk. Aren't there better places to talk and drink alcohol?

I had expected to feel a little self-conscious for being alone at a bar, but I didn't.

Instead, I walked around a lot trying to get a glimpse of the band, and people-watched. I saw:

- A lot of pretty women
- A lot of really boring-looking men

- A few pretty women who slouched, making me want to shriek "stand up straight!" I swear, they would look five times more attractive instantly if they would stand up straight and pretend to be confident, even if they weren't.
- A man at the bar who was mostly bald, but had made himself a little ponytail with the hair he had remaining in the back.
- A woman talking to her date in exaggerated Valley-Girl speak, using her fingers as quotes far too often

That bald ponytailed man seemed to be taking an interest in me as I was waiting for a bartender to notice me. He swiveled in his seat in my direction. I didn't want to get into a conversation, so I put my left hand flat on the bar as though I was trying to get the bartender's attention. Which I was. But Mr. Ponytail swiveled back around pretty quick. Maybe those rings do make a difference sometimes.

Finally I got fed up with it all and left, and went down the street to a kabob place, where I sat outside and ate a gyro and watched the pretty girls walking by.

And then Poindexter picked me up, and I told him about all the people I saw, and we went home and went to bed.

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