2001-08-27 - 3:15 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "I Must Have Done Something Good", from "The Sound of Music" (dammit, Steiner, it's been in my head all weekend)

I don't know if I've discussed this here except in passing, but Poindexter and I are serious homebodies. We are very attached to our extremely comfortable couches (the old one, in the rec room, and the new one in the living room). We spend a lot of time on them. We like to spend a lot of time at home, by ourselves. We can't take a lot of non-home activity or we get sort of upset. Stressed, I guess it is. We need a lot of recharge time.

For instance, we love visiting my parents up in NJ. However, we hate the trip (6+ hours in the car, roundtrip), we're usually pretty busy while we're up there, and we end up coming home feeling like we didn't really have a weekend.

From what I've heard, this is classic introvert. It's not that we don't like people, it's just that it wears us out to be around other people all the time. That, plus we are pretty lazy. We're not people who need to be DOING something all the time and are mystified by people who do. I know someone who isn't happy unless she's frenetically busy, who gets fidgety if she does too much relaxing.

When Poindexter and I finally sat down last night and relaxed, we discussed how stressful the weekend was (although it was all very fun) and I wondered aloud what extroverts feel like when they are alone (as opposed to the blissful feeling I was having at the time). Do they feel anxious and stressed, I wondered. Poindexter speculated that it was more of a depressed lonely feeling. Hm. I wonder if it's a fidgety one, like when I have some energy and want to go do something.

So anyway, this weekend, quite by accident, was the kind of weekend where I didn't end up sitting on the couch cuddling enough, so I feel like I need to rest. Argh. Just have to get through the week first.

My weekend went like this:

Friday night: Went on a skate. Came home, feeling revved up, and pestered Poindexter. Packed lunches and gathered stuff for our dirt-biking trip the next day.

Saturday: Left house at 10am. Was expecting to be home by 1pm, but didn't make it back 'til 3pm because I was having far too much fun. Exhuasted myself. Showered, napped for half an hour, went out to dinner with Ahmed and Marie. Came home, watched Max X and looked online for new places to ride our dirt bikes, and then went to bed.

Sunday: Woke up feeling energetic at 8:30. Left Poindexter in bed by himself (which he grumbled about) and went on a special beginner skate. Came back, feeling bouncy, and set to work cleaning my dirt bike. Figured while the hose was out I'd water the garden. Then I got an insane bug up my ass to do a little weeding, trimming, and mulching. Barely had enough time to shower before it's time to go to Frances' house for Gwen's neighborhood farewell party (Gwen is leaving for her foreign service assignment next Sunday). The party lasts until nearly 8pm, at which point Poindexter and I finally get to go home and just collapse. On the couch, of course.

Argh. So there's your laundry list. Notice I did not have any time for resting. (Napping for half an hour does not count as resting. If I hadn't napped, I would have fallen asleep at dinner.)

Now, details:

I noticed that when I come home from a skate, I'm usually feeling very bouncy and energetic. Poindexter thinks I'm crazy. He laughs at me and calls me "smelly girl" since I'm all sweaty and gross.

When I got home on Friday, I somehow got on the topic of the women who have had crushes on Poindexter in the past. He got out his yearbook, at my request, and most of them were quite pretty. One was supposedly a model, but I didn't think she was as pretty as some of the other girls.

This led me to speculate whether any of the men who have expressed romantic interest in me were equally good-looking. I thought a while and made a verbal list, and decided no (with the breathtakingly gorgeous exception of Poindexter, whom I think is a fluke). I got a look from Poindexter and the query, "Did you leave the skate early so you could come home and tell me about all the men who found you attractive?"

Poindexter insists that there were good-looking men who must've liked me. Well, given that *I'm* the eye beholding the beauty here, about 99% of my crushes didn't give me the time of day. Fuckers. Makes me all the more amazed and happy that my Big Crush Of A Lifetime actually wanted to marry me.

Ah, the dirt bike ride.

How can I properly express this?

Well, I kept yelling, all day, at Poindexter, apropos of nothing, "THIS IS FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN! I LIKE IT!!"

I loved it. The place where we rode has little trails all over, and it also has one section with an amazing steep hill. It's more gradual on one side, and very steep on the other.

When I first got there, I was scared of the hill. I was scared of everything. I moseyed along at the minimum speed to keep the bike upright and panicked at every little bump in the dirt (and the dirt is, by definition, bumpy).

By the time we left, I was coasting down the hill and zooming UP it and catching air at the top (only six inches, but hey, it was my first time). I was zooming down the fire road at an insane speed, standing on my bike and enjoying the bumps. It was really, really fun, and I can't wait to go back.

Poindexter said I was doing really well, and that I was a lot less wimpy than he was expecting.

Apparently I only saw part of the riding area. There are other areas that I can't handle yet, so there will be more explorations once I get better at it.

We had the whole place to ourselves for most of the day, since we went out early before the annoying teenagers were awake yet. This was good, because I think the most dangerous thing about this activity is other people. When a couple kids came by in a pickup I got a little panicky and stayed away from the area they were riding in.

When we were almost ready to leave, three men arrived, and the one guy, whom Poindexter had told it was my first time riding, kept giving me a thumbs-up. Guys seem to like it when girls ride dirt bikes.

And by the way, apparently my husband IS, indeed, quite adventurous on a dirt bike. I was flabbergasted. He's always launching himself well over three feet in the air, and tearing around in circles around me. I'd see him off in the distance, then turn my attention to the curve I was rounding, then look for him again and he'd be right behind me. He's a regular maniac on a motorcycle.

This next section may be TMI for some of you. It is a discussion of, basically, peeing in the woods. Skip it if you're too squeamish or like to pretend women don't have bodily functions, or don't find peeing funny, ever. You wilderness camping women, though, please keep reading and help me out.

There is precisely ONE reason that I might put up with having a penis: The ability to pee anywhere, anytime, with no muss no fuss. Give it a little shake and off you go.

OK, so, the thing about a dirt bike is that I get jostled a lot, which means I have to pee far more often than I usually would. Especially since we were drinking a lot of water, trying to stay hydrated. It's pretty annoying. The nearest public restroom, however, was a couple miles away. I will not drive two miles every hour (the bike is not street legal, so I have to take the truck) just to pee. I was all set to pee in the woods, until Poindexter brought to my attention the problem of logistics. If my pants are around my ankles, I can't place my feet far enough apart to keep things clean.

It seems that in order to do it properly, I can use one of two methods:

1. Remove my pants entirely, which is far too complicated since it involves removing my shoes as well, and what if I have to move quickly?

2. Hang on to something at waist level, standing, and stick my ass way out. What if I lose my balance and fall over?

I know there has to be a way to do this. Somebody please tell me what it is.

As it was, I made do with a single restroom trip and just suffered the rest of the time. The trip was after lunch, to Wal-Mart. Much to my surprise and chagrin, Wal-Mart was closed. As in, never to be opened again. So I'm wandering around, past the car dealerships, despairing that I'm not presentable enough to ask to use their restrooms (my shirt is covered with grease/oil stains from the VW), thinking I'm gonna have to drive another couple miles to a gas station, when I happen past an empty construction site. With a couple of "Don's Johns". Port-a-potties. Woo! I'm saved!

Seeing as how I'd been mentally prepared to pee in the woods, this was practically the cradle of civilization, here. It didn't even smell bad. Well-ventilated and had that air freshener smell, that was it. And it had plenty of toilet paper and a little dispenser of Purell-type stuff to clean my hands with. I was really quite pleased.

On my way back I noted another construction site closer to the riding area, but when I returned there for a second pee break, there were men in white shirts, hard hats, and ties hanging around. Just the kind of people who might fuss at you for coming onto their site without a hard hat to use their port-a-potty. So I just went back, and just suffered.

As for the socializing:

Dinner with Ahmed and Marie was great. Wonderful, wonderful food. Especially the bastilla, which is like a cinnamon/almond pie with a cripsy crust, with saffron chicken in it. It sounds really weird, like a an appetizer/dessert fusion, but it was absolutely delicious -- I kept exclaiming over it -- and I want one again, right now.

At the party at Frances' house, I met a 70-year-old neighbor who has been losing his hearing over the last decade. He's finding it frustrating. He didn't realize at first that I was hard-of-hearing, and once he found out, he started grilling me about where'd I'd gotten my hearing aids and telling me about his troubles understanding people. He's tried two types of hearing aids and hasn't been happy with either one of them.

I need to ask more about why, because I'm not certain, but from what he was telling me, it sounds as though he is looking for a hearing aid that will give him his hearing back. I don't know how it is for people whose hearing is better than mine, but I think it might be impossible.

All a hearing aid does is amplify hearing you already have. If your hearing is sufficiently destroyed that you can't hear the tiny whispery sounds that distinguish consonants, the hearing aid is not going to bring it back. He may never be able to understand people the way he used to, and he might need to take some lipreading lessons to learn to make the most of what he's got to work with. I don't know.

The really amusing thing is his wife. I had a bitch of a time understanding her, because she has a small mouth, doesn't enunciate very well, and tends to purse her mouth up and talk out of one side of it when she's being disapproving, which is fairly often. His wife complained to me that her husband says that SHE's the one he can't understand. I said, diplomatically, that some people are harder to understand than others, and that there are some people I just can't understand. I didn't say that it was looking like she was one of them. :) But I did have to ask her to repeat herself a lot. Or ask other people to tell me what she said.

Hm. As I was writing this, I realize I'm editing a lot of stuff out for brevity, and prioritizing things by what might be most interesting to readers and to my future self. One of these days I'm going to write an entry about everything that happens in a particular day, and everything I thought about. It'll probably be a really long entry, but it'll be nice not to have to pick and choose what to talk about, for once.

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