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| Dear Diary,
This one time . . . yesterday . . . I had the day off and woke up extra early so that it would last as long as possible. After doing the dishes, cleaning out the fridge and giving the bathroom a scrubbing down that would have blown Mr. Clean's mind, I sat at the dining room table and wrote out a grocery list.
Recently Xena and I (please note that Xena is not my ACTUAL roommate, but only the alias of the chica with whom I rent and to whom I am closely related) discovered an organic produce market just about a mile from our house. Not only does it carry beautiful and intoxicatingly fragrant fresh produce, but also all of those clever little organic specialty items that never seem to find their way onto a Hannaford shelf. It's truly a grocery-shopper's paradise . . . and, being my diary I'm sure you're well aware of the fact that I LOVE GROCERY SHOPPING!!!!
So I wrote out a list for the Fresh Produce Market, you know, things like mushrooms, tomatoes, environmentally-friendly paper towel and toilet paper (see, I told you they have all the good stuff!), coffee ("Wicked Joe's" organic Sumatra from Brunswick Maine is my new brew . . . and the grinder at the store has an espresso grind that any caffeine junkie would simply DIE to get their hands on, it makes coffee like LIQUID LEAD!!!), and two or three other small items that would be no trouble at all to stick in a backpack and carry on home (remember, Diary, I'm on foot full-time now).
After finishing up a few other small chores I set out. It was sort of misting rain, but it seems to do that a lot on the coast and it's been very warm so I really wasn't worried about it. Plus the only thing better than a hot bath on a day off is hot bath on a day off when you've just come in from exerting yourself in the cool, damp outdoors.
So off I went, singing a little to myself about how happy I was to be on my way to peruse some exquisitely fresh food products, barely even noticing the scruffy man whose path I crossed while leaving the mouth of our road and heading up the street.
Pretty early on in my adventure I realized that it would have been advisable to wear shoes with a greater amount of tread, were I to think of it before leaving the house, because this misty sort of almost-rain (by that point) was freezing into rather treacherous sheets of invisible ice that were causing me to have to scuff along the sidewalk looking a little retarded. As I rounded the bend onto the road with the Produce Market, I noticed the same scruffy man (who I remembered once I saw him again) that I'd passed on my way out, only now he was waaaaaay ahead of me, and had almost reached the market, which was apparently his destination as well. "huh" I thought to myself, and kept walking.
Any thought of . . . well . . . anything at all really, left my mind once I entered the Market. I swear, the smell of all of that luscious goodness is enough to make you never want to eat anything but veggies and fresh herbs again. All of the mushrooms and ginger smells, and the basil and mint smells, and the tomato and radish smells, and the mango and pineapple smells, GOD!! every time you shift to a new section of the store you step into a deluge of new aromas that send you spinning and before you know it you're saying crazy things to yourself like: "I should totally spend the rest of my life gardening . . . I'm sure I'd be REALLY good at it," or "wow, maybe I should move out into the wilderness and become a mushroom connoisseur." It's really incredible!
So I ended up spending the better part of an hour eagerly stuffing my cart with all of the eatable goodness the earth has to offer, getting to the check-out and paying with a credit card (gulp) and then looking over and noticing my backpack. "oh s**t, I'm on foot" I realized to myself. to the clerk I merely smiled and said, "oh, save the bag, whatever doesn't fit in those two I'll just stick in here." And he and I stuffed my backpack full of about three hundred pounds of miscellaneous food things.
* SIDE NOTE * you know how heavy water is? ok, well, it turns out that vegetables are like 90% water . . . WHO KNEW?!?!?!?!
By the time I got back outside the temperature had dropped and the precipitation had increased to the point of a pretty steady sleeting rain. As I'm skating my way to the road I remembered Mr. Scruffy Man, who had gotten to the Market ahead of me . . . "AHAAAHH!!!" I thought to myself, "there must be a shortcut around here somewhere. and then it dawned on my "THE RAILROAD TRACKS!!"
There are some tracks that lead to the Naval Yard near where I live and you have to cross them pretty early on my walk . . . . and they seem to head in this general direction, and there are DEFINITELY some tracks that I have cross to get to the Market . . . so they MUST be the same tracks, RIGHT???!!! YAY!!!!!!!!! "oh, and THERE THEY ARE, JUST OVER THERE!!!!!!!! Boy, things just work out so well for me!!!!!!!!"
To be continued
Love,
Frances | | |
| Dear Diary,
This one time . . . last time I wrote to you . . . I was totally telling the truth!
Apparently Jonnys in town because he's buying a house for his mother. I guess that two weeks ago he popped in and hung out for a while and it was all through the newspaper. He stayed in an inn here in Portsmouth and rumor has it that the housekeeping staff sort of freaked out. They were very professional until he left . . . then everything went down hill. They rummaged through his trash, didn't want to clean the room for fear of washing the Jonny out of it. It's pretty ridiculous really, especially since there's a much younger and slightly taller nock-out look-alike that lives right here in town.
As much as I'm ridiculously in love with the real one, you have to remember that he's not all that tall, is pretty darn pale, and probably weighs about as much as I do.
Don't get me wrong, I'm completely smitten and not at all above professing pathetic love/infatuation . . . but it strikes me as seriously weird that when I first saw him, I'm so used to seeing him everywhere (TV, movies, magazines, posters, online, grocery store tabloids) that my first reaction was "oh, I know him." but he's a complete stranger to me.
I mean, I'm totally thrilled out of my mind to have seen him and shared smiles (WOW!) . . . it just is a little odd to think about and makes me feel a little bad . . . like I'm invading his privacy by being obsessed to the point of such thorough familiarity.
Seriously Diary, I was so used to seeing him that my nonchalance was genuine, it wasn't until the after-thought of "oh my god, he's standing right in front of me!" hit me that I got excited. Now, isn't that a little strange? I'm afraid that I've been so obsessed with him for so long that I've crossed a "crazed fan" line, and seeing him face to face and having him smile at me made me feel a little ashamed of myself.
Love,
Frances | | |
| Dear Diary,
This one time . . . this morning . . . I walked in to town over the bridge early and spent some time writing before starting work (oh yes, I did get a job . . . more on that later). I had a lot on my mind so I found a great sunny spot on a bench right across from Breaking New Grounds and started writing. It was wonderful because it was a really warm, breezy morning and I was sitting in the sun, drinking my coffee, smoking my cigarette and totally lost in my head.
I was absorbed in a huge mess of thoughts, trying as hard as possible to write them all down, string together all the separate emotions and ideas, attempting to make coherent sense out of it all, and I glanced up and there was Jonny Depp. We smiled at each other and I looked down and kept writing . . . and then suddenly I stopped!!!!! HELLO!!!!!! (freight train of adrenaline) . . .
"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!! THAT WAS JONNY DEPP!!!!!!!!!!!!"
. . . or was it . . . hmmm
Anyway, I just had to look again but I felt bad since we'd already smiled and it would be so obvious that I was a double-taking loser no matter who it was.
oh well.
so, after much frantic deliberation, I looked again and (oddly enough) he hadn't gone away, he had just sort of moved closer to his car (which was parked directly in front of the bench I was sitting on) and was looking for his keys or something. So yeah, he totally realized that I was looking again, and I felt SO bad, but he smiled again, this time a lot bigger . . . you know the kind of "yeah, you're an idiot, but here we are, alone together on a sidewalk in the sun, so I'm just going to forgive you because it's such a beautiful day" smile, and, yes, it was Jonny. How cool, huh?
Well, after thinking about that all over again, just the mention of work (even though I'm thrilled about it) is totally anticlimactic (except for the fact that I was able to verify that "he" is in Portsmouth) so I'll just save it for another time. For now, I'll just love the fact that I was all alone, on a secluded bench, on an empty sidewalk, stressing over my inability to sort out my thoughts, and Jonny Depp showed up and smiled at me.
how rocking.
Love,
Frances | | |
| Dear Diary,
This one time . . . today . . . I FOUND A GREAT ART-SUPLY STORE REALLY CLOSE BY!!!!
love,
Frances | | |
| Dear Diary,
This one time . . . right now . . . I'm up late. Mehera's in bed. I should be too, I have to wake up early. But I'm just enjoying being here, all alone, listening to some wonderful music (BSS, Diary, if you haven't heard them, you really should!) and trying a new color of drapes on the windows in our sweet little dining room. I may have to paint over the blue on the picture we hung on the wall and try to mix one that better matches the blue of these curtains, but I think it really looks great to add more color around the windows . . . I hope I have the paint! You know I still haven't found a good art-supply store around here. I should go hunting for one tomorrow.
Okay, I have some laundry to fold, just thought I'd check in. (you bothered me so much for not writing that now that I have high-speed I feel stressed when I have time to kill and don't at least say hi . . . damn Diary, so needy!) . . . :)
love,
Frances | | |
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