All my life, I've been ... well, plagued would be too strong ... captivated by one thing or another. When something catches me, it gets me good, and I might read as much as I can about it (bicycles, HTML), or collect pictures and put them on my wall (Ireland, David McCallum), or find no peace or rest until I acquire it (a cellphone without an antenna, jeans that fit.)
I want a gnome. A garden gnome.
I don't know why. I almost never hang out in the yard; since I was six and the giant spider fell out of a tree and onto my hair, I've been a little wary of all the lifeforms that are more at home in the outdoors than I am. Hubs, who would live outside 24/7 if he could, would not be as much amused by a garden gnome as I.
I want a gnome. A garden gnome.
I want to put it on my front porch, just at the top of the top step, and say hello to it when I come home.
I want to look out the front door from my lovely bug-and-squirrel-free interior and see it standing there, a silent sentinal guarding the house.
I may have lost some perspective here.
I keep looking in catalogs, but I haven't found a good one yet. I've looked in Target and CVS, where they've appeared in the Sunday circular, but had magically disappeared by the time I got to the store. The day I pass the local garden store and the parking lot isn't jammed with cars, I'll stop in. Perhaps my gnome resides there.
It may be a Harry Potter thing. I don't remember craving a gnome before I read the description of Harry and Ron "gnoming" the garden.
I am on a gnome hunt. I'll be reporting my progress, when I get some.
Funny thing, I was just reading Suburban Island, in which was described a business trip to New York City, seeing what's there, picking up souvenirs, and so on. And I was reminded: I go into The City (as we call it here) almost never, once a year, if that, and I live so close. Ten miles west of the George Washington Bridge. There's so much there, and I never see it, only going in once each summer to visit OldFriend.
I am afraid of New York City. My overcautious, fearful parents raised me to be that way. They made sure that my sister and I both knew that if we ventured into The City, we would most certainly come home dead, or at the very least, robbed.
Not that this ever happened to either of us, or, for that matter, either of them. Shirl grew up in the Bronx, and like all others of that time, happily roamed Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan at all hours of the day and night in her youth. Then she got scared.
I did go in as a teenager, as often as I could, mostly to the theatre, where I saw great things. But now, not so much. Once each summer, by train and PATH, into the West Village where OldFriend lives. I'm alert the whole time, and hope that no one will speak to me.
I go there in my dreams, though, at least once a month. In my dreams, The City is interesting and exciting. I'm not afraid, though I'm usually lost, trying one street after another, looking for OldFriend's apartment. Usually, I give up, and we meet just outside a theatre with a big, bright marquee.
So here, I'm thinking all this, and then I click on Trinity's diary, and there she is, describing her dream about going to New York City.
Somehow, it's like going around and coming around at the same time.
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I'm watching The Golden Girls
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