Lorraine Says: Pop.

I haven’t seen the sun for four days now. This isn’t an emo opening for my latest journey into self assessment, it’s just been raining a lot.

This weekend was full of the type of rain that never really stops. It drizzles, it pours, or even when there are no drops falling, it feels like the rain is suspended in air, stuck in a web of humid heat. It sucked.

Usually, I would deal with this type of weather by staying indoors and out of pants. This weekend was Vyelit’s baby shower, though.

In preparation, Pink and I visited every craft and party store in our city on Saturday. This was initially for some last minute supplies we needed, but when we started veering into home goods stores and beauty supply stores... well, honestly, I wasn’t surprised. That is the only logical end when Pink and I are together.

I own 185 bottles of nail polish. Pink owns 203. She is very proud of this and likes to be on hand when I’m buying a bottle of polish, so that she can buy two, and giggle.

Sometimes I just am amazed at how the same we are. But then something like this happens: 
 

Pink: Gailey has been dying for Yougurtland. I’ll take her but I don’t eat frozen yogurt.
Lor: UH, WHUT? It’s practically ice cream. What’s the problem?
Pink: I don’t like it.
Lor: Have you tasted it?*
Pink: Yes! I tasted the vanilla one.
Lor: There’s your problem. You don’t have vanilla frozen yogurt. You need a flavor.
Pink: But I hate flavored ice cream. If I want a cookie, I’ll eat a cookie. I don’t want cookie flavored ice cream.
Lor: PINK YOU ARE DOING LIFE WRONG.
Pink: Look. Some things don’t go together. I like to keep life simple. Cake is for eating with icing. Ice cream is for eating with sprinkles. And cookies are for eating with orange juice.
Lor: *horrified*
Pink: What?

ORANGE JUICE?

She swears that it doesn’t really taste good together, but it does. This is the point where I wonder about her. This is also the point where she makes sure to tag me in this photo late Saturday night. 

 

Sunday, the scrambling began. Vye’s shower was meant to be outside, under a rented pavilion at a local park.

We had to scratch that plan and inform the guests that we were now going to host the party in a small room at our church. I could insert a lot here about the pain in the neck this was, and how I was not the best at handling the stress, but everything came out nicely and that’s what’s important.

The theme was “ready to pop” so I’m pretty sure I could never eat popcorn again and I’d be totally okay. I still have buckets of it at home, though, so I’ll probably eat that for dinner.

I will say that sitting in a small room, the wet air sneaking inside, surrounded by balloons and chattering friends and family, it felt like a tangible measure of progress. Eight months ago, the news that my sister was the victim of sexual assault devastated my family. It was news on the heel of the death of my grandmother, coupled with the news that she was pregnant, followed by the news of the death of my grandfather.

I will never be able to tell you what we felt. I will never be able to describe those moments and those days. I don’t know that I ever felt that we wouldn’t make it through it all. I knew we would. It was distant knowledge then, though. The way I know where France is, though I’ve never been there.

Sitting at the shower, hearing people say things like, “I can’t wait to see her,” I felt a little closer to that knowledge. I can hold it in my hands now. I know where it is and I have hope of getting there one day. I can see it. There’s a little more conviction in my voice when I say that we will fine. Vyelit will be fine. And little Mae-fly, whenever she decides to make her debut, will be absolutely loved. 

Penny playing the measure Vyelit's belly game.

 

I like all of your faces. I hope you’ve seen the sun recently.

*Asking Pink if she’s tasted it is a totally valid question. She often makes judgements about food she’s never tried based on color, look, feel or imagined consistency. She’s really awesome that way.

Lorraine Says: Lowball

Much of the field trips I went on as part of a south Florida public school involved parks, tourist attractions or aquariums. It makes me curious what field trips everyone else was was taking while elementary school year after year, I pranced around Disney World or Monkey Jungle or Parrot Jungle or Butterfly World or the Miami Seaquarium.

I remember a part of one of those trips to the Miami Seaquarium quite vividly. I don’t know what grade I was in, or what I wore, or if I packed a Lunchable that day or another favorite, a smushed ham and mayonnaise sandwich. What I do remember is standing in the front row, behind an almost face high plexiglas partition, watching the dolphin show. It was almost unbearably hot, but I was amazed by the trainer’s flailing arms and the way the dolphins responded in their round pool of too-blue water. The lead trainer, the one wearing the microphone, the one with the happy announcer voice, said that they needed a volunteer for the next part of the show. She walked up to the partition and pointed right at me.

“You. Would you like to jump in the water? The dolphin will swim up to you and carry you!”

I thought about it for a second and decided my mother wouldn’t appreciate it if I wet my clothes or my hair, which she always took pains to blow dry.

“No thank you,” I responded meekly.

“But it’s so hot out here!” the announcer continued without missing a beat. “How about you?”

She pointed to a dirty blonde haired classmate of mine, whose name is lost in the folds of my terrible memory.

“I can’t swim,” she said giggling.

Oh.  

OH. 

Lorraine Says: Insginificant

I wish I could remember when exactly I played Neopets. I was reminded of the Giga Pet-esque website just now after I sent out an email to a friend, sadly proclaiming that I’ve been neglecting my blog. I was forever neglecting my Neopet too, logging on to find it famished or dying. It was more fun to play the games when I was bored than it was to consistently log on to feed the thing. I don’t think Neopets ever died, though, unlike my Tamagotchi which was often drowning in poo.

No one is drowning in poo, I promise.