Why Is That?

“So, what do you do?” I overheard at a party.

“This is John, he’s a software engineer,” I heard at another party.

“So, you’re an attorney. What’s that like?” I overheard somewhere else.

Not many people ask me what I do for a living. And you know what? I really don’t mind that I don’t get asked. I wonder why people don’t often ask me that question. Is it that I don’t look like someone who is gainfully employed? No. It’s probably because whenever I am in a social setting I tend to talk about the things I like to do. I talk about the stupid things my dogs do. I talk about our sailing adventures and our diving adventures. Then I forget that I even have a job that I could be talking about, because I am having fun talking and hearing about vacations and listening to funny stories.

When Todd and I were at Kalahari, we stood in line at the boogie boarding ride. The line takes a long time because we have to wait for every single person ahead of us to take a turn navigating a boogie board on a perpetual wave. I struck up a conversation with the couple in line behind us. Then Todd asked me what they did for a living.

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” I replied. Then I thought about it some more. “You know, I don’t like asking people what they do for work. I’d rather ask what they like to do. That’s always more interesting anyway.” He shrugged and thought about it for a second and acknowledged I was right.

We rode the boogie board, and I managed to get up onto my knees before the force of the water sent me flying up to where the wave ends. The lifeguard greeted me with an outstretched towel in case my bathing suit ceased to cover up the goods. (Which I thought was great of them to do. At Schlitterbahn in South Padre Island, TX I involuntarily flashed my boobs at all of the people in line, and at all the people on the balcony of the café above. Good times.) We headed to the hot tub bar after boogie boarding. You have to enter the hot tub to belly up to the bar. Then the hot tub flows under the exterior wall of the building so that we could enjoy our drinks in the tub outdoors. A perfect situation, really.

We soaked and drank. As usual, I eavesdropped on the conversations around us. I listened to a man bitch about his job to his friend. Blah blah blah blah… I tuned out the conversation. Then they went inside after one of the men said to the other “You should just be a man about it and sleep with other women.” (What??) We took their place along the side of the tub and listened to other people talk about their jobs.

I asked Todd, “Why is it that we’re at the biggest indoor water park in the nation, sitting in an awesome hot tub on a Saturday night with these fabulous drinks in our hands listening to people talk about work? Isn’t there anything else for people to talk about?”

Is it that we’re overworked? Are so many of our waking moments spent working or worrying about work?

What do you think, Internet? Why do people talk about work so much?

You Know What I Love About Water Parks?

I love the rides, but water parks aren’t ALL about the rides for me. I love the easy access to junk food, because who doesn’t love instant access to dippin’ dots, or waffle cones oozing with frozen deliciousness. But it’s not just the ice cream either, and I can’t believe I just wrote that. I love ice cream. A lot.

It’s the people watching. I love people watching. And what’s great about going to a water park on a sunny day is that I can check out people all day long and nobody knows it because I am wearing sunglasses. Checking people out at an indoor water park is a lot harder. Nobody wears sunglasses at an indoor water park; I have to take care to keep my ogling subtle.

All day long at a water park I am surrounded by half naked people, and I am constantly fascinated at how each person I see has a unique shape. You could put two women in an identical bikini in the exact same size, and it will look different on each one. So, yes, I do stare at people at the water park. And it probably makes me look weird and pervy. But really, I am admiring the art of the human body and not only the sexual aspects of it.

Speaking of art, another thing I get to see at water parks on most of the half naked bodies are tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos. Every time I go to a water park I am constantly amazed at what people were willing to permanently etch onto their skin.

At Schlitterbahn in San Antonio I saw a man with the Ford logo tattooed onto his back. This dude liked his truck so much he got the swirly Ford cursive name on the blue oval tattooed across is back. There was no registration or trade mark on it, so I wonder if the company can sue him now? I didn’t see anyone with a Toyota or Honda logo on their person, and really wish I had so I could see Toyota tatt man and Ford tatt man duke it out.

At Six Flags in New England I saw a man with the entire cast of the Simpsons tattooed on the small of his back. Dude liked the cartoon, so he got it inked in. Every single character too.

At Wet N Wild I saw a man with a Care Bear on his shoulder. Ooooh, manly!

At Kalahari I saw a man whose arms were covered in various tattoos. On his forearm he had a bottle of booze next to a naked woman. Beneath them a ribbon swirled, on which it said “Stewed and Screwed.” Classy! Dude will never regret that one, I’m sure.

Todd and I struck up a conversation with a man in a hot tub at a ski resort once. He had some Asian characters tattooed on his forearm. Todd asked the guy what the characters meant, and the guy rattled off a bunch of things like “Strength, wisdom, integrity… blah blah blah…”

“So, how do you know it doesn’t say ‘American asshole’ on it, or something?” I asked, not being able to contain my inner smartass. Who am I kidding? There is nothing inner about my smart ass. It’s out there in front, snickering at just about everything I see. But I am always suspicious of things written in languages I don’t know how to read. (When we bought Sabine, her name was Tara Vana. Supposedly that means “Crazy Man” in Tahitian. But I know it actually meant “Loser American Dickweed.” That is the only thing that “Tara Vana” could possibly mean.)

The man chuckled and said “Well, I looked it up on the Internet before I got them done.”

Todd and I looked at each other, and I could tell we were both thinking the exact same thing, my inner smartass shut her trap before saying,“Yeah, because everything on the Internet is true, right?”

Landing a Plane While the Pilot’s Passed Out

In 1997, when Todd and I were together for a total of 5 minutes, we went on an overnight trip together. He was living at his parents’ house in Vermont for that summer. I drove up there from Boston to join him on an overnight to Burlington, VT. On Saturday we prepared to leave for Burlington, when he asked me to pack an overnight bag for him. I frantically glanced around his room, confused as to what to pack for him. Which toothbrush was his in the bathroom? What will he want to wear? Where were his shorts? Surely he wouldn’t want to wear that T-shirt. Was I really at that stage of girlfriendness that I could pack his things? I think the last question freaked me out the most, at the time. The sudden jump in girlfriend status that he had imposed on me at the time threw me for a loop. I went from “New girlfriend” to “Girlfriend that knows what to pack for him and dutifully does it.” I refused to pack for him, he thought I was over-reacting about it and got annoyed with me. But, if you think about it, I didn’t know what to pack for him. At the time Todd had a lot of clothing in his drawers that he hadn’t worn in years. With any luck I would have packed pants that didn’t even fit him, and his mom’s toothbrush.

A year or so later, we moved into our first apartment together. We lived in Brighton, Massachusetts. I worked in Andover, MA—which is north of the city and almost in New Hampshire. He worked in Providence, RI, which is about an hour and a half south of Boston. We were planning on a trip to Vermont for the weekend, and for some reason I didn’t have time to pack for the trip. I got up at some obnoxiously early hour to catch the train to Andover so I wouldn’t have to leave a car at work all weekend. The trip on the train to work was impossibly inconvenient. It involved a near hour ride on the green line from Brighton to North Station. Then I had to change to the commuter rail and ride that for another hour. After the train I had a mile and a half walk to the office from the train station. And I had to do all that before 9 AM. We often did this when heading to VT for the weekend, so I wouldn’t have to waste time driving home, just to go right by my office.

Todd had volunteered to pack for me. In the afternoon he called me at work and asked me what I’d like him to pack, in a “how hard could it be?” kind of a voice.

“OK, for toiletries, I’d like you to refill the little bottle of shampoo, conditioner and Cetaphil that are in my travel toiletry kit, if they need refilling. I need body lotion, my face cream, and my eye cream. I need both the night face cream and the day face cream. Grab that bottle of body spray from Bath and Body Works. It’s plastic, so I don’t have to worry about it breaking in my bag. Then I need my hair dryer, mousse, texturizing gel, hair spray, and my hair brush. Bring a spare barrette, in case I lose this one. Oh, and I need my tweezers, and q-tips. I need enough multi vitamins and calcium pills for as many days as we’re gone. Put those in the Altoids tin in my travel kit. I have a new deodorant in the closet. Don’t take the one in the medicine cabinet because that one’s nearly finished. Take the new one. I need my chapstick from the drawer in my night table, too.”

“Are you serious?” Todd asked, exasperated. I could hear him rifling through the medicine cabinet.

“Oh, and don’t bring the Clinique eye cream. That stuff sucks. Bring the L’Oreal stuff, please.”

“If the Clinique sucks, why did you buy it?” he asked.

“I didn’t know it sucked when I bought it. I bought it when they were having the Clinique bonus thing at Macy’s. But I did get free eye shadow and lipstick when I bought the eye cream, so it was worth it. Oh, and I would like the lip gloss and the lip brush from the medicine cabinet, and my mascara and eye shadow. The brown eye shadow with the two shades of brown in it.”

“The Neutrogena eye shadow?” he asked.

“No, the Clinique one. The one with the 2 shades, not the 4 shades…”

“Are you kidding me? You really use all this stuff?” he asked.

“Yup. OK, ready to pack my clothes?”

“I have to pack your clothes now?” he laughed.

“Yeah, I can’t spend the weekend at your parents’ house naked. OK, let’s start with the black chenille sweater…”

“What the hell is chenille?” he asked, slight annoyance in his voice.

“You know that black sweater with the zipper down the front?”

“Hold on,” he sighed, “OK, got it, what else?”

“No, I don’t want the one with the zipper. I want the one with the scoop neck that is the same kind of material as the one with the zipper.”

“What the heck is a scoop neck?”

“You know, the black sweater I wore when we went to dinner in the North End that time? That’s the one I want to wear.”

“When we went to Georgio’s?”

“No the other place, across the street from Georgio’s…”

“OK, I think I have the sweater. What else?”

“I want my Gap jeans. Not the faded ones, but the other ones….”

“OK got it…”

“Now I want the brown boots. Not the pointy ones, but the rounded ones…”

On it went for a good twenty minutes, as he scrambled to and fro trying to get everything I wanted into my bag. He very tolerantly packed every stitch of clothing as I barked commands into the phone. But we both knew that would be the first and the last time he’d pack for me.

But since that jump in girlfriend levels, as his wife I could pack for him blindfolded. All that’s required are 2-3 pairs of pants or shorts, a stack of T-shirts, one dress shirt in case we go somewhere nice for dinner, a few pairs of socks, and a bathing suit. For toiletries he needs a toothbrush, hair brush, deodorant and cologne.

I still have to pack for our trip to Florida this weekend. I will leave work at noon on Friday, go home, and take some time to pack what I want to wear, use, apply to my face, and everything else that goes into my bag. But all he’ll have to do is open a suitcase, sweep an arm across a shelf in the armoire and he’s packed.