A Grumpy Day, Apparently

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Collette was antsy that morning, waiting on something she wasn’t even sure of. The past couple of days had gone well, relatively, as she usually seemed to speak of her weeks.

Thursday, Joe the Younger and Ivy had remembered her upcoming birthday at the office and wrote her a kind card. Ivy had also provided donuts (chocolate-covered cinnamon in particular), a bright pink bag of chocolates, and a set of twelve nesting boxes from Max and Joy (each box depicting one of the twelve days of Christmas). Collette thought it would be a marvelous idea to fill each box with a novelty to be opened (one each day) on the days before Christmas. Perhaps if they had children one day, they could do so. She wasn’t entirely sure when the twelve days of Christmas took place, but she concluded that though they likely took place Christmas through January, she would start them on December 14^th and finish on December 25^th.

Meanwhile, Ivy dealt blows to the e-mail as it was acting up again.

“Wake up and smell the coffee, dude!” She commanded the machine.

It clearly had no interest in cooperating with either Ivy or Collette. It was a stubborn piece of equipment. Collette secretly believed it was snickering most sinisterly at them from the inside, every week.

She had thoughts of different ideas for Christmas, something different from year to year, as well as traditions. Violet had written her about how she decorated the house. Their tree had white and purple lights with clear glass and silver ornaments and white garlands. Then there were lights and garland for the banister. And on Christmas Eve they were going to have her husband’s family over for games and Christmas movies. It sounded like a fun plan to have for a newly married couple.

Then Friday had brought some grumpiness from the Snickett household. Carrie-Bri was bored and tired, and sick of work. At least New York was right around the corner for her. But while Carrie moped a bit that morning, Collette found herself at work once again.

On the way, she noticed on the Knights of Columbus sign — beside the Christmas Tree Lot — a fish fry for that evening at four.

As she arrived at work and set up the lights and machines and took a look outside, the ground appeared like frosted spindles of glass as the sun came over the shade beyond the melon patch and tomato stakes, where the great tree grew. And hawks would circle in the cold.

She sighed a little to herself; she was unsure of those days. In the kitchen she took inventory of the paper shelf and kicked the rug back in place by the copier. It was an old worn rag-stitched rug. One of its rag ends had come loose – a dark green piece – like a long string bean hanging off the end.

She opened the paper closet and checked the stacks of paper inside. She liked the door to the paper closet. The handle turned so lightly, as light as spun sugar (without hardly feeling it turn in the hand) and it shut so gently.

Then that night it was off for a bit of shopping with Mom and Carrie-Bri. For the first part of the trip, Carrie was quite grumpy. Although at The Mills, she did recall that one little baby dress she had seen a year ago at one of the fancy bridal dress shops. It was so stiff with frills and beads and ruffles it could nearly stand up straight on its own.

“Wow, that thing could walk itself down the aisle,” Mom had laughed when Carrie brought it over to show her.

“I want it!” Carrie giggled. “It’s so cute. I’m going to dress my daughter like this some day. Can you just imagine the little chubby thing walking around in this? She would just bounce around in it and look so cute!” She clutched the frilly thing to her and looked pleadingly at Mom. “I’ve got to get it, Mom.”

“Well, fork over the fifty dollars and it’s yours.” Mom had laughed again at Carrie’s funny face.

“Fifty dollars!” Carrie held the dress out in front of her, as if examining it to see if it was worth it.

She decided it wasn’t, for the time being. “I’ll get it one of these days,” she thought aloud as they left the shop. “OK, let’s get some pretzels.”

Meanwhile, as the evening had gone on, Carrie seemed to be more and more miserable. Her feet ached from wearing her stillettos, she was grievously tired from working till two or so all those nights the past two weeks at Columns, and she was plain grumpy from lack of eating dinner. Her braces convinced her to stop eating in public. She was a homebody, and despised eating at restaurants, however this was likely partly because of the hated braces.

“I’ll rip them off if Dr. Mad doesn’t have them off next month,” she had vowed a dozen times.

But meanwhile that evening, she was also irritable and plainly bored.

“I’ve just got to get out of St. Charles. I can’t stay here. I don’t want to get my degree online. I want a team sport and team colors.” She moaned aloud as she switched lanes hastily to cross over past the mall.

“Carrie,” Collette said, “If you want to get into the Secret Service this badly, you’ve got to take the good with the bad. You’ve got to get this stuff done first. And you know that it’s going to take you longer to get there if you go away to school.”

“I just don’t want to wait eight years till I get there, meanwhile doing nothing here.”

“Nothing? What are you talking about? You’re planning on E.S.I. training in Colorado, the police academy, working security at the airport, getting your pilot’s license, studying over in Egypt and Uruguay… Come on.”

“Carrie,” Mom cut in, “you’ve got to be happy where you are. You can’t always be looking for something more. Be content where you’re at.”

Carrie was quiet for awhile.

“And knowing you, there will never be a lack of excitement in your life,” Mom laughed a bit as they pulled into the Olive Garden parking lot.

That seemed to settle things for awhile. From time to time Carrie went through a spell of frustration with her current situation, as everyone did.

And ten minutes later when Mom and Collette came back with carry-out, Collette still limping from her sore heel, Carrie was better.

“I’m sorry for being grumpy,” she said. “It’s just that I’m always around all these people at work with such depressing lives. You can’t help being depressed when you hear about all the terrible things they’re dealing with.”

“It’s true,” Collette agreed, looking out the window to the night lights and stores.

Later, Collette laughed a little to herself and thought of several days before when OLeif had been playing around with her, annoying her somehow.

“Oh, you’re dead, buddy,” Collette told him.

“Bring it on,” he bent down to her level and motioned her on with a menacing grin.

“I will,” Collette went back to her typing, “as soon as I get my sword out of the closet.”

“I eat bigger things than you for breakfast.” He growled at her.

Collette laughed at his obnoxious scowl. “You’re crazy, you goofball.”

Meanwhile, the afternoon seemed to be coming on quickly. She thought of the upcoming semester and hoped to study Spanish and Italian thoroughly. Then she would move on to setting up a program to orally recall world history and geography, as well as literature and mental long division.

The one o’clock hour approached, while the sun said it was five, and Collette continued to lightly type on the keyboard as the minutes ticked by and Soviet history was reviewed. She began to make up her mind about taking on a second degree in January, provided she passed the first. And it would begin with the psychology GRE in April, perhaps. But then again, it was OLeif’s turn to take on the schooling, and perhaps she should back to the side for awhile.

The warm sun began to settle comfortably beyond the trees, enough for Collette to draw open the shade in front of her desk where the bean pods swung even closer than they had been before, when her computer sat on the floor. She tied aside the minty green satin panel where the glass revealed the swaying branches of the red bud in the late fall winds. The horizon waxed blue and lavender-brushed fluffy white as the sun shaded itself behind each that passed. And below, the activity of the world continued, waiting for Christmas to come.

As the afternoon came on, the sky filled itself with an army of blue and gray in the northeast, a sign of coming snow perhaps. A deep violet filled them from the inside out as the wind blew them along to fairer lands. Streaks of robin’s breast blue still lay stretched across the horizon, and she thought she hadn’t seen such a beautiful sky in a long while. As the sky dimmed, the twinkling Christmas lights glowed across the streets and she felt more as if Christmas was coming.

Then she recalled Carrie-Bri telling of her experience at The Pageant.

“Yeah, so anyway, then there’s this band from Sweden or somewhere. And he gets up on stage and this dumb blonde throws a cookbook up on the stage.”

“A what?”

“A cookbook. And so the guy’s like, ‘what’s this?’” She imitated a London accent, “and the girl whines, ‘it’s a cookbook, so you can learn how to make mayonnaise and stuff.’ And he says, ‘Mayonaise? I love mayonaise. What about ketchup? Is that in there as well?’” And Carrie-Bri rolled her eyes. “Then this other band gets up there, and some girl throws him a scarf. And he’s like, ‘Oh, cool. How do I wear it?’ And he tied it around his waist, and then he says, ‘Hey, what about you balcony people? Do you have any scarves for me?’ And then everyone up there starts screaming and ripping off their scarves and things and the guys take off their shirts and throw them down there.” She ended with her voice up, almost as if she were asking a question.

“Gross! Sweat!”

“Yeah, they had a whole pile down there, and they started putting on the shirts and stuff. It was kind of funny. Then Cake gets up there and suddenly they finish a song, and they say, ‘Thank you, St. Louis’, and they’re gone. So everyone started booing them because they didn’t sing their biggest hit, and they just left out of nowhere. And then we all started chanting, ‘Cake, cake, cake!’ because we wanted them back.”

Collette smiled at the thought of an entire concert hall calling for cake.

That evening, OLeif and Collette headed out into the fresh cold where a rain had just passed and went over to find a Shirley Temple film. In the end, they chose the third Harry Potter. After arriving home, she called Dad to tell him the code to the church office and where to pick up the greens. But first she got Joe on the phone.

“Please, please come over tonight,” he begged.

And she could hear the other kids in background chanting, “Come on, come on!”

“Sorry, Joe. We’ve already got a movie and Hardees over here.”

“What movie did you get?”

“Harry Potter. The new one.”

“Ah!” Joe exclaimed. “I see a great difference of moral standards between our two families. We’re over here with a home-cooked meal and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”. And you’re over there with thickburgers and sorcery!” His voice got loud toward the end.

“Very funny,” Collette laughed at him.

He was such a stooge – a great guy with a big warm heart.