drewd The Adventures of Carlos d'Avis

I ate four apple cider doughnuts on an achingly autumn afternoon with my father Federico and my mother Melanie and my sister Nicole and my brother-in-law Mark. Not pictured above are the wedding I attended the day before in Gloucester for Amy and Don or the striking colors of my first return to October in Massachusetts since 1999.

I took a Tuesday lunch at home as a challenge and constructed my finest sandwich in recent memory. Highlights include the first bite, the second bite, the last bite, and all those other scrumptious bits between.

I revisited fully, every page and word, the Lord of the Rings for the first time since having seen the movie, as evidenced by a particular Saturday afternoon at Volunteer Park Cafe. In the books, the women receive less attention and the men are all more obviously in love with each other, though less annoyingly so. I'm not sure Sauron has ever had Côtes du Rhône wine or bacon-chevre-chanterelle quiche, but maybe if he had he wouldn't have been such a jerkface.

My parents had a Traveling Wilburys tape that we used to listen to in our Nissan Axxess minivan circa 1990 and I loved that tape so hard. This glorious super-group passed from my awareness at some point but I remembered them, rediscovered them, sometime at the end of college. "End of the Line" is the best.

I woke up this morning and I was thinking about my drive into the law firm this morning for consulting and I committed myself to listening to this song on repeat in my car until I know all the lyrics by heart, in my sleep, underwater. Listen up, for serious.

I feel obliged to archive my day, this 9th of September of 2009, because over and over today I was just feeling fucking triumphant. I woke up just after 7am rested and happy and, without even getting out of bed, got an email via iPhone with fantastic work news (which will remain undisclosed). Trust me: ACES! I could have stayed in bed, content, but I rose up and kept the groove going. I was happy! It was a good day! I decided to WEAR A TIE, you know, TO WORK. And by that I mean that I decided to wear a tie to my local coffee shop.

Showered, breakfasted, and happily outfitted, I spent the morning at Victrola. The Americano was delicious, as always, and one of the baristas called me 'Dapper Dan.' Silly! My name is Drew (sort of), not Dan! But I'll take the Dapper anyway. I worked on a fun project and I worked on real (read: paying) projects and I tore through my email, with a particular focus on securing a house for January in Panama. There may have been a chocolate orange cookie in there at some point for refueling.

Did I mention that I can walk now? I've been over a week without crutches but, regardless, the Victrola staff felt inspired to congratulate me on my mobility and normal walking. More sun shining on me!

And then I needed a change of scenery. So I walked down the hill to the park and, without guilt, parked myself in a bench for a lovely, leisurely phone call with a friend. Of course! Why not? It's the 9/9/09, and I'm wearing a tie! I can do whatever I want!

I proceeded to lunch at Oddfellows, ordering a ham, cheddar, and tomato panini. When the cashier asked me if I wanted a beverage, I knew I didn't need more coffee yet so was content to stick with water. But why go content when you can go big? So I had an Abbey Leffe Belgian blonde beer with my lunch, sitting in the sun by the open windows and reading up more on Panamian surf.

I suppose I kept working after the lunch, and I suppose I had another Americano? Seriously, I was actually productive, even with the beer. I was satisfied just after 5pm and closed up shop (read: closed my laptop). I headed back to the park bench for another lovely and leisurely chat, this time with my sister, Nicole, far off in Boston.

I reached home, eventually, invigorated by the walk in warm breezes. I itched for activity but didn't even stop to yearn for an impossible distance run. I changed right into my board shorts and drove to Madison Park. Ankle be damned! Setting sun, you can suck it, too! I went swimming, sharing the rather cold Lake Washington with only two others, both of whom were training in swim caps, goggles, and triathlon wetsuits. WIMPS. I totally looked more hardcore than they did, what with my shivering bare torso and numb feet. But truly, my body was exultant in exhaustion… yeah, and also super duper cold.

So I made soup. Because I'm so good at life! When you're cold, and your roommate brings home limes from Labor Day, you make coconut curry lime vegetable soup, or that's what I've heard. And I improvised some coconut curry lime chili chicken that came out bangin' as well. And now I'm in bed and full of delicious food, and I'm totally going to go to sleep and dream about high-fiving Obama and baking cookies with Jenny Lewis. But I won't remember the dreams in the morning: I'll be way too excited for my next cup of coffee.

I offer now, three weeks and one day later, a recap of my ankle injury by way of an excerpt from an email I wrote following the injury.

So, last night, after Hovey, Niki, and I dominated (um, yeah... we won 0 to -2) the first game of Mini, we started another game. And I was cutting all lazy and didn't feel like faking Mike hard so I swirled around and then went deep for Hovey and she put up this high OI flick which was actually pretty great but it meant that I had to sky Mike really hard so I did that but somehow my torso ended up above his body and my feet were sort of tangled up below his body and then we landed and my foot fell off. For maybe like a second. I looked down and my foot was turned under and inward with my ankle pointed out and down and then I flexed my leg and it popped back in. Heh. FUN STUFF.

[…]

PS I mentioned that I caught the disc, right?

I broke no bones but severely strained my ligaments. Best case? Worst case? Uncertain. I was so fated to ride crutches hard for just about two weeks, after which I removed my temporary splint to find a mostly unswollen leg and a totally disappeared calf. The calf came back and my pain slowly decreased and I started walking and life got a bit happier. My friends were, in fact, wonderfully helpful and caring. But seriously, there were some bad moments there, like every time I had to take a friggin' shower with a friggin' plastic bag or like when I had arranged, while hopping on one foot, a bowl of macaroni and cheese on the couch to eat and watch TV but then started to lose my balance and caught myself by knocking the macaroni on the floor. GOOD TIMES.

I will thus play no more Ultimate this year and I cannot guess as to when I will run again. But I will be ready to surf in January in Panama. GOOD TIMES.

I flew to Oaxaca on February 23rd, 2009, to meet my sister, Nicole, her then-fiancé-now-husband Mark, and our families. We gathered there for Nicole and Mark's wedding, for a wonderful week of delicious food and happy urban wanderings and a few moments of perhaps more stressful wedding preparation. Sometimes, I may have looked a bit concerned, or at least a little bit squinty:

We stayed all together at Casa de la Tía Tere, a favorite Oaxaca hotel of Nicole and Mark and located dangerously close to Tlayudas Libres. Nicole and Mark know the staff well, having stayed at Tía Tere every year of the last five (six?) visiting Oaxaca, and we were not disappointed by their warmth and care in every part of the stay. The wedding was held on the roof of the hotel, with panoramic views of the city, its valley, and all the mountains surrounding.

The rooftop ceremony was carefully planned with seating and flowers and papel picado. We had considered the sun and heat and where photographs should be taken. We did not account for that Saturday of their wedding, that February 28th, 2009, having extreme winds unlike any other day. I think my mother's hair gives you a fairly good idea:

Despite some difficulty hearing over the wind, and the beautiful shredding of the papel picado, Nicole and Mark said their vows, we signed the copious Mexican paperwork, rings were exchanged, kisses were kissed, and all was right.

We retired to the courtyards below for a more calm clinking of wine and champagne glasses, and some snacking on light, delicious dishes from Cafe Gaia. After a few toasts and few more photographs, we loaded up taxis and headed to dinner, where I had foam dishes not once but twice. And I toasted Nicole and Mark successfully, in that I made people laugh and I made people cry. Go me.

So, in short, they totally got married and it was totally awesome. Truly, I cherished the opportunity to spend time with mi familia d'Avis as well as finally meet Mark's family, the Andersons. And I have added Oaxaca to my list of destinations for return visits. Joy!

I will have pushed 'Publish' and headed upstairs to sleep for an early morning jaunt with Arnie to Glo's for eggs Benedict. Well, at least that's what I'll be eating—I don't know about Arnie. I am trying to close my eyes so that I will type faster and I am trying to ignore the lyrics of this Bon Iver album so they do not infect my writing.

I closed my eyes and tried to write an email late Saturday night, a drunken email to one lucky recipient, but all I managed were two nonsensical introductory paragraphs before the closed eyes turned to real sleep.

I perch now precariously at the edge of a living room chair, facing inward toward my laptop with a glass of Cab close by, a cheap splash from a $10 bottle whose flavors slipped away easily beneath couscous and salad and a yam and a delicious new chicken recipe. I rubbed chicken thighs with salt and pepper and cayenne and paprika and brown sugar and then cooked them long and slow, covered in the oven with slices of red onion and chicken stock for good measure.

I avoid an email now to a different (lucky?) recipient. I, in fact, blog somewhat nonsensically so that I will not write a specific email but my fingers will still feel sated. I can dance around that email with discussion of excessive dinners and insufficient wine and having watched the season premiere of Entourage this evening. Oh, Vinny Chase, you're so lonely despite your fame and success!

That email, and the messages it would invariably carry, will be wrapped and entwined in nonsense, safely hidden from view, tied up far away from this night's dreams. I will sleep on a full belly and a head willfully pointed at the happiness of a Tuesday, the truth of joyful plans for breakfast, work, lunch, and dinner.

And now the wine is gone and the clock is done. I'll see you tomorrow, 'neath the summer sun. Or, as it were, Seattle gray.

My aunt gave me a watch when I graduated from college and I've worn it ever since. Five years later, I've added scratches and dings but it still marks the hour. The steel timepiece has a rotating dial encircling the face, clicking to and marking any one of sixty arbitrary moments in time. The dial only turns counter-clockwise and my sense of order only accepts the marker at zero (or 12 or 60, as it were). Even a single click to the left prompts 59 more to return time to its proper place.

Knowing my peculiarity, Trina used to sneak a single click when I wasn't paying attention, sleeping or in the shower or otherwise distracted. I would don the watch, time would pass, and I would notice the offset and be happy.

Time passes, and all I want is the intimacy that slows, defeats, and confounds it. Love, Freddy, that's what it is.
from Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

In the past few years, I check the time in certain moments and again find the inexplicable offset. I click the dial 59 times and I remember and I wonder what force in my life now displaces time. Are the Tralfamadorians just having fun with me, pulling Trina's hand forward through the years to issue that click, that jolt?

There is a "No Parking" sign about a block from my apartment. Sometime, in the last year, as I walked by the sign, I discovered a nail stuck into the bottom of my shoe. I used the metal of the sign to pry the nail out of my shoe and then pushed the nail into the top of the wooden signpost. Whenever I walk by it, I push the nail into the top of the post a little bit more and the nail gets rustier and rustier and more and more stuck and resistant. And I wonder if I should take a hammer to it, bang it all the way in, and leave Seattle.