le petit hiboux | owls gone wildtag:,2008-11-23:/162010-03-05T21:37:21ZOnline nest of Krissa Corbett Cavouras, erstwhile known as le petit hiboux.Movable Type Pro 4.21-enhelp wanted: expert repairs for bedraggled little sailtag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111172010-03-05T21:24:25Z2010-03-05T21:37:21ZI'm starting to notice this pattern. Fridays are impossible. Something about the amount of wind my sails can hold, I don't know, only gets me until Thursday night at 10pm. Then I wake up on Friday and I know the...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com So I get up late and put on clothes - usually clothes I look crappy in, because somehow by Friday I can no longer be bothered to bother - and I usually forget or can't be bothered with breakfast. I give the dog a terrible walk, poor dog, and I go to work. And I'm usually pretty productive, if I can forget how tired and waterlogged I am. But all I can think is, it's not really Friday. I've got class on Saturday morning, surely that defies the very Fridayness of a Friday. All this non-Friday is going to be the end of me.
What is there that is sunny: well, there's been some sun this week, for one. (Look at my tattered rags of repartee, reduced to scraps of weather.) On an unexpectedly beautiful walk on Thursday morning, I curved around to the sweeping harbor views of Sunset Park to find just the mildest hint of mild on the wind, a lack perhaps of cold more than a breath of warmth. I was gulping it in, giddy with the idea that Spring is coming, and surely this great inky black spider weaving its little dirgy ditty in my chest will be banished when Spring comes.
Maybe all I need is a cookie.
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damn the torpedoestag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111162010-02-20T18:21:46Z2010-02-20T18:34:24ZThis morning something occurred to me, as I fought the impulse to stay home instead of dragging my weary bag of bones to yet another Saturday class (it's never as bad when I get here as I imagine it's going...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com Who am I kidding! There are moments when I don't feel tough enough to peel a banana. For the first time in my adult life I am a delicate fucking snowflake. I suppose if I had been someone already given to a fair amount of hand-wringing and hyperbole, all this grief would be a practiced flourish, perhaps? As it is, all I can do is look back on the happy, centered and rational person I feel quite sure I was through November 18, 2009, and miss the stuffing out of her. I particularly miss her when I find myself throwing tantrums over what kind of taco I ordered, or crying because the train is late, or snapping at Nano because he isn't walking fast enough. Honestly! Who is this drama queen! And by drama queen, I mean me.
I have a song (I've become someone with a song!) that I put on my iPod when I'm really just tired of pushing past the stupid feelings I'm feeling all over the place, and just want to stand in place (last night it was in the middle of Union Square Park) and just feel the damn feelings already. It's the Rolling Creekdippers' cover of Gram Parson's In my Hour of Darkness. It even has a dramatic title! But I suppose it reminds me that even though I don't believe, I can still plead with the Universe to cut me some slack already. And by Universe, I mean me.
Then there was an old man, kind and wise with age he read me just like a book and never missed a page. Oh, I loved him like my father and I loved him like my friend. And I knew his time would surely come but I did not know just when.
In my hour of darkness, in my time of need, O lord grant me vision, O lord grant me speed. ]]>
february ninthtag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111142010-02-10T04:48:36Z2010-02-10T04:56:07ZToday is your birthday, and it was hard to imagine how much fun I would have had with you turning seventy, and how incredibly, impossibly young that now seems, for a man who used to joke that every day above...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com We went to La Villa for pizza tonight, with some of the friends that I've found the most comforting these past few months, some of the friends who know that any minute I'm smiling is bonus. We should by rights have gone to Di Fara - I still remember how absurdly proud I was that you loved Dom's pizza even though you waited an hour for it, how you bragged to other people that you'd waited an hour for the best pizza you'd ever had, how you got excited when Di Fara's was mentioned on Food Network because you'd been there! - but I was in class until eight thirty and La Villa was as close as I could get, buddy. We ate there, just in November, just the four of us, and I remembered the sight of your smiling bespectacled face across the table.
When we got home I stayed up after Stuart had gone to bed and finished the amazing novel L gave me. I sat in the big armchair Mom bought when we lived in Houston, the one you called the thousand dollar chair, as if you couldn't believe a chair could cost that much, and read the last thirty pages in less than an hour. It reminded me of coming downstairs some mornings, when you still worked, and finding you reading. You used to wake up early, crazy early, just to have a few hours to yourself every day. Mostly, you read. Such a man of sacrifice, and yet when given the time to indulge, you read. It might be my favorite thing about you, my favorite thing I got from you, of all the beautiful and intricate and subtle things I inherited.
And now it's almost midnight and it will no longer be your birthday and I'm a little grateful because I never quite know what to do with milestones, but also a little sad, because as much as it'd be so pretty to think so, I don't believe in an afterlife where you're reading this but I do believe that in writing to you, I'm honoring you the best this life knows how.
Happy birthday, buddy. I miss you so. ]]>
zero out of zero starstag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111132010-02-08T17:41:11Z2010-02-08T17:48:55ZPredictably, I stopped writing here as soon as the semester started. This is because I am busier than I have ever been. Serving as Graduate Assistant to one of my favorite professors has been a godsend, if only because I...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com Only, the sad thing is, all I can do is what I was already doing. I feel crippled, hobbled, when I think about doing anything - passing any landmark of time - that will be the first thing my dad doesn't know I'm doing. The big slam of the bell will signal that this was the first time I made a decision without him and for all the strength I thought I had, I don't have enough yet for that.
I have just enough strength, it seems, to recognize that tomorrow is his birthday so I should go out to dinner with my closest friends at his favorite pizzeria and be grateful that I'm still his daughter and I still love pizza. I also have just enough strength - but only just - to know that I'll get stronger.
I saw a friend last night who's already ridden this particular carnival ride and she asked how it was going and I said, I don't know, it's going whether I want it to or not, and she said, sucks, doesn't it, and I said yeah, would not recommend, would not purchase from again, and we started laughing and I realized, this is funny only because it sucks so much harder than you could ever imagine it sucking. And at least it doesn't always suck alone. ]]>
she blinded me with [library] sciencetag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111112010-01-15T16:18:03Z2010-01-16T05:35:51ZSo back when I still had a head reasonably screwed on, I nonetheless decided to coincide a trip to Boston for BFFsie's wedding with ALA Midwinter because, apparently, I like a challenge.I've been dreading it for a week; squirreling my...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com
ALA Midwinter because, apparently, I like a challenge.
I've been dreading it for a week; squirreling my head away from the conference materials sitting on my desk, I simply couldn't bring myself to Plan such a thing as what to do in two days at my First Ever Professional Conference.
Turns out, all you have to do is show up and know you have a few fabulous fellow Pratthattanites to flounce around with. With which to flounce around. Whatever, I'm tired, it was a lot of work, all that flouncing. Not to mention those margaritas with lunch and all that raiding the ARC piles* like a very well-dressed scavenging horde**. Plus, I got to flounce with BDL, a fellow library student and New Yorker who agrees with me on critical issues pertinent to librarianship like "why do I have to order extra cheese with my fajitas?" and "I expected bagels at this event". In my book this makes her top shelf.
Tomorrow I fully expect Al Gore to ask me to check myself before I wreck myself, environmentally speaking. Aw yeah.
*OMG so much bookswag. Tomorrow I will be strict with myself and only visit vendors that offers products about which I want to learn, instead of flinging myself at the Penguin Booth and just licking all the books.
**SO well dressed, was my gang of ladies. And full of brains. Librarian chicks are awesome. ]]>
time forward and time pasttag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111102010-01-12T14:31:04Z2010-01-12T14:38:45ZI don't know why time should matter, the marking of one week to the next shouldn't make grief any more or less burdensome, and yet, I had a terrible day yesterday. Only when I was walking home did I remember...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com Last night we watched Man on Wire, the documentary about Philippe Petit's highwire walk between the WTC towers. I was thinking about 1974 and whether my father was still working in Rockefeller Center - had they moved to New Rochelle already? - and before I could catch the sneaky little bastard the thought jumped into being, "I should ask him if he remembers it", and that was hard.
It's all these things I had yet to ask that sink my valiant little boat. At least I know that my dad would have thought walking on a tightrope between the tallest buildings in Manhattan was the work of a lunatic idiot. He might even have used a colorful swearword. No doubts there. ]]>
flair for the dramatictag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111092010-01-09T21:09:01Z2010-01-09T21:21:26ZI remember thinking when I was in the hospital for my appendectomy, back in 2003, that being sick in a hospital isn't as tragically glamorous up close as I thought it would be. Or really, tragicaly glamorous at all. I...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com This is like that. I think I imagined the grief I'd feel over losing my dad and the real enchilada doesn't look much like it. I probably thought I'd cry more, or more around people other than Stuart. I know I thought I'd have been a wreck at the funeral - I wasn't. I remember being terrified at being around his body right after the life tiptoed out of it. I wasn't, funnily, it was still like being around dad. That was still nice.
But when I do cry, when I do feel it, hoo boy I feel it. I said to Stuart that I felt silly now, for any grief I'd ever felt over any of my ex-boyfriends (sorry guys). He asked why, and I said that until This, there wasn't anything that had made me cry harder than lost love. And now it seems quaint, trite, almost adorable.
I had lunch with Simon, who I have dubbed The Wise Man (it says so in my phone when he rings) and we talked about grief and religion, and whether there's any comfort I'm missing out on by not believing. I suppose you can't walk into a bargain with Belief - you make me feel better in exchange for my membership! - but I wanted to know if it helped. I wanted to know whether I'm missing out by putting Life and Death in two distinct, irreconcilable boxes at opposite ends of a room. My favorite thing about Simon is that he thinks he's some sort of curmudgeonly misanthrope while actually having a heart bigger than Texas. A lot like my dad, actually.
Aside from thinking all these deep fucking thoughts, I also had an amazing massage on Thursday, and I had a wisdom tooth removed yesterday. The ridiculous along with the sublime, it seems.
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sad, but thanks for askingtag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111082010-01-06T17:53:46Z2010-01-06T18:09:12ZI'm getting to the end of my gracious length of rope - already! Everyone wants to know how I'm doing, and the right answer involves stuff like "he died peacefully" and "he was such a great man" and "we didn't...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com Today I'm feeling more like telling people that I miss the shit out of him already and it's only been a week. How I'd see him there when we exited the train station at New Haven, standing by the car and wearing a plaid shirt and corduroys with the burgundy suspenders, and he'd look so pleased as punch to see me, and I'd be pleased as punch to see him too, and only one hug was enough to say that. How I never got tired of hearing him say "hi, love" down the phone even if it was third time that day. I feel like telling people that anything is better than gone, that even when he was sick and wordless I loved sitting by the hospital bed and just looking at him, how I'd bring a book and never read it because my eyes just wanted to rest on his face, a face I've known my whole life and maybe even a little before.
Last night I dreamed that he came downstairs and we were all so happy to see him even though we knew he'd died, and how he explained very simply that we'd always be able to sit down in my dreams and have dinner together, and that I could tell him what was going on and he'd remember it the next time. I'd like to think my brain is so tired of thinking about Before so now it's finding ways to live in an After.
I guess there's no polite way to say all that when someone asks you how you're
doing. They're not asking you whether you're bouncing back. What they mean is, can you carry on? And I guess I can. ]]>
wherein I make brief liststag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111072010-01-05T16:31:30Z2010-01-05T16:37:24ZThis morning I made a perfect pot of coffee (two tablespoons to six ounces of water, STUART) and ate half of the perfect vanilla cupcake that Lavina sent me home with. Ever have cupcakes for breakfast? You should. I'm thinking...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com Noon will mark the point in this day off where I have to decide if I'm going to a. sit around watching Instant Netflix and eating bon bons b. tidy my room and do laundry or c. go to IKEA and look at closet organizing solutions
On the one hand, I think, I should be as lazy as I can because in the next week I'm a. having a wisdom tooth removed b. going to boston for a library conference and c. a wedding and also d. coming back to start my third semester where I'm in e. two demanding classes and also f. serving as graduate assistant to my highly intelligent knowledge org professor.
On the one hand, I'm reluctant to rob myself of the very last bon-bon/netflix chance I have until May. On the other hand, will sitting around eventually lead to depression and malaise? Is there a third hand?
Do you like this new thing where I open a blog window and just yammer on until I come to a reasonable stopping point? It's like 2003 all over again. ]]>
oh my darling clementinetag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111062010-01-04T16:40:14Z2010-01-04T16:54:32ZSitting in the dark theater watching a movie helped. Sea salted caramels and emails from friends and shopping for groceries helped. But I'm still swinging wildly between relief that I'm back home and life will proceed whether I will it...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com I bought sweet clementines yesterday and the first one brought me joy, which is funny since my dad and I loved sharing a box of clementines you'd think it'd make me cry (it made Stuart cry a little) but I thought to myself, I'm eating this delicious sweet thing! It's not even one-eye! There's no crying in here. I thought about how I sang him the song in the hospice, as he slept, and how I fumbled past all the deathiness of the last two verses. The clementines are still sweet, the sweetest box I've bought in years. Is meaning found, or created?
There's no shortcut. It wouldn't do any justice if there was. So through it, it is. ]]>
this pain in my hearttag:petithiboux.com,2010://16.111052010-01-03T18:53:38Z2010-01-03T18:56:54ZI took his old pencil case out of his desk, the day he got too sick to fix. It's a tartan fabric, flat and long, with holes in all four corners. It's got leather alongside the zipper. I'm not sure...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com I think he's had it most of my life, the pencil case, since I remember the privilege of borrowing it when I was young. But I'm sitting at our coffee table looking at it, and I realize I don't know where he got it. My mom might know, most likely, because not all the questions I have are unanswerable, but I can't ask him.
I think about how I felt the day he died; fragile but full of light and grace, full of unrealized sorrow, and so hyperaware of all the love around me. I felt so lucky to have known him.
And now I feel so bereft, so heavy, so unable to ask him questions about the pencil case, or whether there's a maximum I can contribute to my IRA this year, or whether we did alright with his funeral. I don't know that I want that lightness back, now that the sorrow has arrived, because I know I have to go through this, I have to put my head down and get through it. I just keep thinking how upset he would get when I cried about anything, and now he's not here to tell me not to cry because everything is going to be fine, even if it will be. ]]>
e.c., 1940 - 2009 (a eulogy)tag:petithiboux.com,2009://16.111032009-12-31T16:00:00Z2010-01-05T16:39:09ZKrissahttp://petithiboux.com
Here are ten things I learned from my dad:
1. Never put anything off; make a list and then do it.
2. Always read the instructions.
3. Money really doesn’t grow on trees.
4. If you’re lucky, you have two or three great friends in life.
5. You get what you pay for, unless it’s at Sam’s, then you get it in bulk. 6. A good steak is always medium rare.
7. Anything worth doing is worth doing right.
8. If you don’t know something, look it up.
9. Work hard, pay your dues, and enjoy it.
10. Love is always unconditional.
For as much as these sound like clichés, my dad meant them. He had the wisdom to back up all his experience, and the advice to help you out when you needed it. If there was something my dad understood, he would explain it. If there was something he didn’t understand, he would research it until he did.
My dad touched so many lives in different ways. He was the funny man with our neighbors, Kathleen and Donna, because he shared their sense of humor. He was the family man with the Pappadopoulos and the Corbetts, because he relished those big family gatherings that we’d missed, so many years abroad. He was the long-suffering Republican to so many of us bleeding-heart liberals. He was the guy with the answers for me, for my brothers, for Stuart. He was the hard worker for his colleagues, who considered his honesty and integrity a breath of fresh air. Perhaps most of all, he was the best husband my mother could ask for, and he treated her like the queen that she is.
But to me, he was my dad. He was my friend, one of those great friends we’re all lucky to find. He taught me the value of my intelligence, he taught me to be brave and confident because I am loved, and maybe he taught me some math along the way. I will miss him every day, but I also know I am tougher, kinder, funnier and braver for being his daughter.
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Puerto Rico, day twotag:petithiboux.com,2009://16.110992009-12-01T18:27:40Z2009-12-01T18:42:58ZMonday, November 16thFajardo to ViequesWe woke up to the dismal sound of steady pounding rain on the deck outside. We gritted our teeth and quickly packed up our bags to head downstairs for breakfast. It was all well and good...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com
Monday, November 16th Fajardo to Vieques
We woke up to the dismal sound of steady pounding rain on the deck
outside. We gritted our teeth and quickly packed up our bags to head
downstairs for breakfast. It was all well and good for it to rain on
our first day, where there was no beach involved, but we were headed to
the sunny, beautiful island of Vieques! It had to stop raining.
Breakfast
was set up in the front courtyard of the hotel, since the beautiful
deck at the back was a flood zone, and we dutifully ate our oatmeal
while the inn owner tsked at the sheets of rain washing out the car
park. She predicted dire delays on the ferry. I resisted throwing a
breakfast roll at her head. The coffee was weak. But at least there was
bacon; Stuart gave me his last bite to cheer me up.
As we
arrived at the ferry terminal and parked our little car in the
long-term lot - guarded by strays! - the rain cleared to a high grey
cloudy sky; by the time we boarded, it was sunny in Fajardo but we were
chasing the rainclouds eastward across the water to Vieques. Again,
rain when we arrived and I held back churlish, childish tears. We found
a publico to take us to our car rental place and pick up our 4WD for
the two days we were on the island. Imagine, we had two rental cars at
once! It felt like a distinctly strange luxury.
We took the winding
route 201 south from Isabella Segunda, the main port town on the north
side of Vieques, down to the south side of the island and Esperanza.
Our lodgings were easy to find, two blocks north of the malecon, the seafront esplanade that made up most of Esperanza.
Carmen
showed us our little studio room at Mi Pana apartments, with the
louvered hurricane windows we'd seen all over Puerto Rico and a cozy
table-and-chair set on the walkway outside. The room was rustic but
clean. We sat outside for a few minutes, watching the last of the
drizzling rain pass, and made friends with the calico cat that wandered
the property. We named him (her? we didn't check) Mofongo.
We changed into beachier duds and headed down to the malecon to grab some lunch at Banana's, the local gringo-ish hangout. In fact, as we wandered the malecon,
it was pretty clear that all of Esperanza was a gringo-ish hangout. It
had that lush life air that must have drawn Hemingway and his ilk to
Key West, before the chain dives and the Banana Republic took over
Duvall Street and turned Key West into Cancun East. Everyone looked
happy and lazy, even the stray dogs. The rain had washed the streets
and the buildings clean and the little beachfront sparkled. We had
finally arrived at a beach vacation.
After lunch, we drove the 15 minutes back up to Isabella Segunda to use
the only ah-teh-atcheh on the island - imagine! - and to get Stuart
some new swim trunks, since the ones he brought were ripped. From there
we went straight to Playa Media Luna. I got a kick out of driving along
the sandy road next to Sun Bay, bouncing through holes and swerving to
miss tree stumps. It felt like Africa again, only this time I was the
grown-up singing along to the radio and not the kid stuck in the
backseat.
We found the beach and I think I might actually have run
screaming into the water, even though it was still a little cloudy and
windy, I was beyond delighted to be in the ocean. After a lazy hour or
so, we explored further down the road trying to find Playa Navio, but
the indeterminably deep mudholes prevented us from making it all the
way down the road. We turned back and headed back to Mi Pana, to relax
a little before our evening's adventure.
At five-forty, we drove back to the Sun Bay parking lot and met our
guide, Federico, who told us to slather up with baby oil because, as he
said, "the mosquitos here are bad, but out on the bay, it's like war".
He drove us, and another couple from Maryland, down a bumpy dark road,
far past Playas Media Luna and Navio, to Bahia Mosquito. It was already
blanketed darkness in the sky as we unloaded the kayaks alongside a
couple other tour companies, but our guy moved fast and we were in the
water before the rest of them. Stuart sat behind me and told me what to
do with my paddle - c'mon, you think I've ever kayaked before? - and we
were soon slicing through the water out to the center of the dark, warm
bay.
We reached the center, and Federico gave us a torturous ten-minute
lecture on the bio-luminscent bay's ecosystem and conservation efforts,
all ten minutes of which we were excitedly dipping our hands in the
water to see the sparkles there. He told us how the dinoflagellates
used their bioluminescence to appear several hundred times their actual
size to scare off predators. He explained how the mangrove swamps
surrounding Bahia Mosquito decomposed into the bay, filling it with
incredibly rich minerals, and how the very narrow opening to the sea
created the ideal conditions for an incredibly dense bioluminiscent
bay. He talked a bunch of science and ecology, basically, very little
of which I retained since I was splashing my oar in the water to watch
the sparkles. And then we finally slid out of the kayaks with woops and
hollers and into the warm night water.
It was incredible. My arms and legs glowed, dimly, as though someone
had shattered a florescent bulb in the water and then smeared the top
with vaseline. It was always changing, too, depending on how quickly I
moved, or kicked my feet. Stuart was a vaguely star-shaped glow to my
left. The light shining upwards showed me the pure wonder on his face.
It was one thing to see the sparkling dinoflagellates light up around
the kayak's oar; it was an entirely other thing to see them on your
arm.
The warm, highly salinated water made floating effortless, so we
just floated, trying out dozens of permutations to see cooler and
cooler effects in the water. Look! When you skimmed your arm across the
surface, they glide over and across like little grains of sand! Look,
when you submerge and then come shooting out, you can see them slide
down your face! I must have spent ten whole minutes just cupping water
in my hands and watching the little lights twinkle in and out.
We spent thirty or forty minutes in the water, long enough to prune our
fingers, and only begrudgingly did we fling ourselves back into our
kayaks (which gave me a nasty boomerang-shaped bruise on my right leg)
and start gliding back towards the shore. We were giddy. I felt twelve
years old, like a million bucks, and glowing inside. I didn't even hear
the buzzing of the mosquito-packed air, although I did rub myself down
with more baby oil when we pulled the kayaks back onto land.
The whole bumpy ride back to Sun Bay, we wittered on about the swim,
the lights, the incredible feel of the water. Stuart and I parted ways
with our guide and the Maryland couple and drove back to Mi Pana,
ecstatic, bubbling, to shower and change and head out to dinner. We
walked down to Duffy's, on the malecon, the whole time jonesed and electrified from the experience.
I'm sitting in my chilly Brooklyn apartment right now and thinking, if
I could bottle that evening, that warm expansive water, that sense of
limitless wonder and incredulity that this teeming, crazy planet had
conspired to create this experience and that I have the brain power and
the imagination to enjoy and relish it, I wouldn't sell it for the
million dollars it'd doubtless be worth. I'd keep it and every time it
was cold and harsh outside, or any time I couldn't tell hell from the
handbasket, I'd squeak open the seal and breathe it all in again.
We slept like babies that night and I dreamed I was floating effortlessly through warm, inky black water.
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Puerto Rico, day onetag:petithiboux.com,2009://16.110982009-11-30T13:29:38Z2009-12-01T18:53:22ZThese travel diaries are a little late; my father had a mild stroke while we were on vacation and I've spent the last week with my parents in RI helping out and generally being a bit frazzled - none of...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com
These travel diaries are a little late; my father had a mild stroke while we were on vacation and I've spent the last week with my parents in RI helping out and generally being a bit frazzled - none of which I feel like blogging about here at pH. But I really wanted to document each day of our amazing trip so without too much further ado... Sunday, November 15th San Juan to Fajardo
We circled over San Juan, which peeked tantalizingly from behind
thunderclouds, for almost an hour before we landed in driving rain.
Welcome to rainy Puerto Rico! wasn't exactly the mantra I'd been
repeating to myself for weeks while I mentally picked outfits for the
trip. Stuart began what would become an entire day's worth of assuring
me, with varying degrees of patience, that the rain would pass and we'd
have our sunny vacation back.
We picked up our rental car - $500 deposit even when I'm paying with a
credit card? - and got briefly lost while trying to convince the GPS,
who we dubbed Petunia for her gratingly fake English accent, to take us
to an ATM. They call them ATH here, pronounced AH TEH ATCHEY! Thus
began my trip-long infatuation with saying things in wildly amateur
Spanish.
Once we found an ah-teh-atchey!, we decided to get some grub for the
road, to stave off the hangries. We ran into a pizzeria e panaderia and
found more pana than pizza. Stuart ordered what looked like an apple
turnover and some pork chitlins in a bag. I tried to be adventurous and
ordered the one called "queso e guayabe", which really just tasted like
cream cheese and strawberry jam. So much for staving off the hangries;
the coke I bought kept me ticking over until we reached Luquillo.
We outran the rain, eastward on Route 3. On the motor way, our spirits
lifted as we parroted back the Spanish on all the road signs, and I got
my first kick out of being mistaken for a Boricua when the tollbooth
attendant addressed me in Spanish. In Luquillo, we didn't have to
wonder where the famous friquitines were; the sign pointed
right off the highway for "kioskos" and we could smelled the fry stands
from the highway. We parked, marveling at the egret-looking birds that
stalked the pinchos stands, and started picking out fried foods
from the half-empty stalls.
I tried three different empanadas and some
sort of cheesy corn balls; Stuart was more adventurous and ate crab
sticks and something with beef and plaintains that he's pretty sure
they invented for crazy gringos. We peeked at the famous Luquillo beach
and I realized how much the Puerto Rican landscape reminded me of West
Africa. Same half-tame packs of stray dogs on the beach, too,
mercenaries for your food.
Winding our way past Fajardo, we found the Passion Fruit Bed &
Breakfast and our poky little room; it took about 20 minutes for us to
decide to venture out for exploration and later, dinner. We took the
tiny road down to Las Croabas, and sat on the waterfront in the falling
dusk, watching the lightning across the sea in Culebra. Vendors set up
nighttime stalls selling more fritas and touristy things, although it
wasn't always clear to whom. Men pulled out deck chairs from the backs
of trucks and popped open cans of Medalla. We contemplated eating at
the waterfront place, which looked busy with both gringos and locals,
but decided instead to venture into central Fajardo to try the food at
the Fajardo Inn. In retrospect - it was pretty middling hotel food, no
matter what the guidebook says - we should have stayed in Las Croabas.
We finished off the evening with a few rounds of mancala on the porch
of the B&B, as we watched the rain sluice down from the wooden
roof, and we were fast asleep in our poky little room - with its
incongruously spacious bathroom! - by 11pm. It was still raining.
]]>
nobody here but us chickens, and a mousetag:petithiboux.com,2009://16.110962009-11-12T11:31:27Z2009-11-12T11:53:12ZI got woken up this morning at 6 because I was having a dream where a classification scheme whose origins were shrouded in mystery was killing people that tried to use it. It may be that this is a sign...Krissahttp://petithiboux.com I'm in this phase now - maybe we can call it a superhero complex - where I feel an almost limitless capacity to do anything you give me. Which means I keep taking on new ventures. Secretary of a student organization! bring it on. Why don't you add a graduate assistantship! And maybe an internship! And maybe some methamphetamines! I will admit, it's going to have to slow down eventually, and I'd like to think I know my limit, but it may be that my Type A personality is at the wheel and I'll only know my limit as it speeds by me and then I'll get a B.
Which is my worst fear, by the way. I guess before last year my worst fear was, I don't know, dying a horrible death before I ever bought a pair of Paige jeans, but now my fear is getting a B. Oh, I'm also afraid of the mouse that I think is in the empty pizza box in the kitchen, but we all know who's winning that fight (the mouse). Now I'm afraid of getting a B. And maybe this is making up for years of never really caring if I got a B (cf. high school and most of college) and I can't tell if I'm simply this committed to my new chosen field of study, or I'm just becoming aggressive in my old age, but I've got this shiny 4.0 average that I've never before been in possession of and I'm determined to keep it.
Just when it doesn't really matter, too! You can argue that a 4.0 in high school will get you into a decent university and a 4.0 in university will land you a good graduate program but what does a 4.0 in a graduate program get you? Tea and cookies with the Supreme Allied Commander of Librarianship? Who would that be, anyway?
So I've been working really hard on my classwork, but still in that Me way, where I schedule the time to complete an assignment around, let's say, the last 20% of time in which I can feasibly accomplish it. I see my upcoming week in these chunks of time that have labels like "work on HTML for 654" and "do research on Moys" and "finish the $@#@ minutes for that meeting already". Which is to say, I've gotten really realistic about how long it takes me to do things, so I rarely cock up and give myself too little time, but I'm always on the knife edge of turning out good work against a limited and shrinking clock. Like waking up today at 6am to finish a paper that's due this afternoon. A four-page paper, to be fair, but there's that 4.0 sitting on my night-table shrieking at me like a deranged academic fairy.
I'll tell you one thing for free, though, I'm not packing the deranged academic fairy for our trip next week to Puerto Rico. A few months back, Stuart and I realized we had a massive chunk of air miles from all his DC jaunts, and two big milestones in the fall: his 30th birthday and our 5th (!) wedding anniversary. So we started saving for some worthwhile trip, and that turned out to be two days in Vieques (swimming with the bioluminescent plankton!) and two days in El Yunque (our first rainforest!). I'm pretty proud of how we've scrimped and saved for the trip, not to mention my BITCHING spreadsheets, you want to see? Wait, you're surprised I went to library school? - where was I.
Oh yes. Beach. Rainforest. I'll tell you all about it when we get back, promise. Until then, can someone babysit my fairy? ]]>
