Blog A Go-Go

In which I cry salty tears

As I've mentioned before, I am a huge fan of the cherry. Not the soft, sloppy kind that comes bottled, smelling of almonds and waiting to be dropped onto a sundae or into a cocktail of the most lurid variety. No, I love PROPER cherries, the dark, blood red kind that ooze juice all over your hands and take some serious technique to pit with your mouth. (I admit--I like to play with my food. Unless it's shellfish in which case I get seriously cranky. Shellfish calls for tools, and I am notoriously bad with tools.)

Last week I ate probably a pound of cherries over the course of a day, and they were glorious. The next morning I popped into the gourmet market where I had bought them and found THERE WERE NO MORE. Panicked, I ran down the produce guy and demanded to know where the cherries were. "Oh, I've got some coming in tomorrow," he reassured me with a smile. "But they're a different variety, and they'll be twenty dollars a pound." TWENTY AMERICAN DOLLARS A POUND. Unless they're stuffed with crack cocaine, how are they possibly worth twenty dollars a pound? (I checked the next day, and he wasn't kidding. Those cherries had been shrink-wrapped into the kind of foam trays they usually package steaks on, and they were indeed $19.99 per pound. Since I have a child in private school and I like expensive restaurants, I passed but I was bitter.)

So, in honor of the beautiful cherries I am NOT enjoying this week, I give you Gene Baro's poem, "Cherry".

CHERRY

She said, ‘Now give me flesh to eat,

Flesh of the cherry, dark and sweet.

Bring me a singing bird—the pale

Moonlight, the attending nightingale.

‘A languishing poet too?’ I said,

Kneeling beside our tumbled bed,

‘a poet wan, whose young desire

Renews just verses with its fire?’

‘Bad dearest, must you tease and tease?

Leave him to rhyming, if you please.’

She smiled. ‘Come, give me flesh to eat,

Flesh of the cherry, dark and sweet.’

Okay, so it isn't JUST about fruit. Close enough.

In which I have whiplash

I wish that was a metaphor for something, but it isn't. It's a diagnosis. (I don't even have an interesting story about how I got it. My husband had to stop short to avoid an accident and I had my head down when he slammed on the brakes. He actually saw my head snap back in his peripheral vision, which kind of gives me the cold shivers. And no, he wasn't tailgating--totally not his fault, I promise. But if you are a woman who drives a Volvo in Norfolk faster than the speed of sound, I AM LOOKING FOR YOU.)

So here I sit in my leopard jammies, a bag of frozen corn on my neck (we were out of peas), popping 600mg ibuprofen tablets every four hours and watching E! I went to the chiropractor this morning and got fully checked out--he flashed a light in my eyes and checked every possible reflex point while muttering about subdural hematomas, but all is well. Oddly enough, my range of motion is fine. I always thought if you had whiplash you couldn't turn your head and they made you wear an "I Love Lucy" neck brace. Turns out you can rip the muscles in the front of your neck up pretty well and still turn your head. Mercifully, he never suggested the brace. I trip enough when I can actually SEE my feet. I shudder to think what would happen if I couldn't see where I was going.

As soon as I realized I had the 'lash, I had two fears: first, I am flying to Phoenix on Friday to sign at the Poisoned Pen on Saturday. No WAY am I missing that. And second, Tuesday is my scheduled cut-and-color and the thought of leaning back onto the shampoo bowl makes me break out in a cold sweat. But my chiropractor is a good and decent man who gets me. He said I can still go, so long as I explain to my hairdresser that I have to bend OVER the sink instead of leaning back into it. Don't dwell too long on the visual there--it's disturbing. I have no idea how this is going to work, but I suspect I will have to tip  my hairdresser a LOT.

In which I am twitchy

Just finished fifty-one pages of revisions, which is call for celebration, except that I am about to jump out of my skin. I think all the enforced lying around the past week has finally caught up with me. To begin with, I miss my yoga class. I am not an athletic person, and anybody who actually knows me is snickering at how much of an understatement that is. I can appreciate really civilized sports, like sailing or fencing or riding, but anything that would require me to wear some sort of supportive footwear is just not going to happen.

I'm not saying I actually DO those things. Fencing and riding demand equipment I don't have, and while I live in an area that is positively teeming with boats, I have yet to invite myself onto any of them. Come to think of it, lying on deck and basking in the sun while someone else does the work is PRECISELY my idea of the perfect leisure activity. (I'm not entirely selfish. I would bring a picnic basket. Otherwise it's all just too Cleopatra for words.) That's why I love yoga--I work up a sweat and get bendy and yet it doesn't mess up my pedicure. I feel virtuous and light when I leave the class, and I even smell delicious thanks to my instructor. She ends each class with a neck massage with lavender oil as a little nurturing gesture.

I haven't been to class in weeks now, and I miss it terribly although I don't imagine I will be twisting myself into half-moon for at least another two weeks. In the meantime, I can feel my muscles bunching up and I'm not sure, but I think I'm about two inches shorter. I am thiiiiiiiiis close to breaking out my bellydancing DVD and practicing my shimmy. Or maybe I'll just head down to the marina and lie on someone's deck until they kick me off. Who knows? If I bring some Brie they might let me stay.