Saturday, May 30, 2009

Days in Hartford

Aside from family-related insanity, which involves a lot of driving around, calling on cell phones, shouting, and playing Apples to Apples (I'd like to point out that my family is relatively dysfunctional, and when I say "dysfunctional", I mean "before this weekend, none of them had spoken to each other in more than twenty years, and in some cases, thirty; also, some of them are dead from suicide or drug overdose and everyone is deeply emotionally traumatized, except for me"), not much has been happening here in Hartford.

I've spoken at a bunch of Rotary clubs...well, okay, two. Two Rotary clubs. But they were both very nice. One gave me a silver whale. And both told me I had a positive attitude. One guy even asked me how I kept my attitude so positive, or why I was so happy, and I really had to think about it. Unfortunately, I blurted out, "Drugs!" BEFORE I remembered what a tough crowd Rotary is. I amended that to, "Really liking people." Dear Internet, please remind me not to crack jokes about artificial stimulants to a group of relatively conservative people who think acupuncture is bizarre rather than a valuable part of their everyday process, like all the hippie pinko commie bastards I hang out with. Kthx, bye.

(Although one of those Rotary veterans, when the room was asked if anyone had any Happy Dollars, went on a long rambling speech about a medication he'd recently been put on, which he refused to name, and how it kept him awake, and while he was awake at night, he reflected on God and decided God was the Goodyear blimp. then he let some dollars drift to the table and sat down. Later, he engaged me in completely random conversation, and then wandered off in mid-sentence. He probably would have enjoyed the aritifical stimulants.)

So it's all been family stuff for a while. Today we drove out to my grandfather's cottage on the lake (which lake? THE lake, duh...) and on the way back, I stopped dead on the small highway. My mom looked at me with that look that says I taught you to drive in a high school parking lot and I am now seriously doubting that decision, until I pointed out the turtle frozen in the middle of the road.

She hopped out and bent to pick him up when he started RUNNING (for a turtle, meaning his little legs were windmilling and he was going about -2 miles per hour) back towards the other lane of traffic; she finally seized him around the midsection -- I noticed all his extremities had been pulled in, so he looked like a rock -- and placed him on the side of the road. When she climbed back into the car, as everyone honked and gestured behind me, I saw him crane his little head out and look around.

On our way back from my deceased uncle's first ex-wife's house tonight, out of nowhere, my mom said, "We rescued a turtle today!"

Yep, it was a good day.

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