Friday, April 06, 2007

Watch out for that scary bunny...

Well, not even a week into baseball season and I’m already regretting pitching decisions. Sigh… I think I’ll blame the unseasonable cold for Andy Pettitte’s performance last night. Toward the end of the game, I realized all the white stuff floating around in the air was NOT, in fact, left-over confetti from the last Yankee World Series Championship parade – it was SNOW. Now, if I’d been watching a football game, it wouldn’t have fazed me in the least to see icy flakes swirling around the floodlights and players bundled up in ski masks. But seeing as I was watching baseball, it was a bit disconcerting – after all, I tend to associate baseball with warmer weather. Baseball and snow seem to meet each other with a strange discordance that draws out all kinds of uncertainties – is it really April? Do I have the right channel? Is this a movie? Is that guy really on the team, or did he just rob a bank? If it doesn’t stop snowing, will “sliding into second” take on a whole new meaning?

And because of the crazy bad weather (yes, I insist on blaming the weather) Andy Pettitte only managed to scrounge up two points for me. I could’ve pitched and managed to get two points. Oh well. It was the cold. I’m sure it was just the cold. Everyone was thrown for a loop. Next time will be better…

My mom and I drove down to San Marcos yesterday, to meet my friend Mary and her mom – my mom and Mary’s mom are good friends, and Mary and I have been friends since we were twelve. She lives in San Antonio now and has a couple kids, so I don’t see her very often. But sometimes we’ll meet in San Marcos at the outlet mall, since it’s about halfway between Austin and San Antonio. Plus it gives us an excuse to buy stuff. I didn’t buy much yesterday, although I AM expecting a check soon for my proofreading work last month. (Why does it always seem to take them so long to pay me?) We went into a Pottery Barn outlet where they were selling Williams-Sonoma items (I wonder why they don’t have a Williams-Sonoma outlet?) and as I walked by a shelf full of cutting boards, I suddenly remembered that I’ve been looking for my long-lost cutting board since I moved into this house and it’s probably a lost cause by now. So I finally bought a cutting board. At last I have a cutting board! My days of chopping vegetables on paper towels and plates are finally over! Yeah, that’s probably not too exciting to most people…

On the drive home, we were surprised by how much traffic we were running into on I-35. It was only about 3 o’clock, and it wasn’t even Friday. But then we realized that today is Good Friday, and Easter is on Sunday, so maybe a lot of people were clocking out early for a long weekend. Driving through downtown reminded me of all the times I drove home from the law firm through bad traffic like that. And the day before a holiday weekend, everyone would leave early. Everyone except whoever was stuck answering the phones until 5:00. And that would usually be me. Once in a while one of the other girls who worked in office services would stay, but it seemed like I was usually the one chosen to stay late. What REALLY annoyed me was that neither of the two GUYS who worked with me were ever required to answer the phones. Ever. Um, I’m sorry, is it 1947? Because I’m pretty sure we’ve figured out that men are just as capable of answering phones as women. Stupid sexist law firm…

And what’s more, I’m just not GOOD at answering phones. I am so NOT a receptionist. I should never go NEAR a phone at anyone’s place of business. Not to mention the fact that apparently I sound really, uh, “nice” over the phone – because I’ve had more than one (or two or three or four) random strange men come on to me over the phone. Even when I was at work. Curiously, this never happens in person. So I can only assume that I don’t LOOK that great, but I sure do SOUND like I look great.

Easter itself reminds me of when I was a kid, when we’d get baskets on Easter morning filled with jelly beans and chocolate, presumably left for us by the “Easter Bunny.” Now, even as a child, I was able to assess the size and weight of my basket and conclude that a regular bunny – like the ones I saw in the pet store at the mall in little glass terrariums – would be unable to carry such a basket. No, the bunny who carried those Easter baskets would have to be a huge bunny… a freakishly huge bunny… possibly a bunny created by a mad scientist or some sort of nuclear accident. In other words – a very, very scary mutant bunny. I have a vague memory of sleeping in my bed one Easter eve, thinking about that scary mutant bunny who’d be bringing my basket, and suddenly hearing a “click, click, click” noise. I’m not sure when I realized it was the just the sound the heater made when it came on, but until that point, I was certain I was hearing the “hop, hop, hop” of a giant mutant bunny. And I suppose the “click” could’ve been made by, oh, say, tap shoes. (And when you’re talking about a giant mutant bunny, would it really be so weird if he brought tap shoes?) Seriously, the Easter bunny is scary…

But I wish that scary mutant bunny would still bring me chocolate once in a while…

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