Rainey Blogs on Some Days

Middle-aged men in summer have one thing on their minds: barbecue grills. Women in bathing suits are no match for a man's thrill at firing up his barbecue grill. The primal instincts of the hunter-gatherer can only find fulfillment in the sizzle and pop of a flank steak lined with the grid of the grill after each flip of the grill-master. The smoke rises as the warrior-king sends smoke signals into the sky to indicate another conquest as imagined in a bygone primal century. I recently had trouble with my grill, which would only heat up to about 200 degrees even though I had tried two full propane tanks, neither of which would work. This bout of grill impotence was unnerving because men measure their summer manhood by their barbecue-ability. It lasted about two months over summer and even stretched into September. Time after time I returned to the house with half-cooked morsels of meat as I was unable to finish the job. I took the grill apart, cleaned it, and put it back toge...

She [Rosie] was seizing the day her way—a made bed meant you were in their world. All kids wanted to dive into bed and be lying down safely, especially until about noon. --Anne Lamott, Imperfect Birds , 154. At my age, sleeping in is no longer a gift. I suppose because I recognize that one never knows how many more mornings of coffee, cool air, and cardinals singing cacophonous songs there are to go. So in middle age, sleeping in seems more like a punishment. This is a big difference between us and the mutant ninja teenagers, who still have so much of life ahead that sleeping until noon seems like a rationale thing to do. But for me, getting up early while the streets are silent and the sun is rubbing its sleepy eyes, starting its daily ascent, is so much better than rising up into a bright midday sun. I am not opposed to an afternoon nap now and again though.

On a Thursday some time ago, I grabbed a pair of pants off of a hanger in my closet to put on and realized they weren’t mine or Marcia’s. (We share a closet.)  For some reason, it disturbed me more than I thought it would. To have someone else's pants in your closet and not know why? Marcia was already at work and I was not really sure how it happened. They were huge; the waist was size 36. I am a 33. They were nice pants--actually three pairs. But to have someone else's pants in your closet? I felt violated. And then I realized the dry cleaners must have made a mistake. And then I figured that someone else must have some of my pants, even though I wasn't sure that I was missing any pants. That thought bothered me too. I did know that not all of my pants were in our closet. I also knew Marcia recently dropped some clothes off at the dry cleaners and they wouldn't have been finished yet. Or maybe Marcia threw out some of my clothes because they were no longer nice enough...