Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Ha ha ha! I'm back! The problem must have been with AOL, because I'm doing this on Internet Explorer (provided free of charge with my ever-so-glorious Mac). Hopefully it will post arright. We shall see.
Alors, here is a blog I wrote when I was forced to go to Lennox. It's been sitting around on my computer ever since Blogger and AOL decided to enter into prolonged warfare. So here it is. If this works out, maybe I'll post more recent stuff a little later.
Today I had to go to Lennox.
Some of my mother's family lives out there, and some more of her family was visiting there, and of course they just couldn't stop by Lennox without seeing us. But naturally this didn't mean that they came to visit us, o no. We had to drive the 3 hours to Lennox in order to see them there.
The ride out was fairly uneventful, except that we got fairly lost once in Lennox, and we ended up going down every road in that benighted little town before we finally found the right one. And even then, we still missed the turn off for the house, so we had to go through some condos.
Also, I killed a fly in the car. It was still intact. We wanted to leave it there as food for my dad's prize white spiders, which he breeds in his car, but my mother removed it later.
As we were pulling in, we were conjecturing about the lunch that might be served to us. The last time we were there, there had been literally nothing in the fridge except for vegetables and a bottle of Grey Poupon. There had also been some suspicious purple bagels. And water. That was all.
This time, little brother Eli guessed, our hosts would have expanded their repetoire somewhat. He predicted that this would mean lemon slices in the water.
We walked into the house. The very first thing I see is the host handing someone a cup of water with a lime slice in it. I almost died.
The people with whom I was forced to socialize were as follows:
-My grandparents, up from Florida and one of them laying on the guilt trip because we 'never have time to go visit them'.
-Lenny and Judy, the hosts, who are insanely rich and don't do anything. Judy apparently was in the shower and didn't show up until maybe half an hour after we arrived.
-Aunt Jane and Uncle Warren, my mother's aunt and uncle, anyways. They're funny, they're very much New Yorkers. They were good for conversation.
-Maggie, the oldest of Lenny and Judy's children, who I don't think I had ever met, and who actually does do stuff. Also there were her small children, Rebecca and Marcos, who were cute as small children go. But you know my feelings on small children.
-Aunt Leila, my mother's aunt, somehow related to me, I always forget how. She is nice but I didn't see too much of her there, for some reason.
-Alan and his 5th or 7th or somethingth wife, whose name I forget and who never ever has said anything to me that wasn't about my hair. "I loooove your hair!" "Are you going to let that color grow out?" "No? Good for you girl!" Picture all that with a heavy accent.
-The nanny of Rebecca and Marcos, Sarah, who only spoke Spanish. The kids are bilingual, since their mother Maggie speaks mostly English, and their father Roberto (who was not there) speaks mostly Spanish. Since I don't speak Spanish, I did not communicate with this nanny.
-Also there were two people, an old man and woman, who allegedly lived near where we were, and who allegedly were friends of someone there, but I don't think I ever caught their names, and I have no idea who they were.
-And of course my family was there. My dad and Eli talked sports at each other for pretty much the whole time. My mother tried to deal with her family, and I fielded questions about college or driving the whole time, since apparently, according to these folks, no high schooler can speak with authority on any other subjects.
You can imagine the good times we had.
Judy, when she emerged from the shower, had this weird thing on her arm. It was brightly colored and looked, well, it looked a little like one of those things you wear for tennis elbow, but not really. It was a lot bigger and more colorful. Someone finally asked her what it was. She said that it was for her tennis elbow, but she hated those 'ugly' tennis elbow bubble things. So she was wearing a wine cooler on her arm. A wine cooler. Goddamned rich people.
We also went on a walk on Lenny and Judy's extensive property, which includes lord-knows how many acres of forest, huge vegetable gardens, a large lake, and a swift brook. We were eaten alive by insects, tramped through what was probably poison ivy, heard encouraging stories about trespassing deer hunters shooting things and starting fires in Lenny's woods, and discovered a trespasser fishing in the lake, despite the numerous No Trespassing Private Property signs. Plus mud. Lots of mud. Ah, nature!
O yes, and we also dicussed in depth the lack of scorpions around here, but the proliferation of scorpions with lasers on their heads. My mother didn't believe that there were scorpions with lasers on their heads all throughout Massachusetts. Shows what she knows.
Then we went back in, and Warren and Jane decided to leave early, greatly pissing off my grandmother, who had apparently been under the impression that they were going to stay for dinner (Warren and Jane were transporting my grandparents). She left, although under extreme protest, shouting as she went out the door "I come up here and I can't even see my own children!"
We stayed for a little bit longer, since it was just my family, Lenny, Judy, Maggie, the nanny, and the kids. We chatted, Judy showed me some really cool costume designs from the Shakespeare company which is right out there, and my dad played ball with Marcos. Eli sat and sulked. Rebecca and the nanny had a tea party.
Then we went into 'town'. We went to a good coffee house and got coffee. We met up with Lenny there. Some kids were playing hackey sack near us. At one point they sent it flying over us, down a small cliff directly behind us, and perhaps into the parking lot below. My dad, Eli, and several of these kids spent a good 15 minutes searching for the hackey sack, which was later determined to have disappeared off of the face of the earth, going the way of Tupac. I thought that it had maybe gone down a gopher hole.
One of the kids was wearing a UMass Herb Fest tshirt, and really really really needed to wash his hair. He needed a hair cut too.
Then we wandered around and went to this really cool art gallery. I had on my Mass MoCA tshirt, and the artist at the gallery saw it and started talking about Mass MoCA. Turns out one of his pieces (a dog house with a roof made out of license plates) had been in a show judged by the son of Norman Rockwell (I forget his name), whose work I had seen at Mass MoCA. It was like a giant pyramid of plastic toys. Kinda cool if you like that kinda thing. We had fun trotting around the pyramid seeing which toys we could identify, and which ones we had in our own basement.
Anyhow the artist guy was really nice, and I wanted to get either a wooden beaver or a metal owl, but my mother chickened out and refused to get anything. My dad and brother sat on a bench made out of old tools and talked about baseball, which is their natural reaction whenever they get within 5 feet of an art gallery.
We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant that claimed to be a 'mexican restaurant and pizzaria'. I don't know how it was, I wasn't all the hungry, so I just had a salad and water.
Then we drove home. There was significantly less traffic, so we lost practically an entire hour. It was uneventful except that I got a sudden pressing urge to use the bathroom between reststops, and I almost went insane waiting for the next one. The Mass Pike really needs more rest stops. That's my official opinion.
O yea, and Lenny and Judy's house is right next to Tanglewood. The radio show Prarie Home Companion (which I love) was broadcasting from Tanglewood today. I really wanted to go see it, but my dad thought we would get home too late if we did. Sigh. Probably. Still, I really wanted to go. Alas.
Tomorrow I go to see RENT!!!! Again. Whatever, it'll still be glorious. I just hope it doesn't get too damn hot.
Hm. S'all, I think.
2:43 PM
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