Category: Fun Pile

I do not give compliments well, that’s all there is to it.

Bryan told me that should be the first line of my very next post because I keep neglecting to mention all the fantastic, thoughtful things he has done for me this week. Not to mention all the fun we’ve had.

He has a point.

I tend to use my writing as a voice for the angst within, and there’s nothing very interesting about resolution: no suspense, no climax, no tension, nothin’.

So this post is dedicated to the one I love.

Tonight we saw The Violent Femmes play at Zoo Tunes, which is a great outdoor venue on a green lawn with blankets and picnic baskets and wine smuggled in tinted water bottles. Kids are running around everywhere, because kids under age twelve get in for free.

FREE, I tell ya.

In the words of Bob the Tomato, What more do you need to be happy?

There I was, sitting on my blanket, leaning against my picnic basket, listening to great music, reading the book Bryan bought me last week – the book he gave me as a sweet, unprompted gift; the book which he found while browsing Barnes and Noble because I was late picking him up for LAST week’s Zoo Tunes concert (Patty Griffin – talk about musical diversity!); the book which I LOVE and can’t put down – so I was sitting on my blanket enjoying the evening with my husband who was so gracious to me after I forgot the tickets and we had to drive all the way home after I had picked him up from work so we could theoretically get to the zoo early for a good spot, and we actually didn’t get there until ten minutes before it started and had to sit way in the back… and I was content.

The evening could have gone very very bad.

Jokingly, Bryan said, “You have the tickets, right?

Dramatically, I slammed the steering wheel and growled, “FUCK!”

I guess he thought I was kidding, you know, like “Oh no, I thought you had the tickets, ha-ha-ha,” but no, I really meant FUCK!

For the next hour as we made the round trip-and-a-half through evening rush hour traffic to get the tickets I said “I’m so sorry,” with, I believe, twenty-six different inflections and nuances because ONCE could never be enough in Zug Land when you’re an hour late for a show.

But darn it if that Bryan didn’t just blow my Keens off when he says to me, “Don’t worry about it, babe. I’m just enjoying the time I get to spend with you.”

And here’s the best part: HE DIDN’T SOUND LIKE A COMPLETE CHEESEBALL WHEN HE SAID IT! He really meant it. He wasn’t saying it through clenched teeth as he really thought to himself, “I need to set up a color coded charted and timed system to ensure this doesn’t happen NEXT week….”

He was very sweet, and I finally relaxed, and we had some of our best conversation of the evening during that drive.

It was pretty surreal to see Gordon standing there right in front of me as he sang (well, not RIGHT in front of me, more like at the other end of a football field, but still, it was surreal). He just has one of those distinct voices that you think is make-believe – kind of like Elmo or Grover – and to see that a real person makes that sound was, well, surreal.

I had the same experience the first time I saw Stevie Nicks sing.

The climax of the evening came during ‘Add It Up,’ the song that was The Femmes’ greatest – their paramount, if you will – which of course they saved for the last song of the evening, at which point all bodies leaped (leapt?) up from their picnic blankets to dance.

Tattooed bodies, magenta hair, average thirty-somethings with kids: they all danced. Children danced hand in hand with their parents, doing the jitterbug, or the twist, or some such dance.

Have you ever heard the words to ‘Add It Up?’

Watching the children dance with their parents, Bryan says, “I think I’m scarred.”