03 October 2010

birthday weekend

I bought a car on Friday afternoon. It was the first car I looked at, but it was clean and it purred, and I could not imagine a more annoying way to spend a weekend than looking at crappy car after crappy car. The oil was clean. The car didn't smoke. I drove it up to 70 mph and it still hummed, and N. stuck his head under the hood and tapped/flipped some things and pronounced it sound.

I liked it, and I made an offer, and then I walked out over $200. N. and I were back in his car before the salesman ran out and said, "Don't leave over $200. We can do your price." And so I signed my name approximately four hundred thirty seven times, and drove away in a new little sedan.

I drove home to Universe City in it tonight, and I love it. It scares me to say that, lest the engine fall out of it tomorrow, but so far it feels steady and solid.

...

We played darts on Friday night, boys against girls, and although there were three of us to two of them, they blew us away the first game. Between games, I practiced over and over, getting instruction from N., while C. and S. were off waiting in line at the bar, and the second game was closer and then, at the end, I won it for the girls with a double bulls-eye.

There was rejoicing.

I'm guessing the boys regretted telling me how a dart is actually supposed to be thrown.

...

We learned to salsa and chacha in a barn, one wall open to the cow pen. We swung around with people we knew and people we had just met, and my partner for much of the lesson was a surly 20 year old who said, when I needed a break for a minute, "Oh, good. Then I can go smoke."

I swung on a swing above the stack of hay, and it only took two people to break the pinata. I didn't go scrambling for the candy, but B. threw candy up to C., who passed half of hers on to me, and I sat back, contented, with starburst and a caramel apple lollipop, the taste of October.

When most people had left, we turned off all the main lights and went back to the dance floor in the glow of white Christmas lights. We tried swing and East African rap and ended up back with chacha, but with the wrong music, because the instructor had long left with the cd. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was getting the hang of a dance, twirling in breathless swing dance circles with C., spinning a chacha circle under N.'s hand. We took off our sweaters and I wished for a hairtie, but I was having too much fun to stop.

No comments: