Vegetable Fried Rice

I disappointed myself this morning by being unable to match anything with a tangerine colored dress I bought on whim (as though I ever buy anything with any semblance of thoughtfulness) a few months ago. I wanted to radiate orange today but found myself incapable of doing it seamlessly. And when you wear a color like tangerine, you really need to wear it correctly, lest you look like a cartoon character. Or someone who wants attention. Last I checked, I'm neither so I'm considering giving the dress away. It only cost me $5. Do you want it?

I'm working today, what could be the last "warm" day of a warm January. While those of you not unfortunate to be at work today, somewhere in the middle Atlantic are holed up in your residences tomorrow, being protected from the frigid cold that is forecast, you'll be able to find a harbor in the tempest of your memory of today. You'll be able to close your eyes and remember frolicking through tall grass in tangerine dresses, barefoot and ecstatic and you'll feel all warm inside. By contrast, I'll remember today as not being able to see outside from the reference desk and not actually seeing sunlight since I don't get out of here until 5pm. And I'll pull my blanket up to my chin and shudder at the memory of my coworker having to look up zip codes for an hour for a mumbling patron as a chill settles in. O the humanity.


Sometimes I don't mind losing things if it means I can find them one random day again, suddenly, like being given a gift from the sofa cushion or the bottom of a shoe or a broken drawer in an old dresser. Back in September of last year I lost this white pendant that bought at a summer festival somewhere out here in the vast expanse of Long Island. I loved the pendant not because there is anything particularly special about it but because of the things that happened on the day I bought it. It was token I could wear and rub between my fingers and conjure up even the memory of smells and sights and emotions of that hot August afternoon. On the day I wore it last I was wearing a scarf and one moment I was walking around town doing errands or meandering, (often they are one in the same) and the next moment I couldn't find the pendant anywhere. I can't remember too clearly but I'm reasonably certain I cried about it like a big dumb baby. Anyway, fast forward to this morning when I woke up at 7am with hours to kill and an apartment that was slowly turning into a dismal futuristic desert a la Solarbabies,

Dramatization, not to scale but otherwise accurate

I started to clean. But  not just dust and organize but the kind of cleaning you do with gloves and a face mask on, when you pull out all the vacuum's attachments and actually lift cushions. Anyway, I moved my couch so I could vacuum behind it. And lo and behold, what did I find? My pendant!! It was in a nest of dust bunnies which also could have been mistaken for Gizmo.

 

 

Picture him wearing a white pendant, the little scamp.

 

 

 

 

 

One of my cats could have been responsible since they can be such dicks sometimes. It also could have been entirely my fault, I'll never know. I know only this: that feeling of happiness and relieved surprise, I want to bottle it. I hold out hopes even today, three weeks after the fact, that I'll find my scarf, so callously left behind by my drunken self in my favorite local bar. Someday.

I don't now, nor have I in awhile, too much else to report. So far, 2013 has been decent. Not mind blowingly, tangerinely awesome or dismal but I like it that way anyway. If I had to pick a phrase that would describe what I'm thinking about right now as I end this blog, one that I can look back on when I can't sleep and I'm worrying that blogging about such nonsense is annoying to everyone, yeah when that happens I'll read this phrase and remember that I was thinking, with unsettling intensity about vegetable fried rice. I wish it was something more profound but what can I say? I'm in a mood.