UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE? . . .

The girls came over last night for a potluck dinner -- omigosh, remind me to tell you about the skirt steak I ventured to make that turned out much better than expected and so now I feel confident about making beef-products for public consumption -- and I started to tell them a story. The story was a good story, a great story, a meaningful story ... but it wasn't mine. It didn't even belong to someone I know or talk to. The story belonged to someone I have never met in my life, someone whose real name I don't even know, someone whose face I can't conjure up in my memory bank of faces. The story belonged to another blogger ... and there I was, saying, "Yeah, this woman had to make this decision and blah blah blah blah, it was really hard for her."

And the girls nodded in complete understanding.

These are fascinating times we live in; I know this fully, and not a day goes by that I don't think this and recognize it and taste its meaning in my gut. As much as I long for a glimpse of "Little House on the Prairie" or "Pride and Prejudice" (because I look good in empire-waist dresses), I love that I'm alive now. But these times are also weird, very very weird.

I spend a portion of my day -- every day -- reading the words, the thoughts, the lives of people I don't know. I have them linked right here on my sideboard! Some of them have recognizable first names; others have aliases. Some of them are here on the East Coast (I think); others halfway around the world. Some of them live lives I can't relate to at all, except through the power of their writing; others I think I could really relate to ... if only I knew them.

And the best part: I discover that sometimes, they read me too.

Why is this a best part? I don't know. I'm not so egotistical that I need someone to hear my words all the time. I've said time and time again that I blog for no one, that this is merely an outlet for things I choose to share and that you might choose to enjoy or not, depending on your mood. But ... is it silly to say that I feel like these people are my friends? And I like having my friends around me.

The other night, I dreamt -- really, I did -- that all these Randy Randoms came over to my house for dinner. Interesting dream, for half the guests had no faces. But they had voices -- such interesting, rich, full voices. The dinner was bustling, the table buckling under the weight of the generosity of other people's kitchens. The conversation was awkward and high-schoolish at first: "Where did you grow up?" "How old is your child?" "So what exactly do you do?" But then it became hilarious, insightful, deep, fulfilling. We hugged each other goodnight at the end of the evening.

I woke up and thought, "my LORD, what would happen if this came true? If Les Bon Temps and Dooce and Sandra in Korea and Chanadaler Bong and The Unlimited Mood and MetroDad and Caffeine Guy came to my house and I made them this amazing cilantro skirt steak and we had to sit around and actually talk to each other?"

Imagine?!

***

UPDATE . . .

So now I know that I don't have to wear sneakers to brunch, and that Mabel is going to be wearing dress boots and she says I can wear dress boots too but then Sunny tells me that there might be a slim chance that I will injure myself if I do.

What the heck kind of brunch is this?!

***

ABOVE THE LAW . . .

Sometimes, I think I am. I don't pay parking meters. Sometimes I don't pay parking tickets. Okay, that's not true. I've only ever not paid three parking tickets and that's just because the FBI agent I was working with promised he would get the agency to pay them for me since I was technically "on the job" with him. I don't like to pay speeding tickets either, and I've only received one, and man, that was a blow to my pride.

Apparently, now, I also don't get my car inspected. It's not that I don't want to. It's just that I haven't had time to. When I'm free, the garage isn't. When the garage wants me to come in, I'm not around. What's a girl to do?

The thing about being above the law, though, is that one always lives in a state of ... fear? Adventure? Thrill? Nervousness? Even a quick drive to the local grocery store becomes a cat-and-mouse chase, inside my head anyway. Will they or won't they get me? Will they or won't they notice the date on my inspection sticker? "10-12-05." It screams like a beacon in the night.

After dropping Omma off in the city this morning, I turned the corner to get back onto the West Side Highway, and just as I made the turn, I remembered: at the end of every month, scads of patrol cars sit at this highway entrance and gaze upon the seatbelt and inspection status of every car that passes. And lo, whaddaya know. They were there again this morning. Two patrol cars, four officers, all armed with humongous Mag-Lites, even at 10:00 in the morning. I saw my traffic record flash before my eyes.

But the gods of New York Vehicle and Traffic Law were in cahoots with me this morning, for only one officer was active; the other three were leaning against their cars, Mag-Lites in one hand, cigarettes in the other. Man, that made me want a cigarette real bad. And so it was that I put on my innocent face, willed them not to glance at my inspection sticker, and humbly rolled by them at an appropriately slow pace.

I didn't breathe until I left the city limits.

I really, really need to get my car inspected. This life of crime just is not for me.