squash star

squash star
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

It has come to my attention that I am going on a vacation in, um, like 9 days. 10 days? Not this Friday but next Friday, my friend Jay and I are getting into a rental car at some ungodly early hour and driving to New Orleans, where I have never been, in order to spend the weekend with a bunch of people from the internet. Scary, huh? I'm thrilled. Do you realize that it has been TEN YEARS since I went anywhere I had never been before? I mean, aside from the odd waterfall or bar; I grant you, there are a few of those around I haven't seen yet - I have not been to a new city or state in ten years. I only ever go to four places: Atlanta, Baltimore, Charleston and New York. That's it, and New York barely counts since I moved away from the greater Baltimore metropolitan area with its Peter Pan buses to Metropolis itself 9 years ago - in those last 9 years, I've only made it to NYC once. Did you know they gentrified the East Village? Shocking late breaking news, I know. I used to go to Vermont yearly when I lived in Baltimore and counted that as major travel but somehow, once I got to Asheville, almost all journeys stopped and I counted myself lucky to get to the Greenville or Charlotte airport to pick up somebody else, somebody exciting who travels.

So I am nervous as shit and excited and all that good stuff and yes I know it's going to be 130 degrees in New Orleans and that it's a fucking ridiculously long drive (longer, in that Google Maps & GIS & every other computerized mapping program keeps trying to route us directly through Atlanta, which is a big, big mistake) and I can't afford it, but I'm going anyway. Even though it pains me to abandon my garden in this season of total fecundity (dudes & dudettes, you have never seen so many cucumbers) and worries me to abandon my son in this season of him being a late adolescent male (oh gods please don't let him burn the house down) I am going.

In fact, not only am I going, I'm obsessing merrily over what to pack. I think I need a list. Many lists, oh many many lists and I will doubtless overpack anyway. I had had this crazy idea in my head that I was going to lose all this weight by the time I left but, alas, that has not happened and while I've thought of trying to find someone who will sell me a shit ton of speed and losing 20 pounds by the end of next week that way, my sense of responsibility and adulthood and good old fear has developed a bit since my early twenties and thus I'm not going to do that. Do they even sell speed anymore? Don't answer that. New Orleans will just have to overlook those 20 pounds. So, that is what is taking up the majority of my brain at the moment. Does anyone know how dressy it is in New Orleans? Can I wear my usual Asheville horrible freaky artist rags with impunity, as in Baltimore, or will I then be looked at with that special elegant Charleston look of pity and shock?

In other clothing related news, I found myself at the Visitor Center / Chamber of Commerce yesterday evening to drop off some rack cards for my job. Monday is casual day where I work and anyway, I'm old and burnt out and do not care, so I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with glow in the dark planets on it and purple plaid fuzzy sneakers. This would have been fine even through my brief meeting with the director in his suit except that then he asked me for a business card and I realized that while I did in fact have some, surprise, they were in a stack held together with a rubber band at the bottom of my purse and were gray and dingy and their ends were all frayed and nasty. He was very nice and this is Asheville, where, thank the gods, we can get away with that sort of thing because we're so creative and artsy and enlightened and shit, also because we work for peanuts since we are insane enough to live here, but still I realized it was just a wee bit unprofessional. Maybe I shouldn't wear those sneakers to work anymore.