the good, the bad, and the ugly

but let's do them in reverse order, so that we end up happy, not pissed off....

the ugly
we spent this past saturday night at our friends sam and gabi's house, in a little town outside of baltimore. on the way in to their place, we passed a sign outside a little restaurant/lunchonette that said "PIT BEEF". so of course on sunday morning one of the first things out of stephen's mouth is "what is pit beef and do we have to stop for it?" sam, when he stopped laughing, said that he wasn't sure what it was, so we decided we had to go find out. pit beef, it turns out, is basically roast beef cooked on an open grill, so it's got a nice smoky thing going on, and it's absolutely delicious on a roll with lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayo. add in one of the "real old-fashioned milkshakes" that were advertised on the side of the building, and it was a perfect lunch.

about an hour later, as stephen and wile and i were making our way up I95, stephen turned to me and said "did you get your purse from the back of your chair in the restaurant?" hmmm. i looked around the van, then said "nope, i guess not. call up sammy and see if he can go back and get it for us?" i could not have been more unconcerned. little lunch-counter place in a little town? surely someone had spotted it and turned it in at the counter. sam called back, no problem, he'd go get it. then sam called back again, from the restaurant: no purse. some lowlife piece of crap had stolen my bag.

two days later now, no bag. sam left his name and # at the restaurant, no dice. i called the restaurant today, they could not have been nicer, but nothing has turned up. and of course, everything was in my bag: my wallet, my phone, the camera.

stephen and i have spent the past 48 hours cancelling all of credit cards, closing our bank account and opening a new one, changing the locks on the house, etc, etc. and though that was annoying as all get-out, it's not really what's got me down.

the first part of what's got me down is all of the stupid sentimental stuff that i'll never get back, including:

> the crocheted "kitty sushi" (literally, a kitten on seaweed-wrapped rice covered in roe) keychain that sarah bought me in san francisco;

> the plastic sports radio 66 wfan new york mets keychain that has been on my keys for as long as i can remember, which i can't just go out and purchase again, since it was a promo giveaway thing;

> my favorite newspaper clipping ever: one year around christmas we were at my parents' house and in the local paper there was an ad from the aspca showing all the pets up for adoption that was set up like personals ads—each pet had a photo and a little description. and there was one that showed a cat named lulu, whose photo looked just like lulu, and whose description read something like "lonely? let this lovely lady in to your life...." or some such nonsense about how she was going to be all cuddly and sweet and not a shredder of arms and furniture alike;

> all of the pictures and movies of wile that were on the memory card of the camera.

the second part of what's got me down is that i can really only blame myself, for leaving the damn thing on the back of the chair in the first place. and there's no one it's easier for me to stay mad at than me.

and the third part of what's got me down is...well, i think the librarian at our local branch expressed it best this morning when she was commisserating with me over the whole situation while i was getting wile a new library card: "i know, honey. it's just that it's your stuff! and it's not the stuff that matters, you can get new stuff. it's that somebody else has your stuff! and they got no right! and there's not one damn thing you can do about it! makes you wonder what's wrong with some people." exactly.

the bad
on on top of that: i'm still kind of sick and hacking up phlegm; i pulled a muscle in my thumb picking up the big man the other day and am sporting an ace bandage on my right hand; and i ate some dried fruit that must have been processed in the a plant that also processes mangos, because i've got hives on my wrist, back of my knee, neck, and herpes-esque blisters on my lips.

hot, no?

the good
the reason that we went down south of the waffle house line in the first place was for bill and marie's wedding, and it was a blast. there were about 15 kids under the age of 7, and wile totally rocked the party. in fact, he can now say party: "paaaah-ee".

he spent the first couple of hours raising havoc out on the dancefloor with the other knee-biters: running back and forth at top speed, climbing up on to the dias and under the table, pulling the flower arrangements apart, flopping on to the roll-away parquet floor like beached baby whales....

then it was time for cake. wile has never shown much interest before, preferring salt to sugar (apple? cookie? no! cornichon? olive? caviar? mais oui!). i smooshed a small bite of cake and frosting on to a fork and handed it to him, expecting it to be shoved back in to my face. not so much. he stripped the fork in .5 seconds flat and demanded "moe!" and when we had finished the whole slice, he still wanted "moe!". so we went back to the cake table, but now there was a line. i got in it, set wile down next to me, and started to explain that everyone wanted cake and we needed to wait.....at which point he took off, ran past the whole long line and up to the serving table, and stuck his fork in the cake.

[stephen also had a transporting food experience: wile and i came back from a visit to the bathroom to find stephen in the buffet room hovering over the roast with a carving knife, hands and mouth slightly greasy. he turned to me, starry-eyed, and said "i've never been left alone in a room with a cow leg before."]

after we got back in line and then got and consumed our second slice of cake, wile decided to work off the extra calories by getting down with his bad self on the dance floor. he started off with some basic moves: the butt, the deep knee bend, the march-in-place. but that was just the warm-up. the main event? breakdancing. his signature move: head and hands on the floor, downward-dog style, with butt up in the air and one leg thrust out to the side and kicking. we had video of it, but, well, yeah. not anymore. but wait, this is the "good" section! and the good is that the wedding photographer was enamored with our little breakdancer, and took about 500 pictures of him. we're going to get in touch with her, so after all we will have a record of wile's first time as a dancin' dancin' dancin', dancin' machine.

and that means that the terrorists didn't win.