“Matilda said, “Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable…”“
- Roald Dahl’s Matilda (a forever ago favorite)
On life
birthday cake candles & bank paper
As we chatted, we began listing our favorite scents. It’s funny, but if you ask someone to name their all-time favorite smells they’re usually not found inside a Bath & Body or wafting from your favorite kitchen. They’re subtle yet familiar, and somehow have the power to take your thoughts from chaotic bustle to sleepy hamlet with just one sniff. It’s what Glade will always strive for and never manage to tap.
Other favorite scents:
Freshly mowed grass
Pert Plus shampoo
His sweatshirt
Laundromat
Flour
Lake water
Baseball diamond dirt
Noxzema
The air, about two blocks downwind of the Sunbeam Bread Factory
Chlorine
Popcorn popped outdoors
Campfire
William, It Was Really Nothing
I celebrated Valentine’s Day the way I have for the past four years: with my closest friend, doing things much too frilly for an average weekend. Our girlish pursuits center around sweets and love stories, the sillier the better.
This year’s Valentine’s Day entertainment was the film of the same name. It had some nice moments, but I have a problem with love being about large gestures or I-had-no-idea-I-was-actually-in-love-with-my-best-friend revelations. The six degrees of separation plot line seemed in place just to allow certain celebrities more screen time, and half of them cheaply referenced their real-life fame. The story never flowed and seemed to be made of chunks of thrown out screen plays threaded together in an attempt to one-up Love Actually. (It didn’t.) Still, Jennifer Garner was cute, and Julia Roberts can always save a film otherwise in distress.
And just as Jessica Biel went into yet another misanthropic melt down about being perfectly beautiful and perfectly unlucky in love, a ripe burning smell followed by blasting fire alarms rushed us out of our seats.
The childish fear of being trapped in a burning building swooped in for a few seconds of premature group panic, until the usher stopped the group at the door.
“We’re really sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s no fire.”
One man addresses the obvious. “Then what’s with the smoke?”
“Well, there was a little fire.”
We ended up missing about 10 minutes of a movie that really never had a plot in the first place, so catching up was never an issue. In the end, two best friends fall in love and those who opted to be alone were marked as villains. I kept wondering if Hallmark put them up to this? I never saw Valentine’s Day as romantic. I’d rather spend it carelessly smirking at a version of love that doesn’t exist, no roses required.
After a night that almost went up in flames, I needed something less polished to fill my head, and The Smiths happily carried me home.
On books
“No more talk about the death of the novel; the novel will be at your funeral.”
-Richard Price
