Spring Break Sketches

This semester has been a big muddle of over-committedness. No time to blog, no time to really take note of the little interesting things that happen in the everyday and mold them into humourous prose.
Well.
I've spent the past week trekking around South Carolina with Kara and Ash and Ash's parents (the trip is very nearly entirely courtesy of said parents ofAshlea...mad props to them). I think I could write a (short) humourous novel based on the events of the past week alone. This week has not been so much of a break in terms of relaxing as it has been a break in terms of laughing hysterically. The tangible results of this break include a frighteningly depleted bank account, a slight sunburn, a hoodie (a gray one, I'm kind of excited about it), and the material for an excessively long post here.
And because of all of this material, for your sakes, o readers, I will break up spring break into several sketches.

Stomach Flu at 30,000 Feet!
Sounds like a B-horror flick. But it is all too true.
The day dawned bright and airy as we drove to DFW from Kara's house. Ash was feeling a little funny, but we got some breakfast into her and caught our flight from Dallas to Atlanta, where we had about an hour to hang out at our gate before flying to Charlotte. As we waited at the gate, Ashlea decided to take a nap, because she still felt questionable in her intestinal area. So she slept until we got on the plane for our 41 minute flight, looking slightly greenish, but convinced that she would be fine.
And she was. Until right after they brought the drink cart by.
Ash and Kara were in the aisle seats across from one another. I was in the middle next to Kara. A middle-aged lady was seated beside Ash and a 30's-ish guy with a goatee (how DOES one spell that...) was next to me. I had brought a book with me to peruse during the flight (Dickens's Pickwick Papers), and when my facial-haired friend saw that I was reading a book with many pages and small print he tried to engage me in a conversation about literature. The last great literature he read was Dan Brown's DaVinci Code.
If you know me, please say you know better than to compare Dickens to Dan Brown in my presence. But for the sake of Mr. Half-Beard I nodded and smiled politely and put on headphones as soon as was decent.
Anyway, I read my book for a little while (side note: Pickwick is hilarious, and if you haven't read it you ought) when I hear Fred (for those of you unfamiliar with my propensity for nicknaming, Fred and Kara are one and the same) next to me saying, "Oh man."
"Oh man" is not an interjection that will typically fill the hearer with dread, but that coupled with the pungent smell that had begun wafting towards me was enough for me to remove the headphones, put the book down, and see--
poor Ashlea sitting amidst an unbelievable volume of puke. It was everywhere. At the risk of causing in my readers a similar reaction, I will say that she had to go change into the pajama pants that Kara had in her carry on, she was barefoot for the rest of the flight, and she is looking into buying a new purse. It was everywhere.
The people in the surrounding rows were highly sympathetic and the flight attendants were highly panicked. The woman next to Ashlea was patting her back and trying to clean her up with those flimsy napkins that they hand out with the airline peanuts. The flight attendant came rushing up : "Ma'am, are you traveling with this girl?" No, she was just seated next to her. "Is anyone traveling with her?" At this junction Kara and I, by various and largely incoherent proclamations, let it be known that we were the traveling companions of the saidAshlea . "Oh good," quoth the flight attendant. "She will have to come forward to the lavatory and get cleaned up there, so here" she thrust into my hands several plastic bags and plastic-wrapped things. "Just follow the directions," she said, and ushered my vomitous friend to the front of the plane. Kara, the youngest of two children, looked at the mess and the bags and made a Face, the interpretation of which is as follows: "Ew, how the heck do you clean up puke?" Whereupon I, the fifth of ten children, made a corresponding Face that meant "What are younger siblings for if not to make one learned in the art of cleaning up waste?"
Accordingly, Fred moved to the middle seat and I went to the aisle, where the Nice Seating Companion of Ashlea and I cleaned up the majority of the mess, in the midst of a chorus of "poor kid"'s and "is she okay?"'s and other sympathetic expressions.

Note: I was not impressed with the service of this airline at all. I did not mind cleaning it up; I felt better that there was something I could do; but needless to say, it is not exactly good customer service to make the passengers clean throw-up. What if she had been traveling alone? Would they have made her clean it, or whoever was next to her? Bad job, AirTran.

We began our descent into Charlotte just as I finished cleaning, and the three of us met up with Ash's dad at the baggage claim, where she got all the parental comfort one desires after having upchucked on public transportation. She was a wee bit queasy the rest of the week, but only threw up a few more times. By the time we hit Hilton Head she had even begun getting hungry again. Whereat we all rejoiced greatly.
And when we flew back there was not a trace of airsickness. Thus we have a happy ending.

Sketch 1. Here is Sketch 2:

When Charlestonian Sidewalks Attack!, or, Night in the ER

We spent the first two days in Greenville, where Ashlea's mom met us and did all of the mom-things for Ashlea that no one else properly could. After two days of nothing but sleep mingled with dramatic reading of the Calvin and Hobbes coffee table books, we repaired to Charleston, where Kara and I saw the Ocean properly for the first/second times in our respective lives. Needless to say we had a Moment.
The night of our arrival in Charleston, Ashlea's paternal parent was in a state of high excitement about a certain restaurant that specializes in barbecue. We set out with high hopes, rumbling stomachs, and an utter lack of directions, the latter resulting in a forty-minute drive to a street that was about ten blocks away. We went in a circle about seven times.
Downtown Charleston is adorable: the sidewalks are all cobbled and bricked and there are more pedestrians than anything else. Little shops line the streets, tempting passersby to behold the overpriced glory of the products within. Music wafts out of eateries that pride themselves on that elusive quality known as "atmosphere," while strategically placed benches and strings of lights contribute to the charm.
About those cobbled sidewalks, though...
It was at the display window of one of the little shops that the females of the party observed certain baubles that drew us to inspect closer. The necklaces were very pretty, and I am certain that my littlest sister could make me one without too much effort. As we crowded around to point and ogle and compare, I became aware of Something in my peripheral vision, hurtling past us and crashing into the bricks.
Spaced along these charming Charleston streets are little trees. Stones are removed from the area around the little trees to allow the trees to grow. I do not offer an objection to this, as I am a fan of the growth of trees. However, when the removal of the stones leaves treacherous pitfalls for the unwary, sending the unwary crashing into the sidewalk, I voice concern. Especially when this particular unwary was so looking forward to that barbecue.
We turned away from the window to find Ashlea's dad rolling on the ground in an immense amount of pain. Paramedics were summoned, and we drove to the hospital, over the patient's protests (he wanted us to go on to the restaurant, because he didn't want to ruin our vacation).
And so we hung out in the ER waiting room until around 1.30 in the A.M. None of us minded, because we were all quite worried for our host, and we watched several episodes ofCSI ( there was a big sign prohibiting the turning of the channel. Query: Why do they play such gruesomely depressing things in hospital waiting rooms? I remain mystified).
Turns out he had a split lip and several broken bones. From a sidewalk? my surprised reader asks, and I answer with the following dialogue between EMS and the ER nurse:
ER nurse: What happened?
EMS: He tripped walking down ___ street. You know the place?
ER nurse: Oh, of course. The Notorious Sidewalk.
Yes, friends, it seems that we fell into some sort of storied Charleston booby trap. The Notorious Sidewalk.
Anyway, Ash's dad was fine, but, as we discovered, is also hilariously funny in the wee hours when on both morphine and Oxycontin. We did not want to laugh, because it seemed cruel. But at times, I confess that we all did. Laugh heartily. The parents of Ash were amazing throughout, concerned more for our vacation than for his comfort. We put a stop to that in a hurry.
Update, in case any of you are worried: Yesterday Ash reported that her dad's hand will be fine. So take that, Sidewalk of Notoriety.


Anyhow
This is long, quite long. I will give you a point if you have read this far.

Writing Art

I've never been an artist. When I hold a brush the most delicate maneuver I can execute is slapping paint onto houses, which I accomplish with considerable finesse, including the preliminary stages of washing, scraping, and priming. But I always wanted to create landscapes and portraits. I drew a waterfall once in fourth grade and thought it was very good, because in the water I drew little lines that meant the water was moving, and I made it narrow in parts which meant it was going faster, and where it plunged over the cliff I drew blurry rocks to show that the water was clear. The rocks looked kind of like the science-book renditions of amoebas, but I never thought of that until I looked at the picture a while later. That waterfall was the crowning achievement of my art career, until I became an APA who had to put up clever announcement-type things every week for study break.

I was taking notes in class a few weeks ago and glanced at the notebook of the friend seated next to me. The margins of his book were covered in sketches and patterns, doodles. His notes were scrawled on the main body of the page carelessly. The most interesting part of the page was the Starbucks logo he had copied from Vic's coffee cup. I looked at my own notes. I do not draw in class when I am absentminded, I copy song lyrics. I amuse myself by breaking up the lines in different places, to see how the change in rhythm affects the meaning of the words. I make my handwriting as flowing and pretty as I can, or as ragged and drifting, depending on the song.

Yesterday I remembered my waterfall and laughed at my artistic attempts, and thought about my notebook, and realized that I am an artist. The alphabet is art for me. I make pictures with letters, with the shape of my cursive and the slant of my words. They are pretty, swooping and full of curls and loops, like birds chasing each other across a big blank sky. My landscape is college-ruled and has pink lines denoting margins. My canvas is lined with blue and my brush is pointy and hard.

I cannot draw a face, but I can write one. My picture is made up of a thousand words, or fifty. When I feel extravagant I fling open the doors of the vault that is the English lexicon, and glory in the treasure within. Here are color, tint, shade, hue; here is action; here is rest. Here weapons of war may double as instruments of peace. And here, buried, am I, something beneath the words, expressed by them, yet always unsaid.
I sit within, sifting through the stores with open fingers, watching keen-eyed as the right ones catch and stay, aligning and re-aligning themselves, telling secrets. Stories that never start and never end, poetry without motion, music with a noteless tune.