Ice Storm
There was an ice storm in Houston overnight. An ice storm means that a bunch of ice gets on the freeways, and SUVs slide into each other. Then the city closes a bunch of freeway entrance ramps because that’s easier than sending out trucks with salt or sand. Apparently.
I woke up at my normal time, 5:30, and heard on my alarm clock radio that all the schools were closed. So I hit Snooze.
My boyfriend called at 6:00 to say that he’d called my building and we were expected to come into work today. So I turned on the radio again and the first thing I heard was that there’d been a huge accident at the first freeway exit that I pass on the way to work. Then, they started listing all the freeway and road closings. I reset my alarm to 8 AM, then went back to sleep.
At 6:30, one of my kids stumbled into the living room and mumbled, “Mom.”
“No school today,” I called from bed. “Go back to sleep.”
At 7:00, I woke with a start and a guilty conscience. I waited until 7:30, when my earliest coworkers get to our office, because I was unable to sleep. I listened to the radio. Wrecks and road closings. At 7:30, I called everyone in our office, but no one answered. I fell asleep.
At 8:30, I woke from a dream in which my boss’s boss was being uncommonly friendly to me, and it was making me suspicious. Immediately, I rolled over and grabbed my phone. I called everyone in the office that I would normally call if I were not coming in. None of them answered. Guiltless, then, I returned to sleep. No one was going to work. Awesome.
I woke up at 10:30. A nagging feeling made me call in. The first two people didn’t answer. The third one did. “Hey. You came in?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m the only one here, too.” I detected a slight bit of resentment in that tone.
“Well, I’m not coming. I guess you already figured that out.” As I spoke, I looked out the window at the ice coating my patio set and icicle-ing from the eaves and the plants I should have brought in two days ago. “There’s ice everywhere here. I don’t want to have a wreck.”
“Yeah, that’s what I told our boss,” she said. “But he asked me why you didn’t call in. I said I didn’t know.”
At that point, it didn’t matter that I’d called in twice and gotten no answer. It didn’t matter that I said that and she admitted that she’d been away from the phones for a while, and my boss apparently hadn’t heard them ringing.
All that mattered was the intimation that my boss was upset with me. That’s the kind of thing that drives me crazy.
The rational side of me repeats over and over that 1) my boss probably forgot his curiosity about my absence the moment he uttered it, and 2) the other two women in our group were also absent, and probably without feeling bad about it at all, and 3) it really isn’t safe on the freeways today, and there is no job in the world worth risking my life for.
And yet, I still feel this wrenching in my stomach.
It’s funny how I feel that every weekday, even when I’m at home.
Guitar Hero
I got my kids Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II (Playstation games) for Christmas. It turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving.
It’s a fun game, first of all. You have these little plastic guitars with buttons that simulate frets and a lever that takes the place of strings. You pick your rockstar on the screen, then pick a song to play along with. It has some good little songs, too. Not just the newest stuff, but old rock classics from the ’70s, too. Of course. How could you make a guitar game without the ’70s?
Anyway, I love playing the game with the kids and reminiscing about the old songs with them. They listen to my stories graciously because I paid for the game. Plus, now, whenever the radio plays a song that happens to be on Guitar Hero, me and the kids can all sing along. “It’s more than a feeling! I hear that old song play, it’s more than a feeling!” You know?
Whenever we go to Best Buy or Fry’s, of course we have to play the demo of Guitar Hero they have set up, to show off our skills (Medium level for me and the two younger kids, Hard level for my oldest). I see a lot of older dads watching everyone play the demo. These guys get a gleam in their eyes, and then they buy the game. And I’m glad for them, because I know they’ll get at least as much enjoyment and family time out of it as I have.
Isn’t that weird? That a video game could inspire parent/child bonding?
No, it isn’t, because I’ve been playing video games with my kids for years. But I think Guitar Hero is incredibly brilliant, because it draws in people who normally don’t give a crap about video games. DDR did the same thing, but I think it drew in more moms, and I think moms are less likely to show up at Best Buy and make a big impulse purchase like that.
I hope other moms are playing Guitar Hero, too. I hope they’re tearing that shit up.
Schools are closed today, as I said. My oldest son is in the next room playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Spanish Castle Magic.” In a little bit, I think I might join him.
More Bonding Through Music
The other night, my youngest son and I stayed up late watching music videos on You Tube. First, we watched a bunch of stuff from the ’80s, because he and I had seen VH1’s “Top 1000 Songs of the ’80s” (or whatever it was) the day before. Then, I decided to move through history, to the ’90s, which was when I stopped watching MTV in real life. Probably because it stopped showing music videos then. Where were people getting music videos from in those days? I don’t know, but they certainly existed.
Long-time readers know that I always loved Blur. But I had never seen their videos. Not one. And, oh my god, I had no idea Blur was so freaking goodlooking until the other night. (Damn, that Damon Albarn looks like the lovechild of Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Cillian Murphy.) And their videos – so horrifyingly cute.
So I watched Blur videos, and Pavement videos, and Veruca Salt videos, and then a video with Pavement and Veruca Salt…
and my youngest son watched it all with me. Just soaked it right in. Until our eyelids grew heavy and we had to go to bed.
It was nice.
