TheBanyanTree: How to ReInvent Your Life in Twelve Weeks of Summer: a work of fiction

[TLW]

(continuing)

When I got home, I gave Jasper the hot dog treat and felt better just
watching him dance around it.  He tossed it up in the air and let it
clatter to the floor.  He ran from room to room with it in his mouth.
What fun!  What joy!  What delightful doggone fantasies he had playing
with that treat before he finally settled down to gnaw it.  Who says
dogs have no imagination?  Mine does.

Then I dribbled the chocolate (I know.  Leave me alone.) syrup over
the coconut sorbet and tossed slivered almonds on top.  My own
luscious frozen Almond Joy.  I totally deserved it.

So I ate three.


I called GiGi to check in.  Here's the update:


Gigi: Did I tell you about the racehorses?
Me: (cautiously) N-o-o-o. . .
Gigi: he spent $400,000 on racehorses.
Me:  Your stepfather?
Gigi:  No.  Santa.
Me:  Where?  How?
Gigi:  He bought some horses.  The kind that race.  In Kentucky.
Me:  How many equines are we talking?
GiGi:  You ask as if I might know such a thing.
Me:  Are they coming to Louisiana?  Are you supposed to take care of
them, too?
Gigi:  Oh, God, no!  They stay in Kentucky and a groom or whatever
takes care of them.  But Mr. John owns them and pays for their hay or
whatever.
Me: ... Why?
Gigi:  Good question.  He wanted them, I guess.  Someone called him
about them and he got his accountant to wire money to buy them.  Kind
of like going to the pound and getting a dog only, you, know, on a
much bigger scale --
Me:  And insane.
Gigi:  (laughing a little too loudly and a lot too long)
(Okay, she really cackled maniacally.)
Me: Can you sell them again?
Gigi:  Not without his permission.  And he is, as you say --
Me: Insane.
Gigi:  (more cackling)
Me:  Do you have a paper bag handy?  I'm afraid you're going to hyperventilate.
Gigi:  My Gothic Life.  I'm going to start a blog, "My Southern Gothic Life."
Me:  "Gothic" means something is different now.  Maybe "The ORIGINAL
Southern Gothic."
Gigi:  Right here.  Right now.


P.S.  Cap'n's called!  I have a job interview later this week, with
Patrick!  Whoever that is!
And I think I have a dinner date this week!  Really!  I think I do!

Life is like the evening sky.  It seems as if nothing is happening,
like the stars are the same, night after night.  But, actually, both
we and the planets are moving -- just ever so slightly, from our point
of view.  Then -- gasp!  There is an eclipse!  It is our proof that
Life has kept happening after all!  Stars move, seasons change and our
whole perspectives alters.

I sense an eclipse is on the horizon.  Certainly someone's horizon.  Somewhere.


----------

Okay, so I had the interview with Patrick, a little guy in his
twenties with curly hair, freckles, and the distracted manner of a
scattered person who is always running two hours behind schedule --
and yet continues to play video games and watch reality TV every spare
minute he has.

The interview consisted of Patrick leaning against the bank of lockers
in the odd room with the drain in the floor and asking me what I've
been doing for work up to now.  I said I was a Math tutor.  Because I
have been a math tutor before, okay?

 Then he asked me if I was a punctual person.  I didn't point out that
I had waited for him for twenty minutes before the locker room
interview.  I said yes.  I am always early, in fact, because I hate to
keep other people waiting.  He raised an eyebrow, as if he thought
this was too good to be truer.  I elaborated by saying that I "used to
be a theater person"  -- I was careful to say "used to" -- and we were
trained that if rehearsal was scheduled for ten o'clock in the
morning, that meant you got there at ten minutes till ten to make sure
you had your script and pencil and coffee and your
socializing all done to begin at ten o'clock.

He kept nodded emphatically and saing, "Oh my gosh, that's awesome."

I asked if punctuality was really a problem with their workers.  He
sort of looked embarrassed, as if he had hired those pesky workers
himself maybe, and said, "Yes, some people are late a couple of times
a week."

"Wow," I said.  "That's not about traffic, that's a time management issue."

His eyes lit up.  "Totally! That's what I keep telling them!"

I swear in his costume and hat and all, he looked just like the guy on
the Cracker Jacks box.  There is a sailor on the box, right?  Did I
make this up?

And that was it.  That was it for Patrick, anyway.  He said I could
come back and meet with the First Mate in a few days.  Then I'm to
meet with the Captain, if all goes well.  And then I can be hired.

I have no idea what or who they are looking for. I told him somewhere
in there that I love Cap'n Jack's.  But everyone loves Cap'n Jack's.
Really, they do.  I mean, right?

(to be continued)