And Also? A Girl and a Soldier Went By in the Street. The Street Light Shone on the Brass Number on His Collar. The Girl Wore No Head Covering...

I don't know, you guys--here it is March 10th and I cannot for the life of me stop to think. First there was this and then that & next thing you know: the other. What have I been up to? Nothing, really, which is everything, of course, nothing to write home about and yet so much has not happened. 60 words on nada ye pues nada, 299 characters (with spaces).

I am not much of a talker, afraid, as I am, of telling stories with no point. My grandfather on my mother's side was famous for this, long car rides in his hermetically sealed Cadillac as he pointed out new strip malls and housing developments, how thick the kudzu had grown along the freeway. But my favorite story of all is how one time he asked me if I was hungry? Did I want a salad? So I said yes and he served me ambrosia.

See? No real point there. (But it had marshmallows! And mandarin orange slices! Nothing green at all!)

Fuck.

This weekend we went to the beach. Where Zoey met some friends (aka "strangers"). Using a rock and saltwater sand, they practiced their face painting on a little boy until his cheeks flamed angry and red. The boy cried. Zoey had the best time pretty much ever.
There were elephant seals on the beach looking very much like driftwood. I almost peed on one as I backed up against a cliff to, well, to pee. Many of the young seals were molting and spent the day basking in the sun to conserve their energy. This is where I would talk about the kudzu if we had such a thing, but we don't, so here's a seal.
I am pretty sure that if my grandfather had had digital cameras we would have been subjected to photos, too. See that there? The new Belk's shopping center? Yeah.

Actually, I did want to show you this pic: the Pixie Peacock dress , pretty please? Also needed: the thin, lithe body pictured. (While I could possibly be described as not fat, maybe thin(ish), I have never been nor never will be referred to as lithe. Then again, I would also never wear a feather headband, so there's that, too.)

The thing with not having a point is that you really don't need direction, either. Because after the beach we stopped at the Toyota dealership just to look. 4 hours later we emerged with 2 free cups of water, one oatmeal raisin granola bar and this (not so very free) car:

Stock photo of my new car looking a smidgen cooler than it really is due to the foreign plates. Bryan says that RAV4 stands for Radically Awesome Vehicle, and I am doing everything in my very Virgo Super Powers *not to look it up right now because I love him. And my Toyota. Words cannot express how nice it is to have a car with windows that roll right to the top.

Woah--where did that come from? Who knows, but I like it, so it stays. Because one time? When I was really little? My grandfather wrote a long, twisty terrible book about a spy named Jenks Edwards. In reality my dad's name is Edgar Jenkins and once interviewed with the CIA, though I'm not sure I'm allowed to say that. I think my dad was something of an enigma to his in-laws; suffice it to say the book never went anywhere. My grandfather was an ob-gyn with a boat named The Sea Section. Before he died he wrote another book called Mullen Leaves and Brown Sugar about his family history, and my favorite part (the only part I remember) was something about his cousin named Jack. Only that was not his real name. His real name was James Arthur Columbus Kearns, but he was called Jack on account of that's what his initials spelled out.

Yeah.
No point at all. But I like it.

Deliver us from nada, pues nada. I'm afraid it's genetic. Like really afraid. Moreso than the multiple myeloma he died from, or the fact that apparently he had to know where the restroom was wherever he went. Do you want to hear a story? About kudzu and cars, peacock dresses, saltwater and elephant seals? My grandfather was one of those men who could do a mean magic trick, quarters behind your ears, turning spades into diamonds. The kind of deft of hand that has since been lost in our generation. The past few days I have let the laundry go, sprinkled confetti soap into Zoey's bathwater. Bryan and I watched Season 5 of Weeds. Did you see that? The way I palmed the card so you could not see it? Or did you know all along that the quarter was up my sleeve, worth nothing?

*Recreational Active Vehicle. Dammit, I am powerless over my need to know slash need to think I know it all.