måndag, december 26, 2005

Up for Air

I desparately need to read something. I am beginning to choke and panic. I brought seven magazines home from the office, I visited four convenience stores yesterday to find a Sunday Times, and I am now the owner of the complete collection of Calvin & Hobbes. I sat down on the couch at least three times last evening to exercise my eyes and never made it to one page one. I can almost not breathe.

Hence, I cannot write.

To make things worse, the family has been in particularly good form. They gave me very little material to work with over the past week. Something about Santa and a potential mound of presents I suppose.

I need an event, a catastrophe, an insult. I am working on it. For pure inspiration, I bought each member of the family a game from a collectors' series I happened upon at Target. Risk for the one who won't take one, Scrabble for the one who cannot read, Sorry for the soul who is always at fault, Monopoly for the kid who has no concept of cash, and Yahtzee for the child who leaves everything to chance. I got things going a bit last night, but we started off slow, with the game of Life in the new Sponge Bob Square Pants version. No car or pegs or getting married. This is a much saner version of life. You move a character about, adopt a pet, and opt to live in a cave or a pineapple. Perhaps the biggest difference in playing versus thirty years ago is that all the kids went to college instead of going straight into a career. When the kid who won Life looked like she was going to win the next game, Sorry, too, the group ganged up on her. Now that they are primed, I am going to set the table for breakfast with plates, maple syrup, and a stretch of Atlantic Avenue.

Then I am going to find a corner and read.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonym said...

Merry Christmas a day late. A day late and a dollar short. I think if someone gave me a game for Christmas it might be something they picked up from a garage sale - some mishmash of several games all dumped into the same box. Like trying to play Yahtzee and Monopoly at the same time. What would that be? Yahtopoly?

I've decided that true wisdom is the ability to realize that life eventually turns everyone into some sort of cliche.

Happy reading, Cate.

11:03 fm  
Blogger Cate said...

Merry and Happy to you too. I am 3/4 through the Times and still everyone is asleep. I grew up with board games, but not the cool ones like Mousetrap or Dream Date. We had Parchesi and Monopoly, and the rare lighter fare of Top-O-Matic's Trouble. Mostly I just liked the Lincoln logs and little plastic cowboys and indians and army men, all hanging on the ranch.

I think it is impossible for any of us in our generation to be completely cliched. Our histories have simply been too strange, great, and awful.

11:24 fm  

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