Living in the material world, or why I still don't have an oven.

Dear America,

Today when I was driving home from an engagement, I stopped at a traffic light. My phone vibrated. I glanced at the number. It was Lowe's. I thought: my oven! I pressed the button for speaker.

Me: Hello?

Lowe's Guy: Hi, this is Dave from Lowe's. [not his real name.]

Me: Am I ever glad to hear from you!

Lowe's Guy, aka Dave: Well, maybe not.

Me: [pause] Oh, yeah?

Dave from Lowe's: Your double wall oven arrived at our warehouse.

DIGRESSION: The way I remember this part of the conversation, there was terrifying and foreboding music playing, like really really dire Muzak, in the long pauses between these statements.

Dave from Lowe's: But the box was damaged.

[terrifying minor chords with the entire string section, heavy on the bass viols]

Dave from Lowe's: So we rejected it.

[thunderous, cacophonous crash of instruments in a downward slide]

Dave from Lowe's: So you're screwed.

Actually, Dave from Lowe's did not say that. What he said instead was:

Dave from Lowe's: So we've ordered you a new oven. And we put a rush on the shipping. So we should have it in four or five days.

DIGRESSION: The music in between the above statements is cynical. Like, flutes, but a computer-generated flute. It was cynical, with a mean-girl edge.

Me:  .............. [crying on the inside]

Dave from Lowe's: ............... [I hate my job.]

Me: So you're saying--I know you can't promise--but you're saying you'll have it by Friday?

Dave from Lowe's: [beating a hasty retreat] It will be in our warehouse by Friday. We'll have it here--

Me: --in your store?

Dave from Lowe's: --right, by Sunday.

Me: --so that means--

Dave from Lowe's: --we'll give you a call just as soon as it's in the store to set up an install.

Oh, America! Here are the things I am preparing myself for:

1. The oven will not be installed before the wedding.
2. The oven will not be installed before Christmas.
3. What of the cookies?
4. I will possibly live in this existential hell called NO OVEN forever.

Dave from Lowe's thinks I might have the oven installed by Wednesday. That's next Wednesday. But he doesn't believe it enough to actually plan for an install by Wednesday. Everything is contingent. Just like all meaning. The world is a dangerous, unplannable, unpredictable, damaged box place with no ovens, is the conclusion I'm drawing. This conclusion is inescapable, if you happen to live in this cold, lonely, contingent, ovenless, without cookies place, i.e., the Megastore.

In other news, my iPod Classic is apparently broken and Apple will not fix it.

Since life has no apparent meaning, maybe I'll take up a dangerous vocation, like, I don't know, vaping. Or base jumping. There sure as hell aren't any cookies to eat around here, that's for sure.

I am mise en abîme, for real.

htms

The Sundays.

We have had the best time here, some of it constructed out of little contingencies. This happens when you're visiting over a series of days--you may think you have your days planned, or at least a rough outline of activities, but things change, things happen, stuff you didn't expect becomes part of the architecture of the visit.

Today, I had a lovely, on the fly breakfast visit with a friend who lives in Tempe. I wasn't sure it would fit, but it did, and for a couple of hours, we talked about teaching writing and the ways we were each thinking about genre and assignment design. It was perfect, including the fact that we ate breakfast.

While I was gone, everyone else went to a park, except for my son, who had a church meeting. When I got home, after driving around Tempe

[see above for map of how I navigated Tempe, before I found my way home after a couple of corrective phone calls]

it was time for everyone to eat lunch and to don their church togs and then, in fact, to go to church. I like going to church with my kids. It reminds me of when they were younger and things were different. Anyway, we went, listened to an interesting if desultory sermon, and my son and I chatted in the foyer.

After church: what to make for dinner? What to make for dinner is the ultimate contingent decision. Even when you've just gone shopping, maybe the dinner solution is not apparent. Luckily, soft tacos. After that: feed the chinchillas. Yes, chinchillas: friends who have two pet chinchillas were out of town, and my son and family were doing the caretaking duties. In case you want to know, chinchillas have a diet of chinchilla-specific food pellets, straw of some sort, and lettuce.

Then, because it was the end of a church-y day, and therefore the kids needed to run off some energy, we went to a park and played soccer. The light was beautiful and the weather, just as it has been the whole time we've been here, was perfect.

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