Wendy Wimmer Dot Com

There’s a cricket living in my garage. And with the acoustics in the garage, he sounds like the biggest cricket in the history of cricketdom. He’s not a cricket, he’s a Cricket. He’s Cricketasaurus Rex. The Cricket does not need a prop.

When I walk out into my breezeway (which is now technically a mudroom or perhaps a vestibule, since we’ve turned 2/3’s of the breezeway into part of our kitchen), the Cricket chirps happily away, serenading our grill and snow blower and my golf clubs until I step down out of the house. Then all of the sudden… Nothing.

And I love that. It makes me happy, that Cricket quiet when I open the door. Sort of like an apprehensive hush, like the way a murmuring crowd goes still when the house lights dim or the orchestra raises their bows, meaning the star is about to take the stage. Like maybe it’s just a part of his morning that he waits for’ the girl! The girl is coming! The girl… ooh, here she is! Shhhhh Shhhh shhhhh, can’t miss the girl!

Of course, he’s probably just whispering to his friends ‘Oh jeez, I hope she doesn’t step on me. Because seriously, have you SEEN the size of her feet!?’

I am the only person in the world to find that funny, and you know what? I don’t even care.

I got neato mail the other day. Not a bill, not a coupon for a lawn service, not another credit card application, not a disk for a gazillion hours of free AOL. Actual real mail.

The first thing that was cool was a letter from my friend Laurie, she of the Shit In Her Face. She had lots to tell me about working with disadvantaged kids in Portland, showing them how to have writer’s workshops and also be politically active and yet have time to sparkle too. We were a strange friendship, Laurie and I. She was tiny. She could have passed for a ten-year-old, and she was punkadelic and vegan and too cool for Green Bay, whereas I drove a Pontiac 6000 and had a decent apartment and was an administrator for a local homeless shelter and wore blazers to all of my classes. Wool blazers. With leather shoes. But we somehow became excellent friends and made each other laugh and ate lunch together every day and scowled over the poseurs and laughed at the one who signed all of his poems first initial last name. So we’d just call him R because it was so ridiculous. Only we’d say it like a pirate, because even then, pirates were cool.

And we both felt fully vindicated when the teacher in a workshop was talking about things we do to mentally prepare ourselves to write and he said in all sincerity that he puts on his copper helmet to prevent the radio frequencies from messing up his creative process.

And in the middle of this letter, she said ‘Hey, do you remember that time that we were leaving class and we saw Johnny Cash!? Wasn’t that cool?’ And it was. The funny thing is that I was just telling Skeeter about that when I was in San Francisco.

Laurie and I were leaving a late night class, walking out to the parking lot behind the performing arts center. I suspect that I was giving her a ride home, because otherwise she took the bus. There was a fog blowing up off the Bay and the backstage light was a puddle of yellow between the humming shadow of a luxury tour bus. And our friend Bob was walking with us and one of us had just said ‘Who is playing at the Weidner tonight?’ And then we saw this tall proud figure walk from the back door through the improvised spotlight and ladies and gentlemen, it was Mister Johnny Cash. And I wanted to run up to him and say ‘Hi Mister Cash. I just wanted to tell you how cool I think you are.’ But Bob said ‘No, he’s probably tired. We should leave him alone.’ So instead we just watched him walk to his tour bus that sighed as he climbed aboard. Then we marveled at how surreal that had just been. And even now it feels a bit like something I dreamed, because it was just so random. So utter glee that she mentioned it, because it is one of my favorite memories from school.

I am very sad today.

Karl the fish at 826 Valencia died. I just now found out. Too late to send flowers or bowls of red jell-o and bananas and Cool-Whip.
Karl was Jen Larsen’s boyfriend. I wanted him to be my fishy boyfriend, but did not want to step on the beautiful delicate feet of The Fu. Karl had blue eyes and ruled the other fish in the pirate store. I think I wanted to be Karl.
He died on July 21. Skeeter and I stopped in to 826 Valencia on June 21. I waved at Karl. I did not visit with him in his little fish enclave, for there were children there and I did not want to interrupt them. It was a happy visit. There was much drawer inspection, much oogling at glass eyeballs, much sign reading. Much “aaargghing” at Skeeter, who put up with my “aaarghs” most admirably.
Ah Karl. Ye were a good fish. Bon voyage, matey.
Sad aaargh.

I have this weird Tech Support flirt thing going on with one of my clients. He’s actually an intern, in his early thirties and apparently went back to grad school. He’s based out of San Francisco, going to grad school in Berkeley, but interning in New York, so we talked about The Bird in Berkeley and the differences in society between the coasts.

The first thing he said to me when he found out that I was in Green Bay was ‘Oh, I just read John Irving’s The Fourth Hand which is based there? Have you heard of it?’ And I told him that Irving was my favorite author and then explained my whole theory that the book was a shout-out from John Irving to me and that I’m disappointed that he didn’t call if he was in town. And we could do lunchies.

Yes, I am 32 years old and used the term ‘lunchies’. It was the ‘I carried a Watermelon’ of the conversation.

I like to think its part of my charm.