House:
Errands:
Reading:
Kinwork
Lisa:
Someone asked me if I thought a joke was okay. I thought maybe one demographic would feel oppressed, which the querier was ready to shrug off. "Someone's got to be oppressed," I offered and cracked up.
He didn't get it.
On any road trip my sister and I take, there might be Elvis Costello, Patsy Cline, or the Cowboy Junkies. The one constant is Godspell.
I am one hundred pages into this but am going to try to be brave and stop. There's too much authorial intrusion, and David Starkey muses about how it's tempting to analyze this or that from a C20 psychological viewpoint. Tempting, but specious.
If it's about Elizabeth, and I'm rolling my eyes? It's bad. Yesterday I reread It's Not Easy Being Bad, my favorite of the four, and today I'm rereading Bad Girls in Love. Bad Girls I know very well, and I don't even own Bad, Badder, Baddest (so I'm really glad Cynthia Voigt got it together for the most recent two).
Probably why I haven't had a book entry in a week is my inability to stop reading a book partway through, no matter how much I dislike it. Beyond a page or two, I'm committed. I didn't like his style, his "well most contemporary historians have made this mistake but of course it's this instead," his authorial intrusion (and, I hope, not just because I was taught never to use the first person in academia).
Two 3.8-mile city rides. Even just that slight amount of exercise improves my outlook considerable-like.
Okay. This is the best of the Jerry Spinelli I've read. It's interesting that he usually writes in the first person when the narrator is not the protagonist. How often does that happen? Nick in The Great Gatsby. Ishmael in Moby-Dick. And, uh, others. It's not as if Spinelli doesn't have good precedent to emulate. But he might have emulated it once too often.
I did like Stargirl, and maybe she wasn't meant to be possible. I wish I had read it before Crash. And Wringer. And even Maniac McGee.
What is it that I do with entries that kills them when I don't mean to? Sheesh.
Anyway. I said something about how the first third, about pot, reminded me Jon Krakauer's victory joint and burning a hole through his father's tent in Into the Wild, at least for a while, until I remembered Eric Schlosser's style from Fast Food Nation and decided I wouldn't've made the Krakauer connection if I hadn't read his much less personal Under the Banner of Heaven so recently.
I also said something about how the title was disingenuous (the subtitle is inconspicuous) since only one third of the book is about pot.
But I forget what I said.
After a year and a half of hanging out mostly upstairs or in the den, this weekend I reclaimed my study. There had been the occasional thwomping onto the futon to watch "My So-Called Life"* or read a book, or the rare occupation of my desk by present-wrapping or coloring book coloring, but I haven't regularly hung out in my study since I got a laptop. It is now dark at 5:00, and somehow I find myself here, writing and reading and listening to music.
The room still needs to be painted. Would painting it a color less objectionable than the current bastard cousin of blue be stupid since replacing the swirly green carpet is not yet a project I'm up for?
I haven't given up on the water closet yet. RDC is convinced the walls cannot be salvaged but must be papered, and I hate wallpaper on some principle I can't articulate. Damn it, I am going to scrub and patch the two do-able walls--one of which didn't have paper to start with. And scrub over the toilet and prime just to cover the tagging. And generally debate the fate of the under-window wall.
Blake's happy to have another study to play in. He spends his days in RDC's office, either in or on his cage, or in a cave on a shelf in a bookcase, or on the chair seat between his legs. On my desk, I keep stuff he can gnaw on, like snippets of cardboards or blowcards, and he loves throw pens off the desk, and then there's my desk organizer thingie, with shells and stones and his old tail feathers and a little Snowy. Snowy's on a keychain and, with his front right paw lifted in his jaunty stride, does not stand well, so he leans on a piece of seaglass. Blake clambered up on my pencilbox and tugged on the bone in Snowy's mouth. Besides being in one molded piece, Snowy isn't one to give up a bone, so he tumbled down on a startled Blake. When Blake figures out that his feathers are up there, plus my little pewter knight, Snowy won't be guard dog enough to keep him down.
* I firmly believe that movies should be in quotation marks and books in italics, to distinguish between, e.g., "A Room with a View" and A Room with a View, and have treated television series like movies. But television shows have episode titles, like magazines (italicized) with articles (in quotation marks). Writing The West Wing's "War Games" but then "My So-Called Life" is inconsistent. It's a problem.
Precor Elliptical 30', 20/20 incline, 12/20 resistance. Three whole minutes with two 2-pound handweights. I had intended 45' but that wasn't going to happen after the weights, when my strides per minute dropped from the high 120s to 108-110.
One length of the gym in lunges, and I restrained the left hamstring that hurt for a whole week after the weights fiasco of two weeks ago. That's why I was doing lunges, figuring I'd let the weights be for a bit yet.
Ten push-ups. Ten, OMFB. The two-minute plank hold from last winter? No more.
Bah.
I was wondering, as I do around every Veterans' Day, how many World War veterans are left. From the first, twenty-seven British ones, few if any Australian or New Zealandish, a handful of Canadian, while Usan numbers are harder to find. There are more from the second, but I found out last night there is one fewer than before.
In fifth grade we had to interview a veteran. I interviewed my across-the-street neighbor. I don't remember anything about the interview except its very end: why I remember it at all. I must have asked the assigned questions, or maybe I had to make up some, which I'm sure were not overly insightful. I know he served in the Pacific and retired an officer. What I remember is Mr. H asking, "Don't you want to know if I got any medals?" He had received a Purple Heart at least and maybe a Bronze Star.
The Hs were good neighbors. They built their house when I was about three, a ranch with a paddock for their teenage daughter's taupe and pinto horses. Their driveway touched the road at two places, both within sight of my house (my boundary), plus it was paved, so it was a wonderful place to learn to ride my bike. Trick-or-treating, young enough to be with my mother, I turned from their front door and saw, I swan, a witch on a broomstick fly across the moon.* Also, they gave nickels in addition to candy.
They had a Christmas party once and I got to try something my father would never let me do: a guest left a smoldering cigarette on the kitchen counter and I touched its pretty orange glowing tip. Now I knew why my father wouldn't let me do that.
They had a toy poodle (for her) and a Weimaraner (for him). Long before William Wegman, I startled more than one Weimaraner human by knowing their dog's breed.
Later, when their daughter married (my cousin, as it happens) and had three children and divorced, the Hs had the children all the time. So they built a pool, to which they welcomed the neighbor children--me and my sister and two boys much younger. First we could come only with our mother, and after a year or two of not drowning, since we were older teenagers, just on our own, and eventually I was allowed to go by myself, wonderful in those pre-car days when the biked miles to the beach took forever in the heat and I was flat-out forbidden to go to the lake alone. Once when my mother and I went over, they were having a cookout so we turned around, but they invited her to join their party and found a lobster for her. I might have had a bite.
In return for this bounty, we gave them jam and cookies for Christmas.
When I flew to a college program when I was 17, we got up waaay before sunrise to drive to the airport, and there was Mr. H getting his paper. Four years later when I left the house at 5:30 every morning to go to work, there he was getting the paper. Getting up early after 40 years in the Army was a habit he never broke. Several days ago my mother noticed that the Hartford Courant remained in its tube after sunrise. Then last weekend she saw a moving truck. The next morning she brought the paper to the door, knocked and poked her head in and announced herself, and Mrs. H called her in.
Mr. H died very quickly, without much pain, with scarcely enough time to be diagnosed before he died. The moving truck was not to bring in a hospital bed, for Mrs. H with her repeatedly broken hips, but to move in the eldest of the grandchildren, her husband, and two young children, because they are going to live with Mrs. H now.
The last time I spoke with my mother before this was to learn that my great-uncle died. It was his wife's funeral that I declined to attend in September. My remaining great-aunt had told my mother she didn't want to be the last of the three siblings and their spouses--but she is the youngest and a woman. Her demographic sealed that fate, but in ten months, in two spates six weeks apart, she lost her husband and her sister (my granny), and then her sister-in-law and her brother.
I feel bad that I can remember enough to eulogize Mr. H when I could not my grandmother's siblings. I remember talking to my great-aunt-in-law after Granny's funeral and admiring her bravery and her certainty. I remember my great-uncle could not tell my sister and me apart (I'm not sure if he ever could). I barely remember my great-uncle-in-law at all, just a smiling face at the other great-people's annual Christmas party. My great-aunt looks very much like Granny, minus eight years, though my mother tells me she's aged a great deal in the past year, and who wouldn't.
I remember.
* A couple of days later I realized that the full moon does not rise early enough to be up when a little kid would go trick-or-treating. But it could have been a waxing moon.
My first taste of lobster (which I liked, because hey, butter!) was either a bite at the Hs' cookout or the tip my father got once from a fishmonger. I just don't remember which happened earlier. My father worked for the power company, and during an outage, after a lightning strike or a car crash or whatever, my father's crew restored power to a fish market. In gratitude for their fast work that let him keep his stock, or in acknowledgment that linemen--they were all men--on call get up at three o'clock in the morning and work without sleep for days after a hurricane, he gave every man however many lobsters.
It's good stuff, lobster. I can distinguish it from chicken even. I've withdrawn from the drawn butter camp, because what the hell, why cover delicate flesh in butter? Why not drown your bread in it instead?
I did that once during "Wizard of Oz." I bought my own stick of butter so I could use as much of it as I wanted--breaking up a pack of butter cubes after squeezing the Charmin, pirate of the grocery aisles as I was--and popped popcorn for the big yearly broadcast. I dipped each kernel in a bowlful of melted butter. Damn good, that was.
Lordy, I love iTunes. I just bought Dream of the Blue Turtles, which I've owned on a tape dating to 1985 or whenever Sting released it, and ...Nothing Like the Sun, which I've had on a crappy dub since 1987. I gave Soul Cages one listen, decided it depressed me (what a surprise: I bought it in 1991), and, I believe, never listened to it again. Ten Summoner's Tales is fine. Last night I listened to Dream, and oh my it's so '80s. But now I'm listening to Nothing: "Lazarus Heart," "They Dance Alone," "Fragile," "Sister Moon," a cover of "Little Wing." Sigh.
Plus I just bought Reckoning, soon after getting Murmur. I have missed them so much. Also I listened to snippets from Green, so vital a part of the 1989 soundtrack, yet unlike with all the other pivotal albums released or new to me that year--Passion, Sensual World, the Indigo Girls' first and also Melissa Etheridge's, Elvis Costello's Spike, my introductions to the Waterboys by way of Fisherman's Blues and This Is the Sea and to Joni Mitchell by way of Hissing Summer Lawns and Wild Things Run Fast--I can do without Green. This surprised me.
What decade is it?
A friend just lent me Beth Orton's Central Reservation. It is, if possible, even more barbituate blues than the Cowboy Junkies. And I like it! It dates, of course, from the previous millennium.
This weekend I watched "What Dreams May Come," which I had wanted to see when first released. It was cinematically beautiful, but considering how his task had been described, Robin Williams didn't put forth much effort in effecting it. Williams's inability to function in his painty heaven was unfortunately reminiscent of "Hook," and I only know Annabella Sciorra from "The Sopranos," so her becoming unhinged was just typecasting.
That also dates from the previous millennium.
But the next Netflix flick is "Lost in La Mancha," which ought to be super and is this year's, so mleah.
I do things like write "rights" for "writes" that scare the piss out of me. Occasionally I do things that reassure my sense of myself. Today as I approached Colorado Boulevard, I spotted a slouchy young man slouching toward a perfect cone (not pile) of leaves on a tarp on the verge. Judging from his appearance, I suspected he was going to scruff through the leaves. As much as I pitied whoever's work he was going to undo, I was a little envious too. He noticed my glance and probably my judging as he aimed right for the tarp, bent, and picked it up by its corners. By this time I was abreast of him. "Oh," I cried, "I thought you were going to stomple through them!"
"Aw, wouldn't that be fun!" with a regretful smile and hoisting the tarp to his back. "But then I'd have to rake them all up again."
Of course he was slouchy, dressed in layers against the changing temperature and for his labor. I'm glad that, given my previous expression, my tone was right for him to understand that stompling leaves is fun.
And I invented "stomple," just kind of accidentally. Stomp, which came from my thinking he was scruffy, and trample, which is how you destroy a pile of leaves.
Stomple!
Gw'on, guess: two 3.8-mile city rides.
Besides that it's a slurred utterance and not a word, how is that version of "go on" properly transcribed? It needs the w, though there's none is the phrase. Hm.
When I started at Hateful, my first assigned task was one of dubious taste (as were most of the very few I ever had): to write letters to everyone whom they hadn't hired for that position. Looking at the cover letters and résumés, because I hardly scrupled not to, to avert my eyes from all but name and address, I could only think "Well no wonder they hired me." It didn't say much for me in comparison to be be so clearly superior in verbal dexterity and even vocation.
We have some strong candidates and we have some interesting ones and we have some other ones. That's probably already saying too much.
Tragically, the webcam does not work with the new system. Otherwise I would show--would have shown last night, when it was fresh out of the chair and not slept on or twice helmeted--my haircut. It is...short. I can just, just, scrape it into a stubby pigtail. I showed RDC a picture of me from October 1991, a bit more than year into the growing (which officially started August 1990), and my hair was longer then than now. It cups my chin.
I don't think I'm the type to change hairstyles this often (twice in one year).
RDC said I looked like Amélie. CoolBoss and Intern, who knew why I was scarpering 20' early yesterday, liked it; and even Tex noticed.
He noticed and then he asked as if confirming, "And you colored it too?" Um, no. Dye is make-up. When I did the big chop in January, another coworker was convinced I had colored it, and I think she didn't believe me when I denied it. Tex I could show: I pulled it into its usual not-down-ness, and he saw how the color changed depending on whether it was loose or back.
The usual not-down-ness is out for the duration of this cut. I kind of like the swing at my jaw, but I don't like the blinder effect. It's not short hair over the ears but it is over the ear. It does tuck behind the ears, at least.
I am embracing the down.
Sometime during college someone had an installation in the art school called Black Plastic: a human-sized maze of it, inside of which was utterly dark, dank, close, and clingy, because pollution is bad. Looking into my back yard now, I am reminded of that, except in blue.
A blue plastic tarp covers the woodpile, so the wood will be dry on those wet days when we most want a fire. A tarp covers the vegetable garden so that it does not serve as a catshitter of massive proportions all winter long. A folded one covers the lasagne mulch so that bindweed cannot grow up through it, although maybe I can take that off now for the winter. Another is under the remaining pile of needles and sunflower seed husks that have not found their way into lasagne mulches yet.
The most prominent tarp is that covering the brand-new leaf pile. Yesterday I very carefully groomed the front gardens and easement. The vinca is thriving, sending out shoots and sprouting all around. I'm very pleased. I took out the groundcloth so it could spread and battled bindweed thereafter; I'm hoping that after a few seasons of my assiduous plucking, the vinca will dominate on its own. It's tangled enough that getting the leaves out without ripping out shoots that haven't rooted yet was a quite delicate task. I can't wait to plant the other easement, because under that plum tree bare dirt plumes up from the rake's tines. I worked with rake and hands in the north front garden, trying to get leaves without mulch and not hurting the plants; I was less gentle in the better established south front garden and to the catmint I showed no mercy. Raking the north side of the house was easy, since it's covered in landscaping cloth. The south side was extremely rewarding, with two trees protected from the wind dropping all their leaves into a thick carpet whose absence made such stark contrast that I knew I was done. I did just a bit in the back yard, the south fence and the raspberries: the cherry tree hasn't dropped its leaves yet and I'm all about not duplicating effort. All of this made quite a pile, artfully crafted to touch neither the fence nor the garage and rot them by contact. I soaked it, shrinking it by a quarter at least, but it's still about four feet high.
I need to get yet more coffee grounds and vegetable pulp to wed the leaves with, to create the child, dirt.
RDC and SPM saw Phil Lesh & Friends at the Fillmore last night. This morning, with the remnants of his voice, RDC told of how they were tighter than the Dead ever were. "Because Bobby wasn't there," I said. I don't like Phil Lesh's own songs much: they're just basic rock and roll and not very interesting to me. But his covers of Garcia/Hunter and Weir/Barlow songs are fantastic. Phil can't sing and neither could Bobby but at least Phil knows enough to rely on other vocalists.
I'm extremely fond of SPM, and yesterday evening I discovered--for the first time?--something that made me fonder: love of '80s music, in addition to, not exclusive of, Deadheadism. We played 30-second iTunes snippets of Level 42 and Howard Jones and a-Ha and Toto and Asia and did not quite drive RDC screaming from the room, but nearly.
But then it all came crumbling down. As they got ready to leave, RDC pulled his--my!--leather jacket from the closet. "But what will I wear?" I asked. "Not this!" he replied merrily. "But it'll get all smoky!" I whined. SPM erkled: his jacket, lined in sheepskin, would also pick up a lot of smoke. He put it on: a corduroy jean jacket. I remarked that looking like Ponyboy Curtis should be some consolation (N.B.: except for the jacket, he doesn't, being tall, stocky, short-haired, and 20 years older), and just to stay out of old churches. But SPM didn't know who Ponyboy Curtis is at all! And when I said The Outsiders, he only knew the movie, not the book.
I wanted the leather jacket because I was going to a Howard Dean birthday party (i.e. fundraiser). My whine that it would get smoky at the concert but presumably not at the party held no water: when I got home I stripped in the living room and dashed into the shower and I am so glad I didn't wear contacts because lordy do people still smoke. The party happened in a Capitol Hill apartment, a great space with a porch facing west, oak woodwork that had never been painted over, a fireplace with shelves on one side and an inglenook on the other, and I was the only woman and nearly the only straight person. That was kind of interesting.
One man admitted to knowing little about Dean but asked questions about his background and stances and I told him my focus: not that his policies are secondary, but Dean wants to return the process to the people instead of corporate interests and that is his primary appeal for me.
He's shorter than Bush fils, though. Historically, the taller candidate has won. Gore is taller, and Gore won, but Bush proved that the rule of tall as well as the rule of law can be toppled. So maybe Dean has a chance.
Zounds. I just changed the leading in the style sheet, from 120% of line height to 150%, and that seems to have fixed the display problem--that minor one by which text wouldn't display.
One 3.8-mile ride, and another that got me home but had two detours and was undertaken in gale-force winds. Whoosh.
Precor Elliptical, 20', 3' at 11/20 resistance and 18/20 incline, 3' at 11/20 and 20/20, 14' at 12/20 and two of those with two 2-pound handweights.
Two lengths of the gym in lunges, and I didn't feel a sudden pop in my hamstring.
Twenty-five back extensions and a few plank-holds at a total of under two minutes.
Hey, I went. That's all I count right now.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
I stayed after work a little bit, just fifteen minutes, but that will make a lot of difference in a month. I think I know where my headlamp is. Maybe.
Yesterday I cheated on Blake. I went to Hobby Lobby for lunch (and found oh! just the most unnecessary purse-shaped memo pad for my sister's stocking) and detoured into the parrot store. I would have bought the seed mix they picked up after Colorado Seed and Pet went under, but clerks were in front of all the bulk bins with large boxes so I just flirted with the birds.
A military macaw said "Hi!" as soon as I walked in, so I said "Hello!" back. I offered to pet its head, but it only wanted to step up. I don't step up a) big birds b) that I don't know c) onto work clothes, so we were at an impasse. I introduced myself to a double-yellow-headed Amazon named Daisy who wanted, despite being in a cage, to have its head pet. Very very much. It climbed up to the top corner, held onto the two walls with its two feet, and ducked its head to the side to grasp another bar with its beak, and exposed its neck. And I pet another bird's head! I did. I'm very bad. Amazons are not as soft as cockatiels. However, they dislike having their toes (so much bigger than a cockatiel's and that much more tempting!) touched nearly as much as my cockatiel does. Also, perching in a corner like that exposes the belly, and I for one cannot resist tickling a parrot's belly when I have access to it. It is easier to get to the hairs between the pads of a dog's hind paw and tickle those, but I'm a tickler.
I did look at buddy toys while I was there. I think we stopped making him toys out of balsa wood colored with food dye because he got bored with them. All he's wanted for ages is magazine blowcards and a peacock feather and of course his box anyway.
Today is a First Saturday. Usually the only dates I make note of are the Fourth Mondays: every fourth Monday since I was 19, I have got my period. There have been a couple of intermissions, but I've been on the pill pretty much straight for 16 years. Until today.
Today, I did not take a breakfast treat upon arising. (When I first went on it, there was a snack food called the Stella Dora Breakfast Treat, hence the moniker.) Today, I declare hormonal freedom. Too bad I have no mountaintop from which to proclaim it; a website is anticlimactic. Happily, that's the only thing about today that is.
...get down tonight.
We resubscribed to The Nation and The New Yorker. We received a subscription to the former as a wedding present but eventually let it lapse, and I've missed it since. I haven't really missed The New Yorker, but I'm glad of it. I have been reading short stories by A.S. Byatt, Julian Barnes, and Haruki Murakami, reviews by John Updike and John Leonard, columns by Katha Pollitt, punditry in poesy by Calvin Trillin.
Finally! We might not get much, but we're getting some, and there was much rejoicing.
This morning as I toweled my hair (which is, strangely, nearly sufficient to dry it), I cocked my head because surely that couldn't be what it sounded like...? I peeked out the window. The goofy neighbor was indeed raking his leaves through two inches of snow. They are really unclear on the concept, these people.
I am so glad I found José Saramago. In addition to writing prose that bowls me over even in translation, he is obviously a dog person. I first heard about him because Blindness's Dog of Tears appeared on a list of the most memorable characters of the last century. In The Cave, the stray dog, no longer lost and named Found, captured my heart. Of course Saramago is a dog person: all the best people are, plus he lives in the Canary Islands.
The cave, the potter, the fading popularity of goods made of clay, the pressures of the kiln, the significance of all of these did not elude me. And I'm pretty sure what the denouement means, but not quite. I was hoping the Portuguese words for kiln and cave would be related, but they're kiln and caverna.
According to Merriam-Webster,
"Etymology: Middle English kilne, from Old English cyln, from Latin culina kitchen, from coquere to cook -- more at COOK
Date: before 12th century
: an oven, furnace, or heated enclosure used for processing a substance by burning, firing, or drying."
and
"Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin cava, from cavus hollow; akin to Greek koilos hollow, and probably to Greek kyein to be pregnant -- more at CYME
Date: 13th century
1 : a natural underground chamber or series of chambers open to the surface
2 : a usually underground chamber for storage [a wine cave]; also the articles stored there."
Saramago is 80 years old. That means I will one day have read everything there is, and there will be no more. I am halfway through.
"I was shopping in Norwich--and you know there's nowhere to shop in Norwich--and I had all four of you girls with me, except you were little, 7, 6, 5, and 4, and I had Granny with me, and she was about 80. Then the car broke down--don't ask me how I had all of us in one car--and I called BDL, but his car had broken down too. Isn't that weird?" my mother asked.
"No, it doesn't sound weird. It sounds like you're worried about your responsibilities. You were more responsible for CLH and me when we were little than you have to be now, as you would have had to be for the German Shepherds, and you had to be more responsible for Granny when she was old than when she was 60. But you can't be responsible if the environment is bad and if the mechanics of your life are breaking down."
Meanwhile, I had an anxiety dream that I didn't tell her. Lots of people have naked anxiety dreams: vulnerability, embarrassment. Although I am clad, usually I have registered for a regular college courseload but somehow forgotten to attend one or more classes all semester long. If there's anything I can do to fix it, I cannot get to the right place in the right time to do so: there are ten minutes, and I keep getting distracted and I can't move fast enough. All of that is fairly obvious.
Last night I combined all the threads of my anxieties. I had attended some of my classes but I'd forgotten I'd registered for a couple. The usual "Can I withdraw? Will the professor show mercy, since I didn't perform badly but just forgot to go? Can I walk faster without someone asking me for directions?" antics ensued, this time in the altogether.
Later I realized that I'd been attending English and history and whatever other class--Women's Studies or poli sci--but had forgotten to attend anthropology and French. That's pretty easy to parse too.
In the summer of 1990, I happened to be in my mother's line of sight when I happened to have one of my dizzy spells, which happen sometimes when I get up too fast. It was a particularly bad one: I didn't just lose my vision for a moment and clutch at a nearby wall for balance, as usual, but actually spasmed for several seconds as my body tried to hold itself erect without my brain's help, and then fell abruptly, with no visible attempt to break that fall, as I lost equilibrium.
I cannot imagine how frightening that must have been for a mother to see.
She freaked and refused my word that really, this was nothing, just tremendously low blood pressure not getting juice to my brain when I get up quickly after a period of inactivity. She insisted that I consult her doctor. I had no medical insurance at that point and insisted in turn that if she wanted me to go she could pay for it. Isn't that a beautiful example of mother-daughter relations? It was so typical too.
I went, and it was the single most thorough examination I have ever had. Not that he did bloodwork or anything--he flipped my eyelid back briefly and dismissed my mother's concerns of anemia--but I felt like he was there, listening, assessing, more than any doctor I have had since. And oh, that's right, the summer of 1990 was the first I spent under my mother's roof without benefit of four-footed meat. The other thing she didn't believe me about but accepted grudgingly when I repeated the doctor's assurance on, was that chicken and fish and dairy would supply all my protein needs. Her initial fears were that I was pregnant or that not eating meat had rendered me rickety.* The doctor agreed with me, though he put it in medical terms, about the low blood pressure thing.
* That was a mathematical "or," which contains the ugly "and/or," so that sentence is grammatically correct. I hope.
Anyway. It's kind of a cool feeling, my faintiness. Although I've been clutching walls for years now, not every time I stand up but several times a week, I was never able to duplicate the way-cool sensation of that summer afternoon--until this morning.
I threw myself out of bed, grabbed my water glass, and headed for the bathroom. Three steps away from the bed, I started shaking or spasming. I made enough noise hitting the wall, dropping the plastic cup, and eventually thumping to the floor that RDC noticed from under his pillows. In a moment, when my blood caught up with my brain, I could respond.
This makes rescuing Blake from his nightmares interesting. I hurl myself out of bed towards him, fifteen feet away, as quickly as I can, hitting the lightswitch on the way; but sometimes I compound his fright with the noise of my full weight dropping to the floor amidst the covers I'm pulling off to show him that there are no dragons. Eventually I'm going to have to modify that response or I'll break my hip.
"Ben-Hur" is a featured movie in "The Celluloid Closet" and no surprise. I just found out Gore Vidal wrote part of the screenplay. I just looked that up because I'm reading Ben-Hur courtesy Project Gutenberg, and there's no homosexuality written into the movie, OMFB. It's all there in the book. When Judah and "the Messala" have their falling out: "Messala offered him his hand; the Jew walked on through the gateway. When he was gone, the Roman was silent awhile; then he, too, passed through, saying to himself, with a toss of the head, 'Be it so. Eros is dead, Mars reigns!'" (chapter II)
Gentle men are not all homosexual, but this is certainly part of a body of evidence: "The thoughtful reader of these pages has ere this discerned enough to know that the young Jew in disposition was gentle even to womanliness--a result that seldom fails the habit of loving and being loved" (chapter VI).
It was 20 degrees and I rode my bike to work. Shady spots of road had still had ice and snow on them. Once, stopping at a stop sign, I fell, and my bike skittered over the ice away from me and would likely have been hit if a car had been on the perpendicular street. I'm here to tell you that I love my bike helmet, and without my helmet I might have a nasty goose egg, or even a cracked egg, on my head. Then, as I biked one way and a 11-year-oldish boy walked the other and I passed him, he yelled at my back (I'm pretty sure at me, since there was no one else on the street), "Bitch!" I was wearing a helmet and sunglasses and a face mask, so even if I had a mean expression, he couldn't've seen it. I know I've seen him before, walking probably to school, but I'm certain I've never been unkind to him. I know I ought to conclude that he is just a pubescent boy experimenting with malice and power plays, but I can't quite whole-heartedly do that because part of me is still 11 myself.
I liked it. RDC asked if it was as good a novel as a movie, and it's hard to tell. I liked them both. How the two met is different in the movie, because the book's scene would have been so expensive to film, I suppose. And Brad Pitt's line, "How's that working out for you, being clever?" is not in the book. I thought it was great, but I have heard such varying things about the rest of Chuck Palahniuk's stuff that I wonder if I will continue with him.
"Fight Club" is to "Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" as Angel Face is to Perfect Tommy. Also, all the goings after balls reminds of "Stand by Me": "Chopper, sic balls!"
Reading The Times (of London)'s style guide, I learned a few things. Some points are merely differences between British and U.S. English (The Times says "English" and "American," as if this side of the pond speaks a different language altogether), some are basic definitions and solecisms (aggravate, affect and effect, "animals and birds"), and some are things I would screw up--unless those are ones I don't immediately recognize as British usages and so am just Usan about? Also apparently I have changed the spelling of "British" to "Britsh," not quite "kitsch." Hmm.
ad nauseam
I have probably spelled it "ad nauseum." So much for naming that whale Ablative.
allege
Avoid the suggestion that the writer is making the allegation, so specify its source. Do not use alleged as a synonym of ostensible, apparent or reputed.
anticipate
Not to be used for expect. It means to deal with, or use, in advance of, or before, the due time. To anticipate marriage is different from expecting to marry.
Apennines, Italy
(not Appenines)
bail out
(As in to bail someone out of trouble; also bail water from a boat); but bale out of an aircraft by parachute, to escape. NB, bailout (one word, as noun).
Usan Merriam-Webster says you bail out of a plane and bale only hay and such.
bated/baited
Note the important difference - bated breath; baited hook.
I looked up how else "bate" can be used other than with "breath." A falcon can bate its wings, i.e., beat them impatiently. Also cockatiels, since I love applying falconry jargon to parrots.
Beduin is plural. The singular is Bedu
Oh.
beg the question
Do not confuse with "ask the question". To beg a question is to evade it.
Aha! I was recently talking with Haitch about examples of "begging the question." This is a different meaning of the phrase than I am used to.
bight
A curve in a coastline or river; bite involves teeth.
I wouldn't've confused them because I didn't know the word "bight." Now I do and will look for occasion to use it.
birthday
People and animals have birthdays; everything else has anniversaries.
Now now. The Times rails against solecisms like "birds and animals" but says that "animals have birthdays"? Including those animals, like insects, most fish, amphibians, most reptiles, birds, and three mammals, that hatch from eggs rather than are born?
blame
Take care with this word; blame is attached to causes, not effects. So say "Bad weather is blamed for my bronchitis," not "My bronchitis is blamed on bad weather."
Is this British? I might say "I blamed the weather for my bronchitis." I'm probably wrong.
bluffers
Be very cautious. The Bluffer's Guide/Guides are trademarks, rigorously protected by their publishers. So generic phrases such as "a bluffer's guide to ..." must be avoided
The British equivalent of Dummies books? Does "bluffer" mean the Usan "bluffer" in British English, to bluff your way through whatever situation with help of this guide? Or does it mean "duffer" or "stupid person"?
Bush, George W.
Do not use Jr. President Bush at first mention, then Mr Bush or the President. Refer to his father as the first President Bush or George Bush Sr.
I understand why not to use "Jr.," since they have different middle names. I don't understand why "Sr." is okay.
cagoule
But kaftan
I looked up cagoule: a knee-length waterproof garment, like a parka but long. I have no idea what they're getting at here.
Ceylon
Now Sri Lanka. The people are Sri Lankan, the majority group are the Sinhalese.
I wouldn't call Sri Lanka Ceylon, but I would have no idea what to call the people.
clothing
Say menswear, women's wear, children's wear, sportswear.
Why?
comparatively, relatively
Avoid using as synonyms of fairly or middling.
consensus
The word is a cliché that should be avoided wherever possible.
is it ever okay? Doesn't it have one right meaning?
coruscating (not corruscating)
Sparkling or scintillating, not abrasive or corrosive.
I didn't know it meant anything at all.
crisis
Always try to find an alternative for this greatly overworked word. Its use should be confined to a process reaching a turning point. A crisis does not deepen, grow, mount or worsen, and is never a continuous state such as a "housing crisis". Economics are never "in crisis"; "crisis situations" are never to appear in The Times.
deny
Does not mean the same as rebut (which means argue to the contrary, producing evidence), or refute (which means to win such an argument).
diagnose
Take great care: illnesses are diagnosed, patients are not.
England, English
Beware of these when the meaning is Britain, British.
Right. Such as "British English."
fuchsia
I bet I get this wrong all the time
jubilee
This is from a Hebrew word, who knew? "A year of emancipation and restoration provided by ancient Hebrew law to be kept every 50 years by the emancipation of Hebrew slaves, restoration of alienated lands to their former owners, and omission of all cultivation of the land."
Last Post
Like Reveille, is sounded, not played.
last, past
Last should not be used as a synonym of latest; "the last few days" means the final few days; "the past few days" means the most recent few days.
Logical, but I had never thought of it. A Britishism?
major
Do not use as a lazy alternative for big, chief, important or main.
majority of
Do not use as alternative for most of.
massive
Avoid as a synonym of big.
may / might
Do not confuse; use might in sentences referring to past possibilities that did not happen, e.g., "If that had happened ten days ago, my whole life might have been different". A clear distinction is evident in the following example: "He might have been captured by the Iraqis--but he wasn't," compared with "He may have been captured by the Iraqis--it is possible but we don't know."
minimal
Do not use as a synonym of small; it means smallest, or the least possible in size, duration, etc.
motocross
There is no r in the middle syllable, even in Usan. News to me.
nerve-racking, not -wracking.
Ooops
recrudescence
Do not confuse with resurgence or revival. It means worsening, in the sense of reopening wounds or recurring diseases.
reportedly
Avoid this slack word, which suggests that the writer is unsure of the source of the material.
responsible
People bear responsibility, things do not. Storms are not responsible for damage; they cause it. Avoid the phrase "the IRA claimed responsibility for the bombing"; say instead "the IRA admitted causing the bombing."
Because the IRA are not people, but storms?
rigmarole
Not rigamarole.
Oh.
shambles
Take care not to overwork this strong word, which means a slaughterhouse and, by extension, a scene of carnage.
Cool.
slay
A Biblical word, not to be used in headlines for kill or murder.
I can't say, "Oh, I slay me" anymore? Very sad now.
vagaries
Aimless wanderings or eccentric ideas, not vicissitudes or changes (as in weather).
wrack
Means seaweed or wreckage and must not be used as a synonym of torture; thus, racked by doubts etc.
Here endeth the lesson.
Tex just bought some sort of toilet-locking device because his youngest child, unlike the older two at her age, has shown interest in this watery danger. You have to close the lid in addition to the seat for the lock to activate.
I told him that was excellent practice, for his son to learn to lower the seat (and lid) and for his middle daughter to learn to lower the lid. I think closing the lid is a fine compromise for both genders when the male has not been well-trained. I have to remember to thank my mother-in-law again for raising RDC in a house with herself, his sister, his grandmother, and female roommates and their daughters. My previous men were either one of two brothers or only children, and, I expect, would not be reflexive seat-lowerers.
Occasionally RDC has taken ski vacations with his best friend, who has got mock-angry with him for lowering the seat even when no females are around. It is automatic for him to put down the seat, and I am grateful. Only a few times in all our years together have I sat on a cold commode in the dark. Unfortunately, two of those times have been in the past week. Is he slipping? I sure am. The first time, he said, he had in his half-asleep-itude forgot that step because he was moving the bathmat off the heat register. Okay. This morning, he is still asleep so I haven't asked yet. I'm just glad the toilet got scrubbed yesterday. Am I actually going to have to practice my own suggestion of compromise, and remember myself to lower the lid? Hmph.
I just had an argument with my little tiny youngster of a coworker (he's 26). He was asserting that Cat Stevens wrote "Cat's in the Cradle." It was a perfectly amicable knock-down-drag-out fight, of course, but I was right and he wasn't so you can bet I didn't let it go. He said this song was on the same album as "Where Do the Children Play?" Possibly I am more intimately familiar with Caution Horses than Tea for the Tillerman, but it's a near thing. (The Junkies devotion exists despite their lack of any song with my name in it; "Sad Lisa" is on Tea). I don't know So or Sensual World as well as I know Tea, for pity's sake. Shyeah. Plus I live with a man who grew up on Harry Chapin. Intern and I quick-draw googled on our two machines, vying for supremacy. I found lots of cites that an early MP3 had been mislabeled, hence the proliferation of this lie. I also found, on Cat Stevens's own site, mention of an album I had never heard of called Cats Cradle, which I think might be the cause of--not responsible for-- this heinous lie.
This all came up because he didn't know about "Harold and Maude" either. I have told him that by the time I see "Red Dawn" (which he references more than you would think), he has to see "Harold and Maude."
Among my other pop-cultural touchstones of which he knows nothing: Bloom County, "Northern Exposure" (well, he'd heard of it), "M*A*S*H" and "Say Anything." Egg and I tried to explain--well, re-enact--"Philadelphia Story" for him. McTeague, the Great Brain, etc. Also he asked if David Sedaris wrote Confederacy of Dunces, which twisted my brain, but then he explained why (favorites of a sibling's). Meanwhile he has kindly informed me that P. Diddy and Puff Daddy are in fact the same person. I am so glad we hired him. The office with neither Egg nor Intern would be extremely lonely.
I thought I took most of the impact on my left hip and I also noticed I struck my helmet but today it's my left upper arm that's sore. Tex has a nasty habit of smacking me friendlily on the arm--the left arm, since that's the side he usually has access to--and a couple of times today I had to ward him off.
There is nothing like having a cockatiel tucked and dozing on my shoulder, watching his eyes close from the bottom up, resisting the urge to nose into his breast and snort in an extremely nap-disruptive kind of way.
I'm just watching the end of "Dead Irish Writers," a particularly good episode of "The West Wing," and marking time for the next six minutes.
Dude.
(You know, I don't say "dude" that much, my slang having petrified before that. I might be being sarcastically hyperbolic.)
I have never ever even merely wandered by, let alone read or even be familiar with, two of the three nominees for the legacy Diarist Awards. Emily has been writing since the dawn of time; her own formative years and the medium's have kept pace with each other. So there's no question of who I would vote for, but I am so far out of the loop.
And fine with that, but--one of three? Dude.
Netflix is making it waaay to easy for me to indulge my less savory movie tastes. iTunes facilitates the '80s music; Netflix the movies (my mentioning "Heathers" a while ago? yeah).
So I've seen this movie once or twice. The first time I saw it was with Bill--not Billy from the roof, malheureusement. I hadn't read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas yet--I wouldn't meet Hobbit for another two weeks. The last time I saw it was with a woman I made slight temporary friends with when Judy Blume came to the Tattered Cover to sign Summer Sisters.
Somewhere in there I realized that Judd Nelson's character slept in a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas tee-shirt. Of course rewatching movies is valuable: it's only this time that I realized Billy carries Fear and Loathing in his pocket.
It's not December, but it is after Thanksgiving, and therefore it begins. If I didn't have to ship anything, I would be ecstatic.
I mailed Emlet's package air, being ten days too late to trust surface. And a good thing, because when I talked to Nisou on Thanksgiving, she said the books I sent--in late September or early October--had just arrived. Those two were Frederick and an alphabet book of artistics masterworks. For Yule I gave Emlet books (Dandelion and A Baby Sister for Frances among them) and a puzzle and Not for Kids Only and some clothes and a bald eagle and a bison (American animals).
Envelopes are addressed and cards printed. Now comes the long period of procrastination in which not enough will be written.
I know what I want to give to this person and that person, so all there is to do is obtain and ship these things. I found the most beautiful book for ZBD. CLH and I are doing only stockings for each other this year, though I have a couple of other ideas. I need goofy stuff for our cousin, who is coming for Chick Weekend in December (she writes it "chic weekend," which I'm not sure is a joke or a misspelling).