I don't know what gets into me. I meant only to watch some news over breakfast, snugglified because it's still cold. Instead I watched most of a sentimental woe-is-me movie from 1952, Invitation, with Dorothy McGuire (whom I didn't recognize as the mother from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"; if I had I wouldn't have lasted any time at all) and Van Johnson, whom I know only as Spike from my beloved "State of the Union."
Also I downloaded part 8 of War and Peace. Which means I am only 75% done. It might not be as bad as I think it is if I only listened to it more than occasionally. It's why I should cook, so I can listen to it in the house. The match that I wanted to happen could happen now, and I know Napoleon falls, so maybe I could stop listening! There would be much rejoicing.
But the scene with the black-eyed little girl in Quention's section of Sound and the Fury is straight out of War and Peace. Countess Rostov isn't nearly as bad as Caroline Compson, but she tends that way.
Two bike commutes. Once when I drove home mid-morning, it took me less than eight minutes. Today for the first time I biked that route. It involves a diagonal street--a rarity in Denver--one that is not marked as a bike route. It is less pleasant, but much faster. I have to drive it again with the triptometer to see how much shorter.
Kal said she was feeling lucky and that she would push her way to the front, but when we arrove at the Tattered Cover around 6, there was no hope and the line was insane. We were herded as through a sheepfold around the perimeter and up the stairs and around some more (I picked up a title something like Grammar for the Completely Unclued) and we grabbed some floor two rooms away from the hall. In this way, going to a David Sedaris reading was a lot like listening to him on NPR or through an audio book, a broadcast, disembodied voice. It was also a lot not like either of those, because occasionally those people in his presence laughed when the rest of us did not. At a gesture? an expression? We will never know.
Waiting, we entertained ourselves with the quizzes at the end of each chapter of the grammar book. The first chapter was on capitalization, and the book claimed that the one properly capitalized sentence of the mutliple-guess four included the words "Dominican republic," not Dominican Republic. Have I been spelling this wrong all my life?
Sometime in elementary school (I hope no later than fourth grade), we were assigned a project in the school library that the librarian, not the teacher, reviewed. (I can't remember the teacher, hence not the grade, but the librarian was the perfectly friendly but intimidating-looking one whose half-glasses sat on her really tremendous bust.) I remember that Mrs. Bust was surprised I finished whatever it was, probably a reference and geography project, so rapidly and then said, "And you capitalized everything right too." That's why I like to think it was no later in elementary school than fourth grade. Capitalization is simple and follows rules, unlike spelling, which is a sense much more than it is a subject. I got a little glow, of course.
The CIA World Factbook has an entry for the Dominican Republic, in which it mentions "The Dominican economy," following a normal pattern, and gives the conventional form as "Dominican Republic." Britannica's entry capitalizes both in its title, mentions the Dominican peso, and capitalizes both in a sentence: "The Dominican Republic was originally part of the Spanish colony of Hispaniola."
Well, this book also claimed that apostrophes properly do occur in "the 1970's" and in "the 70's," as in temperature; it didn't mention how stupid "the '70's" looks although that's correct according to their pattern nor how Class of "86" is hypercorrection nor what to do when you need quotation marks within quotation marks such that perhaps quotation marks within italics would set off the phrase under consideration more clearly than nested quotation marks.
So mocking that was fun.
David Sedaris was also fun. He read two essays from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, about cleaning apartments in New York City and about seeing "The End of the Affair" in Paris with Hugh. Then he read from his diary, which was better for me because new. He told us about finding, in Budapest, an obscene monkey masturbating with a penis as large as its banana. Because it was just as nasty as it could be, he said, he gave it to his brother, Paul, who of course loved it. A visiting sister found it so repulsive Paul hid it in her luggage, in her decaffeinated espresso. She didn't discover it the next morning, however, since she drank caffeine before traveling on to her in-laws' place. Her father-in-law has beginning Alzheimer's but still can do simple tasks, like make coffee. Also he's a retired Baptist minister. Sedaris also told us his ruminations after reading an article his sister (the same sister; I like to think that Lisa is his favorite) sent him on people who want to be amputees. He used a term for it, o-something-philiac, but that is not a Google search I want to do. [28 June 2004: I can always count on PLT to delve into something prurient: the word was "apotemnophile." Teehee, I said "prurient," for dubious humor of which see below.] Sedaris said that unlike transsexuals, who are born into the wrong body, these people are born into the right body...just too much of it.
See, I'm not David Sedaris.
Afterward, Kal helped me find books and animules. For SFR, I got A Snowy Day and When the Elephant Walks; for SLG, Pat the Bunny, Hop on Pop, and Is Your Mama a Llama? and a pink pig with enormous trotters. (SLG is Emlet's new sister, and Hop on Pop might be better for Emlet since she can speak, and so ma filleule doesn't feel left out, also A House for a Hermit Crab.) A birthday card for Intern, an arrival card for SLG, yet an anniversary card for my husband slipped my mind.
Then we were starving, but it was 9 so Denver was closed (the Market on Larimer and Max BurgerWorks on Lawrence). Before we ordered at Sam's (a faux diner), Intern and one of his brothers came in; they said hi but sat elsewhere. Kal and I decided on breakfast for dinner and I ordered pancakes and bacon. My order came with two eggs, which I hadn't noticed, rather than poison myself, I told the server to give them fried to the skinny guy in the last booth. Intern came over to chat some more and said "dope!" * when I told him eggs were on their way, but when my three fucking enormous pancakes and four slabs of bacon arrived, the cook hadn't made the eggs because the server didn't think I was serious. Maybe she thought I was just making fun of the skinny guy--Intern is really staggering nonexistent from front to back. So when Kal's toast came on a separate plate, we sent that down the end.
* "Dope," like "bomb" as a good thing, is slang that not only passed me by but also that I never heard personally in the flesh. Then Intern came along and I smile like a geriatric when he describes something as dope.
Meanwhile, I was tucking away my pancakes and Kal her huevos rancheros. She reminded me as I picked up a piece of bacon that when we arrived, I had said not to order any pork. I turned guilty to the pig, then picked it up and shoved it head first into the bag so it couldn't see. Then neither of us could remember the name of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's table manners-teaching pig, though of course I realized I had offended this pig the same way the messy eater's mother had (although I hadn't fed the pig anything). So afterward we had to stop at Barnes & Noble to look up the pig's name. I wondered if B&N might be closed (since it was after 10, ooo) and was glad that (thank you again Kymm) I had them in my house if need be.
Need wasn't--that pig's name is Lester. SLG's pig doesn't yet have a name, but he, or the Tattered Cover bag he peeked out of, attracted the notice of another couple in the diner. She asked if we had just seen David Sedaris and we chatted about him. I promise that, for once in my life, I did not drag the conversation out. It was not I who brought up politics. The man--easily in his 40s, note the lack of apostrophe since nothing is dropped, damn it--said had just registered to vote for the first time. My face did that thing that it does that I don't regret not controlling this time, and he said, observing this, that he didn't believe in it. This was clearly our exit and we scarpered.
I asked Kal what she did the day she turned 18. Register to vote, of course. Now, I didn't register the day I turned 18 because in 1986 my birthday was on a Sunday (it was the day of Hands Across America, which I still think was stupid to stop in New York City instead of continuing to Boston so I could have had a hope of participating), but it didn't take long. I also didn't give blood the day I turned 17 because Old Lyme had drives only every 56 days, but whenever I did go no one there knew me nor would take my blood because lacking a driver's license I couldn't prove my age, damn it.
So that was a fun night.