october to-do list

House:

now that is just weird

I don't want to make a gaffe in Gstaad where the merest gaffe might trigger an avalanche but what will they pinch on me...I hope?

I sleep raw and have done since high school at least. I was nervous, living with a roommate for the first time, that I would be compelled to wear the nightshirt I had brought along as camouflage. Occasionally I'll wear a nightgown, when we have guests or I am one. A nightgown, and not pajamas, because anything that interferes with the thrashing of my legs is evil and wrong.

Last night I shucked my pyjamas to the floor and climbed into bed. Rarely I have to get up to pee, not often; to my knowledge I have never sleepwalked.

This morning I woke up from a series of uncomfortable dreams (wanting to take a nap instead of vote, Cordelia from "Buffy" trying to steal my boyfriend, the Cowboy Junkies saying "no comment" when asked whom they would vote for in the U.S. election [they're Canadian]) that, happily for my overall impression of them, was interrupted by the alarm clock when everyone was laughing (I think in an end-of-the-Bradys or of-Scooby-Doo "you crazy kids" kind of way) and staggered out to turn off the shrieking thing. Midway across the floor I noticed...I was wearing underwear.

A while ago, out of desperation brought on by shredding elastic, I bought a pack of underwear from CostCo. These are terrible garments, supposedly bikini but really fitting near the hip such that at every move I am reminded of too much fabric or elastic over my hip bone. Which is wrong. I assigned them for use only under bike shorts. This is what I was wearing this morning.

Part of the nap-instead-of-vote thing was that I had a hotel room facing a sidewalk and kept lowering the shade but someone not in the room nor on the sidewalk but existing only as a reflection in the window kept raising the shades or opened the louvres on the blinds, so I couldn't lie down and sleep except with an audience (both the passersby and the haint, a priest), and I couldn't get to my polling precinct without some rest. I wonder if it was because of that dream that I got up, opened a drawer, removed a pair of underdrawers, didn't notice or care that this was the most uncomfortable style I own, donned them, and went back to bed and to sleep.

the grim grotto

It wasn't Slippery Slope, but it was fine. I do hope the twelfth, which might be Lousy Lane, starts wrapping up threads so the thirteenth isn't overwhelming with raveling and knotted care. Grotto does end with a chance in that direction. Sunny didn't bust out with anything as priceless as "Buscheney!" but she did use a few words I want to look up.

weekend

RDC woke at 2:00 this morning, which isn't even wake-up time in Sydney but some kind of middle ground. He made himself peppermint tea and buttered toast, and Blake, who often sleeps through my morning routine because he knows it doesn't concern him, squoke at the sound of the toaster plunger.

RDC has pictures from the Sydney aquarium of a platypus swimming. He saw a wild eclectus in a park log-rolling on an empty soda can. The Aussies have kangaroos and emus on their money. But apparently aboriginal Australians remain even more marginalized than Americans. So I don't need to move there yet.

He said he was bringing me home a present and if it broke I would have lots of little presents. It survived the trip: a hollowed etched emu egg. The shell is maybe four times thicker than a chicken egg and three times bigger than a goose egg. The unetched surface is blue and pebbled; the etched oval is paler blue and delicately worked and depicts (not an emu but) a crested parrot. The perfect circle at the fat end of the otherwise intact shell means that there is one fewer emu in the world, but apparently they are raised for meat and this is not a wild egg. I hope.

RDC didn't see any wild buddies, which is good because if he had I would be wildly jealous instead of only slightly envious. But he had budgerigars and cockatoos on his hotel balcony and he swam in the ocean and that's bad enough.

This weekend is devoted to backrubs and jetlag recovery and fall cleaning. It is sunny for the first time in days, too. Maybe two whole days. And Uncle Tex gave Blake a new oatmeal box, and Minne gave him an oatmeal canister, so he has the door of the first to widen and the tube-ness of the second to explore (with just the last half inch of his tail peeking out) so it's clearly a viciously busy time.

the rest of life

This book didn't grab me, maybe for no good reason. Mary Gordon's prose was lovely and even her take on three different love relationships, fresh and interesting, failed to grip me as I wish it had. Well, really it was the first novella, "The Immaculate Man," that took me an age. The other two, the eponymous one and "Living at Home," were better.

The most noteworthy thing about this book is that it is signed on the title page, inscribed to me, signed by the author, and I have no memory of seeing her. However, I do remember telling this story before.

still no okapi

I went to the zoo sometime over the summer to see the baby okapi. It wasn't in the pen with the others and a keeper nearby said maybe it was too hot. It's a rainforest animal and Denver's strong sun could easily be too much for such a thick-coated critter. Today we took a walk through the park toward the zoo, hoping for an okapi this time. The zoo was packed with people but not, unfortunately, with a baby okapi. Did the zoo give it away? Was the sun, again, too strong? I want to see it before it grows up. Also, there were only three giraffes, whose indoor shelter is also public so they cannot hide. Only one of the two calves born last year was there (I think).

Afterward we lounged at the pool for a while. I played in the leisure pool and read The Rest of Life and RDC might have napped in a jetlaggy kind of way. In the evening I had a really nice conversation with my dad. While we talked I was in the front garden weeding; SPM walked up just as we were discussing the debates. SPM offered his opinion as he passed and my dad laughed. I mention this because the contrast between him and my mother struck me: my mother seems not to pay attention to what I say when I am on the phone with her, let alone be able to register stray comments from passersby. I could be saying something like "Don't poop on me, you bananahead," and instead of understanding that I am immediately commanding her grandbird she would ask (and has asked) me whether I am addressing her. (I did not mention this to my father.) Instead I told him the story of Taz's (an African Grey) rescue:

For reasons surpassing understanding, Taz's wing feathers had gone unclipped to the point he was flighted, and he doesn't have a travel cage. So when DMB needed to bring Taz somewhere, she stepped him, who allowed no one but JHT to touch him--up on a perch and brought him outside, whereupon he took off. But he's a captive bird and his wind gave out when he was a ways out over the pond, and down he went. DMB, who is afraid of water and cannot swim, stood on the edge of the pond and screamed as Taz flapped desperately to keep himself afloat. The noise brought out a neighbor and the neighbor's guest, and the guest threw himself into the pond--which might have alligators and snapping turtles in it--and swam out and got the bird, swimming back three-limbed and carrying Taz in one hand. When they got back to shore, Taz looked at his rescuer and said, "Good job!" The rescuer was Austrian and needed that translated. And then, when DMB shook her finger at Taz and said, "Just wait until I tell your daddy what you did!" Taz said, "Uh-oh."

My dad liked that.

gym

Precor Elliptical, 40', incline 20/20 (I still don't know the percentage), resistance 10/20 to 12/20. Warm up, 5' @ ~125 spm; work out 25" @ >130 spm; cool down 10' @ sufficient spm to average 130 spm overall.

Current goal, just to write it down: 20' sustained 150 spm.

dark frigate

I never read Robert Louis Stevenson's novels so the closest children's piracy novel for me is Peter Duck. Charles Hawes is somewhat more serious than Arthur Ransome, and the first half or so is of the finest swashbuckliness I could want. Hawes didn't expect to die ony two years after this won the Newbery, because it's set up for a sequel--even in 1924--in a way that The Story of Dr. Dolittle, in 1922, is not (Dr. Dolittle's adventures are each independent of the others). The protagonist--not nearly Will Turner, though the latter surely owes a debt to Phil--does the right thing more easily than Johnny Tremain does, but the eve of revolution shtick and the proximity of my readings made them similar.

bike

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

monday

Without a chaperone I am a lazy sot with the diet of a spoiled 7-year-old (did Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle treat a picky eater? I remember a mother calling other mothers and learning the bizarre and restricted diets of other children, but she never dealt with finickyism...did she?*). I have been tracking my poundage and fat percentage since June, with no cumulative change. Because I haven't tried, because I eat peanut butter toast and cookies and chocolate candy, because I don't exercise enough, because I am not active enough, and because my diet (and I mean "what I eat" and not Atkins or Grapefruit etc.) sucks.

So let's see what we can change.

This morning I had my teeth counted (Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing) and shined ("Firefly"--I don't think "Firefly" had dentistry but they did say "shiny" instead of "cool."). Dr. Dentist said I must have to dim my teeth for oncoming traffic, and I said yes, I am on call on Dec. 24 in case Rudolph is sick. He laughed at that, and said, "That was funny!" as if in surprise. Hmph.

Later he palpated my face, one hand in my mouth, one hand under my jaw-- checking for cancer of the chin, I guess, but reminding me that I should schedule my annual gynecological examination. This I did not tell him.

And then the cleaning! I started what is supposed to be fall but is really quadrennial cleaning. My study could wait until this winter, when supposedly I am going to paint it, but it was fun and easy so yesterday I started there. From the floor of my study to that of the den I removed the gateleg table, the futon, the floor pillows, the little bookcase, the camp mattresses, the little chest of drawers, the old Apple printer, the not-as-old photo printer, the surge protector, the two cassette tape cases that live under the futon, and the box of travel memorabilia I am never going to make into albums.

I stripped the walls of posters and photographs, dusted the ceilings and walls, emptied the two bookcases and the shelves, tipped the cases over to dust and vacuum behind them, removed the shelves to clean them, reshelved dusted books, and reorganized photographs in frames and collages. I threw out dry pens and little bits of this and that and remembered that I have an address book (a gift from PGN when I went off to college, with its address in SMS's bright pink handwriting already entered) wherein to store slips of addresses.

The purging of tapes was ruthless. ITunes has enabled me to get rid of many 20-year-old tapes that I hadn't listened to in 10 but somehow was keeping for archival or nostalgic purposes--such the Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran," which is perhaps the most embarrassing of my recent purchases. I still need Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance." ITunes should offer a wishlist as Amazon does. Now I have one 50-cassette box, way less than full.

When I put away my haul from the used book store crawl last Sunday, I discovered two copies of The Stranger, which I previously might have kept on purpose because one is RDC's Vintage edition and therefore nicer than the Signet pulp I had in high school, but that Signet matches the Signet Fall I had in college. This time I tossed it into the give-away pile. This time I discovered One Hundred Years of Solitude twice on my favorites shelf, once in a good trade paperback on the main shelf and again in pulp on the shelf constrained by the brackets to hold only pulp and no bigger books. Plus it's in the main stacks (ha!) again in pulp under G. Though not for a fourth time under M. So I tossed the worse of the two pulps.

Also, and this is huge, I actually noted the poster sizes of Starry Night and Jack in the Pulpit No. IV so that I can buy frames for them. Oo, and I should get the size of Picasso's Columbe avec Fleurs, which hangs in the den, as well. Especially since its bottom hem is all pinked from when I had the couch against that wall while painting the doors and someone amused himself by gnawing the poster.

We are having Dot Com guests in two weeks and until they are gone, Blake is not allowed on the topmost shelf, which has been his for some time. My writing books, on the second shelf, do not soldier along at the edge of the shelf but an inch back, safe from the bolt of Tash falling from above (do I have that right?). On the top shelf are art supplies in boxes, which he chews on, and a basket I was given, which I gave to him, also for chewing, and a peacock feather. But, as of last night, no poop, no chewed scraps of box and basket and feather.

Tuesday I start the den--the main library, from Kundera to Z; nonfiction; the television shrine with its shelves of CDs, VHS cassettes, DVDs, and practical books (the other nonfiction). If I got that book cataloging software, it would just feed my obsessive tendencies. I would arrange the books according to LOC (grudgingly, I admit it makes more sense than Dewey), more than they are already.

* In the Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker cure, Wetherill Crankminor won't stop eating and Pergola Wingsproggle horrifies her mother by sometimes chewing her food only 71 or 93 times instead of 100, but it is in the Bad Table Manners cure that we hear of Percy, Pamela, and Potter Penzil eating peanut butter and poppy seeds (only at night), weenies and bananas, and junk food. Dear Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

bike

Two 3.8-mile city rides.

women in love

I wasn't making any progress with Ivanhoe. No wonder it was so despised in Up the Down Staircase. What the hell is the point? If it's supposed to be an adventure novel, it needs to have more buckles swashed than its first several score pages had. Project Gutenberg had Women in Love, though, and after only a litte bit I was bowled over.

Conversations like these characters' never do happen, but they read well. Except that the Project Gutenberg text rendered all the italics as ALL CAPS and that made characters shrill and melodramatic. I turned all the stupid British "inverse commas" into quotation marks as is right and proper and then easily could find and replace quotations in contractions and possessives, but if strings of capitals can even be sought in Word, I don't know how.

And no wonder it's on the Triangle list. It seems, three chapters in, that I maybe won't hate the characters as much as I did those in Sons and Lovers, and reading it lets me understand A.S. Byatt (who did her thesis on D.H. Lawrence) better, even just her care with sensual details of physical surroundings.

Although I know Lawrence is 20th century--1920s, pretty much?--I associate him with Thomas Hardy for their rural settings (Lancashire, Wessex, it's all one), and I began this while also reading The Portrait of a Lady, so electricity and automobiles startle me more than they ought.

What struck me while reading:

All books are one book: in Messenger, one of the meals Seer and Matty cook is rabbit. One of the purposes of coal-mining, someone disdains in in Women in Love, is to cook a rabbit.

Chapter VIII reads like a parody of itself. This Gutenberg text renders all italicized text into capitals, which makes Lawrence read like J.K. Rowling (one character is named Hermione, and a chapter is entitled Moony) or like Jean Auel fan fic, which I certainly have never ever read.

Chapter XVIII: "Soon, however, they met in a kind of make-belief world. Winifred did not notice human beings unless they were like herself, playful and slightly mocking. She would accept nothing but the world of amusement, and the serious people of her life were the animals she had for pets. On those she lavished, almost ironically, her affection and her companionship. To the rest of the human scheme she submitted with a faint bored indifference."

Before chapter XXVI, I hated the characters' unreality and was left only cold by the their running hot and cold with each other. So chapter XXVI, about a chair, was a nice break. I could sit back and think platonic thoughts for a while.

Isn't this a which splice or something similar? "Every woman he comes across he wants to make her in love with him." The sentence would be correct without the accusative pronoun. I mean "her," but this book throws in so much French and German that I want to retaliate with Latin.

With the exceptions of the scenes or chapters above, I mostly hated it, because the characters were so unreal. The end slightly redeemed what had gone before but did not justify it.

counry of the pointed firs

A delightful listen, read with a believable, to my ear, set of Down Easter accents. RDC had this Sarah Orne Jewett book for a UConn grad class in what subject I forget. Otherwise I don't know how I might have heard of it.

bike, no swim; and my little boy

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

I was going to swim this afternoon, really I was, but RDC called me at 3:42 to tell me that he had just nearly shut Blake's head in the closet door and was going to the vet. I stayed at work until 5:15, because working was better than biking or being home alone.

Immediately after the accident, Blake was hyperventilating, shaking his head, and huffing. Pain could have made him hyperventilate; he always shakes his head when he doesn't like something (being told no, the taste of icky food, loud unexpected noises); and he huffs when he's scared. His eyelids drooped on the ride down, until partway there, when he started chattering to things and acting more like himself.

I was about halfway home on my bike when RDC called me again. Dr. Vet looked into Blake's ears and eyes and saw no signs of trauma or bleeding. He said birds have tough skulls, for flying into things by accident (and maybe for rapping on things: sometimes Blake attacks a window with his beak as if he hoped the glass might be another big-horned ram). Blake perched on the previously terrifying scale-perch all by himself instead of having to be shut into the scale-basket like a hamster. He is 92 grams, which is a great weight for him (last year his 93 grams was "medium to medium-plus, which is fine," and I would rather he be "great" than fine, but can a gram make that much difference?).

I assembled a microwave cart while Blake chewed on interesting parts of a wheelie suitcase and put Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. 4 in a frame while Blake chewed on the faux poster insert. We all three had pasta for dinner and Blake ate two whole pieces of rotini. And now I'm watching "ER" and typing and petting buddy head.

I didn't swim, but Blake seems fine.That's all I need.

what i really think of me

How do I deal with the giddy? Where is the balance between giddy and sullen?

Yesterday I was feeling at the top of my game. I had my hair cut Wednesday and it looks faboo, I have to say. That evening RDC wanted to go to Mezcal and I said fine, for two reasons: you want to go and I want to show off my great hair. Thursday I wore the Boob Shirt and the Perfect Skirt to work, along with the new hair, and, giddily, I greeted CoolBoss by saying "Please to admire my gorgeous haircut" (obligingly, she replied, "It's fabulous"). At my performance evaluation last week, I repeated my fear that NCSL is not getting its money's worth out of me, and Coolboss said that if that were true, I would have known it by now, that I know her well enough not to doubt she'd've previously addressed it. We also discussed my lack of proofreading such that projects have too much back and forth, plus a new project that I might get responsibility for if I can get proper training. So yesterday I tracked in Schedule+ the various tasks that occupied my time, and glory be, I didn't slack all day, with my booklist or a Project Gutenberg novel or the Suspects.

When I submitted a presentation for her review, I had made a second copy for Ernie. Only in the course of reviewing it for some issues he still needed to resolve for its completion did I notice a few proofreading errors. I printed it again and replaced the old version in her inbox, without eye contact or conversation because she was talking with two people in her office (in an open-door way). Still looking at Ernie's numbers, I noticed an oversight on my part more significant than crossing a t. I corrected it, printed again, swapped it again. This time I caught her eye and we grinned at each other in complete understanding of what was happening. Giddy.

CoolBoss and I always get an error message when we eject and remove her USB memory stick, whose proper name I don't know, even though we don't just pull it from its port but choose "eject" from its software. Ernie was trying to save a presentation to the stick on his machine yesterday and couldn't, getting an error message about installing hardware, that made no sense. When I returned to my cube with the stick to copy it from my system, Big Bird was there trying to duplicate my IE errors.

I had previously left voicemail for him, the one guy in IT I like--Big Bird because he is tall and because I regularly call Ernie by his name and vice versa, despite utter lack of physical or personal resemblance, despite Ernie being in my department and Big Bird not, only because their names are similar--because Explorer is doing two odd things: View Source is not opening Notepad to display the html, and returning to any database-driven page always needs the page refreshed, even if you submitted something through the page and are immediately returning. Big Bird thought the latter might be a security thing that IT has recently installed to prevent user errors, except that I told him it happens at Amazon.com too, even though I would never use Amazon at work. Giddy.

While I had him there, I asked about the memory stick. Big Bird told me that our security is set very high because ya ya ya and systems have to be individually set and permissions allowed for them to work. So Dot Org would rather we use floppies, which no one uses anymore, or CDs, which are a waste of resources, instead of a reusable, more portable, more universal, overall more sensible medium? He alleged that not this but security is the reason, but since this is a "side" effect of the interdict, the interdict should be reviewed. One does not counter IT at Dot Org, but there I was. Giddy.

He didn't know what was causing either of the two IE problems and told me I always have interesting questions. I do like that I have real questions and not "what is the keyboard combination to save" or irritating things like lisa-chip issues, where something misbehaves until a witness arrives and, under lisa-chip mandates, then behaves correctly. But I was sitting on my desk, legs crossed and hands clasped over a knee, in my own mind not behaving flirtatiously and to any mind not speaking flirtatiously or on flirtatious topics, but I don't know whether I was a) fun coworker having silly conversation about whatever is causing these issues or b) mutton dressed as lamb behaving unprofessionally. Giddily, I didn't care.

Big Bird devised another way to webbify PowerPoint presentations, saying it was superior to PowerPoint's default way. In some ways it might be, but his way omits notes. During his tutorial Wednesday when I observed this omission, he said that it was an advantage because you don't want your audience to see your notes. I acknowledged that sometimes that's true ("Say something witty here. Be sure not to take Mr. X's sure-to-be-stupid questions") but that sometimes notes are useful because they give more information than a slide, e.g. data that support a chart, and what would be his solution if we wanted notes? That was a good point, he said, and so the flash device and IE thing the next day continued my pattern of asking interesting questions he cannot answer.

Pride goeth before a fall.

In the next minutes, RDC called me, nauseated and panicky, about Blake. I noticed two things: one, the abrupt change in my mood, including stress sweat, quicker respiration and pulse, lips between my teeth; two, that despite this utterly reasonable catalyst, I continued functioning, working and being productive, and how much that was in contrast to my all-systems shutdowns in response to similarly stressful stimuli up to about a year ago.

Tangentially, RDC asked a couple of times how could he live with himself had he done that thing I can't type. Welcome to my world, I didn't unkindly say. I didn't cause Percy's death as obviously as this would have been, but I was responsible, and I didn't notice his illness until it was too late. So his world would have been much worse. But it is not, because Blake is probably just fine. We are Observing him for 48 hours, but last night he played in his box and wanted to help brush beaks and devoured pasta and otherwise had a healthy appetite, so I am going with Fine.

So last night my mood was even: fine, content, not giddy, not overly anxious about Blake. Ernie assigned me a couple of tasks to do "by Friday morning" and it occurred to me after I left that I had my usual shrinkydink on Friday morning. So I emailed another assistant asking her to follow up, but after RDC and Blake got home and I calmed the rest of the way down, I realized I already had done at least 75% of the work so I emailed her again taking her off the hook.

This morning, giddy again. By the alarm clock I woke from an unusual (for me), and very hot (not unusual) dream. In my bathrobe, on the couch, with the throw wrapped around my feet, I wrote it out, gradually falling back asleep until RDC's alarm rang at 7 and again at 7:10, when I finally got up. I made tea (which I mention because it's a rarity and therefore might have influenced my mood) and was on time for Shrink. I talked her ear off. I finished the sentence I had begun writing in the waiting room, then with the prop of my journal was compelled to tell her about the dream (even though the bit that interested me didn't have the anxiety element that is usual), and everything above. (I had the tea in my water bottle bracket and didn't begin drinking it until I got to the clinic, so I really can't blame the giddiness on the tea.)

I talked, giddily, about my difficulty striking a balance between giddy and sullen. There is a range between utterly self-absorbed and so determined not to be self-absorbed that I paralyze myself into silence.* Both are means self-absorption. Sometimes I am happy or comfortable enough in my own skin that I am not conscious of this range but merely am. Sometimes. What I want to do is be confident enough that my periods of awareness ("I'm aware...of my own tongue!" **) are shorter and rarer, and deservedly not self-aware. Deserving not to be because I actually am not rude or self-absorbed or utterly boring.

* This is another instance of my beloved Evolution of Jane:
"'You're so literal-minded and fanciful at the same time.'
"I was, wasn't I? A black hole, sucking up the world around me to metaphorize it out of all recognizability."
At either end of the range, I suck up the world around me to metaphorize it into lisaisms and lisaness.

** Linus, to Lucy. Moments later, Lucy gets all mad because now she, too, is aware of her tongue.

I told Shrink a story from grad school. At an end-of-fall-semester party, someone commented, "You drink so much water! That must be great for your skin." I do drink a lot of water, both a large volume of fluid and in contrast to more common beverages, and also conspicuous at a party where most people are drinking alcohol. I did not infer an insult, and I do not think the person implied one, but I was so self-absorbed in my own misery, in small part comprising my relatively-for-me bad skin that year, that I focused on only the skin bit. I said something like, "and god knows my skin needs it." Daniella's face clearly showed that she thought I was responding to a perceived insult and that she had not intended one and that I was a loon for reacting so. I saw all this in her face but whether I could have redeemed myself or tried to, I don't remember.

At the beginning of that school year, after an organized fête, I had gone out for a drink with Daniella and another Medieval Studies student. We didn't know each other well, but we were 20something women in grad school together, so intimacies came thrice as fast as they might have otherwise. I remember the third saying that although she was in her 20s, she had never had a relationship, and I was surprised (but not shocked) that she disclosed "but I'm not, you know, a virgin: I've done the barfly bit...." So following this lead I said I had recently ended a major relationship and my ex was in the grad program and yoikes, how awkward and stressful. I know I told Daniella and Third that; I am sure I also reeled through my woe-is-I shtick and griped about how quickly he'd hooked up again.

Some time later I was asking a friend of the ex, Tor, why the ex and I couldn't get along. Tor had been my friend as well, but only through the ex, and, I gradually realized, now made nice with me only for tactical gossip reasons. I had asked outright, so Tor said (among other things) that it hadn't gone over well with Ex that I told "everyone" about the situation: for example, when Ex himself befriended Daniella, connecting him with me she exclaimed, "Oh, you're the one." (I was indiscreet that year, I know that now; I knew it pretty soon afterward, on the upswing from my nadir.)

But this is about Daniella, generalizing (metaphorizing, thank you Cathleen Schine) from my relationship with her to my relationship with the world at large. Later yet than this, an actual friend and I were talking about how the department perceived me, given my lunacy and misery and indiscretion. He said that he could think of only one person who disliked me besides than the obvious, and that was Daniella. Besides that I believed him without difficulty, later later yet than that, when RDC and Daniella chatted and he mentioned he was dating me, though she was verbally polite about it, it was evident to RDC she doubted his taste. I earned her dislike fair and square.

If it wasn't HEB then I don't remember who told me--I obviously must have been an undergrad--that people generally liked me because I met them expecting to be liked, or at the least not worrying whether I would be liked. At the time, that was true, though I had never articulated it. My self-absorption meant I met people openly, unworried about their approval or acceptance and without agenda. It also meant that I treated them without tact or sympathy, but, as I've mentioned before, in college I interacted with a large enough pool of potential that I could find and befriend people for whom I worked.

Now it's after lunch. I interrupted myself three paragraphs back to have yogurt and fruit with Kal, and since then I have written just the three paragraphs, finishing the thread I began before. I was reluctant to interrupt myself, and I'm not sure if it's good that chatting with Kal grounded me or bad that I cannot recreate, reclaim, the morning's giddiness and loquacity. Instead of giddy, I'm just happy. Besides, I've probably said all this before.

Instead I'll repeat what I told her. Wednesday as RDC and I walked to Mezcal, we passed a woman with a dog. I hope this woman lives in my neighborhood because I totally want to be her new best friend. (Now, see, should I have said that to Kal? Are we already good enough friends that that wouldn't hurt her feelings, that she knows I mean that both lightly and sincerely?) The dog was Lab-esque, but smaller, with white speckles and one white sock. Of course I had to meet it, and she was happy enough for that to happen. I asked the dog's name, and she said Milo.
"Really?" I asked, delighted. "After The Phantom Tollbooth?"
"No," she said, "Milo was the name of my invisible friend when I was little. And I looked it up, and it means security."
It's a great name! with a great reason behind it! and the fact that she would tell a perfect stranger about her invisible friend means that either she is a loon or really cool, either of which works for me.

Earlier we met a Welsh Corgi named Bat. "Bat?" I asked--had I heard right? "Does he have such big ears?" They didn't look so very prominent to me.
"When he has fur is clipped, his ears stand out much more," the man explained.
I told him there is another Corgi in the neighborhood, named Opie. That dog was his too, so I must have met his wife, he put together. Like I asked her name (<--that explains everything about me, right there).

Hm, I didn't remember about the Corgis with Kal. Her family name their pets for Andy Griffith characters, so I should. Also I should find some Andy Griffith on Nickolodeon sometime, because its theme song is one of the most common things cockatiels whistle.

And ha, I began with Mezcal and ended with Mezcal, so I did kind of wrap up. Mleah.

bike and swim

Bike 8.3 miles and swim 1250 meters. I was glad to be back in the water on such a gorgeous afternoon, and glad to be swimming, calm, methodical, back, forth, but I managed to get one of my headaches in the water, which is stupid.

bike

Two 3.6-mile city rides. I improvised a way around the one actual hill without adding any mileage, I think. I will measure the next time I drive. Evidently I am all about reducing the exercise impact as much as possible.

good stuff

As I was hanging out laundry, RDC came to the back door with Nisou on the phone. She is coming home! for two months! with Emlet and Siblet! and I am going to join her, tra la. Unfortunately, not toward the end when both SPG and SEM will also be in Connecticut, nor earlier than that, when PLT and his family will be; but I take what I can get. Emlet told me about her favorite book with Max, M-a-x spells Max, and about her pony ride--at first she was scared and then she wasn't; and I heard about Siblet's progress.

Then I had lunch with Lucy, Koroshiya, and Jared in Cherry Creek. Frequently and overly self-aware and chi-chi Cherry Creek is notable because at first I snarked at a woman walking by with three Highland terriers in Harley harnesses--harnesses instead of leashes because dustmops are so hard to control--but then she clipped those harnesses to the sidecar of her retro motorcycle and drove off and I wanted to marry her even though she didn't wear a helmet or restrain her shoulder-length hair while riding. Of both snark and facetious lust I spoke at a normal volume, so I should have expected that the woman at the next table would say of the dogs' tack that they have leather helmets as well and so clearly knew my victim. Hi, I'm subtle.

I have no idea what happened on the rest of Saturday, but Sunday RDC made us pancakes for breakfast and we hung the pantry doors and then I attacked the backyard while he cleaned his office. I combed the grassesque and weeded and mowed it, added the clippings to the compost (and admired the mouse tunnel from the asparagus-strewn top surely leading to the warm interior), added the last of last year's leaves to the other compost, ruthlessly watered both composts (and didn't drown any mice this time that I noticed). Also I took the big pots of dead annuals off the porch columns.

We tried a new fastish "Tuscan" grill for dinner, and took a long walk through the park and the autumn color, and, let me repeat, hung the pantry doors. It makes a huge difference in the doneness of the kitchen, white paneled doors instead of shelves of boxes of food.

And then, oh gods, dinner on Monday. We got to be tasters for an upcoming executive dinner at Adega. The sommelier matched wines with each different dish--two different dishes for each course, and six courses. I decided to try wine, and I don't know if I should be congratulated for trying something new or cautioned that I am an alcoholic waiting to happen. We had champagne before an amuse-bouche of puréed leek tartlet with tomato jam; different white wines with our soups (amaranth with pomegranate-stuffed acorn squash and spaghetti squash with almond); again with the entrées we selected (tangerine-drenched pheasant breast and foie-gras braised fluke); and reds with the ones the sommelier gave us (prosciutto-wrapped gurnard and albacore tuna); and reds again with our plats, monkfish and crown of rabbit.

Sorry about the rabbit, Haitch. It was my last rabbit, presented in a rack just like lamb (leading RDC to call it rack-o-rabbit, or wacko-wabbit, and many Thumper, Watership Down, and Bugs Bunny jokes.

And then two ports with our desserts, a half-baked chocolate-port cake with blackberry ice cream and bittersweet chocolate crumble with hazelnut brittle.

I liked the white wines and the port. The reds, RDC decreed, were more complicated and more of an acquired taste. I'm not surprised I liked the port: it was very sweet.

Also I got to wear my blue velvet beaded dress and my new silvery grey satin slingbacks. That was fun.

bike

I nearly stayed at work overnight--well, I stayed a whole hour late--because I so dreaded getting my overfed body back on the bike. But I managed.

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

luxury

A cold rain fell over night, and this was going to be the first time I would call Kal for a ride. I reset my clock for an hour later, except I didn't set the alarm but the time. So when I got up, the clock read that I was half an hour late to work already. I panicked and asked RDC if I could drive, and wow was I late, and he didn't need the car and his own clock gave the correct time and I wasn't late.

But it was raining, so I wore contacts, and I showered at home in a much nicer shower than the work one, and I wore a new suit I scored at Sweatshops R Us; and I had a cold slice of pepperoni and mushroom pizza for lunch; and I spent the day manipulating Census Bureau data in Excel, figuring out the best way to present information graphically. Except at the end of the day, when I downloaded Main Street and The Way of All Flesh from Project Gutenberg to fill in the gaps. I finally read more than 10 pages at a time of Gertrude and Claudius, which I am loving, and RDC made stuffed chicken breast and perfectly steamed, garlicky snowpeas for dinner, with apple crisp and cinnamon ice cream for afters. I am watching the debate, which is giving me indigestion, but I have my iBook and Blake is napping on my knee.

Life is pretty good.

wimping out

Biking to the gym, I was thinking smugly about the climate, that in the morning I needed a thin sweatshirt and full gloves to bike to work but in the afternoon I could still swim (in an 78-degree pool) outside. And then I saw the chop on the water and considered the breeze I had combatted on the way, and stood on the second step and considered the water around my knees in the 60-degree air, and then gave up and swam my K in the indoor pool. I am concerned that swimming in 82-degree water all winter will do away with what facility I have left for cold water.

But this is a much nicer indoor pool than the Gollum's pool at 24-Hour Fitness: most of the west wall is glass, and skylights give light as well.

8.3 miles bike and 1K swim.

more cleaning

Next I tackled the television shrine. I took down all the CDs, which weren't that filthy, having been upstairs being ripped into iTunes within the past half year; and all the DVDs, some of which were dustier than others (in what alien world would we possess "K-Pax"?); and all the VHS cassettes; and all the books. Also I dusted and mopped under the extremely attractive crates that keep the electronics off the floor near the previously flooding corner. That was filthy.

The CDs weren't that bad. I allow some lapses from strict alphabeticalness, keeping Peter Gabriel, Genesis, and Godspell together and then Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. There wasn't much to weed, as that happened when we ripped. The DVDs also were okay, mostly because there are so few. Relatively few, maybe. I moved the books to the other side and took up more shelves with them, so the house and garden binders no longer block access to the how-to books.

The VHS tapes were a different story. I might have broken Blake's heart by removing so many from his shelf, but I can give him plenty of chew toys more appropriate than the cellophane from blank tapes or their cardboard slip cases. I kept some homemade VHS, since "Lisa and Rich's New House, Tour 2000" is for some reason not availabe on DVD, but most of them I trashed.

Whatever design genius built the television shrine didn't consider that inside corner shelves need bookends. Previous CD bookends were cassettes of the first albums I replaced on CD--Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Murmur, Disintegration, the merest essentials--and now I stacked VHS tapes in the corners.

Blake has almost the entire right top shelf and I will tape a length of cardboard to its underside so I don't have to scrub the lower shelves and their contents every week but must only replace the cardboard. He won't have VHS cassettes' shrinkwrap or cardboard slipcases to chew on but he has plenty of regular chewtoys. All I have to do is scold him when he chews on a shoelace or peacock feather or blowcard for him to find it fun. He loves to be naughty.

He fell absolutely in lust with the series of dustrags I used. Obviously these could not be his chew- or fucktoys. He whined on his shelf, he whined on my shoulder, he whined in his box (which I then upended to trap him, because with pets, that's legal, thank goodness, and what a pain in the ass), he whined unless in direct courtship with the rag. RDC came down at one point and had great fun playing single-handed monkey-in-the-middle with Blake, tossing a rag, letting Blake nearly catch up to him, and tossing it in the opposite direction. That's the reason for a housecleaner, so whoever's cleaning the house isn't someone whom Blake expects to accompany and command.

The CD selection is unlikely to grow very fast anymore, thanks to iTunes--I wish there were a similar service for film. But I freed up some space for more books on woodworking and wiring and, ahem, sewing. I am supposed to make cushions for the eventual kitchen nook. I laugh hollowly.

offshore

My fifth Penelope Fitzgerald. I love how she uses a small detail to illustrate an entire facet of someone's personality, and how quietly she'll sneak in something equally quietly but inescapably funny.

saturday

I attacked the house. Some parts of it didn't need that excruciatingly thorough a drubbing because I delivered that severe a treatment in my first efforts after we dismissed the housecleaners. They didn't do the corners or behind the furniture, but they kept the main areas more clean on a more regular basis than I have yet. Whatever.

I weeded my closet, clothes and shoes; I removed all the shoes and suctioned out gritty, dusty accumulations beneath and on them; I dusted, swept, vacuumed and mopped the upstairs; I polished the stainless steel in the kitchen; and my scrubbing the bathroom included emptying and cleaning and weeding the medicine cabinets. But I didn't launder and iron the curtains or empty the dead moths from the ceiling light in the living room. And as soon as a guest showed up I noticed a dancing shadow on the kitchen wall cast by a defunct cobweb in one of the recessed lights.

I'd met the Canuck before and he is delightful and enthusiastic and a good conversationalist; I hadn't met the other but he was sweet too and managed to contain British bewilderment at the size of our fridge and the steaks to polite interest. The Brit was from Norwich, which I eventually connected with Coot Club, and he showed me in the frontispiece map where he lives and sails. At one point Blake jumped to the floor to prance into the kitchen, where we were congregated, and I swooped him up safe from our feet and the giant Squash-You-Flat, who I think is one of the BFG's compatriots? The Canuck then asked if wasn't Roald Dahl also the author of Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, which isn't offered even used at Amazon. AmazonUK lists it with author Mordecai Richler, but the Canuck barely remembered it and it has no reviews. That was funny. And then the Canuck made the mistake of saying that the first and last lines of Watership Down were the same, which they are not (though primroses appear in both); plus he called RDC a gourmand instead of a gourmet; and it was all in fun that I produced the texts to settle these points. Both the Canuck and the Brit scoffed at poor Noah Webster. Hmph.

It was a fun night.

all books are one book

All books are one book:

In Vernon God Little, Ella Bouchard; in Main Street, Ella Stowbody (not that the name Ella is that uncommon or that the characters are similar. In the former, the family name Gurie; in the latter, Gurrey; plus, in Nightbirds on Nantucket, gurry is the slimy residue left over from rendering whale oil.

Reading Main Street, set in Minnesota in the 1920s, makes me think about Betsy's Wedding, whose time I know only because of Betsy and the Great World. I really don't want Betsy to turn into Carol, but then Joe isn't Will Kennicott or even a doctor. But Whatsisname the Laurie character* from Anne of Green Gables is, isn't he?

*Gilbert. Sorry.

corn maze

Kaland I went to a corn maze today. Thank heavens the maze was printed, though an inch square, on our tickets, because otherwise I'd be in there yet. The Botanic Gardens called it the most challenging yet, and it was at least devious. I wanted to get to the tip of Chapungu's beak, because that seemed like the heart of the five acres. We went through the words, which were good to orient ourselves by and led to my insisting on recognizing an E as an E when I ought to. C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair. A bridge at the base of the spine of the R in "Denver" led not to the eagle's left wing but to a loop without an outlet--the printed maze was small enough, and the actual maze lacking enough in traps and monsters, that we didn't plan ahead. When I thought we were in the southeast corner but then I saw the bridge again, I swore, because I'm a class act in front of your children, and because the foothills were behind, not in front of me, but it was, aha, a second bridge. This one carried you deviously over, instead of to, the path to get out, so we twisted and turned some more, and I made bad puns about dead Ns, and I might have crawled through the desert gasping for nutrients in the last few yards but--as with a national park--being so close to the trail head meant there were stacks of people, so I didn't.

The maze is open until 8, and it would be fun in the dark, I guess. Maybe. A flashlight doesn't reveal a whole letter at once, or shed enough light to show the foothills (and thus the compass points). When I got home I saw an email indicating that Denver No Kidding was supposed to have gone at 12:30. The group's expanded, and they're not all or even mostly kid-haters, I think, but I'm glad to have gone as I did, with Kal. If I'd gone with RDC he would've wanted a GPS and a slide rule, and if I'd gone with No Kidding, would I have had to listen to complaints about how the place swarmed with littluns, as if this were or should be an adult-only affair? Or been part of an indecisive mob with a lower common denominator than Kal and mine? Because ours was fairly high, and all the kids I encountered only enthusiastic (and decisive).

Haitch, come back: I know where to have your birthday party!

I bought a pumpkin that I hope will orange up in the next couple of weeks, and we discussed Hallowe'en costumes. She was recently Between a Rock and a Hard Place and I am considering being Macaroni this year, if I can find a cap to stick a feather into. After the strain of nearly having to cannibalize the nearest Girl Scout in the rigors of the maze, we required dessert. Of course. I had a milk shake, a proper milkshake of a proper size (meaning, with the extra (and there was extra) served in the silver mixing cup alongside), hooray, and spent the evening reading Vernon God Little in Vito the reading chair.

Blake weighted my shoulder and preened: I'd showered him in the morning so he was a marvel of not dust but filoplume, and without dust his feathers lay sleek and almost shimmering, but he was so busy preening that I wasn't allowed to snort him.

vernon god little

I have to look up why DBC Pierre earned the Booker for this. I thought that prize went only to British commonwealth authors. The publisher has offices in Edinburgh and New York, so maybe that's it. Aha! Although the author blurb says merely that he split his first 25 years mostly between Mexico and Texas (only in Texas is that a parallel pair), he was born in Australia and now lives in Ireland. But I still need to find out why a pen-and-ink drawing of a capybara appears in the front matter, when the book is the lesser for its lack of capybaras (as so many are) and the animal doesn't seem to be the publisher's device.

Pierre's figures of speech are hysterical and original and his mother and her "friends" remind me of the mother in The Corrections. I loved his voice and style.

This book is the third I've read in less than 10 months drawing from the assault at Columbine High School (the others were Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! and Francine Prose's After). The Coupland was okay, and I thought this was great, but they're my last Ripped From Today's Headlines (at least that one) novels for a while.

bike

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

my kind of ratio

The reason for the frenetic housecleaning was not just fall or the two dinner guests on Saturday but RDC's conference this week, and his having his group work at (sadly, not on: they failed to remodel the bathroom or build the nook) the house today and tomorrow.

In the evening we all went to Mezcal, and I have to recommend being the only female in a table of 12. I was hardly fawned over, as if Satine dropping among a bunch of men smelling of teen spirit "Moulin Rouge", but it was fun. I continued my conversations with the Brit and the Canuck and had new ones with the Aussie, the Fiancé, and the Southie, who wasn't a Southie but if there's a name for Northies I don't know it. I can distinguish Rhode Island from Worcester from Southie, but Southie from that of the northern suburbs I cannot.

bike

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

swim

1K in the indoor pool.

It was so warm and lovely when I left work that I was sure I could swim outside, but without sun on the water the pool feels a lot colder. And I left work late then bought 120 pounds of black-oil sunflower seeds, so by the time I arrove, the sun had gone.

tired

Please let it only be that I am out of shape. Lately I have been getting headaches and I'm tired--now to the point that I sleep too much--and I am fairly sick of it. I attended a fairly dull tutorial today and noticed only a quarter of the way through that I was falling asleep. I must not do this. From somewhere or other I remembered that rubbing your earlobes is supposed to invigorate you. I put both amethysts in one ear and commenced work on the other, expecting to fall asleep over even this. I can understand Tina's fascination with the earlobe: it's so soft. Nobody's Fool, and in Enchanted Broccoli Forest, the author recommends the bread has been kneading enough when it's the consistency of an earlobe. Maybe she'd be a good baker.

menagerie

Kal brought me whither she is house-sitting. Two dogs, two cats plus her own, a fish, and a green-wing macaw named Picasso.

Without Picasso's beloved human around, she deigned to accept affection from Kal and even some attention from me. I even got to do some wing-pit petting, so very soft and warm. Blake doesn't like his wingpits touched, and of course altogether is too small to stroke with the full hand, so this was a treat for me. Mostly I had a lap full of dog, which was great. And I still got to watch and listen to the parrot: dancing to various blues songs (mostly wobbling her neck like Tim Blake Nelson in "O Brother Where Art Thou"), or doing her Stevie Wonder imitation, ripping up blowcards (the parrot favorite, and an eye-popping illustration of the size difference between Blake's and Picasso's beaks), asking for cracker (anything that goes in the mouth is "cracker"), holding a strand of spaghetti in one reptilian claw and eating the whole thing without dropping it (about eight strands), and, whenever we were out of the room, calling for her human beloved (Kal's uncle) in a heart-rending, irresistible voice. You know how humans are genetically programmed to consider babies' cries unbearable? She figured out that sound.

The lapful of dog and everything else was lovely but I had to get home and snuggle my little buddy before bed.

another session

Wheee! I'm a geek.

Yesterday we had a brown bag lunch to discuss state elections and ballot measures. Encee, who led the discussion, started with a trivia quiz. I didn't know the obviously Dot Org minutiae like in which state is someone retiring after 64 years in legislative service (Georgia), or in which state a leader was indicted (Wisconsin). When he asked which state's state flower was the peony and state tree the tulip (poplar), no one knew; and when he offered that it's a midwestern state that begins with I and the room answered with one voice, "Iowa," we were all wrong (it's Indiana). But when he asked which state's state pie is the apple and state horse the Morgan, I immediately and singly called out "Vermont!" And I was right.

Afterward Encee and I happened to meet in the stairwell and he asked how I had known that. "Children's books," I answered promptly. "Marguerite Henry wrote lots of books about horses, Misty of Chincoteague, about that colony of wild horses off the coast of Virginia," and at this point I heard someone begin to descend the staircase above us, "and she won the Newbery for King of the Wind, about one of the first Arabians, who came to England under George II." Now the person descending was abreast of me and was UrBoss. I grinned that he heard me geeking out but was the more prompted to wrap up. "And she wrote Justin Morgan Had a Horse, about the man who developed the Morgan in the early 19th century? late 18th? in Vermont."

Encee asked what sort of horse this was, particularly. UrBoss said that hearing Vermont had surprised him because it's a horse he associates with the South, and I said that as far as I know it's on the smaller side, in a compact, sturdy, strong way, a good work horse, not as much a riding horse as the Tennessee Walker or American Saddle horse, which I associate with the (antebellum) South. And that Morgans were often used for police horses.* Encee laughed and said "Children's books, eh?" and UrBoss smiled, appreciatively and amusedly, in my direction. This inspired me to add that Almanzo Wilder, who would grow up to marry Laura Ingalls (a name Encee recognized, unlike Chincoteague or Newbery), had Morgans on his boyhood farm in upstate New York.

* I don't know if that's true in general, but in Henry's Album of Horses, or in the last chapter of Justin Morgan, was a story of a Morgan who helped a police officer guide people away from a fire. In Denver the police horses are donated and are Morgan, thoroughbred, or even quarterhorse.

This is the kind of encounter that has to be okay. I long for it to be okay. I know to watch that I don't go into to much detail, because the map of South America that Phantom had on her flank isn't pertinent to Justin Morgan, but mentioning Henry's two best-known titles and naming the Newbery to give her legitimacy before a one sentence description of the book that answered Encee's question, please let that be okay. And he asked about the kind of horse, and UrBoss joined us, so it was a conversation instead of a monologue, right? Please?

Because two weeks ago? When I was all giddy? and in the midst of gidst I had what I thought was a loquacious, not particularly guided, but wheee! giddy and geeky session with my shrink demonstrating the loft of my mood? She thought I was upset with her.

Such that last Friday, when I for the first time forgot my appointment, she thought maybe I was subconsciously avoiding her/therapy. What do I do with that? I haven't been getting up on time and forgetting was a stupid effect from that stupid lack of discipline, no more. When she called me at 8:20 as I sat placidly at the dining table drinking coffee waiting for Kal to pick me up, did my "Omigod it's Friday I am so sorry" sound fake?

Shrink today offered me a couple of things I said or did two weeks ago to make her ask: on our way into the office, she stopped in the hallway to talk to a colleague. I interjected that if I didn't stop as well it was because I don't expect her to treat me like a social peer, introducing me to her cohort, and if I walked along, it was because I didn't belong in their conversation. She finished, saying I said something like "I'll see you in there" or "I'll leave you here" or something that (even now, three hours after she mentioned it today) I don't remember. And I see that as fitting with not expecting to tag along, and also not expecting her not to make an important communication with her colleague just because it's my hour. She had seen it as exactly that last, though, as a "well when you deign to give me your time I'll be waiting." Then during the session when I mentioned my haircut, apparently I said something about how she wouldn't understand, which I meant in an I-always-come-to-the-clinic-on-my-bike-wearing-a-ponytail kind of way but which she took as a you-don't-understand-good-hair or worse kind of way.

So what the hell. When I'm at the top of my game is when I make everyone else feel worst, and only by suppressing myself, on purpose or, after months of purpose, by fucking depression, can I refrain from random insults. Except not even then.

She did admit that it was her mistake not to address what she saw as a problem two weeks ago instead of waiting for our next session, which (by my forgetfulness) was two instead of one week later and meant that I can't remember these incidents--meeting the colleague in the hall, my exact wording about my hair.

And I had so enjoyed the gidst.

And my geeking out with too much information about children's books has to be better than the previous occasions in which I've answered merely, "I read."

This, actually, was pretty funny. In Renaissance history we were talking about the wool trade and the professor was eliciting from us wool's advantages as a fiber in damp climates for poor people. He had practically already told us when I remembered, "Oh! Wool keeps you warm even when it's wet!" He asked, in a how-did-you-know-that way, "Do you knit?" and I said, "No, I read." And everyone laughed. I don't remember where I picked that up, but it was neither in the class's texts nor in an academic book.

Another time, in a class on comedy--reading the Rumpole story about the brothel--I answered a posed question what the old boys' network was and how it was named. The professor, having his answer, continued, but there was murmuring behind me about how I, the prep, would know that. Or something; the only reason I remember this is that it happened only two years after the incident above and I wanted to retort, "No, because I read," but knew better. By 1990, I wasn't compelled to respond to classmates' jeers or misunderstandings.

I am still compelled, though I hope I am better about judging when to yield to respond to jeers and misunderstandings.

coinage

Gidst: the midst of giddiness. Possibly the main point, or gist, of giddiness, except not, because I have a hard enough time remembering that "gist" has a soft g.

I should redo all my pages in Movable Type so they're easier to update. I haven't even added "blee" to my coinages page.

Blee: bliss + glee

bike and West Wing

Two 3.6-mile city rides, the homeward one quite chilly and windy. A wonderful fall day.

Today's brown-bag was sixth season premiere of "The West Wing." I was stupid enough not to program the season pass into TiVo and was bereft when I realized, Wednesday evening at 9, that the show airs at 8 and I had just missed it. Besides having trivia contests about the state tree of Indiana, policy wonks are also likely to be "West Wing" aficionados. So today a bunch of us watched a merciful co-worker's tape.

I am not liking the looks of this season.

the bridge of san luis rey

I began this last fall in audio, but the Audible file suddenly changed to an Arthurian myth narrated by Derek Jacobi. Which isn't a bad thing at all, but it's not Thornton Wilder.

I love how the enterwined characters make the four novellas one novel. I thought the Pulitzer prize was to be given for portrayal of U.S. life, but if it went (inexplicably) to The Stone Diaries and The Shipping News, I guess it's for American stories.

earthlings: ugly bags of mostly water

Last weekend Trish invited me to a movie, by cell phone; Wednesday I turned on my phone to get someone's number and noticed the message; also I learned that No Kidding was assembling to see "Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water," a documentary about people who speak Klingon (who did not thus describe humans; a silicon-based life-form elsewhere in "Star Trek" did). Trish was up for that. I was thinking that No Kidding could possibly be a good way for Trish as well as myself to meet Denver folks. It was my one experience (five years ago, I think) that NK people were freaks, but that was, of course, before I saw this movie. We girded ourselves with water and Timtams and entered.

The father who spoke only Klingon to his baby hoping that the child would be a native speaker? And what, as a native speaker know more words than the creator of the language has authorized? A native speaker of a language that has a grand total of 2500 words, though none for sandwich, a language that belongs to a bellicose, and let's not forget fictional and alien, culture? The kid speaks English fine for a sevenish-year-old, so whatever.

The real danger to himself and others is the fellow who, without obvious physical cause (so I assumed emotional), sounds like Elmer Fudd, describes his ex-girlfriend as a bloody Romulan despite being treated like a queen ("I brought her to all my Klingon conventions"), and, most tragically, considers proficiency in Klingon as undeniable proof of belonging to a(ny) group.

The unscripted dialog ripped hysterical and incredulous snorts and guffaws from Trish and me (and the rest of the audience), but the movie itself also was laughably bad. Was the film technique that gave Michael Dorn's epidermis the quality of looking worm-ridden deliberate? Was there a purpose to the "transitions" that I would call "filler" of water running over probable shower curtains? Did the director premeditate my newborn fear of lampshades, the movie's only, and Dr.-Who-level, prop?

Could there have been some alien intelligence behind it? The director was present--the movie was part of the Denver International Film Festival--and he was alien, being French.

the king must die

I am going to devour Mary Renault's opus. Greek myths expanded into novels: what could go wrong--in the hands of a sympathetic master of prose? Nothing. This was a great read.

gym

Precor Elliptical: 45', 5600 strides, just under 125 spm. A few bicep curls on the half-dome wiggly thing, whatever that's called, and not nearly one half of the way around the 1/12 mile track by lunging (I stopped as soon as I felt a hamstring).

In the morning I began The Shipping News but I was feeling waaay too depressed for it--the writing is bizarre without being inventive, the characters might have been better off drowned as kittens, and it reminds me of someone I miss, plus I wonder if my opinion can be separate from hers (probably not) and how pathetic that makes me (very, or call it loyal)--so I started Confederacy of Dunces instead. I read it in the whirlpool today, a little, and only a little because someone whom I first took as only annoying was TALKING AT THE OTHER WOMAN IN THE WHIRLPOOL EVEN THOUGH THE WHIRLPOOL WAS WHIRLING AND THERE'S A FAKE WATERFALL TOO AND THE ENTIRE SPACE IS, SURPRISE! TILED AND ECHOEY.

Then I took a shower, and when I came out the same woman was TALKING AT AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT VICTIM IN THE LOCKER ROOM, PLUS AT THREE OTHER WOMEN INCLUDING MYSELF WHO WERE INESCAPABLY IN EARSHOT AS WERE THE ANTIPODES. I observed without surprise that the litter of possessions--toiletries, snacks, clothing--strewn along the length of the counter and unattended when I had arrived over an hour before belonged to this woman, WHO WAS NOW NOSHING HER DRIED FRUIT AND APPLYING HER MASCARA WHILE NOT YET HAVING CLOTHED HERSELF SO SHE WAS SITTING NAKED ON A CHAIR WITHOUT BENEFIT OF A TOWEL LAYER.

I very deliberately didn't catch anyone's eye, because it's possible I have an unreasonably low tolerance for annoying people and because, whether or not that's true, it is certainly true that soliciting agreement about my annoyance with someone else would externalize and strengthen that negativity.

WHEN THAT SECOND VICTIM LEFT, FIRST GRADUALLY AND THEN SUDDENLY The Sun Also Rises, SHE THEN CONTINUED HER MONOLOGUE TO A THIRD WOMAN. HER TOPIC WAS MENOPAUSE AND HER EXACT TIMING AND SYMPTOMS AND SHE INQUIRED OF HER VICTIMS, WHOM SHE OUT-MENOPAUSED AT EVERY TURN, WHETHER THEY HAD CONSIDERED SUPPLEMENTAL ESTROGEN BECAUSE HER DOCTOR TOLD HER IT WAS NECESSARY ONLY IF YOU NOTICED YOU WERE BECOMING, NOT JUST KOOKY AS YOU'VE PROBABLY BEEN ALL YOUR LIFE, BUT NON-FUNCTIONALLY KOOKY.

Whether being told by a perfect stranger that yes, you're kooky in an above-average way that even limits other people's functionality counts as "noticing," she didn't mention, so I didn't tell her. She was a fuck of a lot less appealing than Owen Meany, anyway.

After keeping my trap shut, I ate a salad for lunch. Further signs of the apocalypse as events warrant.

ow

The humiliatingly low number of lunges I did yesterday, ceasing when I felt the first twinge, was enough to pain, though not cripple, me today. Seating myself was painful, but sitting wasn't. So what did I do today?

Life[stride?] elliptical, with handles, at least 5 minutes, until the machine I wanted opened up.

Precor Elliptical, 40', about 5' at 20/20 and the remainder at 9/20 because the lower incline purportedly to concentrate on gluteals and hamstrings. I certainly did feel it more, and currently I am somewhat hobbled.

my brother sam is dead

My ten-year-old nephew RDC2 recently read this and reported that he really identified with the main character and understood him. He has only just begun to read read, to read for pleasure, with fluency and comprehension, and this delights me, as Dicey was reassured when Maybeth, at eight or nine, read Green Eggs and Ham, late, but giggling and appreciating the silliness. The Collier brothers' book won a Newbery Honor (the afterward-like epilogue makes the deliberation behind its 1974 release obvious) for it, and Christopher Collier taught U.S. history at UConn while I was there, and the book is set in Connecticut, so RDC2's enjoying it was an excellent reason for me to skootch it up the queue.

I just recently read Johnny Tremain, Newbery Medalist, good story, good history, but Tim Meeker is more credible in his way because he doesn't just happen to fall in with the major players, as Tremain does, but lives his own life. Like Across Five Aprils, My Brother is a war story from an average child's point of view instead of from a soldier's.

main street

Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt failed to blow my skirt up; and then, associating Lewis with Upton Sinclair because of their names and period when Lewis wasn't as obvious a reactionary as Sinclair, I decided the former was boring. Main Street changed my mind. Aside from an incredible because manipulative episode fairly late in the novel, the characters, events, and plot formed a riveting microcosm of American life.

A question: Why would someone give a pregnant woman Ben-Hur "as a preventive of future infant immorality"? Because it's "a tale of the Christ" or because, for this time (late 1910s), it would have been a diverting read during confinement?

First I thought that Carol was merely a female Babbitt, and she does have her babbitty strains but Lewis is not that lazy. Then, by period and discontent, the next obvious parallels for me to draw were to Dorothy Canfield's The Homemaker. Familial and economic differences again let Carol be her own self, but not the townsfolk. If they were not drawn by the same pencil, at least their authors used the same sharpener.

Preliminary googling turns up Lewis working as a janitor in Upton Sinclair's socialist commune and also knowing Jack London. I have confused Upton Sinclair Lewis since high school, but now at least I will remember that both of them were interesting.

swim

Swam 1K, very gently.

bike

Two 3.6-mile city rides. I feel back to normal.

the shipping news

Annie Proulx cranked out her thesaurus but not her Strunk & White for this. Partly because of that article in The Atlantic but also on my own I rolled my eyes at the unnecessary sentence fragments. And the choppy sentences. Full of gerunding. Because it enhanced nothing. The author was wrong. And didn't care.

Both Lou and Minne, seeing the book on my desk, asked if I was rereading it. Is ten years old so old for a book? Both said they needed several score pages to get into it. Lou said unprompted that the style annoyed her. My sister said she gave up after a dozen pages or so. I preferred Far Afield for remote northern Atlantic outcast of Western civilization.

It reminded me of Anne Tyler, and a book does that to its peril. Hopeless, unlikeable characters living lives of quiet desperation. I say that on the (not) strength of Searching for Caleb and Breathing Lessons. My sister and Haitch love her, so I haven't written her off (as I have, say, Theodore Dreiser), but I'm not enthusiastic about anything more by her.

I should read Iris Murdoch or Eudora Welty but I'm reading Robin McKinley as a reward. Mleah.

twitchy

The Red Sox won the World Series.

I hate "The West Wing." (Okay, no, I probably don't, though Aaron Sorkin wouldn't've done what the new writers did. But still. I hate "The West Wing.")

A shadow ate the moon last night.

Now all I need is a comet to know the end times are nigh.

gertrude and claudius

I loved this. Also it makes me more hopeful about the Rabbit books than I had been previously. Also Ürboss said that it, rather than Hamlet, would be sufficient preparation for Something Rotten.

gym

Precor elliptical, 45' @ incline 20/20, resistance 12/20, 5650 strides (average 125.5+)

letter to the editor

Several weeks ago the small but valiant Lymeline in Old Lyme called the high school girls' soccer team the "lady" Wildcats. I had, months before when the site was new and the editor debating whether to continue her effort, written to say oh yes please do, how can I help, because I need my hometown news.

So I wrote again:

I'm pretty sure it was this article, which the editor has since modified. She asked if she could publish my letter, and I said I hadn't intended it as a public letter to the editor but to go ahead if she thought it would spark useful debate.

The girls' soccer coach and my ninth-grade history teacher responded:

The Usual Suspects have toughened me up, and I earned a 95 on his mid-term examination, back when I could recite all the Roman emperors in chronological order. This hasn't been posted yet:

windows and costumes

As ever on time-change days, I swapped the windows. I found a glass cleaner that, attached to the hose, makes this chore much less annoying. Cold hose water on the skin in sunny but 60-degree weather and Windex in the eye is no joy but is preferable to scads of paper towel and leaves fewer streaks. Hooray.

I pruned whatever kind of bush it is in the corner that in a high wind always makes me think the house is haunted by how rogue branches scrape either screen or glass. RDC emptied the swamp cooler for the winter. I would have continued in my filthy state to put the vegetable gardens to bed--it was only 1:30 and beautiful--but the Hallowe'en party was at 3:00. Three o'clock! for all the shorties.

Costumes were meant for kids (actually for the adults, most of the kids being too young to appreciate the holiday or to object to adorable get-ups), but I wore one anyway, inconspicuously: my regular gray french terry skirt and RDC's gray t-shirt and a home-made "Hello, My Name Is" label on the breast--my name was Earl. Earl Grey (tee).

The last time I saw Gethen was at JPM's first birthday party, when she thought I was a poorly haberdashed loon. This time we had a great time together. She is at one of those perfect ages, 3.5, and we compared belly-buttons and I tossed some sofa cushions on top of her and leaned back and her father asked where did Gethen go? and I asked JJM why the cushions had feet on them. She spoke of the advantages of cushions with feet instead of just the whole couch, and then of the advantages of giggling cushions. Gethen might not know quite the order of the letters in her name, but she does know which letters belong to it, so we spelled it out with alphabet blocks and sounded out my name too.

Her younger brother is adorably owly in spectacles. Little kid eyes are big anyway, but magnified because of hyperopia are bigger still. And Ditty, Jack and Diane's kid, is fun for seven months (I am gradually learning that people under 18 months old can be fun, though I maintain that it's rare). She was a pumpkin, interested in pulling hair (fine as long as she grabbed a fistful, but individual strands hurt) and peeling my label. There were a ladybug and a pig (when the ladybug lost her costume I had to ask which kid that was), a lion and a bumblebee and a monkey. Pynchon was the fleecey monkey, and Dexy and I dragged his crawly self back toward us, fleece offering no resistance against hardwood floor. We were demonstrating to Pynchon the futility of effort while he showed his determination in the face of adversity (which Dexy attributed to his mother). Then there was discussion of the age by which children can understand existentialism.

Later in the day I sat in one room petting Charley the cat, an excellent excuse to eavesdrop on a conversation in the next room I did not want to be explicitly involved with (it was political and heated; politics might not make me itch but heat does), though everyone knew I was there. Gethen came in asking if I would read her a story. We selected Parts, Olivia, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? and I read with her in my lap, until she said her eye hurt for the second time. The first time, I looked in it for irritants; the second time, I called her father, who identified the irritant as Charley. Poor broken child. So we finished our reading in the uncatted living room.

Gethen should not live so far away. I can't recommend Parts, but I can Olivia (I gave that to the bumblebee upon his birth), and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? was new to me. It is great, with lots of detail, and anatomically if not chromatically correct dinosaurs. And that's what I learned Saturday.

sunshine

Absolutely engrossing. A few, surprising grammatical lapses dropped me out of her world, but only briefly, because engrossing. Although its market probably exists because of Buffy, I was glad to find the story independent of the Slayer world. I read it not for Buffy but for Harry and Aerin and Robin McKinley. A wonderful, absorbing story. I'm a big enough fan of Spike that I wanted more and more Constantine, and more Constantine and Sunshine, but even the tantalizing incompleteness was satisfying.

All books are one book: there was a jeweled goblet in Gertrude and Claudius too.