2 February 1999: Blue

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I didn't fall asleep easily last night, which means my sleeplessness is working from the other direction: last week I woke at 3:30 on Friday and at 5:00 on Saturday. It also means I'm grumpy now.

Grumpinesses:

  • No orange juice, which I blamed on RTD rather than on myself.
  • Blaming ojlessness on RTD rather than on myself.
  • The suit I planned to wear is at the cleaners.
  • I still buy dryclean-only garments.
  • Victoria's Secret stopped making whatever sort of thigh-high it was whose elastic lasted almost forever or at least held up until I snagged a leg.
  • The pair I plucked was therefore only the new-again wimpy sort.
  • The new-again wimpy sort collapsed during the walk to the bus, which meant I was holding up the top of the left leg as I stumped the last few steps.
  • The emergency pair of nylons I keep at work are hose.
  • The emergency pair of hose I keep at work are nude, which I hate.
  • I particularly hate nude when I'm wearing a blackish suit.
  • I'm wearing a black houndstooth suit.
  • My heel caught in a bricked sidewalk and marred the newly repaired heel.
  • I hate to wear heels I can't walk in.
  • I hate to look at heels I can walk in.
  • I don't know what happened to my cash but I had to mooch the second dollar of my Starbucks OJ from my coworking pal.
  • In the elevator on the way back, I saw that the blind person's Guide Golden Retriever was bearded. I said, trying to be conversational, "I see your dog's getting on in years."
  • When I wanted to bitch about how tactless I am, making a visual reference to a blind person--because you have to pretend you're blind too, don't you know, for courtesy's sake--I had to remember my coworker's grandmother had just died so I'd better damn well shut up.
  • I can't think of a single redeeming thing I have thought or said yet today.
  • Except that I do love Possession.

I never go to lunch at noon but usually closer to 12:30. Today I strode purposefully toward the 'brary, all stoked for a productive hour. I found Addie Pray in the stacks and then headed for my favorite alcove, a two-storey cylinder with two layers of windows in the southwest corner that was, at this wintery noon hour, flooded with light. The octagonal table lay empty, awaiting me. I lay out my journal, my scrawling pad, Possession, The Phantom Tollbooth, Addie Pray, and my DayRunner. I unzipped my DayRunner and opened it to today.

I had a meeting at 1:00. It was 12:40.

Sigh.

I packed up, checked out Addie, and came back to Dot Org. Contributed my gilded tuppence while eating my yogurt and a package of M&Ms someone gave me last week. I still make sure to eat one handful comprising one of each color, but I must say those handsful are less satisfying now with blue in them. First, blue isn't a food color except for blueberries; second, I voted for purple; third, tan was killed for blue, which doesn't go. So after I had an assortment I tipped the bag a little farther for general eating. Not only did a bunch of blues fall out but they were followed in quick succession by a lot more oranges than had any right to be there. Abruptly I could eat no more.

My boss just called "Lisa!" Ordinarily I refuse to come to my name on the grounds I am not a dog. Furthermore, it's what my mother used to say when I had no choice about it. I thought she could at least say please. That courtesy or respect thing. But this is my Coolest Boss, and I could tell by her tone she wasn't serious, so I went in, intoning, "You rang?"

"What does 'mellifluous' mean?"

"Melodious." That consonance thing, meritorious and meretricious being the most egregious example. She was thumbing through her American Heritage. "Wait a minute," dreading being wrong, "also easy on the ear, as something is on the eye. Not necessarily songlike."

"Smoothly flowing, as honey," she read.

I skipped out and returned with my Merriam-Webster. "Second definition: having a rich smooth flow." So the voice meaning is only a connotation and the denotation is hugs the honey-meaning more closely.

"Do you always think I'm testing you? It's just that you always know."

Like I mind when she thinks I have this remarkable vocabulary. I told her about the Broncos M&Ms, too.

Tonight I'll go to step, give the kitchen a final scrub, and tackle some of the tedia that've fermented on my To Do list. The kitchen has to be scrubbed because the complex manager will do a walk-through tomorrow to see what all we've busted. We're on notice for this place, and today I'm bringing home two boxes in preparation to move to the new place. I have to get measurements.

We want so much stuff for the new place.

RDC wants a new desk chair, which is perfectly reasonable since you can feel the screws through the flattened padding in the current one's seat. I myself want to sit on one of those big balls used for physical therapy and body sculpting. You have to sit up so straight in them. Except Blake would hate it.

We both want new desks. Actually I want a big table, preferably used so I don't have to care if I mark it with crayons, nick it with scissors, spill juice on it, or otherwise mar spandy-new perfection. We're debating setting up the Quadra or buying a Duo Dock, to use the old monitor. Right now we've no writing space left or right of the keyboard and no place to prop a book. We wouldn't need a whole lot.

Also a bureau. We're pushing maximum density in the current one.

And a better shelving system: we're not gaining any closet space and might not even have as big a pantry, which means appliances will be homeless. Unless some live on the bar, which RDC wants to be a Blake-free zone in the new place. Which means building Blake new playpens. Which will then mean he'll have to stay on said playpens. Which is another issue.

And of course my bathroom bits, a real priority.

Sometime soon we'll have to find a couch too.

I'm salivating, really I am. I think we agree that one wall of the study will be his and one mine (the third gets the futon and the fourth has doors to closet and bath). In fact, I'm pretty sure he agrees, because to demonstrate my point I said that on my wall I'd put up my Breakfast Club poster and he cringed but didn't stomp up and down in refusal. I'm not going to put that up, but I will put up the framed poster RSH gave me that now hangs in the living room and the two photographs of Devil's Hopyard that his girlfriend gave us. And LMB offered me an Italian landscape. And my collages and photographs.

RDC wants to collect Actual Art and recently looked at some Russ Chatham prints. I told him he could put that sort of thing on his wall of the study but there would be no trout in our living room.

I wonder about the division of books. If I have my own corner of study, I want my own books there--my children's books, Janey Jane, my other favorites, my Arthurian and Celtic stuff. RDC will probably keep his reference books, literary and -ware, near him. But we're going to put the ugly bookcases--fake walnut laminate--in the study and keep the slightly better bookcases in the living room. We married most of our books when we moved here, excepting my particular choices, to prevent, as I put it, Hemingway hunting amongst Make Way for Ducklings. But the general stuff, Edward Abbot to Banana Yoshimoto--will that fit in the new arrangement?

And I have plenty of vacation time. If I had to, I could flex my hours and put in a fortnight's 70 hours in nine days to take the tenth off, but I think I'll just take a vacation day that Friday. I can get all the clothes moved and the kitchen and most every other non-book, non-furniture item. Saturday will be the big stuff and Sunday we can clean the old and rearrange the new. Skipping and prancing I am. I love this. Organizing the move goes with my misfiling nature.

 

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