Reading: Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma

Listening: Muzak

Viewing: Geriatric shopping competitions

Moving: A walk round the block plus restrained walking through Publix.

Learning: I like living in a young state.

26 December 1999: Disappointment and shopping

Sara Astruc and I had planned to meet this day but, calling to cancel, she described herself as one giant germ. She was sick. I was extremely disappointed, but it's a drive from her island to Boynton Beach and what with her not being a notoriously early riser and I being wanted back in time for dinner once JJT's daughter arrived from Texas, and what with my not having a car obliging her to drive me, well, I don't know if Florida grants driver licenses to big old germs for long drives and short visits. So I called myself disappointed and did dutiful daughter-in-law things instead, and Sara and I will have to shop for Schuyler severally.

When I got off the phone and said I wasn't going, DMB said, "Good, you can help me grocery shop for New Year's and my mother."

Ack!

So RDC and I were dutiful children. I fetched and waited in deli lines (and RDC returned an eight-pound roast from his grandmother's carriage to the acatary. (I doubt that's the approved word for the butcher's section of a supermarket, but I've been waiting for an opportunity to use it since reading it in The Autobiography of Henry VIII and finding no definition for it, besides in context, in Merriam-Webster either on- or off-line)). When I considered that I might have been spending the afternoon comparing booties (baby socks, not heinies! how could you wonder?) and tooling along the A1A in Camilla the sun-roofed Jaguar, I felt quite put out. But I could help out, and I'm not so ungrateful a guest that I resent doing so.

Although JJT had said not to worry about being home when A----- got there, I felt better that I was there. Also I might have missed RDC2 dancing to 'N Sync or Boys II Men or whatever group whose name I forget but to which he danced enthusiastically (9 January 2000: it was the Backstreet Boys), and I wouldn't've wanted to miss that.

Of course I brought the camera to the dinner table.

This is JJT's daughter A-----, who is 13 and gets her braces off in six months. She had colored elastics on her braces and wanted to get U of North Carolina colors (I think) but her orthodontist didn't have enough of the right color. Silver with colored elastics makes more sense to me than gold braces, which I have recently seen. I don't get the point of emphasizing braces with gilt.

This was also the first time I realized that this person probably got her braces before she'd lost all her baby teeth and grown in her adult teeth, and I know I've seen much younger children who have more to lose than back molars yet still wear braces. I was wired up only after I had all my second teeth. What happens to the teeth of eight-year-olds? Do they not fall out because they can't fall out, until after the braces are gone? I'm confused. A----- likes her orthodontist, anyway, lucky thing. They must grow nicer ones in Texas than in Connecticut. (Yes, I still resent mine. I have issues.)

RDC's grandmother. She's an amazing cook and seamstress. Upon finding out Richie had a new girl, she asked my name. Hearing it, she asked, "Is she Irish?" Answered in the affirmative, she followed up, "Can she cook?" I lived up to all her generalizations. But she likes me anyway.

This isn't my most flattering portrait, and I was tired (or are those under-eye smudges permanent?) Nonetheless I really like this photograph.