Reading: John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

Listening: "Brown-Eyed Girl"

Viewing: Steam-cleaned rugs, oooo.

Moving: Oops

Learning: how the new phone works. Pick it up and shake it.

10 January 2000: Ratzenfatzen ratzen

Grumpy and crampy, or grumpy because crampy. Usually I can turn on a smile, sincere or not but immediately, at work when necessary. Always at visitors and interviewees, the former because they're our lifeblood and the latter because I've been there all too often myself.

Today I didn't. I was coming back from the copy room and encountered a knot of perhaps five visitors with an equal number of staff all from the one department in front of whose area they were standing. Loitering. Getting in my sacred way.

The best I could do was a sickly lip-stretch and an "excuse me" or two. Those on my entering periphery saw me and stepped aside to allow me through: they got what passed for a smile. Despite this small rustle, four steps later when I needed to squeak through the other side, no one shifted. They got an "Excuse me" and after I nearly shouldered my way through their reluctant ranks, a muttered "Thank you."

"I think she is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this wind."

I didn't quote Jane Austen once all the time I was in Florida; my last was on the way thither. My mind is quick to rot.

Scenes from a mall:

Yesterday we went to Cherry Creek to exchange, as I predicted, the sweater I picked out for RDC's grandmother. It's not that bad: I only remembered that she's short (so I got a medium) without considering that she's plump (so she wanted a large). I couldn't find my Christmas receipts, although I'm sure they're all somewhere quite logical, so I walked up to a counter with two sweaters, claiming that I had to exchange them. That must be a common shoplifting ploy--how is the clerk to know who lost her receipt and who ripped off the price tag quickly to scam a free garment.

While I did that, RDC went to the phone store. I don't know why he needs a new phone for the new job, or maybe he needs a specific kind of account for the new job which requires a new phone. But anyway, I am going to inherit the former one. There's not much point to my having one, I don't think. I think of it as a leash. Except when I get to call DEDBG from the beach, from my chair, sitting on my sandy tush, instead of either getting up and finding a payphone if it were an emergency or calling from a landline without seagulls if it weren't.

Anyway. My transaction tooks only moments, since I knew where the sweaters were (this was the only reason I went along on these errands so I hope she's grateful), and while RDC set up his account I went into some neighboring shops until finally he was told to come back in 15 minutes.

So we circled the mall. I wanted to show RDC the amazing scarlet dress, but of course the West Palm Beach and Denver Saks have different stock. I'm glad I didn't look in Denver. Navy, maroon, and brown. Brown? "Mocha" and "toast" are things I eat for breakfast, not colors I wear to go be formal. Me and Missy Wright. Well, Missy wound up in scarlet, not champagne, which was allegedly my dress's color. It got champagne on it by the end of the night, and I know the wine wasn't the same color as the fabric.

But anyway. As soon as we walked away from the phone store, I told RDC, "The clerk looks like Dexy." "The black guy?" (The clerk, not Dexy, is black.) "Yeah. Or maybe it's the glasses." "No, he does look like Dexy." Separated at birth. Dexy was adopted, after all. You never know.

I, a sensible tigger, did not wear a jacket into the mall. RDC was sweltering in his fleece and I took it from him while he signed stuff. He handed me the old cell phone and I put it in a zippered pocket while he signed more stuff. Then he was done and we left, and as we walked toward the garage he put his fleece back on. Slipping an arm in, he caught something in his hand.

"Why is the phone in my sleeve?" "I didn't put it in your sleeve, I put it in a zippered pocket!" Sleeve. What kind of a nidiot [that typo was deliberate] does he think I am? "You put it in the armpit." So I had. This is a very high tech fleece and has zippered vents in the pits.

Oops.

That night when we went to bed, we were talking about how animal noises are represented in different languages. U.S. cats say "meow" but British ones say "miaow" and by the time your cat's moved to Japan it's speaking in another language entirely. He asked what frogs in France say. I ribbited, "gimmemylegsback."

Also yesterday RDC cleaned out a bunch of stuff to make room for his home office. Goodwill, trash, and our onsite storage cubby received 2.5 storage shelves' worth of linen, inflatable rafts (I groused--I like to pretend there are lakes around warm enough to float in), and assorted whoknowswhat. I managed, this time by making another stack of paperbacks (D.H. Lawrence through Ira Levin) and using up all the space up to RDC's lit crit shelves, to jam in all the books. Also RDC emptied another two shelves' worth of library books and parted with computer manuals--Hypercard 1992, for instance. We're like Pilate, dragging around bags of bones for reasons the hard-minded Macon Deads in our lives can't fathom.

Also I reread bits of Babel Tower yesterday. The courtroom scenes were surfacing in my brain, perhaps because large chunks of A Maggot are told as question and answer.

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Today I discovered Elphaba at Diaryland. I wrote her when I first noticed a post from her on Beth's forum. Great name, I thought. Today she told me she's been reading Speaking Confidentially and discovered that I live in Denver; she lives a bit more than an hour north. I'd like to meet her, I'd like to meet anyone, but eek, I haven't read her journal. So I went to it, cautiously; I was supposed to have cut back to a vital dozen back in September. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, surprise. One more for my list, and while I want to know more more more, she began her journal only in November--so there isn't a lot, yet. I shamefacedly confess the age of an on-line journal is now likely to work against it for me because of archives. I always read archives. Oh, whatever. I'm reposting my list of what were going to be my cold turkeys--this time without the commentary.

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We had the carpets steam-cleaned, which might be meant to pacify us over the rent increase. We signed a nine-month lease last March for reasons that seemed sensible at the time, though I can't think what they were right now. It took over two months to get it done, and now it is done, and the carpets, eight hours later, are spongy. I am wearing socks. I am wearing socks with Birks. This means I am wearing shoes in the house, which makes me crazy. This also means I haven't worn socks with Birks out of the house yet--to be seen in such a get-up would make me crazier still. Plus they're RDC's Birks, since I don't have any. RDC is not wearing his Birks himself because he is in Seattle for a day and a half.

Having one car and only in the past year having two rooms has meant I have long gone without the large doses of solitude I need. The freaky thing is that round about 1991 solitude suddenly came to mean loneliness, and I descended to the point that, unsupervised, I might spend the odd Saturday afternoon alone watching television, jumping at shadows, and reliving all my past sins (which are many) instead of reading and writing and exercising and having a life of my own.

Having RDC travel will be good for me, therefore. I might have to learn to cook. I can play--and sing along with--Sarah McLachlan or Shriekback or Roxy Music however much I want, and not have to listen to Frank Zappa (the only rule in the house is no U2 when he's home and no Bob Dylan* when I'm home). When I am in the living room, I do keep the tv on, on but muted. I can call that either lulling my television addiction or keeping my demons at bay.

* I was listening to the Waterboys the other day when RDC came home and he laughed at me--couldn't I hear the similarity between their lead singer's voice and Bob Dylan's? Or Elvis Costello's and Bob Dylan's? Did someone have to be English or Irish for me to like him? In a word, yes.

So anyway. We had supper at Le Central, which is our favorite Denver restaurant, and I dropped him off at DIA and here I am, going to bed.