Reading: John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

Listening: KBCO

Viewing: CNN

Moving: A good walk.

Learning: what cases the Supreme Court will hear

15 January 2000: Sleep

I woke up at 7:45 after falling asleep at about 8:00 last night. Eventually, being in better shape will enable me to need less sleep. For a while, I'll need more and more. I feel fully rested, despite dreaming about a consultant I worked with at ATK who looked like Opus after his nose job.

Also last night, before I feel asleep (but maybe I should have called while sleeping), I called my mother. It was her birthday. She hadn't received my card, so it was a good thing I did. Sixty. That's about as old as I can handle my parents being. Any older and they might not be immortal. They make me crazy but I don't want them not around not making me crazy anymore.

Vocabulary lessons with my mother last night. I was describing my visit to Florida: "And JMT is just besotted with DMB, it was so sweet---"
"He was what?"
"Besotted."
I don't remember what word she imagined here.
"Besotted. To be devoted to, head over heels with, b-e-s-o-t-t-e-d, besotted."
"Ohhhh."
I guess she hasn't been studying her Reader's Digest "Enrich Your Word Power" lately.

Also I tried to tell her about the photograph of me from New Year's Eve. I know I'm exaggerating and a person has to be slender to get this adjective, but after Kim Rollins used it to describe Karawynn Long, I've liked the implications. And I know I don't hold a candle to Karawynn, but anyway, I told my mother, "I love this photograph--I looked foxy that night."

Here's another reason, besides that I'm not, not to modify myself with that adjective: "You looked stocky?"

On Christmas day, telling her that RDC had given me a digital camera, I knew she wouldn't know what one is. She said her usual, "Help me to understand what that is," and I told her that the camera, which looks like a regular point-and-shoot, saves its image not on film to be developed into negatives and printed onto photographic paper (do I have that right?) but electronically, digitally, as a bunch of 0s and 1s that ya ya ya (which I also don't know). She seemed clear on that. She seemed to comprehend what a scanner is when we got that a couple of years ago, so I had hope.

So I told her that I'd love to give everyone I know the photograph but just now I only can distribute electronic, not paper, copies. I said things gently about pixels and dpi and inadequate printers and she said, "Well, you can just send me the negative and I'll make my own copy."

This is an improvement though. Years ago (pre-BDL) if she wanted a copy of one of your photographs, you should do it because it was your negative, while if you wanted a copy of one of her photographs, you should do it because you wanted it. I see an improvement here not in her memory (I told her three weeks ago "no more film, no more processing") but in her miserliness.

Speaking of (former) miserliness, they've bought stuff for the house. They put wall-to-wall carpeting in. We saw the samples when we were home in November. "Raspberry swirl," the style was called, which if I recall was also the color of their new bathroom sink. The house doesn't get enough light (even after having slaughtered most of the shade trees) and I myself wouldn't use any color darker than ivory inside.

Elphaba's house gets much more light than my apartment or my mother's house so she can do whatever she wants, and look how colorful [representative entry] it is. It's gorgeous. Because it's got light.

So it's a nice enough raspberry color, but it's got that texture in it of some of the shag cut away and streaks as if bleached (that's what gives it the swirl). It doesn't show vacuum tracks or footprints, my mother said. It belongs in a trailer--maybe a double-wide, but still a trailer, I didn't say. And a blue swirl in the den and green one in the bedroom. All of this carpeting, which with its padding will cut down on the heating bills, is being laid over hardwood floors. Wood hardwood floors.

So: too dark a color with a trailer swirl over hardwood floors. Count the levels of tacky there.

And they've got new living room furniture and new dining room furniture, which in the living room is particularly indicated--I should scan the upholstery. One new piece they are going to buy is an armoire-style entertainment center for the living room. She doesn't want people to see the television as soon as they come in the front door. ("Oh, are you going to use the front door now?" I didn't ask.) So they're going to tuck it away in a supposed armoire and no one will ever guess that there's a television in there. I thought that was what the den was for; there's another television there. Whatever.

I asked what corner that's going to go in and she said, "Oh, it's not going to go in a corner, wait till I explain it to you."
Visions of the entertainment center being placed in the middle of either of the room's long walls horrified me. "Ma, you don't need to explain it to me; I know the house like the back of my hand." For its layout, this is still true; and if its cosmetic treatment has changed, it still smells the same, of camphor.
"It's going to go between the front door and the window."
"You mean, that corner of the room?" I didn't say. "Ah," I did say. There is room for such a piece there, but only just. This will mean she'll fret about the front door being opened too far (more than 90 degrees) and marring either the cabinet or the door itself. It will mean that because the front door cannot be opened too far, an entering visitor will be confronted with a staircase and a hallway and not see the living room at all. Also, it will mean that only persons seated on the couch will be able to see the screen, not those seated in the armchairs which will flank the fireplace. And of course, the fireplace gives up any hope of being the room's focal point (previously, with the television next to it, it still had a prayer).

Resolved: In my house, when it happens, I will have a fireplace and that will be the living room's focal point. If a television exists therein, I will choose whence the cable enters the room so that the room need not be split, as ours currently is. On Thanksgiving, we kept a fire going and the television off (until "ER") and as the semi-circle of guests formed and reformed throughout the day, we did focus on the fireplace, not the blank screen.

Also I wonder what else will go in their entertainment center. "BDL has a CD," our mother gushed to CLH in the initial days of the romance. CLH knew she was crowing about his musical and technologial hipness, not his bank account, and gently hinted, "He has a cd player? What does he listen to?"

Oh, and I wonder if she's disposed of her record player. That was an interesting piece of work itself. About the breadth and length of a good-sized coffe table, it stood to mid-thigh on four 12" legs. The cabinet holding the turntable was thus a box and needed all that volume, the coffee-table-surface area times about 18 inches of height, to house its works. The left half of its top could hold a vase or something delicate and light-weight and the right half slid under the left half to reveal the turntable. It had an arm so you could securely stack several LPs on the six-inch spindle--the needle arm would rise at the end of a record and knock the next one down. It had a slot in the corner that contained a column that fit over the spindle to hold 45s. Its speakers were self-contained and I don't remember when the left one ever worked.

I wonder if it will fit in the entertainment center.

Later...

We bought a new vacuum cleaner. Very exciting. It has a a HEPA filter, which RDC specifically wanted, and it works, which is what I wanted. Instead of bags, it has a clear cylinder in front that all the dirt falls into. I insisted on being the first to use it (I should have that privilege since I'll be the one to use it almost exclusively afterward) and considering that less than a week ago we had the carpets steamcleaned, it picked up an amazing pile of stuff. Mostly carpet lint, but also dust or some filthy substance that glued the carpet fibers together in a grey wad, and bits of bird dander and quite possibly some two-foot human hair (which must belong to RDC's other woman), and if I liked seeing the vacuum tracks, well, at least I won't have a cow if I see footprints marring them.

We saw CGK at Bloodbath and Beyond. She hasn't seen "Toy Story 2" yet either and maybe we can do that later this week. HAO wants to see "The Straight Story." On Monday after the steamcleaning RDC said he was going to call CGK and tell her that the winestain from Thanksgiving is permanent (it came out Thanksgiving night, but she was so mortified he wanted to tease her about it) and I was going to say something equally tactless today about why we were buying a new vacuum, but I didn't.

Then we grocery-shopped at Alfalfa's. The Colorado Boulevard store is a year old today and offered face-painting, music, massage, free samples, and a delicious cake. There were six slices from a poppyseed cake left on the demonstration counter and a bunch of people hanging around waiting for fools to take those so they wouldn't feel bad about asking the clerk to cut into the chocolate one. I myself just waited a few minutes so I wouldn't have to feel like a vulture. We were each a few bites into our pieces when we heard a man decline the cake, not because he's allergic to chocolate or wheat but because it was a vegan cake. "This cake is vegan?" I asked, incredulous. It was exquisite. Its lack of dairy explained the seeping frosting; it was probably made with hydrogenated oils (worse for my health than dairy, though possibly better for the cow's health). Anyway, we heard the man tell the clerk that he flatly refuses to eat anything vegan. Including an apple? I wanted to ask but did not.

After rigging the vacuum-cleaner trap with tuna-fish sandwiches (I really miss Calvin and Hobbes sometimes) and stocking up on food I have a hope of preparing myself, we came home and went for a walk. I concentrated on keeping my strides long and I could feel the effort in the front of my thighs and in my butt. That's a good thing. We had grouper and risott and a spinach salad (I made the latter) and now I'm full. It's only 8:00 and this is the time I want to snack that I should resist.