Reading: Zilpha Keatley Snyder, And All Between

Moving: Bike to work, 13 miles

Learning: Home Despot rents high-pressure water cleaners

Moving: bought two quarts of our two Behr colors

3 May 2000: From grumpiness to misanthropy

How is it that my mother can turn a medical tragedy to her own advantage?

I called her to find out about Squeaky's new home. One of Granny's care-givers from her assisted-care place likes Squeaky--and presumably Granny--enough that she will give the cat a home (where my mother, who already has a cat anyway, would not).

The main news is that BDL's older daughter has just been diagnosed with MS. I was horrified. She is older than I, younger than my sister, just at the typical age for the first onset.

I asked how Gretchen learned this; since she has no health insurance, it wouldn't be during a regular physical. Has she already suffered muscle degeneration? My mother said she had some eye thing over a year ago that was diagnosed as a virus--see "no health insurance," above--but last month she had so much trouble with her knee that my mother had to help her into church on crutches. (Gretchen must have loved that; last I knew, she despised my mother. In fact, unless Gretchen's feelings have substantially changed, I'd posit that it was BDL helping her into church. I said nothing of this to my mother.)

Then I asked if her knee was better now, if she could walk, and my mother said, "Well, she'll never walk as well as your sister and you, but right now it's in remission."

Yes, I'm ever-alert for any evidence that will support any of my various agendas, but here's my mother offering a degenerative, crippling disease as another comparison between her glorious offspring and the German Shepherds. Why not, "as well as a normal person"? Perhaps I should be grateful my mother didn't say, "as well as a person who has her degree."

(The German Shepherds say my sister and I "have our degrees" because apparently they do not distinguish between BAs and PhDs. They hated us before they met us because they assumed we would share our mother's superior attitude about us.)

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I just got email from PLT linking to a lecture he gave about archiving the web. It seems an impossible task--do you archive my page when I post it, and again several days later when I correct it? do you archive Beth's forum after the first few days of discussion, or much later?

Meanwhile I'm over here sending faxes to the Stupidest Woman in the World. Criminally stupid, she was, with a Worcester (MA) accent--which means that anything she says sounds bad. Coolboss gave me a 12-page packet to fax. I did. The machine printed a receipt indicating it had transmitted only 11. I sent it again, this time babysitting the machine to watch each page feed. Twelve fed fine; only eleven went. Twice is a mistake; thrice is excess. I called the recipient; his assistant answered. I asked her to check the fax to see what page was missing.

"But I checked the fax when you sent it again and all the pages are there!"

"How many pages do you have?"

"Eleven, and they're all there."

"Okay, but I faxed you twelve pages, and if you have only eleven, then one is missing."

"But they're all numbered right, one of eleven, two of eleven...!"

I realized she was looking at the strip the transmitting fax machine prints along the margin. "Don't look at the pagination the fax machine printed on it. There's a cover sheet, and then there's the document proper, which is numbered at the center bottom, one through eleven."

"But that's what I said, all the pages are there, one through eleven! The cover sheet is page one!"

"Yes, I understand that the fax machine labeled the transmittal one through eleven, but eleven pages of document plus one page of cover sheet equals twelve sheets, and if you have eleven, then one is missing." She was unable to comprehend this, so I had her go through her stack, page by page. "The first sheet, that the fax machine numbered one, is the cover sheet, and it says from my boss to yours, right? Then the next sheet, your number 2, is the title page." [I stopped using numbers entirely.] "The next page starts with heading thus-and-so, numbered roman numeral one..."

Would she understand roman numerals? No: "You mean I?" she asked, like Eye Street in DC.

I took her through almost the whole thing like that; she was missing page 9 of the document. I sent it again, with a cover sheet explaining just where to insert it, and it went through fine. I am wondering if she figured out where to put it. It was numbered page 2, after all, and having two page 2s means one is redundant. I wonder if she ever did notice the numbering that was obviously integral to the piece--in the same serif font as the body text, centered, within the margin, instead of in Courier strung along the bottom edge with the transmitting phone number--and recognized her mental glitch.

So there's PLT, saving the web for posterity, and here's me, sending a fax to a mouth-breather.

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In Below the Root, children play a game called Five-Pense. Consequently, I've been humming "one two three four five, senses working overtime" all day. When I first heard that song, in tenth grade, I was of the same Malthusian bent I am now and thought it was "Census Working Overtime."

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The Virgin Suicides has been made into a movie? Thanks, stee, for telling me, but how bizarre. How distasteful. Imdb says "If you like this, try Wars of the Roses." Just because they both star Kathleen Turner? Did Jeffrey Eugenides have anything to do with this?

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Recently, I read on a Watership Down page, "The captain of the Sandleford owsla, Holly is one of the sole survivors of the warren after its destruction."

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I emailed TJZ the other day:

TJZ, I am pack pack packing and experiencing an extremely liberating new philosophy, which could be succinctly if not poetically summed up THROW IT OUT. I didn't do this last year when we moved into the 2-bedroom apartment because all we did was trot stuff across the complex, RDC and I and my pal Hao and two big burlyman friends SPM and JEM and a truck. This year we have only Hao and a truck and time is much more of the essence.

In short, I want to move only those clothes I have a chance in hell ever of wanting to wear again in life, or if not to wear, at least to gaze upon in fond nostalgia, like the circa 1985 miniskirt.

So. I have a scarf--and, you know, that's just as heavy as, say, the stainless-steel ravioli press RDC has yet to use that his aunt sent back with him in the car when he drove to CT in 1998--and it reminds me of you and your tasteful earth tones, to quote an immortal SEB-phrase. I'm going to mail it to you and you can throw it out if you hate it and I'll never know--isn't it convenient to have me 2000 miles away and none the wiser?--or you can wear it, if you do still wear such stuff.

Apparently she does:

You are just a darling! Yes, I still wear such things. I'm known at school as "the scarf teacher" by kids who don't know me by name. Catchy, isn't it?

That's me, a darling, bringing joy to all who know me.