But Reading: The Cider House Rules

Moving: walked 2.7 miles

House: applied a coat of paint on the window trim in the study; ordered blinds for bedroom, study, and bathroom.

Weather: everywhere has weird weather, and living here five years doesn't make me an expert, but this is the first time in half a decade here that Denver has had one of those overcast, white-skied-but-sunny, humid days that make Connecticut such a steambath when the temperature's over 85. Today, Denver only got to 70, and I doubt the humidity was as high as Connecticut gets, but still, drastically reduced visibility, fog, no mountains, obscured skyscrapers downtown. This is not what I get homesick for.

A weather item will not be a regular feature.

27 June 2000: Humid Tuesday

A slow stagger into work today. I never had much trouble with cramps, some bellyaches, some headaches, nothing major, but in my 30s these have grown much worse. I thought sprouting was supposed to help ameliorate pain, but a mother I talked to today said that wasn't the case for her. It's just occurred to me that she's in her early or mid 50s. I myself plan for the earliest possible menopause. Whom do I speak to?

So anyway I gave up and went home at noon. I took a nap--me, John Irving, Blake, and my contacts--for two hours and felt better, then went to Home Despot to order blinds. We'd measured the windows once this weekend and brought the numbers to HD, but the blinds woman--lots of makeup, long nails, swoopy eyeglasses--talked about mismeasurement and so we got nervous. Last night we measured again with twine as well, in case there was slack in the mylar measuring tape. Today, remeasured measurements in paw, along with a coupon for 10% off that came in the mail with confirmation of our change of address from the USPS, I returned.

I stood off to the side looking at the various home decor books while she laboriously tapped my order into a primitive order form. For each of the ten blinds, she had to enter the make, the color, the style, the mount, individually, and she had to do it with the pads of her fingers instead of the tips because of the nails.

Yesterday on the bus I sat next to a woman who dropped a small wire hoop earring onto the seat between us. She had trouble picking it up, I thought because of her parcel, and reached for it, but she glared so I withdrew my hand. Eventually she had to pick it up between the pads of her two index fingers, because her fake nails were so long she couldn't use her fingers. Judgmental much? Oh yes I am, especially about someone who rudely rejects a small offer of kindness that I offer even though the help would be unnecessary if she didn't deliberately cripple herself.

So I stood waiting in Home Depot, one eye on a book and the other on her, when a young man in a tie and crisp blond hair strode up to the clerk and began to ask her questions. If he couldn't tell she was serving me--which maybe he couldn't've because she faced her monitor, away from me--he could at least tell I was waiting for her attention. And she began to answer his questions, which were complicated ones about blinds and not a single simple one like "Where is the lighting department?" They spoke for a few minutes without a glance in my direction, and I activated my Steady Even Gaze (which is not quite a Basilisk Glare) for a minute or two more before asking, not quite sweetly, "So am I set to go?"

A courteous person might have been able to think of a way tactfully to intercede on her own behalf; I honestly couldn't think of a subtler way to phrase my question.

So she finished tapping and printed my order. She shooed me on my way and, walking to the cashier, I found immediately that she had omitted one entire blind. I returned. Tappy tappy tappy, a second print, and reading it thoroughly again, I found three other mistakes in her numbers. Finally she got it right, and I proceeded to the checkout.

And to think we might have used that coupon on a couple rooms' worth of paint and supplies and saved oh, fifteen bucks or so! Bless its little toes, not that it had any.

When the cashier accepted the coupon without protest, I was so relieved. I opened my wallet, and my heart stopped. There, in the third card slot, was clearly nothing. Nothing at all, no debit card, nothing. I began to pant, the way you do when you see the flashing lights behind you. I stared at the wallet, remembering going to the grocery store last night to have milk for the morning, thinking that one shopper looked like the Reverend Al Sharpton if the latter weren't so corpulent, using the debit card, signing the slip...putting the card back in the wallet? leaving it on the counter? Or, my heart beating again, putting the card in the wrong slot of the wallet. Now I was shaking, the way you do when the cop leaves your car without giving you a ticket. (With a ticket, you're mad at yourself and maybe the cop; with just a warning, the cop is the nicest person ever and you love the whole world but you're still shaking with fear.)

1 July 2000: It has come to my attention that this tale was unclear. In the second slot of my wallet, where it should have been, was my credit card, and on the 27th of the month for a purchase that large I was hardly going to pay with the debit card even if it weren't missing. That's how I paid. Furthermore, as should have been quite clear by my saying I began to breathe again, shakily in the post warning-but-no-ticket way, and by my saying "putting the card in the wrong slot," that is exactly where I found it. Pay attention, people.

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EJB warned RDC to ensure that window treatments were in our purchase agreement, along with the garage door opener, the porch swing, the two lampposts (but not the satellite dish, which our realtor said must receive Detroit Red Wings games better than any other dish and therefore be worth the expense of removing it). So we got the window treatments, which are either cheap lengths of bad lace on pocket rods such that they cannot be opened (because they do not have pleats sewn in and cannot be pushed to either side) and which provide neither privacy nor darkness, or ugly half-length white things with gathers and a wide royal blue stripe at the bottom. Ahaha, it is to laugh. After we have our blinds, which can be pulled thoroughly up and block neither light or air, I shall buy interesting rods with amusing end pieces (and learn the name for those end pieces) and swag fabric about them. They shall fall to sill-height, no lower, and thus preserve proportions; they shall block neither light nor air; they shall lend a finished look to the windows without needing any more sewing than hems (a key factor).

I went to K-Mart only because it's on the way and the USPS moving guide also had a coupon for it, at 25%; I wanted a cheap microwave cart or similar thing for Blake's cage. I saw a decent thing calling itself a jelly cabinet at Bloodbath and Beyond a while ago for about twice what I thought it was worth; in K-Mart I saw a much uglier piece for 3/8 of the Bloodbath piece. Ugliness I expected from K-Mart, but since this piece was slated for the sunroom and slated to have a birdcage on top of it housing an actual defecating bird, I didn't care. Except that we decided this weekend that Blake would probably be happier staying in the dining room, since we can reach it more quickly from the front door, since it has a window that opens (the south window of the sunroom is painted shut and he can't go in front of the east window because he should not be in direct sun), and since the apricot tree grows right outside and Blake likes to watch and talk to the squirrels and birds it attracts.

So now I'm having a crisis of materialism and form over function. Blake would be happier in the dining room, but any piece of furniture suitable for Blake will be too ugly for the Look we wish to achieve there.

Mmmph.

I stopped at Alfalfa's for real groceries. Real groceries, yes; lots of other stuff like greeting cards and cleaning supplies, not so much. I needed a get well card, though, for my aunt. In early May, she had surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurism. I sent her a get-well card then but it didn't work because, I learned Friday, that as feared, she has lost her left leg below the knee and her right toes.

At least three of the small selection of get-well cards made some reference to "getting back on your feet." There was one that had a dog nursing a frog (an odd combination, I thought) that said, "Hope you're hopping soon." This, I thought, would under the circumstances be tasteless. I got her one with a simple message devoid of ambulatory references, illustrated with a rainbow over Ayers Rock.

This is the paternal aunt for whom I am named. The aunt who drove my mother to the hospital when I was born.

They had arranged this long since because my father, a utility lineman, was on call. My mother, surely calm and collected, called my aunt's house at 5:00 a.m., Saturday 25 May 1968. My oldest cousin, the one for whom I would serve five years later as a flower girl, was then about 15. She was so excited she hung up on my mother and ran through the house screaming "Aunt B-----'s having a baby! Aunt B-----'s having a baby!" waking her parents so that, despite being hung up on, my mother was able to deliver me in a hospital a scant three hours later, bang on my due date.

This is the aunt who had Christmas parties every year, the one her other daughter, my other cousin, remembers my grandfather enjoying. The aunt closest to my father in age, though still five or seven years older. The aunt with the spinning wheel I wasn't allowed to touch and the above-ground pool I was allowed to swim in (only once that I remember, and with my father; I remember that I asked him to watch and that he did watch as I dog-paddled the circumference of the pool.). The aunt who took care of my other, paternal grandmother, during her protracted final illness, and who had a reception after the service.

There are three siblings older than she who are all relatively fine. My father, the youngest, is the only one who quit smoking, upward of 20 years ago. This is the aunt closest to my father's age. If she is mortal, then so is he. And I never, ever want to hear again my mother cry as she did when she told me, her voice hitching, her valiantly attempting to control herself, her sobs breaking out again. Nor anyone, for that matter; but just two weeks before my sister also called me in a similar state and I never want either of them ever to hurt that much again in their lives. That's the kind of phone call that makes me wonder just what the fuck I'm doing so far away anyway.

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