Reading: Charmed Life, Straight Man

Moving: swimming and walking

Learning: how addicted I am to clear skies and good weather

Watching: hazy skies

7 August 2000: Why I Haven't Updated since 13 July

15-24 July 2000: Vacation

Tuesday, 25 July 2000

• Sleep and morning time reuniting with Blake more important than walking to work: no exercise
• Hope earring box not lost
• Work
• Be in post-vacation, sluggish, pissy mood until lunch, then discover newish (two months) store where everything is chunky silver, fake tortoiseshell, or tooled brown leather. Buy bracelet and be cheered
• Learn that CoolBoss just discovered that Harry Potter is a character, not the author
• Go to library, renew Nobody's Fool, borrow retellings of "Tam Lin" and the one Diana Wynne Jones that's available and doesn't look too fantastical (Fire and Hemlock)
• Rent "Mansfield Park" and "Twin Falls Idaho"
• Set up back pair of closet doors, paint one coat on interior side
• Plant raspberry bushes JUMB gave me
• Dig out current plants including that one unnamed weed that grows five feet tall without water or care
• Break up hardpan with shovel and hands, since no spade and trowel unlocatable.
• Soak earth.
• Cover exposed soil with dried weeds, since no straw
• Scrub bathroom window, paint and glass
• Water
• Watch "Mansfield Park" (bad in ways wholly unexpected), fall asleep during Crawford proposal, wake up and realize this, rewind to remembered bit, hit play, fall asleep again, give up and watch remainder; while petting buddy's head
• Read for ten minutes until asleep

Wednesday, 26 July 2000

• Water raspberry plants
• Planning to swim, justify not walking to work by spending time with Blake
• Work
• Lend CoolBoss Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• Return "Mansfield Park"
• Swim. Or not, since pool is closed "due to vomit."
• Go to Bloodbath & Beyond since pool is but six blocks away
• Butcher's block rolling island for Blake's cage (with 20%-off coupon)
• Shower curtain rod, liner, and rings
• Picture frame
• Grocery shop at new Safeway at Sixth & Corona
• While making supper, call mother-in-law to discover what groceries to stock
  • Turn burner to "high"
  • Do not notice gas did not light
  • Wander around bedroom and living room tidying up
  • Go back into kitchen to get Blake, who is yelling his little yellow head off on the windowsill
  • Notice smell
  • Light gas
  • Praise Blake for being such a dependable cockatiel in coal mine
• Water raspberry plants
• Discover earring box in side pocket of suitcase. Be merry
• Assemble island, test for cockatiel fright factor. Blake doesn't mind it, so place cage upon it
• Watch "Twin Falls Idaho" while petting buddy's head; fall asleep before end
• Go to bed and read for ten minutes until asleep

Thursday, 27 July 2000

• Sleep and morning time with still unhappy, extremely clingy Blake more important than walking to work: no exercise
• Water raspberry plants
• Work
• Water raspberry plants
• Flip back closet doors and put one coat on their exterior sides.
• Set up front closet doors on the two milkcrates liberated from under Blake's cage and another pair emptied of stuff from wherever and put one coat on their interior sides.
• Be clever enough to put curtain rings on rod before hanging rod (which is only just long enough) but not so clever also to attach liner and curtain (RDC's giraffe one from apartment) while rod is still conveniently on the floor
• Otherwise convert downstairs bathroom from paint clean-up room to bathroom. Discover trowel among paint clutter, decide it was probably used to clean brushes. By myself, probably, because I'm the sort who would; but decide probably by RDC, since he was the only one who cleaned brushly thoroughly elsewhere than the kitchen sink upstairs (hence passive voice).
• Remove bookcase from study to make room for unbought futon
• Empty, shift right, and refill one medium, one tall, and two short bookcases
• Empty bookcase in study, move into family room.
• Realize, you stupid cow, that study bookcase cannot go in at far left because of window, and that therefore you must rearrange books
• Empty medium bookcase, shift left back under window, insert study bookcase in gap.
• Work backward alphabetically, filling bookcases from bottom up (i.e. safely).
• Fiction now begins on east side of study.
• Unpack rest of study.
• Discover one more milkcrate and one more box of RDC's books, for which there is no available shelf space (did we acquire so many recently?)
• Put art, craft, and sewing on top shelf (under hole in ceiling)
• Stack pictures on desk (do not hang)
• Do all this with petulant, attachment-disordered cockatiel on shoulder; don't let him fall (despite his vet-trimmed toenails) because his vet-trimmed wings and week of cage-bound inactivity means he drops like a rock
• Go to sleep immediately upon lying down

Friday, 28 July 2000

• Water raspberry plants
• Despite week-long lack of exercise, anticipate swim and do not walk to work
• Work
• Decline offer to replace Sorcerer's Stone, which CoolBoss made because thinks she tore the cover. Point out that notch in cover is exactly the size of a cockatiel mandible
• Fold and put away accumulation of laundry washed and dried then heaped on other side of bed throughout week
• Swim one mile in depuke-ified pool
• Drive to DIA to pick up RDC. Appreciate gate stupidity that allows time to read 30 pages of Nobody's Fool
• Return home to joyous buddy, who finally decides that maybe he should eat and preen as much in an evening as he has not this whole week and probably the ten days previous as well
• Water raspberry plants

Saturday 29 July 2000

• Water raspberry plants
• Unpack mother's father's mother's china from plastic crate to its over-the-fridge home
• Put another coat on exteriors of back closet doors
• Flip front closet doors and put one coat on their exterior sides
• Admire return of Blake's appetite
• Buy futon
• Having done no research, knowing only the floor space available, thinking of the precious hours finding the right one will take, make first stop at futon store seven blocks away
• Walk in, have salesperson descend
• Salesperson says "Oh, but you've never seen this!" of a new style of frame and I say, "But I have," since I made a reconnaissance stop in there a few weeks before (because the store is conveniently located between a Starbucks and an Einstein Bros.' Bagels)
• RDC says "I like that!" surprising me utterly. That's the one I liked, but I thought he wouldn't
• Gratify the salesperson by saying, after three minutes in shop, "We want that one."
• Further gratify salesperson by upgrading to highest grade of futon, since its primary purpose is bed not couch
• Be gratified that particular frame and futon of particular size, color, and quality, are both in stock
• Having gratified him fully, be given a futon cover gratis
• Pay and walk out in less than ten minutes with guaranteed Monday delivery
• Go to Gart Bros. Sports to buy SPM's birthday present
• Have lunch at Watercourse Foods
• Go to Colorado History Museum's exhibit of John Fielder's contemporary reshoots of William Henry Jackson's century-old photographs, having insisted on doing this now since this was the exhibit's last weekend
• Paint closet doors some more
• Water raspberry plants
• Wrap SMP's present, using packing tape instead of Scotch. Apply gift tag with Curious George sticker left over from 1998 calendar
• Go to SPM's party
• Lose Bono sunglasses

Sunday, 30 July 2000

• Sleep until 9:15 and feel thereafter like the day is wasted
• Water raspberry plants
• Since RDC can't drive (because of his back), go to Walgreen's for his pain medication and anti-balding stuff
• Drive to Cook Park instead of Congress Park in hopes of less crowding. Swim 1.75K in uncrowded but very warm pool. Make good time and wonder if warmer water offers that much less resistance
• Paint closet doors
• Lunch on sesame pasta that RDC actually cooked
• Try plum from tree. It's all right--more palatable than our cherries
• At Williams-Sonoma, acquire martini glasses with Christmas gift certificate. Be disappointed that penguin martini shaker is no longer available there or at Pottery Barn, since martini glasses themselves do not interest
• Examine door hardware in Restoration Hardware. Turn up nose at RH penguin martini shaker, since it has a stupid big ole wart looking thing at the end of its beak. Return to PB for plain shaker
• Look in Scandia Downs and Foley's for sheets and duvet. Wonder if grape pattern RDC likes would be tolerable. Doubt this
• Grocery shop and return home
• Rip bag of bulk quinoa
• Spill quinoa on counter and floor near pantry
• Curse
• Discover vacuum (purchased after Thanksgiving for apartment carpeting, replacing not-sucky-enough wedding gift) to be totally pointless on hardwood floors
• Sweep, more carefully, from sunroom as well, since vacuum kicked sharp grains of quinoa thither (by way of shins)
• Wonder why Blake can't eat bugs for his protein instead of quinoa, like a normal bird, or cheese or fish, as Percy did, and why the only two protein sources he likes are annoying quinoa (since it spills) and disgusting eggs (as eggs are)
• Sup on grilled eggplant and shrimp (not mushrooms, since the portabello were haggard and shrimp are the natural substitute for mushrooms) that RDC actually cooked, and whatever red grapes aren't moldy.
• Water raspberry plants
• Water parched, dormant lawn
• Clean the Augean stables of the furnace room
• Re-assemble shelving unit from apartment into 3x4 rectangle.
• Empty two boxes of computer bits--keyboards, mice, Scan Man, modems, cables of all sorts, into china's former plastic crate.
• Stack ugly plastic stackers BJWL gave for high school graduation, which have, over the past fourteen years, been shoved farther and farther from the public eye, to their now-acceptable spot in the furnace room. Fill with random clutter
• Arrange camping, biking, skiing, fishing, sewing, scuba, model rocket launching-, and all other manner of stuff with the rest of its kind

Monday, 31 July 2000

• Forget that alarm is set for 6:30, not 6:00, and fail to motivate in 30 minutes enough to walk to work. Read Nobody's Fool instead
• Eat breakfast without Blake, who does not complain or peep at all because he understands that when I leave him in bed his daddy will be home all day
• Discover absence of sunglasses. Squint
• Work
• Read Kymm's quiz of ten children's books' first lines.
• Lend Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to CoolBoss
• Admire futon, delivered and set up by people other than me
• Set up downstairs bathroom for guests with towels and soap and the like
• Paint last coat on front closet doors
• Remove all the various gallons of paint, quarts of spackle, five-gallon bucket of primer, and the other painting equipment from living room to coal cellar
• Remove edging tape from RDC's study's windows
• Save lower right pane in upper sash for last, so Blake can amuse himself shredding it
• Get a whole bunch of paint flakes on floor
• Water raspberry plants
• Hang front left closet door. Decide bronze handle really is too ugly to bear
• Remove front left closet door
• Go to Home Depot
• Discover HD has no brushed steel hinges of the right size, no kick plates at all, and several desirable handles
• Consider clerk's suggestion about spray-painting hinges white (to blend with trim)
• Buy four door handles, a larger grill, an electric grill lighter for the grill (no more lighter fluid), an outdoor extension cord for the lighter, spray paint
• Completely forget, despite standing next to the pertinent machine, the need for more spare keys
• Leave RDC to scrub hinges and kickplates to render them receptive to spray paint
• Remove beat-up statue of chair from study to furnace room, since chair is disgusting and underfoot and study will be guest room and desk inaccessible anyway
• Hang pictures in study
• Discover that the two pictures of Devil's Hopyard that Sheryl gave for Christmas (1998) are in frames that can be hung only vertically (one picture is landscape)
• Hang wedding collage between poster and card collage instead of two photographs, which looks stupid
• Realize that three photograph collages cannot march down from ceiling to desk. Grit teeth and separate collages
• Unicorn in Captivity is left over

Tuesday, 1 August 2000

• By this point the smoke-addled sky has made any physical activity distasteful. Eschew walking to work
• Work
• Buy tortoiseshell sunglasses with silver earpieces from Brighton and be all stylin' and de-Bono'd
• Pick up variety of touristy brochures from visitor kiosk and hope no one thinks I'm a tourist
• Forget to have spare keys made
• Desire Jamba Juice for lunch
• Order Raspberry Refresher
• Stand in line having hair admired by queuer with shoulder-length hair
• To explain hairstyle, remove pin CLH gave for Christmas so that braid unfolds down back
• Refold and repin while someone emerges from behind counter, stoops, stands with something in her hand, and asks, "Did someone drop a wallet?"
• Retrive wallet, abashed and grateful; unsnap and let unfold with photo ID at top, though clerk did not ask for verification
• Chat with queuer about where to find hairpins for the French twists her hair's the perfect length for
• Leave with shake before realizing I should have asked if the woman wanted to drink her lunch with me
• Send office-wide email asking about a babysitter for one night this week while RDC sends similar one to grad student list
• Admire RDC's expertly spraypainted hinges and kickplates
• Scrub both bathrooms with actual chemicals, a step not taken last week when easily-poisoned cockatiel would not leave shoulder without apopletic fit
• Mop
• Vacuum (only in family room and my study, where carpet is)
• Shove last 10-ream box not very filled with homeless stuff into study closet to be dealt with later
• Be reminded, in closet, to bring down empty hangers for guests
• Dust and scrub other, but not all, surfaces in basement. Remind RDC we need to replace the hose of the dryer since it seems to vent to the basement and not to the outside
• Bring case of wine to basement where it's cool. Wonder where in coal cellar wine cellar will be built and where the storm windows will live thereafter
• Unfold and make up futon into bed with waterbed sheets and comforter
• Put touristy materials on futon
• Hold doors in place while RDC screws hinges into place
• Shove all remaining clothes into closets, now that they can hide stuff
• See all the flaws in own paint job
• Remove hardware, old ceiling fixtures, drill, dropcloth, and everything else that's doesn't belong in the bedroom from the bedroom to the coal cellar, except the drill and the blinds which get deposited in RDC's study
• Try to untangle mess of cords in living room from phone, Mac airport, and modem; hear and acknowledge RDC warning to replug everything in just as it was
• Desire cord-hiding spools
• Realize line 2 is open but has no dial tone
• With attachment, vacuum sawdust from within closets (since latches required new hole) and windowsills (from blinds a few weeks ago) and burned-looking dust that fell out of the old ceiling fixtures (was there a fire?)
• Do one last load of wash
• When that finishes, run dishwasher. Do not remind RDC we need to replace a hose in it as well, since he is grocery-shopping and out of earshot
• Read Nobody's Fool and pet buddy's head in my new spot, leaning against the arch between the newly-empty dining and living rooms
• Gape at alien food products husband brings home. Juice boxes. Trix. Snapple. Fruit roll-ups. Hide these from sight
• Hear RDC say, "I think I'll have a martini on the porch swing....Or maybe I just want the concept of a martini."
• Ask if a martini will make him more receptive to what I'm about to tell him, which is that I screwed up the phone lines
• After sorting out the wires, RDC makes an actual, vodka martini with Grey Goose, which comes in bottle I like (because it has neat interior artwork that's magnified through the liquor; I always want to water down the liquor so the level never drops and I can keep admiring the geese)
• I make the concept of a martini: one slice of peanut butter and one slice of Charenton blueberry jam toast and a glass of juice
• Congratulate each other on the house--after more than two months--being finally suitable for houseguests (as long as they don't mind not having television)
• Read in bed.
• Finish Nobody's Fool. I thought it was going to have a McTeague kind of ending but it didn't and I'm glad; it's just a Right kind of ending
• Read two picture-book versions of the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin, since my book listserve recommends an sf novel named that and these were the only two things on the shelf with that name
• Be surprised to like the Patric Yolen more than the Susan Cooper one. Who is this Yolen person anyway?
• Think that here's a story Robin McKinley could seriously retell
• Hang head that Robin McKinley remained unloved by me for 20 more years than is excusable
• Begin Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, the least fantastical DWJ on the shelf, and wonder if I'll ever find out which of the Chrestomanci books is first so I can read them and be converted

Wednesday 2 August 2000

• Having omitted to set an alarm at all, wake at 7:00
• Empty dishwasher
• Carefully braid hair so that strands, once out of head and therefore yucky, do not litter carefully mopped floor
• Do not empty dryer or fold and put away laundry
• Get to work 10 minutes late
• Finally get answers to Kymm's quiz; realize the only book I guessed wrong was one I'd never read, and the three that I knew I knew, that kept pecking at my conscience, I had indeed read but not memorized. Resolve to get Seventeenth Summer from library
• 12:00: take call from RDC on his way from DIA with family asking where to lunch with easy parking. Earlier RDC had eschewed the Rainforest Café for having sucky food, but now he realized what an excellent idea it is, entertaining and accessible.
• 12:15: realize the raspberry plants have received no water since Monday
• 12:30: go to library for Seventeenth Summer, Richard Russo's Mohawk and his new Straight Man, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (because with every trip I get something I doubt I'll read), Charmed Life (which I hope is the first Chrestomanci novel), and the Recorded Books Inc. production of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (strongly recommended by Charenton), because tomorrow, damn it, I am walking to work
• 12:50: Compile from DayRunner to-do lists the reasons I will not be able to post until

Monday, 7 August 2000