Reading: Myra Goldberg's Bee Season

Moving: housework and a short walk

Listening: NPR

Watching: CNN, twilight, and "Stranger than Paradise"

11 November 2000: Senior fall

Another house weekend.

I got up at 6:30 (with an alarm) and looked outside and exclaimed happily "It's snowing!" and then I remembered and repeated less enthusiastically, "It's snowing." The alarm served to get me out of bed in time to bring Blake to the vet for his annual checkup. "Why didn't you have him checked when he boarded?" asked Rich sensibly.
"Because I have questions!"

Last month I drove to Englewood or Littleton or wherever it is on what seemed to be a blazing hot day, but which was only in the 70s and uncomfortable only because of my stress level. Today I drove there in snow.

Denver doesn't plow. It just doesn't.

Colorado Boulevard was hairy but I-25 was mostly okay. Otherwise I was just glad I had left in plenty of time. I didn't remember that the last time I had driven to the vet's, the engine light had flashed, until we were almost there.

Blake is fine, beak to tail, as his doctor said. My questions concerned the introduction of a dog into the household and how much more jealous and neglected than most human older siblings Blake will feel. Actually I asked about safety. The reason I have not moved on the dog thing is that the very hesitation addresses the Whether I Am Ready issue. More hesitation = more uncertainty about when or if readiness will ever happen. I want to get a dog for my own sake, but also for the dog's sake, and while I know a dog won't make Blake happy, I don't want a dog to make him a) miserable or b) dead. Both are possible.

---

Home to coffee and the painting of window trim. RDC did the ceiling. Or maybe he did it Friday. Anyway, it's done. In the coal room I found two storm windows for the breakfast nook, washed them, and hung them up. I found another window labeled in pencil on its unpainted wooden side, NBR-front-L. I have no idea where it goes. The house originally had three bedrooms on its north side and now has one and a study; the window fit none of those. The breakfast nook has its glass. It's too narrow for the kitchen, too short for the living room (whose screens I exchanged for storm windows last weekend? sometime anyway). I have no idea.

Yes, RDC did paint the ceiling Friday. I'm not writing this Saturday, surprise surprise. He painted it Friday while I was cleaning the bathroom and on the phone with my mother. (I love the headset for the cordless phone.) She mailed me the photographs I gave her, reluctantly, in October, gave because she pouted, gave before my friends had seen them. I ordered more prints from Shutterfly afterward and sent the URL to the picture-deprived. So whatever. We chatted. I de-yellow-fied the shower.

I did a coat of white on the trim, cleaned the house (somewhat), returned to CNN. In the evening we watched "Stranger Than Paradise," which his mother sent RDC for his birthday (love those Amazon wishlists). I surfed from a wireless laptop because I didn't like the movie the first time and didn't like it the second either. RDC said I didn't like Jim Jarmusch at all, which is not true--I like "Night on Earth" and "Down by Law"--but "Stranger Than Paradise" reminds me of an Anne Tyler novel, which will garner me smacks from Haitch and my sister: pointless miserable characters autistically unable to connect with any other character, and congenitally joyless.

Which reminds me. Last week I dreamed of minor UConn characters, a full cast of long-gone, never-wrote-back characters like Kathy two doors down in Holcomb and Quinn from two of my history classes senior fall and that grad student in economics I used to swim with whose name I've forgotten. I told PLT about that dream (which I think I had Wednesday night--Tuesday night I fell asleep thinking Bush had won the election and dreamt about Justice Stevens dying, a much more realistic dream than I usually have) and he replied "Jen S------." She was my across-the-hall neighbor senior year. She had a sleep disorder, which got her a medical single ahead of people of later semester standing. For reasons unrelated to the disorder, she wore hard-soled shoes all the time, including her late-night (related to the disorder) bathroom trips. Holcomb had tile floors. She was loud.

So anyway I threw another couple of names at him. The characters in the dream were people I liked and wish I had known better, people I bet I wouldn't have lost touch with if email had been prevalent a decade ago. (I used to be a tenacious letter writer; it wasn't my fault I lost touch with anyone, oh no.) The later names belonged to people whose acquaintance I or we dropped freshling year, purposefully and not in a post-graduation kind of way. PLT at first didn't remember them, and so out came the lisa-stories, at which point he remembered. The reason he forgot them? Congenital joylessness (theirs, not his). Or perhaps something in the water of the town they were all from.

My minor characters, who were fun:

Kathy was from Mystic. She's the one who told me most of the scenes in "Mystic Pizza" were filmed in Pawcatuk or Pawtucket (I always confuse those two towns; she didn't) or North Stonington. The irony of that movie title was lost on me since I immediately recognized the town name and the restaurant in question; I know the main touristy drag in Mystic well enough to know the restaurant if not the surrounding areas well enough to Spot the Mansion, as Kathy could. She knew Kerry somehow, but did Kerry ever live on campus? But talk about bad correspondents; Kerry's long gone. Her boyfriend was a good friend of SEM's and he disappeared even quicker. There's a picture of SEM, SSP, and either JCC or that boyfriend that I wish I had a copy of, of the three of them doing "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil."

I think I just cleared this up with SEM and JCC last month, whether it was JCC or Jonas in the picture. They laughed at me, because JCC is about half a foot taller than Jonas, Caucasian, and at the time of the picture had long red curly hair. Jonas was Philipino and wore his straight black hair only to his shoulders. So, SEM and JCC mocked, I should be able to tell the pair apart. But I saw the picture only a couple of times, a long time ago, and all four of them were in the martial arts class where the photograph was taken, and if the J-man were doing "See no evil," then maybe enough of his face could be hidden that I could reasonably forget which one was taller. If one of the other S-men did "see," then I've just forgotten in my senility. But SEM is in some kind of contact with the girlfriend-at-the-time who took that picture, so maybe one day. And since I did just clear it up and promptly forget, then I'm certainly senile. What stands out in my memory is what a good smile SSP had, and that's why I wanted it.

Anyway, back to the minor characters. Quinn was in two classes with me but I don't remember which. They were history classes because they were in Storrs Hall and it was senior fall. I can reconstruct my schedule and remember the courses that way. Senior fall was one of those semesters when I had a perfect schedule, timewise. MWF, I had 50-minute classes at 9, 10, 11, and 1. TR, I had one at 9:30. This meant I got up at the crack of 8 and then went to class without wasting the morning, and had large blocks of time for work at Scheduling or the library.
9:00--England to 1603, in the room in the SW corner facing Wilbur Cross and Wood Hall.
10:00--Chinese History to the Mid-19th Century, in the SE corner facing WC and Chem.
Quinn was in one of these two classes.
11:00--Russian Novel
12:00--Lunch. We were all in Holcomb or Sprague by then and almost all had lunch at noon. I liked that.
1:00--Indians in North American History, SE room again.
Quinn must have been in that one too.
My Tuesday-Thursday class was Modern Irish Lit.

I don't remember much about Quinn; but because I had the distinct impression that he liked me, he stands out. Sometimes I swam before class, and one time I arrived at class with nearly sopping hair. That day was rainy and humid, and I made some comment about my hair (though cropped in back and merely floppy in front, short overall) refusing to dry. Three hours later, it was still thoroughly wet, and Quinn said, "Your hair is just never going to dry today is it?" Of the earlier two classes, he must have been in Chinese History with me, because I remember him coming to a review session in my room the night before an exam. SEM and Jonas or Kerry or both and someone else were all in that class, and SSP, who had much better study habits than the rest of us, showed up to help (and, as I recall, got fed up with our lack of scholarliness, which lack manifested in our respective GPAs).

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"Indians in American History" is a problematic title, isn't it? Soon after I moved to Denver, once when I was temping, someone asked what I had gone to school for. I hadn't yet learned to give the short answer (have I yet?) and did mention working toward a master's in Medieval Studies. The man thought that was just ridiculous, and he asked, really antagonistically, "since I'm part Indian," what the medieval period in American Indian history would be.

I define history as a written record. That's why, in the semester before I had Indians in North America, I had course titled "Near East Pre-History." Humans were there, we know that, but they weren't writing yet. I allow some leeway for the fantasticly intricate woven belts Incan priests wore, in whose colors and knots they recorded events, but aside from that, history didn't start on this continent until 1492. The course studied Indians after European arrival but at least didn't take only the Europeans' word (their history) for what happened.

"Medieval" is a term people apply to an era in hindsight, and whoever started calling the period "medieval" did so because that time is considered dark and stagnant with nothing of note really happening between the two true flourishings of European human accomplishments (the Greek and Roman Empires, then the Renaissance and afterward).

I would not define native Americans as having had a medieval period. Individual empires like the Incans or Mayans or Aztecs flourished for hundreds of years, and then fell. In the case of the Aztecs and Incas, they were pushed, and the Spanish conquistadors did the pushing. But the record, if not historical even archaeological, doesn't exist to support the idea of a middle, dormant stage between peaks of civilization.

What pissed me off about the man's belligerence was his assumption. Sure I'm eurocentric in my own personal interests, but being so doesn't mean I consider other human civilizations, like those in the Americas or China (which was terrifically interesting and one of the best courses I had at UConn), beneath my notice. Just kind of...beside my notice, which, yes, is focused on western Europe and the British Isles specifically.

I wonder if the title's been changed, now that disabled students at UConn are called "students with disabilities" and presumably towheaded students are similarly called "students with blondness."

Which reminds me of two things:

• One of Box's foibles was that she thought "towhead" was an insult. Apparently, she had never come across it in print and heard a homophone, "toe-head."
• And that a woman from my high school class was in the American Indian class. I was so focused on my own UConn life then, in the aftermath of the PLT-SEB debacle and starting to go out with SSP and staring May 1990, my would-be graduation date, in the face, that I just didn't pay attention to anyone from Old Lyme. She remembers my ignoring her, which I don't doubt I did. But I didn't do so maliciously--if I had, I would remember her being there, and remember it guiltily. That I barely remember her being there indicates I ignored her by accident. Also that I sat in the front and participated and she sat toward the back and did not.

Anyway, back to Quinn. I think I had finished with Quinn.

A grad student in education had surveyed the university that semester to find its best professors, as research for her dissertation. She came to two of my classes and I was pleased I had chosen my courses so well. I don't remember how many professors she had found, but it was a number low enough that for me to have two surprised both of us--Chinese History and Modern Irish Lit. The history prof said he didn't like projects like this cutting into his class time but because she seemed herself to be a cut above, he was making an exception. Her questions were thoughtful and useful and, as an incentive, she had a basket of Hershey's miniatures. Good woman.