Reading: J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

Moving: housework

Listening: NPR

Watching: CNN, Fox Sunday nights, and "CBS Sunday Morning"

13 November 2000: RDC's birthday

Yesterday I watched "CBS Sunday Morning" for the first time since before we moved at the end of May. I like having the television downstairs, away from the main living area. We recently, finally got a radio for upstairs, for Blake to listen to while we're gone. When RDC brought it home, as soon as Blake heard music, he started bopping. We've been leaving it on KBCO instead of KCFR because it seems he prefers rock and roll to NPR. Anyway, I don't turn that on in the morning either. My mornings, now, are my own.

Except I do like "CBS Sunday Morning," and, especially today, I watched parts of that along with CNN and NBC and ABC. RDC made coffee and expressed surprised I hadn't bought him the griddle from his Amazon wishlist for his birthday. That would have been a selfish present, I said. My mother had a cast-iron griddle which I used happily while in her house, and a frying pan on an electric stove's burner works okay, but a frying pan on a gas stove doesn't work (as Jessie and I found out) because the heat doesn't disperse across the whole pan. I'll get him the griddle for Christmas, especially since we've found that merely heating, not totally overheating and burning, Teflon, emits fumes that kill birds, which rules out waffle irons in our house.

Then I took the ladder outside to the garage to look for storm windows. I left the door open and raised the car door for maximum light, set up the ladder, and had a look-see. I found screens for the three bedrooms windows that had glass in them all summer. (I didn't go into the garage rafters all summer for fear of hornets.) I found glass storm windows for dining room and for the narrow bedroom window. I found glass for the study window, the wide bedroom window, and the last regular bedroom window, but I couldn't get them down myself, too heavy. No. I was too weak. Or not strong enough for my wingspan. I don't think the previous owners or anyone for ten years or more ever swapped out screen for glass on a seasonal basis. These windows were filthy. I scrubbed them down and hung them, stored the screens in the coal cellar (much easier to get to than the garage rafters), did another coat on the dining room window trim, and both of us spent the rest of afternoon in front of CNN.

And the evening in front of Fox. Love those badgers. One of the ads was for corduroy jeans, which I guess Levi Strauss is trying to reintroduce. A man walks through a forest with his cords whisking "wherk wherk wherk" which sound piques a badger's interest. The badger chases the man through the end of the commercial. Finally, this neglected species is getting its air time. I love badgers.

RDC asked me how much we have to empty the garage for Cassidy to occupy it. Umm, a lot. The shelving from the front bedroom closet. The mint-green carpet from the study. The old toilet. Lots of boxes. Also now the weird black tubing from behind the garage. I never did find out when Large Item Pick-up would be or where in town to recycle cardboard. And I have to remember to sweep, because if nothing else there are probably carpet nails everywhere.

It would make sense to come in from the back for the winter. Keeping the car ice- and snow-free for the first time in my life would be a treat. The door's below the main living area and opening it wouldn't deliver the punch that opening the front door does. Which reminds me, I have to see if some of those metal-framed windows belong on the security doors. That would help. And we don't yet have a mat on the inside and have been, since Saturday, taking off our snowy boots on the porch and going into the house sock-footed, which is cold, or taking off our boots immediately inside, which still drips on the wood floor.

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Cold. Didn't walk to work. I began Disgrace this weekend and like it better than other Coetzee except Foe. That's good. Desiree's site has a whole page for Rumer Godden, of whom I had previously barely heard but who is prolific. The "barely" is because Nisou sent me Cromartie v. the God Shiva: Acting Through the Government of India for Christmas but I haven't read it yet. I started it yesterday. She also sent me The God of Small Things, which I did read, and loved particularly because the author photograph looks like Nisou. Have I written of this yet? I told her this, and she denied it. Roy is prettier than she, she averred (I countered I'd be the judge of how beautiful my friend is or is not) and furthermore, Roy is Indian (to clarify, given what I've recently written, and if the surname were insufficient, India Indian) and Nisou is not. When RDC bought his new cell phone, I told him the clerk looked like Dexy. "The clerk's black," RDC said. (Dexy's not.) "Yes. But they still look alike." He looked again and agreed they did. I see resemblance in expression and movement much more than I do in colors or even shapes.

We went out to Busara, a Thai restaurant, for RDC's birthday. We were mistaken to go downtown, because of football traffic--people parked downtown and walked or took shuttles because the new stadium is being built on the old one's parking lot. I can't believe people were deliberately, willfully, going to go sit in a windchill of around 0 to watch other people have an overly physical argument about a ball. But they were. We were unthrilled by Busara, but to eat Thai was an important obstacle for me to get over. I had not had anything Thai since early August, when I vomited up my Drunken Noodles. But last Friday I had the Pressto Aubergine sandwich for the first time since before Labor Day, eleven weeks previous. It was the last thing I ate before getting even more viciously sick (in the other direction). Both the aubergine sandwich and the peanut noodles stayed where they were meant to stay and performed as expected.

When I came back to the office with my sandwich, Tex asked me what I had, and I told him, and he remembered my last trip, and I said yes, I had to get over the Garcia effect. He raised his eyebrows. "It's a psychological phenomenon by which two nonassociated things become associated. Like if you're eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you first learn that your father's died, and from then on you can't stomach the things." Or something like that.

I guess I like Pressto sandwiches, with lots of cheese and plenty of pesto-mayo dressing, better than Thai, because I ate my whole sandwich Friday but only part of my supper last night. Or maybe I wasn't hungry. We came home and RDC opened his presents, all off his wishlist. He expected I might have given him a DVD we both like, like "Cinema Paradiso" or "Tampopo." But I got him Dick's Picks, volumes 7 & 9, and more vacuum stoppers for wine, and some light reading, as he said, a programming book. If he ever finishes The Code Book I'll read that, but he's had a bookmark in Midnight's Children for more than five months so I'm not holding my breath. But The Code Book is nonfiction and therefore a surer bet for him right now.