Reading: Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

Moving: housecleaned and yardworked all the day long

25 August 2001: House work

You know, I have nothing to say. I haven't been reading or exercising. Or thinking publicly. My safe subject is recent purchases--I said safe, not interesting or admirable--and after last Friday night I feel even shallower than ever. But anyway, an email to CLH, modified:

I wanted a bag for camera and money and suchlike. I didn't have a black purse I didn't hate either--I have a tiny one, fake satin, that can hold a bill and a bottle of eyedrops, totally inadequate, and I have a black leather purse I despise and that you would loathe even more (remember the bag I looked at in the Westbrook outlet stores? If you hated that, I dread to think what you would say about this one). The impractical purse came from an accessory store in Connecticut, which indicates its age and quality, and the ugly black thing came from Ross, which indicates its ugliness and quality.

So time was getting close, and I need something. Saturday we went to REI and I expected to find no more than a silk pouch for my passport (do you carry it at all times? I expect to. Also, do you fret about losing it? I expect to, but then I'm a fretter). To my surprise, I found the most PERFECT travel clothes--sturdy, comfy Tencel, dark charcoal grey dress and skirt and a black shirt, all on sale. I was expecting to get a black dress, but I really didn't want to because I hate black. So I was very happy clothing-wise--grey is my New Black. I don't have a black everyday dress at all--I have two Little Black Dresses and one long velvet one and a winter-weight funeral one. So anyway, now I'm set for clothes. We looked at bags, too, and RDC found pouch that he can shove glasses, camera, and ass-mar inhaler into (he's calling it a European carry-all), and that I decided was Not Pretty Enough for me. I was forgetting one important consideration.

On Tuesday I went to T.J. Maxx. I was wearing my new black shoes, breaking them in, and Tex asked if they were new (which indicates how much I wear my brown leather sandals: every day). I said yes, they were new, I hadn't had a pair of flat black shoes for Europe. He said he couldn't begin to count how many pairs of black shoes his wife had. At the store, I looked at a larger bag that was not so pretty but acceptable, and then found a nice smaller one that I thought was exactly right: camera and money and eyedrops (I'm expecting the smoking will be bad). I was at the cash register when I Realized the One Important Consideration, so I nipped back for the larger uglier bag.

What I had forgotten was the blank book you brought me from Europe 11 years ago, in whose front cover you instructed me to carry it everywhere and write everything. The little bag wouldn't fit it.

And then I went to Ross, which again proved itself superior to TJMaxx. A Nine West bag, completely acceptable (to me), just the right size. I returned the TJM DKNY--and on the return trip, ran into Tex's wife buying a pair of black shoes. At home, I fit your journal and my camera into my bag (I refuse to call it a purse) and it is Just Right.

Yea!

---

I don't know why I began fall housecleaning today. Perhaps so I don't postpone it until Thanksgiving. I usually give the kitchen a lick and a promise (that's from Look Through My Window, the treatment Wilhelmina gives the last-born of her kittens, and I wanted to get it as a phrase over with before I mentioned the bathroom), but today I scrubbed the inside of the microwave and moved it to clean the counter underneath (no Rarities) and scoured the burners and polished the glass canisters and emptied and soaked the glass bottles and detailed the blender. Detailing the blender was long overdue: some years ago I forgot the rubber ring that goes between the pitcher and the blade, and not when I poured my smoothie ingredients in but when I switched the machine on, yoghurt and blueberries and orange juice leaked all over. Some years ago. Yep.

Whenever we redo the bathroom, we are going to have flooring that looks clean when it is clean. I scrubbed every square inch with a scrubby sponge, a distasteful process, after which the linoleum still has, in addition to a blue cornflower design bounding every square, two colors of white plus red flecks, so it always looks dirty.

Then I got distracted by the garden. I untwined bindweed from various tomato plants, mercilessly ripped off zucchini leaves that shadowed the eggplant--something I've been doing for over a month now. Now sometimes along with the leaves, whole sections of plants came too, and although I wasn't consciously deliberately killing them I am glad. There are four monstrous zucchini in my fridge, and while RDC's zucchini-and-asparagus stir-fry with brown rice is good, there are only so many times a week you can eat that.

Also I scrubbed the next set of windows for painting and had ridiculous schemes about starting that painting as soon as the patio was in shade.

By 2:30 I was falling over, though it took me another hour to overcome my "Ooo, shiny!" auto-distract function (although today it was more like "ooo, not shiny!") and actually make myself a smoothie. RDC came home from his errands at Home Depot (allegedly the other windows in the living room will have molding tomorrow) and we collapsed in our delightfully comfortable camp chairs with fruit and smoothies and cookies and water and books and napped for a while, until Blake's squeaking for his supper roused at least RDC.

Apparently six hours of labor is all I can manage at a stretch. I'm doing laundry now. The machine is churning, yeah, and I'm not stooping over a washboard, but it counts.

The bookcase on the east wall of my study, a particle board giant run to earth at Home Despot.

1. Basket HEBD gave me. Will I ever use it? Doubtful. But she gave it to me.
2. 3D puzzle of Caernarvon Castle
3. Calendar of moon phases.
4. Lavender garden from Southwestern Living magazine.
5. Calendar: exhibits at the Museum of Nature and Science, movies at Fillmore Plaza, concerts. Dilemma: the Go-gos at Red Rocks, a lecture at the DNS on carnivores of the Ice Age, and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at Fillmore Plaza are all next Thursday. I'm not going to go to the Go-gos if I couldn't motivate enough to see Lyle Lovett, and I'll probably wind up at the Museum. I've memorized "Raiders."
6. Schedule of art classes at the Denver Art Museum.
7. Aerobie
8. Fiction begins with Kobo Abe's The Box Man, which I haven't read, but I've read Flatland and Things Fall Apart and Douglas Adams and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and Louisa May Alcott and Lloyd Alexander and Isabel Allende and Hanan al-Shaykh (which probably belongs under S) but not Lucky Jim.
9. Picture books and my yearbooks and coloring books and Opus and Madeline and Dickon and Granny's pink elephant and Tropicana orange rado and Tigger of course and two of Granny's paintings.
10. Binders covered in William Morris paper.
11. Box of personal correspondence
12. Case for Peter Gabriel's Xplora CD-ROM. Much more effective as decoration than as a computer toy.
13. Smallish poster of The Unicorn in Captivity. I used to hang it naked but now I want to frame it.
14. Heating duct. This is how RDC and I talk when he's upstairs and I'm in here.
15. Lightswitch for closet. Why isn't the bookcase farther to the left, alongside the futon? Because my study is curbed. I have no idea why.
16. Clampy reading light that is the only way my houseguests can read in bed. It's not ideal.

---

Watching "The Gods Must Be Crazy." Reading Philip Pullman. Tickling RDC. Petting buddy's head. Eating spinach salad and chocolate cookies. It's a rough Saturday night, but someone's got to do it.

"They're the sweetest little buggers. They're gonna die for sure." What a great movie. I used to have that line on my left Ked and "When you grow up, your heart dies. It's unavoidable; it just happens" on my right.