Reading: Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost;

On deck: Don Quijote, The London Rich, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Moving: walked 5 miles

Garden: are squirrels eating seeds right out of the ground, or what? Zucchini are weeds, and should sprout anywhere. But nooooo.

3 June 2002: Caffeine

My head is about to spin off my neck. I have, I thought, an okay tolerance for caffeine. I have a cup, or part of a cup, on weekend mornings. Once in a terrifically great while I'll have a cup of tea on a weekday. I drink coffee on weekends but not weekdays because on weekends, RDC and I get up at the same time. Approximately. I have no idea how to make coffee. My being totally and completely clueless is another story. I can make myself a cup of tea, though not properly. We now nuke water in the microwave and add a teabag later; if the teabag is heated with the water it explodes. I had to find that out the hard way, after RDC told me what would happen. See cluelessness.

So anyway. I never quite woke up today. Jazz either has shifts its narrative voice or I am not following its shifts in time because I'm still half-asleep in the mornings. RDC said his freshling didn't like Beloved because the time-shifts confused them. At lunch I bought a wrap and craved, as usual, a chocolate chip cookie. Today I bought a kind I've never had before, with espresso chocolate chips. Zounds. I am so wired. I wonder how much water I would have to drink to bring down my blood-caffeine level. Enough to get punch-drunk, I suppose. REB and I used to get drunk on water, or so we thought at the time; after that I learned that you can poison yourself by overhydration, I have wondered if our hysterical giggliness arose from our being nine years old or from incipient water toxicity.

Spin spin spin. Zoooom.

This weekend I did not finish the screens. Damn it. Friday I would have procrastinated even if there hadn't been the bike drama. Saturday I spread mulch over my front garden, improving its appearance significantly (I think) and removed most of the free TreeCycle mulch to the back. I left one layer of needles on the groundcloth over the easement. Next season I want to plant that with vinca, which apparently spreads so well I didn't want it in the front garden.

This week I must finish the screens so I can hang them before I leave.

I have to renew my pills. Gripe: my insurance now permits me to buy only one cycle at a time. Not for health reasons: it considers one annual examination adequate. (As I'm sure it is; the college infirmary dispensed six months at once without a complete repeat exam but with a second blood pressure check.) But apparently the decision whether to reproduce is one I should be making month to month. I know it's really only because the company wants as many copays as possible. But I choose my own subtext. So I must scurry to Rite-Aid.

I need a new audiobook and will dash to the 'brary Wednesday (I should finish Jazz walking in Wednesday).

All of this dashing and scurrying is necessary because this week and last I have been flexing, banking hours against my vacation, so have had a half-hour lunch.

Packing. Shopping. One evening I would like to go find interesting presents for my chilluns. What do five-year-olds read? Dr. Seuss on her own? HEBD has read Lucy Maud Montgomery and Tolkien to ZBD, but I doubt she can read at that level.