Bein' Green

It's not easy.

I've said before that the Hubs is Mr. Recycler, the Garbage Police. Also a vegan. Now, who doesn't support the whole idea of recycling and being green? I'm taking baby steps.

A year or two ago, I switched all the light bulbs in the house to those compact fluorescents. Let me tell you, it is nasty when one of those breaks, or burns out.

A few months ago, I banned paper plates and cups from the house, along with disposable plastic tableware. (I really, really hate to wash dishes.)

The other day, I picked up some paper towels and toilet paper to try. It's unbleached, and made from recycled fibers. (Presumably not from recycled toilet paper fibers.) We haven't started using them yet, because I just stocked up on Bounty and Charmin last week. Those two are on the list of the worst environmentally friendly paper products. Who knew.

Next, once I've got the paper all sorted out, will be dishwashing and laundry detergent. I also picked up two huge bottles of Tide on sale last week, so that'll be a while, too. And then the other cleaners.

Why? Why not? Why not, hey, everybody stop using stuff that puts toxins in our bodies, our houses, our water. Just seems to make sense to me, I guess.

I will not, however, use the compost in the summer. We have a big compost bin outside and a small stainless steel one on the kitchen counter. I have no problem using the little one and dumping it outside all winter long, but I went outside to do it yesterday, and of course, a cloud of those horrid little flies flew out when I opened the lid. I swear, I almost stripped to my naked torso* right there on the porch lest I bring even one of them inside with me. So, for the summer, I throw my apple cores in the actual garbage, and let the little pail sit there until the Hubs takes it out. Those flies freak me out.

(*for kitchenlogic.)

But my big success of the day was the finding of the educational documents. Last weekend, K got her brandy-new master's degree diploma in the mail. (We're not fans of going to the ceremonies.) She opened the envelope, said "Oh, it's here," and R said "You have mine someplace, too, right?" And I said, "Oh, sure!"

Uh .... uh ....

I looked with something less than zeal here and there throughout the week, and it -- her graduate diploma -- was not where I was sure it was. And then I started to think: where were their undergraduate diplomas? For that matter, where were mine? I tore the family room apart this morning and came up with zippo. Nada.

What I did find, which surprised me, were copies of all my teaching certificates, which is pretty funny because I just received the duplicates of those I requested from the state to the tune of $80 in money orders (what a pain), but I found what I needed, even the one that the state somehow neglected to send me. Which made me think, now where could everything else be?

I have a sort of captain's chest which we use as a coffee table, but it has doors on one side and is full of all the family pictures. It was the only place left I could imagine all of it being, so I looked. What I found was actually a nice archival storage box for each of us, full of the kids' report cards, camp swimming awards, and all that stuff, and our diplomas. All of them, except mine from library school -- no idea where that is, don't care -- and the Hubs', which he has framed someplace. I found all our high school diplomas (all from the same school), and even, tucked into my box, my kindergarten diploma and my three years of high school Latin awards. Aw.

So that's my accomplishment for the day. I barely slept last night, was wide awake from about midnight to four, and couldn't sleep this afternoon. I sure hope I sleep tonight, or I'll be cranky tomorrow.


watching L & O/SVU :: ENTRY #2066
READING: ----- by -----

A Miracle Happened Here

(with apologies to Chanukah, and the dreidel, which bears the Hebrew inscription "A Miracle Happened Here.)

R came over today and helped me clean the basement. Yes, folks, I lived to see one of my children help me clean the basement.

She had an ulterior motive -- of course -- which is that the piece of furniture she took from my parents' apartment is down there, and damn heavy, so we've been piling stuff on it for years. Although our goal for today was to make the table accessible, which we did, she also went through a dozen or so boxes and created many many bags of garbage, as well as filling her car with stuff she's keeping and putting aside another pile of stuff she'll take the next time she's here. YAY! She's moving into a house with a big, empty basement, so she's taking her childhood crap with her.

Have I mentioned YAY!

It's actually navigable down there now, and when the piece of furniture is out, we'll put shelves there, and everything will be off the floor and then K will be able to go through her boxes easily.

I'm tellin' ya, I never thought I'd live to see the day.

In other news, there is no other news, except school tomorrow and the eye doctor after that. And that my nails are so long I can hardly type.

That is all.


HISTORY CHANNEL :: ENTRY #1982
READING: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hursti\on

Chai's on Fiah!

I have spent this day in a whirlwind of activity. I'm not sure where all the energy came from; I didn't sleep better or worse, really, than I have been all week, and I woke up before six. I realized right away that I had the makings of a sinus headache, so I took a couple of Excedrin and tried to fall asleep again. I didn't do that, but may I say, I heart Excedrin. I can't take it too often, and I can't take later in the day than say, three or so, but it knocks out the headache and gives me a nice caffeine boost that my decaf just doesn't do. I expected to crash by noon, but I never did.

I got up and did my Wii Fit, which was much, much easier to do first thing in the morning than after a day at work, and I got in 35 minutes instead of 20. I'll bowl later, which I've been doing right after the Fit. I took the body test again and my Fit Age has gone down from 75 to 44. I'm sure it has less to do with me than it does with my taking the test originally with the board backwards.

I just got so much done today. Let me share some highlights with you.

I wanted the living room in order, because the R and the GF (Gentleman Friend) were meeting K and her friend Matt here at 5:00 to go out to dinner and then to the play at the high school. I had repaired the broken clothes rack, but K said there was no way she could make the room to take it back upstairs today, and who was I trying to impress, boys? Here's the thing. I wanted my house to look clean because people were coming over. She said that Matt wouldn't care. (More on the Matts in a moment.) Well, I know that Matt wouldn't care, and his mother isn't going to ask him "What's their house like?" because she already knows, and I know her and she wouldn't care anyway, and K and Matt are not dating. The GF, on the other hand, has only been here once, and I don't know his mother, and how do I know she won't say "So what's their house like?" When I explained this to K, she said "He's a boy! If his mother asks him, he'll say 'It's a house, I don't know!'" which is probably true. But these are potential in-laws, it would seem, and okay, am I crazy or what?

Part of my travels today included the Recycling Center. I had a carload of cardboard, boxes and clothes for the Red Cross box. As I was hoisting the bag of clothes into the box -- I hate those things -- I smashed my wrist into the edge of the opening up inside the box. I pulled it out and rubbed my wrist, and thought "Funny, I guess I forgot to put my watch on this morning." (That's called foreshadowing, boys and girls.) Next, I went to the Container Store, where among other things, I got stuff to organize the top of my desk, which I did when I got home.

A few hours later -- sometime after one o'clock -- K was waiting for Matt to pick her up for lunch and she glanced at her watch and said "He's always late!" and I thought uh-oh. My watch wasn't on my desk either; I had just touched everything on it and there was no watch. I checked the blankets to see if I had maybe fallen asleep with it on last night and took it off during the night, but no watch. Looks like someone at the Red Cross is getting a present. By that time, the Recycling Center was closed, so it was too late to go back and see if it might have fallen on the ground instead of inside, just to check.

It was a really good, but not expensive, Mickey Mouse watch that I like a lot, and that is now out of stock on Amazon. (Insert boo hoo here.) I never wear expensive watches (and now we all know why.) I ordered another one, not as good, but relatively okay. (I only like the ones with all the numbers, a good, full-body Mickey in the center, and actual Mickey arms for the hands. OCD much?)

So, the Matts. K actually has four friends named Matt, who can roughly be distinguished as High School (aka Big) Matt, College (aka Gay) Matt, Berlin Matt, and Grad School (aka Engaged) Matt. She has no romantic involvement with any of these, although she and Big Matt have been good buddies since ninth grade, and he has just recently come home to New Jersey, so she's very happy to have him here. When they were in high school and went everywhere together (aka cutting class together whenever they could), the Colleague called him The Bodyguard.

I finished Twlight yesterday, which I thought was an entirely adequate YA (Young Adult) novel. I enjoyed it, but I don't get what the fuss is all about. (Although that boy cast as the lead has, as Hawkeye once said about Ava Gardner, pleasant features.)


WATCHING HOUSE :: ENTRY #1916
READING: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Hello Out There in Internet Land

I'm having a silly morning, and it took forever to fall asleep last night, so I'm not too clear about the whole thing. My car is in for service, so I'm driving my nephew Little K's car (since he's away at college), which rides very nicely for a car with 130,000 miles on it (and, as my sister reminded me, once had an unpleasant encounter with an 18-wheeler.) It took me forever to find the cup holder in it this morning.

I have a new mindset when it comes to the mice. Kill'em, kill'em all. After I posted yesterday, I went in to finish the shelf cleaning and such that the Hubs had started for me, and we ended up doing it mostly together, and while I didn't find more signs of mice presence, I am just fed up with the whole cleaning up thing. It seems they found a bag of soup beans on a high shelf, and wouldn't you know, this must be their favorite thing in the whole world, and everything we had to move on every shelf below it spilled more bean pieces onto the floor. Everything is safe now, clean, in a plastic container if necessary. I told K that I expected wake up in the middle of the night last night and hear a squeaky indignant voice yelling "What the FUCK??!!", but it turns out I wasn't asleep anyway, and wasn't even asleep when I got a wrong number text message around two. Anyway, kill the damn mice; I just want them out of my house.

Which is a disaster. We may have to postpone Christmas until April, since there is no place to put the tree. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The next step in the Great Mouse Hunt is to have K's bedroom closet taken care of. Last week, I got a clothes rack on wheels, a temporary place for all the stuff that was in the closet, and someone can always use a clothes rack on wheels. She put it together, it was good, and then Saturday afternoon, she brought it down to the living room, in pieces. She needs another one! Mommy needs to call the handyman to get the closet worked on! Y'know, we went to Target, and when we came back, she said Oh, we forgot to get a new clothes rack. Oh, did we? Must have been my mistake, or else my intention, because I'm not spending more money on another one and then on the closet and really, why don't I just take my paycheck and flush it down the toilet? Anyway, I have no idea where her clothes are and I don't want to know, but I have someone coming to give me an estimate on the closet Wednesday after school, which you know certainly means that I will sit by the phone, straining to hear the doorbell and no one will ever come. But we shall see.

In another case of something I had no intentions of doing, we had a breakdown in the computer network at school this morning, and naturally, all the work I needed to do was computer-related, including checking in a copy of Twlight which had just been returned and was on my desk. So I read the first page or two and now I have to read the rest of it. The cat-in-the-library book will have to wait. I'm in the mood for another page-turner, or at least a grabber, which the cat book is not and everyone knows Twilight is. It seems I have no choice in the matter.

My haircut, btw, rocks. It's exactly what I had but a little shorter, which means it'll last a longer time, but I had no trouble getting it to look just right today and I love it. I am terrible at that thing where you hold your arm out and take your own picture, but I'll see what I can do. It's actually impossible in the iPhone, because the back of the phone faces you, of course, and you can't even tell by touch where the button is to press since it's part of the screen. Perhaps I shall step away from my desk a moment and see what I can do with the real phone.

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lalalala
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Okay, I took a picture, but it didn't look cute, it just looked fat. What I need is some kind of remote for the mirror, and when I get myself to look in the mirror exactly the way I want it to look, I click the remote and there's a picture. Why hasn't anyone thought of that yet? Isn't this already the most narcissist society of all time? (Rome, maybe Rome. But maybe not.)

It's about 1:30, and I am going to have the coffee in my thermos now.

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We moved into The Mouse House 23 years ago today.


WATCHING WIFE SWAP (from last night) :: ENTRY #1912
READING: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Husbands Is the Cwaziest People

I did not make much progress on the kitchen yesterday, other than to wash out the containers I got for pasta and rice and stuff, but I mentioned to the Hubs that I was planning to clean out the one cabinet we keep food in -- it's very high and inconvenient -- as well as a set of shelves next to the fridge where we keep most of the non-perishables. He said something about going through the spices in the cabinet, and looking for anything else he might have bought at some time and seeing if he still needed it.

At this point, my spices look like a picture in a magazine of a perfect kitchen, and the two cabinet shelves above them are practically empty. Not only did he get rid of anything expired or unused, he emptied it properly, into the compost when appropriate, and put all the boxes or cans or bottles in recycling. Now he's got a football game on the little kitchen TV and is going after the set of shelves.

I know you think now that I have some sort of perfect husband, but let me remind you, this is the same I guy I asked to replace the toilet seat over a year ago, and the new one, in its package, is leaning against the wall next to the doorway to his little study. The CFL bulbs I bought to fit into the fixture in the bedroom ceiling, which I can't reach, are still in their package on the dresser. Why is he going through the kitchen stuff? I suppose it appeals to his sense of order. Which is all wonderful, until I sit down on the toilet one day and the old seat slides off on the side by the almost-broken hinge. On the other hand, all the leaves are raked up out front, which is also good.

I finished the Supreme Court book, very good. I never read The Brethren, so I can't compare. Now I'm reading the cat-in-the-library book, so, quite the change.

Yesterday morning after my haircut and errands, I started setting up the Wii Fit. A very intriguing device. I think what it is is actually a biofeedback device disguised as a game, which is not a bad idea. Anyway, so it did the evaluation of me -- I'm overweight, who could have guessed -- and then the funniest thing happened. If you are a Wii person, then you know that the characters who are playing the games on screen as you move them around are little avatars, cartoon people that you design, usually to look like yourself, called Miis. (One of them is a Mii.) My Mii has shortish hair, green eyes, glasses, a crooked smile, and a blue shirt, since I generally wear denim. I had the sense to change the body style to a little fuller when I originally created it. But when the Wii Fit finished my evaluation, all of a sudden, my little Mii changed to match, and there I am, not so much fat, but a lot bigger than I was before. It was pretty funny, I thought, although I shudder to think what the Mii would look like if the thing had gotten my real weight, instead of the scale-on-a-carpet distorted result.

My little house, which I have always jokingly referred to as The Mouse House -- ironic now, isn't it? -- is cluttered. Most of the piles of stuff, which my mother and sister have always called "our mountains" are out of sight, but the fact is that there is just not a lot of free space here. It's not uncommon that when I'm Wii bowling, for example, my swing will knock magazines off the coffee table, or more likely, my wrist into a corner of my desk. But there were literally only two Wii Fit activities I could do without moving something. So I had to move the loveseat back a few inches, which makes the room look a little off balance, but it's not like anyone's coming here, and if anyone is, it's likely to be one of the girls' friends who's here to play Guitar Hero, and so needs the space.

K is a little under the weather, which makes her alternate between bouts of cranky and super sweet. It's like never knowing who's going to walk into the room next. Once again, I refer you to the most realistic cartoon character of all time:



It's nearly five o'clock and essentially dark, so I feel like it's seven. We've been having very gray weather lately, sometimes with rain and sometimes not, but very little sun. It's depressing, I don't have to tell you.

I'm a little hungry, but not going into the kitchen while the Hubs is still working there. The little kaboomster did not fall far from the daddy kaboomster tree.


WATCHING SNL (from last night) :: ENTRY #1911
READING: Dewey by Vicky Myron

Lost. Found.

So, I went to that memorial service today. There were a good forty or more people there, and I was in the back of the room, waiting for the family to come in. When they did, there were clearly two daughters and a son, and I couldn't tell which of the daughters was my childhood friend, Jessica. She and her sister both looked so different than I remembered them that either one of them could have been either one. The minister was standing near me at this point, and I asked him, and he pointed her out.

Ah. Sophisticated. Sharp. I was not surprised.

I stood so that when she came toward the back of the room, I could step forward and say who I was, but as she got closer to me, she looked puzzled, and then looked like she got it, and said my name. We were immediately hugging each other. I told her that when I saw the announcement of her mother's death in the paper, I had to come, because I had loved her mother.

She was very touched. After a few minutes, she asked how my mother was, and I told her I had lost both of them about seven years ago. "Oh," she said, "then you know. This is the pits." I told her I did know, and it had surprised me too.

We spoke a bit after the service, too. I didn't go to the repast, which I felt was more for family and close friends. But we vowed to get together again. I met her daughters, one in college, one in middle school. Beautiful girls, like their mother, like their grandmother.

It was a surreal, fulfilling experience.

----------------------------

In other news, I worked on my closet all morning and when I got back, and to my amazement, it's done. My living room now looks like a rummage sale is going on there, and I actually had it all tidied up before I started the closet. I took three sets of plastic bin drawers on rollers out of my closet (two out of the closet, one out of the bedroom), so they're in there, not to mention about eight pair of jeans that I have decided I'm not squeezing back into just yet. (Or ever, probably.) And empty boxes, and other stuff.

In the meantime, K was working on her room, which I went to help her with when I was done with mine. We got her closet completely cleaned out, and at least now we know how the mice are getting into her room. Seems that when I had the electrician there to work on some things a while back, he made huge holes in the walls of the closet that have the attic on the other side. It's like a freaking mouse freeway up there. So now I need to call someone to come and sheetrock the inside of the closet and plug all the holes up.

The SCM, of all non-home-handy people, told me that he had mice in an apartment once, and he was told to stuff steel wool into the cracks. This won't work for the closet, since I'm talking about holes the size of a man's fist, but I did work on some corners and such. We had also suspected that they had made a home in the bottom of a couch we have up there (used to be my mother's, a love seat, actually) but we moved it and everything was clean, thank god. But it's time for that to go, too, so I need to make a lot of phone calls on Monday.

Looks like a busy next few days, between calling to get this work done, getting my car fixed -- the dashboard lights are sometimes on, sometimes not -- voting and watching the results, packing to go away, and going away on Wednesday. If only I didn't have to go work on Tuesday, but it's an in-service day -- closed for the kids, open for the teachers.

I changed the reservations for both of the hotels we're going to stay in, since neither one of them, as it turned out, had the one essential thing that the Hubs, as it turned out, wanted: wireless Internet in the rooms. Now we got it, even though one of the hotels, I think, will cost as much as a new car, but hey, you know, we don't buy new cars, and it's our only vacation. It's also adjacent to the historic district, or the pedestrian mall, or whatever it is they have down there, and I think very close to UVA as well, which they say is the most beautiful college campus in the country.

Packing for a car trip is so different than packing for flying. I have so much room to work with that it makes me giddy with delight. Doesn't fit in the luggage? Put it in a shopping bag on the back seat! Bring my own pillow! Bring the giant economy size of everything! Bring food in a cooler! And all this while I'm glued to the TV Tuesday night. Oh please, please, let there just be a definite outcome before we leave the house on Wednesday.


WATCHING WEST WING MARATHON :: ENTRY #1896
READING: Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

is It Bigger Than A ... ?

We always had a breadbox in the kitchen when I was a kid, but I've never had one in my own home, probably because of the precious space it takes up. But I have one now. Why, you ask? Let me tell you. What do you suppose happens in your average 60 year old little house in the months after your cats die?

Oh, yes. And not of the cute, red-shorts wearing Mickey variety, either.

Oy. Yes, I had a random encounter with one over the summer, but they seem to be living happily in the attic, which means K has to get her room in sufficient order for a mice professional to come and set traps and seal up holes and stuff. (I don't want them dead, I just want to send them on permanent vacation anywhere but in my house.) In the meantime, kitchen protection is the order of the day. A stainless steel breadbox -- Shirl's was white enamel, but I couldn't find one of those anywhere -- and any number of protective plastic containers from ... um .. The Container Store, of course.

Hey, everybody needs a project.

But not for me tonight, apparently, because the trains are for some reason not running again -- where's a fascist dictator when you need one -- so I'm picking the kid up at the train at 6:12 and taking her home. But right home, no dinner out tonight. I still have last night's leftovers, and I want to be home well in time to see Mr. Obama on TV.

My workshop today was excellent, as was my time spent with the middle school librarian, whom I have known for nearly ever. (She was two years ahead of me in high school.) The content was good, we had a nice pizza lunch, and got home by 1:30 (thereby enabling my shopping run.) Tomorrow we are having some sort of emergency drill at school, which means we will be out in the football field stands for an hour or so. I'm thinking someone could have thought of this a month ago, before it got weirdly cold. I mean, the cold is weird, but not unheard of. Snow this time of year, yes, virtually unheard of, but wind, not so much. Anyway, I'm bundling up.

Okay, time to put a load of laundry in the dryer and head over to the train --


WATCHING WIFE SWAP :: ENTRY #1893
READING: How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond

Andrew Jackson? Party of One?

You know, as presidents go, we've had some real characters out of the 43 individuals who've held that office. (Okay, I think it's actually 42 individuals, since Grover Cleveland counts as 22 and 24.) For example, Richard Nixon notwithstanding, I think that Warren G. Harding still sets the standard for corruption. 2000 notwithstanding, Rutherford B. Hayes stills sets the standard for election stealing. And all the others notwithstanding, Andrew Jackson still sets the standard for crazy.

He demonstrated his brand of crazy in more ways than I can count, but right up there at the top is that he, you know, killed people, and more often, threatened to kill people. (His killing did not take place while he was in office, and although most of it probably took place when he was a general, he didn't restrict himself to killing enemy troops.) But he threatened people all the time, attacked some, and has generally gone down in history as a man you did not want to be on the bad side of. A scary dude.

All I'm saying is that when people at a political rally shout out "Kill him! Kill him!" when the candidate is talking about the opposition, I really think it's kind of the candidate's place to put a stop to it immediately, and decry that sort of thing as despicable and un-American, as opposed to, y'know, smiling and winking.

I'm just saying.

Okay, so yesterday's alternate title, Fucking Salt Mines, works for today as well, and pretty much is going to work for most of the days that the SCM is there. (That's the silver lining in all the days he's taking off, I guess.) I just feel sad when I'm there. I won't go into everything because hey, that's what I pay a therapist to listen to, and I don't want to revisit it now that I'm home and all is peaceful and I have the kitchen odors of whatever the hell the Hubs is cooking -- I'm not looking -- to keep me company. The SCM and I barely speak, and only on business, so to speak, although we're pleasant when we do. Okay, enough of that.

I've finally begun to plan the little trip the Hubs and I are taking next month. I have the Thursday and Friday after Election Day off, so I'm taking Wednesday too, and we're going to Virginia for a few days. I've never seen Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, so we're going to spend a couple of days in Charlottesville, where there seems to be a lot to do, and then a couple of days in the Shenandoah National Park, along Skyline Drive, which is said to be one of the most beautiful places in the country, and we should hit the peak of the fall foliage there. I promise pictures.

House cleaning tomorrow, which, you can be sure, I am not doing myself. But I do have to straighten up first to get stuff out of their way, like the laundry basket in the living room -- I never win that battle for long -- and other things that just need to be put away. So I'll be busy all morning with that.

For those that do, I wish you an easy fast.


WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1875
READING: My Lobotomy by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming

Little of This, Little of That

First, I have no comments whatsoever on the economy or what's going on with that because I don't understand a word of it, other than it's bad and bad stuff is going on. I'm not thrilled by the whole McCain trying to put off the debate because it just looks to me like he needs more time to figure it out himself. And here's an odd word on the campaign: I have seen no commercials, not for McCain and not for Obama, and heaven knows it's not for lack of watching TV. I think it's strange. It's as if neither one of them feels the need to enter the New York City market yet. (Our broadcast TV is from NYC.) Maybe McCain figures it's not worth it because he's not winning here and Obama figures he's winning here anyway, so why waste the money? I don't know, I just think it's strange.

Speaking of which, here's the strange thing that just happened to me. (It's 11:00.) The SCM and I finally had our meeting with the principal this morning about lots of things, and it went very well and all, and he assured me that he has no intention of losing any professional staff this year or next, which means the SCM will be replaced with a real librarian. YAY! I told him -- the principal -- that I had two former students in mind, and he said I could let them know because the job is going to be posted any day now.

Well, one of them is easy to reach because she and K are friends on Facebook, but I expected finding the other one to be a challenge. All I knew was that she was working at a high school in the northern part of the county, and her maiden name. I knew she had kept her maiden name after she was married, but I think she told me once that once she had children, she had taken her husband's name and I didn't know that.

I googled a list of high schools in the county, which was arranged alphabetically by the towns they're in. The first one was in the northern part of the county, so I clicked, and worked my way through the school's website. The librarian there, it seems, is my girl, who never changed her name professionally, it would appear. It may yet turn out not to be her, but it looks like I found her right off the bat. I sent off a goofy email -- we knew each other well -- and we'll see what I get back. I owe her the right of first refusal, since she asked me a long time ago -- when my other candidate was still in my Girl Scout troop, probably -- to let her know if there was ever an opening here. She may be happy and settled where she is now and won't want to move, but she deserves to hear about it first. And I wouldn't want these two people to be competing against each other because I would want them both.

I also got to teach my first class this year, which felt like ahhhhhhh....... , yeah, that's right, so that was good. Not that I had any concerns, but I was looking forward to it.

5:00

Home, and already had dinner, actually, because I was really really hungry. So.

I got email back and it was indeed my delightful student from twenty years back. We emailed back a forth a few times, exchanging what we knew about some of her classmates from back then. And she is very well situated where she is now, near where she lives, just got tenure, they're paying for classes she's taking. So she's off the list. K is in class now, but when she gets home, we'll talk about my other option. K doesn't have her email address, but can leave her a message on Facebook, so I'm thinking she could leave it Sunday night so the girl -- okay, I know, woman -- can get in touch with me at school on Monday, if she's so inclined. I mean, really, I could drive the six or seven blocks to her house right now, and if she doesn't still live there, ask her mother to have her call me, but that seems over the top a bit. I mean, the SCM isn't even leaving until the end of January.

(He said it was odd for him to be sitting in the room as the principal and I discussed his replacement. I'm sure. Get over it.)

So K is in class, and the Hubs is having dinner with a former boss, and my house, to be blunt, is a shit-hole. This was one of my mother's expressions, that when her house didn't meet her standard for cleanliness, it was a shit-hole. Here's what that meant to her: she hadn't vacuumed or dusted within the current calendar week, and the dining room table had papers and things all over it that she needed to put away. That's it. Other than the table, there was no clutter in this house. (Except, of course, in my room when I was a kid.) There was no laundry basket on the living room couch for two weeks because no one felt like bringing it down to the basement. There was no pile of clean dishes in the drainboard waiting to be put away. (My father refused to have a drainboard in the house for this very reason. You ate, you washed, you dried, you put away.) There was no trash in the kitchen waiting to be taken out because you know there's room for just one more thing, and then maybe someone else will take it out. (My father took it out every night while my sister and I were washing the dishes, so that would have been, say, 5:50.) There were no crumbs in the toaster oven because, seriously, neither Shirl nor Jack would have stood for such a thing. My house, on the other hand, is indeed a shit-hole. I just made an appointment for some cleaning people to come. I am seriously not up to doing this myself. I mean, I never wanted to before, but now that I wouldn't mind it as much, I just can't. Bending over to tie my shoes leaves me short of breath. Scrubbing the tiles in the shower are certainly out.

This feels like it has been the longest week ever, but it has also been the only full week of school I've had so far, and will have for another two weeks. No school next Tuesday and Wednesday, and the following Thursday, for the Jewish holidays, which I do not observe, so for me, they're just days off. I've already made numerous appointments, as I do.

It was chilly today, definitely an end to summer weather. It was only in the low sixties, but no sun. We're supposed to be in for a couple of days of rain now. Not that I'm looking forward to it, but my car could use a rinsing off.



WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1863
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

VaCaDay 7

So here it is:



This has been the most amazing week of weather for a vacation week. Every single day has been sunny and warm and perfect. The colder temps and rain are coming back tomorrow, I think, but this week was delightful. Never had to wear a jacket once.

You know, I wanted this week to be relaxing, and it was. I never made a big list of tasks to do, I just kept a little running list on a post-it and erased the stuff when it was done. Today I threw out the little blank list. (Okay, I didn't actually erase the last thing because that would have been weird.) I saw the podiatrist this morning, speaking of weird, and then had a nice lunch with the Sibs at The Cheesecake Factory and then we went to Costco. I was so good at Costco, too; I only spent $35, which you wouldn't think was even possible there. All I got was a box of plastic knives, some ankle socks, one DVD and a book. I got the first volume of The Spiderwick Chronicles. I'm not sure why, but it's a cute little book, and that appeals to me.

Speaking of which, after I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns the other night -- excellent book -- I went on a tear to find something else to read on the Palm. I downloaded and started Julie Andrews' memoir, Home, and then last night, I thought to check a free ebook site for something I'd been looking for, a book written over a hundred years ago called Looking Backward, and they had it because it's old and out of copyright, and I downloaded a few more from there, too. And I have a real book pre-ordered from Amazon coming next week, The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon, whose The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay I liked so much last summer. I love it when I'm on a reading binge. I haven't had a real good one in years and years.

As I mentioned, I've been looking over a lot of old entries, and seriously, I have to apologize to you all for the typos and spelling mistakes. Foxfire, the browser I use now, spellchecks, so I'm finding all the mistakes in the old entries as I bring them up. (Spellcheck, btw, is a mistake. It must be spell check. Okay, it is.) Oh, and I'm really really sorry I wrote so much about food and losing weight. Something else I think I'm over in this life.

One of the things I didn't get to this week -- I erased it off the post-it yesterday -- was cleaning. Well, I'm on vacation. I'll get back to it, but it's not bothering me, so there.

WATCHING THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #1738

VaCaDay 5

It was a very random day.

I woke up to an absolutely dreadful smell coming from the kitchen. It took some hunting to detect that its source was the refrigerator -- after I'd emptied the compost bucket and cleaned it with boiling water -- and then I scrubbed out the inside of the fridge. No luck. Turns out it was some garlic-heavy food that the Hubs had made last night for tonight's dinner. It was just a bit overpowering.

What took up most of my day was copying over old diary entries, now that I have a rhythm going. I did fifty, maybe, maybe more. The interesting part of doing this is reading the old entries. Although I only have a few more to go and then 2007 is finished, I decided to work on 2002, and I only have a few of those left, too. These were my first diary entries, since I started in October, 2002, and wasn't very good about the every day thing then. Some of it is startling, but not in a bad way; my father was still alive then and so of course I referred to him, to talking to him, and so on. The whole process (the copying over, not diary-keeping in general, although that too) has become a little addictive. I'll probably do more tomorrow, if I get the chance, but I think I'm finished for tonight.

We actually put down a deposit on a car for K today, although we'll be looking more tomorrow. Her current car, a 1995 Chevy Cavalier with a dented in front fender, has now lost its air conditioning, which will cost maybe $800 to fix. No point in putting that much money in that old a car. (Over 110k miles on it.) We're looking for a decent used car that we can finance through the dealer, and we have one now (a Toyota), but we're going to look at Hondas tomorrow, and then go to her crazy college (see yesterday's entry) and then it's new tattoo time for me!

I'm going to read a bit now, I think. A Thousand Splendid Suns. Depressing, but very good.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1736

No Wire Hangers!

I've gotten in touch with my inner Joan Crawford today. No, the kids are fine. But I purged my closet of all wire hangers, which I have always felt were the tools of Satan anyway, but you know, you get stuff back from the cleaners and don't wear them right away, you've got wire hangers in your closet. No more! My closet is very neat now. It's still too small, but it's neat, and my shirts are hanging in groups -- wool, denim, striped, plaid, solids -- and my sweatshirts are also categorized: hoodies, zipped hoodies, pullovers -- so I can find what I'm looking for. (Yes. There is a purpose besides OCD. I found stuff I totally forgot I had because I couldn't see it was there. I swear.)

I also found about a half dozen pair of slacks. I said this to my daughters, who said "Slacks? Who says slacks? That's an old lady word." I reminded them that I am, indeed, and old lady and they let it go, not before asking me if was also going to tell them that "their outfits looked sharp." Uh ... something wrong with that? Not seeing it here. (And anyway, why on earth do I even own slacks? All I ever wear is jeans.)

I also got two pair of new jeans to try at The Gap, same jeans in different sizes. I am pleased to report that the larger size was the wrong one, but I still haven't decided if the cut of these jeans is good for me. I'll try on for the jeans maven when she finishes dinner. (She worked at The Gap, I remind you, and knows what to look for when people are trying on jeans, and also how to not make them feel like crap no matter what they look like.)

Between the two of us and closet cleaning, we also have five big bags of clothes to donate. Now, this is something I have always done because it would just be ridiculous to throw out clothes that someone else can use. I saw something on TV years ago about which charities to donate clothes to and which ones to avoid. Basically, if you give clothes to the Salvation Army, Goodwill, or Vietnam Veterans of America, the clothes will be sold to used clothing stores (or sold in their own second hand stores), so poor people will have the chance to buy good clothes and those charities will make money for their other projects. If you give to the Red Cross, the clothes go directly to people in disaster areas. However, if you give to other random donation boxes -- DARE, for example -- the clothes are sold for rags, and cut into pieces and recycled into other stuff around the world. So I avoid those boxes. If I have clothes that I can't wear but that are in good shape, I want someone else to be able to use them.

Anyway, there is also a tax benefit to this, which I never cared about much because I was giving the clothes away anyway, so I estimated their value at tax time. Now my accountant says I have to keep a record, so I looked up the value of the stuff we were donating this time, and damn, it's about twice as much as I would have estimated. I'm sure this would never have made even a five dollar difference on my actual taxes, but really, who knew?

Once again, I have messed up my dinner time, not realizing what time it was, and had a big snack -- leftover boneless spare-ribs from last night -- at five, so now I have no interest in any other real food. (Which would be leftover sweet and sour shrimp.) I guess I'll have that tomorrow. The girls and I went to The Cheesecake Factory at the mall for lunch today, so, aw, poor me, I'll just have to have my Dulce de Leche cheesecake in an hour or so. That's what I like, go right from the appetizer to dessert, and skip that whole pesky main course thing.

More John Adams tonight. Is it just me, or did he just turn into a schmuck as he got older? (It's not me. I've read the book; it was him.) It makes for a less entertaining TV show is all. But I've already invested in the first five hours; I can't pass on the last two.

WATCHING YOU'VE GOT MAIL :: ENTRY #1726

Yet Another Nice One

I just love days that aren't packed with stress, and when stuff seems to work out nicely.

Top of the list today, I guess, is that the therapist called me back and I have an appointment for Thursday. I had a nice long talk with OldFriend last night, which is always very good for me and I think for her too, and she was advising me on alternate plans if the therapist didn't call. Well, she did, and apologized for not calling earlier, but she herself started chemo this week (first stage breast cancer) and asked if that would be a problem for me. No. It's not. In fact, it's not at all. I would feel like a shit if I told her Oh no, you have cancer so don't waste my time, or you know, if I gave her that impression. She wants to keep her life going and work, that's aces with me. So, Thursday. I must call OldFriend later and tell her.

I sorted out a few dresser drawers this morning and put away my sweaters. I wore almost no sweaters this winter because it was always so frickin hot in the library. I don't even know why I bothered to take them out, except last winter it was mostly freezing there. Can't win. Anyway, now I have room to do a good job on the hanging stuff in my closet, which I'll do tomorrow. Or today after the in-laws leave.

Yes, into each life some in-laws must fall. My only real issue with them, I guess, is that our pace of life is very different and dealing with them raises a bit of a frustration level in me. Here's today's story: the FIL's sister, who is the aunt I so adore, has a baby great-granddaughter having a first birthday party today. (Oh, now here's the irony: the ILs have just arrived. I'll finish this later.)

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Okay, so they were coming up from Old-People-At-the-Shore Land to come to this birthday party, and said they might stop by either before or after. "But don't change your plans." Which means, we expect everyone to be there when we get there, although we have no idea when that will be. So they did come, after the party, and then what we do is, we sit. We all sit in one room and visit, and no one does anything else when they're here. (This is also what we do when we go to their house.) The FIL has so much trouble walking that it terrifies me to see him come up the three or four steps into my house, and then totter around. (He has nasty orthopedic issues.)

So anyway, they were here, they're gone, and R managed to get out of work early and came by as well. She and K are out shopping now, and we have plans, the three of us, to go -- where else? -- Target tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, after the old folks (and the young folks) left, I moved onto the next stage of my closet. I still have to weed out stuff I don't wear, but everything is neat and accessible now. I have to get more hangers tomorrow morning.

I was going to tell you all about the woodpeckers, with pictures and everything. Maybe tomorrow.

WATCHING THE ADDAMS FAMILY MOVIE :: ENTRY #1725

Sotto Voce

I'm typing this in a whisper, as it were, because of a strange thing that happened last night. I had started typing my entry, venting, pretty much, about K and her illness and whole situation, and the Hubs as well. The phone rang; it was unexpectedly the Sibs, to whom I had already spoken twice in the previous hour. K was watching a movie in the room, so I took the phone and went into the living room to talk briefly. When I came back, I realized I had left everything on the screen where she could easily have seen it.

I felt awful, so awful that I couldn't continue the entry, so I just erased it. I must remember to minimize the screen if I get up. She's not a snoop by any means, but if she passes by the computer and sees her name -- okay, her initial -- she's human, and it'll catch her eye and she'll read it, anyone would. (We are both very good about never looking for each other's diaries, and trust each other.) She doesn't need to see my venting. That's for your eyes only.

Anyway, today's had its ups and downs, but it's relatively calm now. I think she may have the flu, actually, but she can't reach her doctor until Monday. She's been on a very strong antibiotic since Monday, and although her sinuses are better, she still has a terrible deep cough and feels sick all the time. It's the mood swings that are hard on both of us. I won't even go into the Hubs, who was working outside all day so he's in a good mood. He even just suggested that we go to an antique book fair in the city tomorrow. Wow. But I can't do that much walking, not yet. I need to walk as much as I can this spring and summer to build my stamina back up.

So anyway, here's what I mostly did today: I cleaned. Yes, ladies and gents, I cleaned my house. I don't know if I really can keep this up, but I'd sure like to. I made a list of what needs to be done daily, weekly, monthly, and I actually got everything on the list done today except for dusting the family room and washing the kitchen floor, which I'll do tomorrow. (K will take over the floors again when -- or if, if you listen to her -- she's well again.) My new vacuum is very nice, but it's not the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is very easy to move from room to room. It was not very easy to move the old vacuum up into the attic, because that sucker, pardon the pun, is heavy.

I also did errands on top of errands this morning, stocking up on cleaning supplies (of course) among other things. I've also decided to take a little better care of my non-facial type skin, so I got some shower scrub and gel. (My sister's call last night was to remind me not to use exfoliating scrub on my legs and arms every day. Yes, thank you. I am 55 years old. I know how to bathe.)

I also love my new mouse, which scrolls. I've had scrolling mice before but never used that feature, but I love it. I also just signed up for Netflix, which I probably won't last that long with, but I'll see how it goes. I signed up for the one DVD at a time but unlimited throughout the month, and unlimited download access, and then when I submitted all my information and was in, a message said "Sorry! Downloading is not compatible with Apple computers!" so I feel just a bit ripped off, but I probably wouldn't have done that much anyway. But they could have said that up front, I'm thinking.

So, a very random entry here, which I shall now post before my sister calls. (Haven't connected with her yet today.)

WATCHING WINGS on DVD :: ENTRY #1718

All a'Twitter

Yes, I'm joining the 21st century, or whichever century this is; I signed up for Twitter. I have no idea why, because trust me, I'm not that interesting. But it intrigues me, it's a toy, and that's all it needs to be. I was thinking that it would even make me more comfortable at texting because I'm not, but it just occurred to me that I should check my phone plan and see what I have there, because if this toy is going to cost me fifty cents each time I play with it, I'll update from a desktop somewhere, thank you.

Anyway, two of you found me before I was practically even there, and I don't know how you did that, but cool. I put the twitter thing down there on my page somewhere, if anyone's interested. (Not that I am, as I say, inherently interesting.)

I still have like a million pages to read in Truman, but I picked up Persepolis when someone returned it to the library yesterday, and it is most interesting. I've tried reading some other graphic novels but they're too graphic for me, this one is not. And a story I haven't really heard before. Based on my being about halfway through it so far, I would recommend it.

The news on my Aunt is that she seems perfectly fine (except for the Alzheimer's thing) and no one knows what happened to her or how she got better, but she appeared dead on Friday, and was carrying on conversations on Sunday. Who knows.

So here was a nice compliment to my kid I heard about today. She's been in subbing for two days this week for a particular teacher who has poor classroom management, and whose classes are therefore not well behaved. The teacher called in that she would be out the rest of the week. So the secretary who took the call said, after she hung up, "Damn! No one can handle those classes! We'd better get K Chai in for the rest of the week!" Which I know because someone overheard this and told me about it, and the secretary who made the comment never says a nice thing about anyone. So nice when someone thinks your kid is a capable adult.

Who is at class tonight, and the Hubs is coming home late, so I'm on my own here for awhile. Time to catch up on a George Lopez I recorded last night. Speaking of catching up, or keeping up, my house is still clean. I'm doing the little daily wiping up, as well as the vacuuming and shower cleaning on Saturday. K is doing the kitchen and bathroom floors on Saturday. Which goes to show you that if you live long enough, you will see things you never thought you would. Both of my daughters keep their own apartments clean, when they have them, but at home? Why would they clean at home? Well, now I've seen it done, so things must be pretty chilly down in hell these days.

Okay, George awaits.

WATCHING ELLEN :: ENTRY #1711

What a Nice Day

Any day I'm not at work starts off with an advantage, but this was generally a pretty good day. For one thing,

My house is soooooo clean. It looks nice, it smells nice. It makes me happy. Too bad I can't afford this every week, but I will look into some more affordable options. I thought these ladies were very thorough and didn't put too many things back in the wrong places. (Although the pictures on my piano, oy vey.) I didn't even let them go into the Hubs' study, because I didn't want to deal with any of his stuff being out of place, but I just did some dusting and swept the floor before they got there.

And I got all kinds of stuff done on the phone while they were working. I now have insurance on my hearing aids. I got the last piece of the stuff-for-the-accountant puzzle in place. I solved not one, but two, health insurance snafus. I got the monthly cost of the expiring cell phone cut down until it's gone.

Oh. I got a toaster. Not a free toaster, mind you, but a fourteen dollar toaster, which is close enough.

And then an early dinner at Red Lobster with my sister. No complaints here. Although it would be a nice change if I got some sleep tonight, I think.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1704

Now: Nobody Touch Anything!

This is as tidy as my house gets. Everything is where it's supposed to be, except in K's room, of course, but nobody's looking up there, and in the basement, where the only proper place for whatever's there is "in the basement." And tomorrow, it will also be nice and clean. Then we'll see how long I can keep that up.

Once I finished the tidying this morning, all that was left was the final stage of getting papers ready for the accountant, and I did that too. It's a real self-esteem blaster, since it's a job I should do well and I don't do well at all. This year, there was only one thing I needed to keep and didn't, but I can call for that information tomorrow. Some years I lose really important stuff, or forget to make tax payements that I was supposed to make. I really do need a keeper.

And then it was a long boring afternoon. I never put on a movie or anything because I wanted to read, but reading kept making me sleepy. It's so interesting to read a biography of a famous person, because you generally know how things turned out before you start reading. I mean, I'm reading about the election of 1948, and I know who won, right?



And the girls called from Paris before, so I know they're alive, which is all I care about. And incidentally, they're having a good time.

Anyway, here's a little something to amuse you. It relieved my boredom for five minutes.

Which Character on The Simpsons Are You?

More on The Simpsons. Created by BuddyTV

Who is Your Ideal TV Boyfriend?

More on The Office. Created by BuddyTV

Which Gilmore Girls Character Are You?

More on Gilmore Girls. Created by BuddyTV

WATCHING NEXT TOP MODEL :: ENTRY #1703

You Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone

I must have touched my hand to my right ear dozens of times today, not checking to see if the aid is lost, but to enjoy it being there. Moving on.

I really did get most of my tidying up done today. All I really have left is a shopping bag full of old PC stuff to get rid of, and I'll take that out to the trash Monday morning. But I know somewhere I still have my DOS 6.0 floppies because I wrote on them NEVER THROW THESE OUT!! and so I never will. They weren't in the bag, anyway.

That leaves tomorrow to finish getting ready to get my taxes done, finally. I always think that I should just get one of those tax programs and do it myself, but who am I kidding? Filling out that financial aid form online when my kids were in college stressed me out beyond a reasonable point, and I'm so glad I'm done with all that; why would I want to do the same kind of thing but worse? I am not a numbers person. Even my brother-in-law, who is a numbers person and also a CPA (but has never worked as an accountant) goes to someone to get his taxes done. You can know numbers, but not all the tax laws, I figure.

The Hubs and I went out to dinner tonight, since it was just the two of us. In the last week either his coughing has gotten better or he's gotten better at dealing with it. Or both. It still won't hurt him, or me, for the house to get a good cleaning on Monday.

And that's my day. Back for a little more Truman. I think I'll be reading this book forever, although, ever the optimist, I got A Thousand Splendid Suns today, which is by the author of The Kite Runner, which I thought was excellent.


WATCHING ----- :: ENTRY #1702

Go Me! (and a meme)

I just got home; I wrote most of my entry below at school today. I decided that when I got home I would call a cleaning service and make an appointment, and I did, so, go me. I can barely make it up and down a flight of stairs, so doing any real cleaning myself is not a consideration, not that I would want to consider it anyway. But it's nice for things to be clean, and I'm also being the good little wifey here and hopefully making it easier for the Hubs to live here without coughing up a lung every five minutes.

I made the appointment for March 17, since the girls will still be away, and I can use the weekend to tidy up so stuff isn't in the ladies' way. I'll have to take off one of my precious and few sick days, but I guess it's worth it. Maybe I can do something with my sister in the afternoon. So we'll see how that all goes.

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It's an odd day. Everything around me seems very loud today, but I don't think I turned up the hearing aids too loud. Almost as if I'm more sensitive to sound today than usual.

I'm feeling very tired, although I slept well, as far as I can remember, I just got up too early, as I do nearly every day. I hope I perk up some later, because R is driving her car here when she gets home from work -- seven-ish -- and then I have to drive her back home. (She's working in the city until Saturday night, staying over in a hotel, so it's a good time to get her car serviced, and anyway, she'd need it here on Saturday to get home since the trains run to B-Town but not her town on the weekends.) I don't know if the Hubs will even be home yet when I need to go drive her, and I know K will still be in class. She's getting sick, it seems, which is unfortunate since they're flying off to France next Thursday. Let's hope whatever she's got, she's over it by then. She was just on antibiotics for a few days, and they killed her stomach. But now it looks like she's just got a cold.

I'll be very curious to see what the doctor says to me tomorrow afternoon about where we go from here. The next medication, if I need it, is one that suppresses the immune system somewhat, if I understand it correctly, so I'm wondering how I would go about continuing to work in the germ pool that is any public school. Unlike most other visits, I'm not going with a list of questions to besiege him with this time. I only have one (about the fish oil), but if he starts talking new medicine, well, that'll open up a whole new can of worms.

Hey, big night tonight, Project Runway finale! I'm guessing that Christian will win, because it won't be Jillian, and Rami is way too smug. Not that anyone else cares.


So here's a meme that I got from Robyn.


MOUTHOLOGY


Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant? A. I pretty much love fast food, although there isn't much of it I can have anymore. I do love me some McDonald's fries, as well as a Junior Cheese Whopper, no onions, no pickles. I'll have to fall back on McD's as my favorite.

Q. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant? A. Hard to say. We eat out once or twice a week, generally, at chain-type restaurants. I think the nicest restaurant I ever went to was a little Italian place in DC off of Dupont Circle, after K's graduation.

Q. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant? A. At least 20%, then I round up.

Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of? A. Like Robyn, I like edamame, but I've been off that for a while now. i could probably live on macaroni and cheese, and BLT sandwiches, and plenty of eggs.

Q. What are your pizza toppings of choice? A. Mushrooms.

Q. What do you like to put on your toast? A. I usually only eat toast when I'm sick, or if I'm having some kind of soft eggs. Just margarine, or if I'm sick, seedless strawberry jam.

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer? A. I currently have a big Mickey Mouse on my home computer, and this centered on my screen at work.



(If it wasn't that clear, it looks like an old touristy post card that says "Greetings from New Jersey", and under that it says "It hurts our feelings when you make fun of us.")

Q. How many televisions are in your house? A. Lots. One in every room except the living room and the bathroom. So that's ... five, plus the one in the basement that isn't currently connected.

BIOLOGY

Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed? A. Right

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body? A. An acoustic neuroma (brain tumor), an appendix, buckets of blood (or so it seems), a couple of teeth, and two babies.

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted? A. I'm actively avoiding that these days, so probably a load of laundry. (And after I first wrote that, a small box of books that came in today.)

Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious? A. Not that I can recall.

BULL****OLOLY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? A. No. I've already got enough to worry about.

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to? A. I certainly do hate my first name. Growing up, I considered changing my first name to my mother's maiden last name (also a first name), but I gave it to my firstborn instead.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you? A. I have been told that pink looks very good on me, which is unfortunate for me because I detest pink.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake? A. I'm sure I have; doesn't everybody at some point? What's that old saying about having to eat a pound of dirt in each life?

Q. Have you ever saved some one’s life? A. I don't think so.

Q. Has someone ever saved yours? A. The doctor who diagnosed my brain tumor.

DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100? A. I'm not opposed to the kissing, as such, but I'm not a fan of doing such things for money.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000? A. No. That would really hurt.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000? A. I don't know. I'd still have to write, and I could email people, I guess.

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000? A. Actually, no. And for what, Old Bats Monthly?

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? A. Not a chance. Not for any amount of money. I'd sooner pose naked, and I'm not doing that either.

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000? A. No. Not for anything would I intentionally do that.

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket? A: Nothing at the moment. When the testing in the school is over for today, I'll turn my cell phone on and put it in my left pocket.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie? A: I thought it was clever; I enjoyed it. It wasn't Casablanca.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower? A: Stand. Even when I could hardly stand, I stood. The idea of sitting in the shower squicks me out.

Q: Could you live with roommates? A: As opposed to the jabroneys I live with now? (As in, my family.) I would prefer not to live with any other roommate, I think, except a dog.

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own? A: I can't walk in actual flip-flops. I have a pair of Croc flip-flop type shoes that I wear for pedicures.

Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops? A: I've had some encounters with lovely police officers in the last few years, mostly when they were helping me with something, and I got a ticket from -- I have to say it -- a real pig about five and a half years ago. Nothing I could really call a run-in. (Curiously, the two good and one bad encounter all took place in the same town -- not mine, a neighbor -- so all the officers were members of the same police force.)

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up? A: I think at this point my two main ambitions are to retire and to be a grandma.

LASTOLOGY

Q: Last Friend you talked to? A: Chatted with the Other Chai about an hour ago in the school office. A real deep talk with a friend? My sister, Monday night.

Q: Last person who called you? R, last night.

Q: Last person you saw? A: I'm at school at the moment, so I've seen at least a hundred people already today. The last one was a chemistry teacher.

FAVORITOLOGY

Q: Number? A: I have two favorite numbers: 42 (no idea why; this is from before I read Hitchhiker's Guide) and 732, my dorm room number in college.

Q: Season? A: Summer.

CURRENTOLOGY

Q: Missing someone? A: Not so much at the moment.

Q: Mood? A: Stable.

Q: Listening to? A: I have the New York City oldies station playing on my computer, something I can only do when there are no kids in the library.

Q: Watching? A: The only time I'm not watching TV is when I'm at work.

Q: Worrying about? A: Always money at the back of my mind.

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning? A: To the bathroom.

Q: What can you not wait to do? A: Retire.

Q: What’s the last movie you saw? A: Ooh, tough one. Oh, okay. I watched Idiocracy on Sunday. It reminded me of Americathon.

Q: Do you smile often? A: Also a good question. I think I do, but apparently it does not always appear so to other people, because strangers will sometimes accost me with a command to "Smile!", to which I respond, if I'm not totally taken aback "This is smiling." Part of my face is paralyzed, you know, and my mouth doesn't move on one side.

Q: Are you a friendly person? A: Well, I certainly think so. But I am also a shy person, so the friendliness isn't always so out there. I could sit in a room full of strangers, like in a waiting room, and smile (for me) but never speak until someone speaks to me, and then I will chatter away and make all kinds of conversation. But I can't start it.


WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1694

Back in the Real World

So it was back to school today, a long, busy day. I had five classes in, plus all the stuff I had to catch up on by being out Wednesday, plus the SCM was out. I told them I only needed a sub when I went to lunch, but they sent me someone for the rest of the afternoon, too, and he just loomed around here and there in the stacks, never really speaking, and I was too busy elsewhere to think of something for him to do. Easy money for him. I even forgot he was there.

I did manage to get two loads of wash done (well, not quite done yet) this afternoon, and K and I went to the A&P. I am on beyond tired. My house is just a mess. I think if I went away for a month, it would collapse under the weight of garbage not taken out and expired food in the fridge. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that they would replace the toilet paper roll, as needed. I guess they have their priorities.

I am still so not organized here. I got the laundry done, but not the clean clothes that I brought back with me put away, or the toiletries and other stuff. Still bags of my own stuff in the living room.

I'm thinking that this weekend is going to be unbelievably busy, what with getting the house in order and doing all the Thanksgiving shopping. My god, is Thanksgiving next week? That certainly snuck up on me. But I am taking Friday off, for a podiatrist appointment in the morning and a haircut in the afternoon (as long as I had the doctor's appointment; I'm not taking a day off work just to get my haircut), so I guess I can do a lot of the cleaning in between those things.

So here's the first part of the journal I kept while I was away, which would be for last Wednesday.

*********************

Wed 11/5

We're at the airport. We left the house at 5.15 and got here just about 6; it was maybe 10 minutes later til we parked and got into the terminal.

This really is a child's view of what an airport is. In other words, it works. Two minute line to check luggage. We went through security in ten minutes; they were efficient, professional, pleasant, and good humored. Found seats right by the gate with a ladies room and coffee shop nearby, but of course, everything here is nearby everything else.


9.15 am On the plane

I have to say that this was maybe my most pleasant airport experience ever. Every airport should be like this: uncomplicated, efficient, good humored. The plane itself is nothing to write home about -- although I am -- but it's fine, and the staff is very friendly and nice.

Very glad we got the first class coming home, because I am squished here in the window seat -- the O.C. prefers the aisle, which is fine, I don't care -- but she has a bit of bulk to her, so room is tight. Flying home seats looked very nice, though, as we passed them on the way in.

I slept great at her house last night, although I think it's often awkward to spend a night in a home not your own. She has been renovating for about a year and a half and stuff is everywhere. Boxes and boxes and paint cans and furniture covered with dropcloths, and you name it. I don't think I could live that way for that long. I tell you, my Mouse House is going to look a lot better to me when I get home. Her whole house is like my infamous basement, the cleaning out of which is apparently my life's work.

Due to land in about an hour and a half.

I am surprised that typing in text on the Palm using the stylus and the on-screen keyboard is neither slow nor annoying. I originally wrote the pre-boarding part of this by hand on a pad of paper, and that was uncomfortable.

Speaking of which, I was talking to nephew Good Guy last night, and telling him about my trip. He knows both of my traveling companions, the Chum and the O.C., pretty well, so he was amused. I told him it was the Old Bat Tour. Now I wish i'd gotten t-shirts made, like rock band tour shirts.

Waaaaay later. Same day.

WE ARE IN DISNEYWORLD.

Sparing every last detail, we met up with the Chum, who drove here from her mother's in south Florida, we're laughing a lot, we had a good meal - Mexican - , we are exhausted. I had a beer. My feet hurt.

Today's hit parade:

• airport/plane/airport/bus
• Wilderness Lodge (our hotel) is cool
• took the bus to Epcot
• Journey into Imagination - where Figment lives!
• ride in Mexico
• ride in Norway (Maelstrom) is excellent but too short
• dinner in Mexico - I had a beer
• looong trip back to the hotel. Two monorails and a boat
• we saw the Magic Kingdom fireworks from our sixth floor room, which was very cool.

So I'm ensconced here up on the top bunk, which is fine. The getting up and down is not so great, but up here is fine.

Laughing a lot. Very tired. Feet hurt.

WATCHING SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS :: ENTRY #1622