Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan
Today I tried to do all the things I failed to accomplish on Saturday. Random errands. I have such a hard time getting errands done these days I wonder when I ever had time to work!
Dropped off Wilbur's stool sample at Bulger Animal Hospital. They said if I don't hear from them in 48 hours they didn't find anything. Meanwhile, his litter box is still pretty foul.
Not a thing on the schedule today. Reorganizing the web page seems to be the thing to do. Somehow it doesn't feel like real work.
The air is heavy with the coming thunderstorms this afternoon. A few kids are swimming in my condo complex's pool. A mockingbird is imitating a robin outside my office window. It's nearly 6:00Pm as I write this. What have I accomplished today?
The cat shelter was particularly filthy today and with the humidity it smelled bad. I cleaned fewer cages than usual, got clawed by more of the cats than usual, and didn't have time to pet Jaguar today. Moe and Doc, two of the kittens, were growling at each other so fiercely we all wondered if we should separate them although they are siblings and are being adopted together. When I took Moe out of the cage to clean it, Suzie growled at him. He was so frightened he dug into my shoulder with claws of all four feet. I bled. He shivered. Suzie is one of the mean cats, but she's not that frightening. Black Beauty has already gone to his adoptive home (yay!). Black Beauty's mom got into an altercation with Suzie too. Come to think of it, it seemed everybody was growling at everybody else today. Including the people.
What does a holiday or a long weekend mean if you don't have a "real job"? Do I put aside work on the "great American novel" to celebrate Independence Day? I tried to write at Starbucks this morning but the place was noisy and packed with families after the Horribles Parade. I watched streams of people flow by on Main Street all decked out in red, white, and blue. The faces were Asian, or WASP, or Greek, or Russian but this was unmistakably the USA. The folks who wrote of Americans as a people without history or culture in the guest book at Hotel Leifur Eiriksson have not had to forge culture and history from such diversity.
The amount of time I spend structuring and writing content for this web page seems disproportionate to the results. I wonder sometimes why I do this. Text is rapidly becoming obsolete. It figures I decide to become a writer just when writing goes out of style. I haven't the tools to become a graphic artist even if I had the desire. The future of words strung together in sentences and paragraphs is ominously short. The mockingbird outside my window is imitating a car alarm. Surely he isn't trying to attract a car alarm to mate with him! Maybe I should just write to tell my story and worry about the end of text when it happens.
As I was driving home from Nancy's house last night, I realized that even though my life is not structured around a job, I still focus on weekends as the time to do all the summer activities because that's the only time I can see Nancy. It feels odd still thinking of weekends as important, but as long as I interact in relationships with people who have real jobs, weekends are still a meaningful concept.
Nancy was sick this weekend - a virulent cold. Wilbur still has diarrhea even though the stool sample was negative.
Today I took Wilbur to the vet. She put him on Flagyl and a high fiber diet and told me to call back in 5 days. To my surprise he ate the high fiber food with relish. I was expecting his usual finicky behavior. He seems fine in every way except the diarrhea. He's even gained a pound since January. He hated having his temperature taken. He bit me. Heck, I'd probably bite somebody too if I had a thermometer stuck up my butt.
Gave Wilbur his first dose of Flagyl. He drooled. Everywhere.
The cat shelter was in chaos today. Holly got a puncture wound from one of the cats (Dottie) and had to go to the ER for a tetanus shot. Dawna didn't show up. Two cats, Faith and Peter, got into a huge fur-flying fight. Faith ended up bleeding and I couldn't tell from where. Finally Eileen came in and checked her out etc. I left with a headache.
Tropical Storm Bertha derailed my plans to spend Saturday with Nancy in Wickford so I sulked all day yesterday. I finally worked on these collages I'm making on note cards for Ma's birthday and finished 'em except for trimming a few edges. Then I put old old 1993 entries from the Janet Has No Life series onto the web page. Don't know why. Practice I guess. When blocked from original new thought, use old stuff.
I'm back to list making as a motivational tool. Today's list: connect with Julie to borrow a book on the Christian Right (research for the great "family values" novel), go to the vet for the dry version of r/d so I don't have to feed his royal orangeness 20 times a day, drop off the film with the ritual "hi bob" pictures from yesterday's family gathering for developing.
Ma says Bobby may stay in Bosnia for 5 years to complete the rebuilding. He really thinks he's making a difference. He says things are getting better every day. I have to admit I never thought of construction as a humanitarian profession before. Actually, I never thought about it much before except as what Bobby does for a living. Now that he's off rebuilding Bosnia I have a new appreciation for the importance of the people who build the infrastructure. More power to him. Meanwhile, do we have to think up five years worth of creative ways to spell out "hi bob" at family gatherings? Yesterday, cherries. Previous: sand, jellybeans, peeps, sidewalk chalk, sea shells and driftwood, pen & ink. I'm thinking of having a banner made and just photograph it in different places... with different family members... hmm... maybe even with different families...
I'm glad I connected with Julie this morning. We had sorta plans to meet on Friday but I ended up driving Rita to the Toyota dealer to pick up her car. Besides the handbook on combating the Christian Right, Julie lent me one of her sources on the Salem witch trials (which she wrote a book about last year) because it had an article about Lithobolia (a phenomenon I got interested in from reading a paragraph in the WPA guide to New Hampshire about an incident in Portsmouth). Julie, Tom, and I had a great time talking as always. We covered everything from Lithobolia to movies to see and movies to avoid and then some. Tom's doing a lay-led service on Ralph Waldo Emerson at North Parish Church in a couple weeks so I told him Chris Lydon had a show about Emerson on The Connection today. Tom's reading someone else's poetry (Paul somebody) at TT the Bear's tonight. Don't know why he's not reading his own. Julie's getting depressed writing about the history of the labor movement. I don't blame her.
Wilbur is doing much better on the r/d. I stopped giving him the Flagyl. Except for the fact that he only eats a couple mouthfuls of the wet food at a time and I have to be at his beck and call to feed him, the new diet is the answer. Now that I've got a 4 lb. bag of dry r/d, I'll start him on it tomorrow. Maybe tonight. I don't want him waking me up at 3:00AM, 4:00AM, and 5:00AM for a spoonful of food.
And while I'm sorta on the subject of the Christian Right and my family, can somebody please tell me how gay people pose a threat to heterosexual families? And what on earth is this "gay agenda" I keep hearing about? And why don't my mother's liberal friends see the Christian Right as a danger? Why are the alarms going off saying "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger, Will Robinson!"? We all sat around at yesterday's family gathering discussing this threat and my mother's efforts to wake up the old liberals. Here's hoping they hear her before it's too late. And we gave Barney Frank a round of applause for his speech against the "Defense of Marriage" bill. (each separately applauding our radios as we listened to NPR... and then rehashing it yesterday over dinner)
The Red Sox are clinging to a 6 to 5 lead over the Yankees in the 3rd inning and thunderclouds are massing ominously outside my window. Another day loafing the soul winds down.
All's right at the shelter and Dawna's on vacation. Faith seems to have healed from her fight with Peter and Randy. Randy got adopted and has gone to his new home.
I drove down to Providence to have dinner with Nancy at Siam Garden. We went to Watchemoket Cove and watched the swans in the twilight. The setting sun made them look lit from within with a pinkish glow. The breeze felt cool and peaceful and made me feel like at last I'm enjoying summer.
We topped off the evening with soft serve at Dari-Bee. Sublime.
I listened to the Red Sox/Yankees game on the way home and well after I got home. The Red Sox blew a 9 to 1 lead and then came from behind to win 12 to 11 after all! So it's actually after midnight and I should date this tomorrow but I won't.
I've been obsessed with picking up the glass on Crescent Beach off Beach Road Extension in East Providence for 2 weeks. Today I finally just drove down there with a bucket and shovel and started picking it up. In an hour and a half I filled the bucket. And I only covered a few square feet of beach. A few minutes after I'd started, a little girl came up to me. She showed me the cut on her foot from the glass and started picking up glass with me. Her 6 year old cousin came over with a bucket and started in on it too. They really worked at it. Both Danielle and Ryan turned out to be six years old. Both followed me along the beach picking up glass and telling me all about themselves and their cousins and their friends and their birthdays and how they can swim without floaties. Danielle told me she was going to get her other cousins and her friends to come down to pick up glass too.
So, I'm home with a bucket of broken glass. I rinsed it in the kitchen sink to get the sand off. I thought I'd fill a few Classico sauce jars with the different colors but there's way too much of it to cram into the jars and most of the chunks are too big anyway. Maybe one big container with layers of each color. Maybe goldfish bowls or an aquarium. We're talking a lot of glass!
There's this weird stereo thing going on outside in the rain. A robin sings in the tree across the parking lot and on my side of the parking lot a mockingbird imitates a robin. This mockingbird is not nearly so annoying as last year mainly because I've been running my air conditioner all night so I don't hear him. He'll probably start imitating an air conditioner next. That would be nice if it cured him of the car alarm. And so what if the mockingbirds (Mr. & Mrs.) and the house finches and purple finches are eating all my raspberries. For about a week I felt horribly guilty about not getting out to pick them as they ripened. Now I like the idea that the birds are having a little fiesta every morning in my 10' x 10' "yard". And if the neighbors complain about the purple bird poop, so what!?!
So, I'm not Thoreau with the bird observations. Mockingbirds probably didn't imitate car alarms in the 19th century and the little finches with the red heads probably hadn't been introduced then either. Anyway, so what am I doing with my life and when am I gonna get serious?
I slept 'til after 11:00 this morning after a miserable hot/humid night. I felt like a zombie for most of the afternoon. I ran into Tom at Starbucks (formerly the Coffee Connection) and swilled down 3 shots of espresso. He briefed me on a review he'd just read in the New York Times about a book whose thesis is that primitive humans had wars. Neither of us were surprised. We continued our ongoing discussions of Rousseau, Lithobolia, Emerson, and Paul Marion. Apparently I missed a Paul Marion reading in Lowell last night. He read two of my favorites: the one about the plastic army men and the one about hearing French on the radio at night. Tom said he meant to call me but he doesn't remember why he didn't. I was out all day and evening anyway. I told him about my urban beach adventure yesterday and he thinks I should make the glass into art of some kind.
July 20 & 21 1996, Newport, Rhode Island
I saw my first sumo match on Saturday and couldn't get enough of it for the rest of the weekend.
Never in my life have I asked an athlete for an autograph. Not even my baseball heroes of childhood. Yesterday afternoon, I broke with that tradition. I unabashedly asked Kawabe-san of Meiji-Nakano High School Tokyo for his autograph after he won the weekend tournament. Kawabe is about 6'1" 155 pounds and he beat guys twice his size! Morishige and Mikamo and Takei are all way bigger than Kawabe but he gets really low and gets the big guys off balance. He looks like a Daddy Long Legs spider: all legs. When he was introduced at the demonstration match on Saturday, Nancy quickly dubbed him "Spider Boy".
After Spider Boy, my favorite was Ito, the team captain. Ito has charisma, star quality. He plays to the crowd. He and Morishige led the warm-ups before the demonstration. Watching 300 lb. guys balance on one leg, stomp, balance on the other leg, stomp, do a split and stretch forward flat on the mat wowed the audience. I started to get inspired to maybe start tai chi or something again.
After warm-ups, the boys demonstrated various sumo techniques so we'd know what to watch for in the matches. One of the freshmen got hurt demonstrating a tripping technique and was out for the remainder of the weekend with ligament damage. I felt bad for the kid. The coach waited until the demonstration was over to take the kid to the hospital. I saw him later that night at the Festival of Drums with crutches and a knee brace wincing when he came down the few steps from the VIPs grandstand. Actually, he screamed, but I wasn't gonna say that. Anyway, he was clearly hurting on Saturday night. By Sunday afternoon he seemed to be getting around better on crutches and did manage to stand up to be introduced at the beginning of the tournament.
The demonstration matches reminded me a lot of push-hands practice. It made me want to get back to that. The object of the sport is to push your opponent out of the ring or onto the floor. The principles of lowering your center and trying to feel where the opponent's center is seemed to apply here and I could see Kawabe in particular testing for the center as he pushed Takei. By the end of Saturday's demonstration I couldn't wait 'til the Sunday tournament.
I got up extra early to make sure I had plenty of time to get breakfast and drive all the way back to Newport, with a stop at the Barrington flamingos, and get a good parking space near Freebody park. I made it just in time for the introductions. This time the referee was all dressed up in white pants, white shirt, and white gloves. The sumotori were all lined up looking very serious. The announcer explained the rules to us again and told us to cheer by calling out the name of the one we wanted to win. Ito and Morishige proved very popular! At one point I was yelling for Ito and Nancy was yelling for Morishige so we kind of canceled each other out. But for the final match, everyone in the place was screaming Ka-wa-be! Kaaaawaaabe! Especially the children. When Kawabe knocked Morishige out of the ring I was on my feet whooping as loud as I could. The crowd went wild!
Local children were invited into the dohyo to try their hand a pushing the sumotori out. The sumotori had a great time with this. Takei picked up a little blond boy and whirled him around. A little black girl with corn rowed hair pushed Morishige around. quite a bit. The kids (Newport kids and sumotori) clearly enjoyed themselves.
After the medal ceremony (Kawabe got a medal, a Newport Tile, and a pen), Ito (as team captain) presented 15 mawashi (sumo belts) to the city of Newport so they can start a sumo club. When all the formalities were done, the announcer casually said the sumotori would be available for pictures and autographs. Kids of all ages and races and classes swarmed onto the field. The little girl with the corn rowed hair borrowed my pen to get Kawabe's autograph, and Morishige's, and Takei's and Mikamo's and Ito's... I got Kawabe and Morishige and Ito to sign my Black Ships Festival poster. The officials had a hard time clearing sumo fans off the field so they could start the kendo demonstration.
Despite Wilbur's wakeup call at 5:16AM, I "slept in" this morning. I think I fed him his high fiber prescription cat food in my sleep. He didn't bother me again 'til 7:00. I fed him again and went back to sleep again. When I woke at 9:00 I was sure I had slept through my 11:00 therapy appointment and probably all of the day. I was quite relieved when I discovered it was only 9:00. I ought to either move the clock closer to the bed or sleep with a watch on so I can see the time without my glasses. My whole reason for putting the clock so far away was to force myself out of bed for early morning meetings when I was working by making it impossible to shut the alarm off from the bed. I don't need to do that now but I still keep the clock across the room from the bed. Of course the outlet near the bed is the only switched outlet in the room and I use it for the lamp but I suppose I could make it a non-switched outlet and have the convenient switch next to the door be connected to nothing.
I don't understand the rationale for the placement of any of the switches or outlets in this condo. Never did. Except maybe the one the stove plugs into. There is no switch near the kitchen door. I have to walk clear across the kitchen in the dark when I come in. Everyone's assigned parking space is in the back - that's where the damn lot is - so the architect's clearly intended people to go in and out through the kitchen door not the front door. For that matter the switches near the front door control the porch light and the hall light - not any of the room lights. There are no switches or outlets in the downstairs bathroom. The outlets in the kitchen are several feet from any place you might want to use a small appliance. I mean, not just me, but any rational person would not immediately think of placing the blender on the stove. Would they?
So, I'm in my usual "why can't you get up in the morning?" "why can't you act like a responsible grownup and accomplish six impossible things before breakfast?" mood that comes on whenever I feel sleepy in the morning or wake up unrested. "Janet, you'll never be able to get a job and function in the real world if you can't get up in the morning!" Gee, I was taught that as a kid and you know what? I made quite a success of myself anyway. The software biz never seemed to require getting up early. Quality Management did of course require catching very early flights to customer sites and early morning conference calls to Japan to apologize (what quality managers really do is apologize to customers - a whole 'nother story). I survived. My rudimentary Japanese is much better when I'm sound asleep. And there's nothing like an early morning landing at Washington National airport to wake you up! I never had a problem being awake when I got to Arlington, I'll tell ya. Landing at Washington National is like a very scary carnival ride. Scarier than a scary carnival ride. So I managed to do all this cool stuff reasonably well while suffering from "not a morning person doesn't even begin to cover it" syndrome. But now that I'm a full-time bohemian I still agonize about my "oversleeping".
So, if I don't have a job why do I need to get up in the morning? I guess I read somewhere that if you're unemployed it is vitally important to get up early, put on a suit, and leave the house to look for work in order to stave off depression and loss of self-esteem or worse. Geez. I haven't worn a suit since I quit work except at Kathleen's funeral. I got up early in the Galapagos for the best wildlife photo-ops. But other than that, getting up early and wearing suits haven't been part of my burnout recovery program. I do leave the house almost every day for coffee at Starbucks (formerly the Coffee Connection) and the daily chance to hunt for Unitarians (my niece calls them my boyfriends, I call them the Unitarians, the Starbucks crew calls them the morning discussion group). I do a shit load of errands and the errands never seem done. My therapist says one can't depend on errands to give meaning and structure to one's life but I'd love to know how I ever kept up a minimal level of errand-doing, housekeeping, adult daily living activities when I worked at BT. I get up in the morning to feed Wilbur, do errands, drink coffee, and look for Unitarians. About as much structure as today's fatigue/sleepiness level will allow...
I thought I'd be smart this time and do Juliet's cage first so the hard part would be over with. I got out the gloves and carefully moved her hissing, snarling, felineness to the cage above hers (Gladys was already out). Got Juliet's place all cleaned up. Put the gloves back on to move her again. She wouldn't budge. I couldn't reach high enough to scruff her so I tried to lure her down with a cat toy. No dice. We're in a standoff. I decide to just go ahead with cleaning Dottie's cage in the bottom row and forget about Juliet. So, I'm scrubbing away and I look up just as Juliet is about to leap - onto my head! I duck. She lands, claws out, on my shoulder. I scream. All work comes to a halt. Juliet jumps from my shoulder to her cage. I shut the door and try to act nonchalant, like "me screaming? naw, it must've been one of the cats..." . Holly asks if I need a Band-Aid. Tibet asks why I won't take off my shirt to see how bad the scratch is. I don't want to see how bad the scratch is and certainly don't want to take my shirt off in front of Tibet. Yikes. The sting goes away and I get back to cleaning.
So impressed with myself for surviving Juliet, I nonchalant my way through getting Vincent, the lunger, out of his cage where he's cowering in the litter box. The gloves and a strategically placed towel always work with Vincent. I'm golden. Once I get him out of the litter box, I notice it is full, I mean really full, I mean we are talking severe diarrhea. It stinks so bad I almost choke. I'm used to cleaning cat cages, even in the sick room, but this made me gag. Got that cleaned up and noticed that his food dish, which he hadn't eaten from, was covered with bloody snot as was the cage wall on that side. I clean furiously, like the white tornado from whatever cleanser that commercial was for. Holly comes out of the sick room for something and I tell her "I know you don't want to hear this but Vincent has bloody snot and wicked diarrhea." Holly is not thrilled as this means she'll have to take his temperature. Fortunately, Dawna returns from vacation just in time to hold Vincent while Holly sticks the thermometer up his butt. Having confirmed that he's sick, we strip his cage and move him to the sick room. So now I've gotta totally disinfect his cage all over again in case we need to put anybody else in there.
Snookie jumped out of my hands and hid under another cage while I cleaned his. He's not vicious, just shy. I left him hiding.
A postcard of a cool cat beaching it in Florida arrived for Jaguar. He was indifferent.
While Roberta was getting some clean bedding from the closet, Tibet started making jokes about her "coming out of the closet". Roberta was not amused. I had to resist just walking out right then and there. As far as I know, Roberta is straight. I'm none to sure about Tibet after her remarks about my taking my shirt off, and previous comments about the size of my butt, etc. One day Tibet was asking everyone whether or not they were/had been married. She stopped short of asking me. Thank goodness. I don't know what I would've said. In my fantasies I would've said "Of course not, I'm queer" but in reality I probably would've turned beet red and left the room. She scares me. BTW, Tibet is not really her name. My girlfriend dubbed her "Tibet" after my story about walking in one morning and being greeted with the word "Tibetan" about 6 inches from my face with no preliminaries and no further utterances. This was after the day she asked me if I'd ever read The Little Prince when I asked her for the broom.
Today I cleaned 12 cages, filled the food jugs, swept the floor. Entertained the kittens (Holly and Freddy - now we have a feline Holly and a human Holly so we can be confused), petted Jaguar, took the trash out, and hightailed it outta there to my usual Starbucks.
I went to the Bruegger's next to Starbucks for a bagel and found Tom there reading the Herald. He joined me at Starbucks and just as I ordered my coffee, Julie joined us with a book of Emerson's essays she'd gotten on interlibrary loan and Internet for Dummies. I gave her a 10 minute basic tutorial on buzzwords and basic html for a job interview and showed them my sumo pictures. They're both sumo fans since they lived in Japan.
After my coffee, bagel, and Unitarians, I raced over to West Parish Cemetery to walk with Joan and Priscilla. I saw a great blue heron in the cemetery pond. I worked up quite a sweat going up and down those hills and turned into a couch potato when I got home. Of course, Wilbur likes it when I turn into a mass of exhausted flesh the better for him to sit on and get attention.
When does "loafing the soul", as Tom calls it, turn into being a slacker? When does taking needed time off from the fast-track turn into whatever this "sabbatical" is turning into? I did nothing today. I went over to Starbucks formerly the Coffee Connection around 10:15 for my morning coffee. I left there at 2:00 and miraculously didn't get a parking ticket. I did writing practice, read the Globe, read the stack of articles Julie gave me about The Alliance to read for tonight. Tom came in. I ordered a second coffee and a scone. We chatted about The Alliance. I noticed a woman walking down Main Street carrying a cylindrical purse made out of a license plate and two shiny circles of aluminum. That got us both into observing what kind of purses women carry, if they carry them, how they carry them , what gestures they make to verify that they have them under control, etc. This went on until Sue (who does not carry a purse) came in and sat down with us. We talked about her relatives who are visiting from Indiana, growing up Catholic in Indiana (not many Catholics there), and somehow got onto business dinners in Japan. Sue left. A guy I knew from tai chi class who knew Tom from somewhere else stopped by and caught Tom up on the latest family news. Finally, I decided I had better go find out if I'd gotten a ticket. I got to the meter steps before the cop. Lucky me. The universe gave me an extra 1 3/4 hours ...
I bought a loaf of bread at the Earthfood Store to bring to Tom & Julie's tonight for the Alliance discussion. I drove down to Petco on 114 to buy a 1 gallon fishbowl for my bizarre glass project. The 2 1/2 gallon bowl wasn't giving me the effect I want. I ate a late lunch at Val's and walked out without my change. Now here I am having accomplished practically nothing on a day when my only scheduled event is dinner tonight at 6:00.
I never did call the travel agent to find out why 3 business days have gone by without my hearing from them. I will call tomorrow morning and change my plans. At this point I just want to get to Vladivostok in one piece on time for the expedition and to get home afterward in one piece. Stopping in northern Japan on the way back is a dumb idea. Even though Hokkaido is close to Russia, getting there from Russia is apparently something that even the recommended travel agent of Earthwatch can't handle. I feel guilty for even having requested such an unusual itinerary. I should just use my frequent flyer miles to go back to Japan another time. Gee, why is it my fault the travel agent is having trouble with this?
I've been reading Jeff Greenwald's The Size of the World . It has convinced me that just because places are close to each other on the map doesn't mean one can get from there to there and from there to here. I was surprised to read that Greenwald's journey took place around his 40th birthday. I would've thought a project like that would be done by someone much younger. Why he's close to my age even (I'm 45)! How can it be that I'm an obsolete over the hill fossil from the Jurassic era of the computer industry? That aside (I'll deal with obsolescence in a future entry), the whole idea of the world as a real place with real boundaries and physically connected spaces is getting obscured these days.
Heck, 4 years ago I couldn't have even considered going to Vladivostok and now I'm having trouble getting a flight.
I've been dragging my feet on preparing for this expedition in a lot of ways. My initial enthusiasm has faded in the light of the logistics and my usual fears of leaving home. I don't fear the traveling. I fear not being at home. The minute my flight takes off from Logan, my day to day world stops existing. Wilbur will still be meowing to be fed every hour. The mockingbird will still be imitating a car alarm. The cats at the shelter will still need to be fed and the plovers guarded. This is exactly the same fear I used to experience whenever I took vacation from work. It would all be going on without me and would be irrevocably changed in some unpleasant way when I returned. Now that I'm on perpetual vacation, one would think I'd be less worried about these things.
It's been so gray and cool for so many days the tourist businesses at the beaches are complaining about a lack of tourists! The front page story on Wednesday's Eagle Tribune was about how cold it is. The weird thing is, it's not cold! The air is so thick with moisture you could cut it with a knife. The sky is so gray I think I died and woke up in Nova Scotia (no insult intended to the province of my ancestors just an observation). And why are the tacky businesses at Salisbury and Hampton and whatever beaches complaining? The tourists spend more money on tacky stuff when they're in the shops and stupid arcades instead of baking their bodies in the sun. The Eagle Tribune's nose for news needs a decongestant.
It poured this morning so Rita and I canceled our walk. We got together for lunch and espresso instead. Now I'm back home procrastinating on calling the travel agent, procrastinating in make this weird broken glass assemblage, procrastinating on writing the great American novel (actually I do that every day), and wondering how that mockingbird knows when I'm in my study.
Last night as I was leaving for dinner at Tom & Julie's, a group of boys was dancing the Macarena around the swimming pool. A little fella in black baggies, a tight black T-shirt, and a Cleveland Indians cap cut quite a figure in the parking lot out side the pool gate. There must've been 10 or 12 kids spinning around with the music cranked up. I expect the mockingbird to start singing the Macarena any day now.
2:30PM update : So I called the travel agent, who seemed surprised no one had called me back. She connected me to the voice mail of the agent who is handling my itinerary. I left a message saying I wanted to change my itinerary and skip Japan. Now I have the feeling this will make it even harder. I am starting to disagree with Jeff Greenwald's thesis that you don't get a sense of the size of the world when you fly. At the moment, Vladivostok might as well be on the moon.
I went back downstairs and resumed stacking broken glass. This thing is just not coming out the way I want. I want strata of each color going up from brown to clear. The brown glass is in such big chunks I almost think I should break it more, but that sort of goes against the spirit of this project. I've gotta arrange it the way it came.
My fridge quit last night.
It was 25 years old. It was "harvest gold" for crying out loud. Imagine me explaining to the decorator that even though it was a hideous color that was last popular in 1978, it still worked so I wasn't gonna buy a new one. So, the cosmic good taste arbiters decided to intervene and force me to get the ugly thing out of there.
Instead of taking Nancy to the Lowell Folk Festival, I took her to Lechmere with me to look at refrigerators. They sure have changed. For the better. They don't use nearly as much electricity and they defrost themselves! Imagine that!
I bought a GE because it was the most energy efficient one that would fit in the space in my kitchen.
They can't deliver it 'til Friday.
I'm forced to eat out or eat nothing but dry cereal 'til then I guess. Nancy suggested I take my bowl of Cheerios to Starbucks and order a caffe latte without the caffe.
No wonder I feel like summer is getting away from me. I'm too busy trying to keep on top of creeping obsolescence. The only reason I didn't buy a new range this weekend is it's too hot to use the oven anyway so it doesn't matter that it doesn't work. The stovetop still works. I'll wait on the range until after Vladivostok.
My new procrastination excuse: wait 'til after Vladivostok to buy the new range, buy the new computer, get a decent haircut, write a book proposal for "The Size of Rhode Island", start the 3 co-ops I've thought of since the Alliance meeting on Thursday....
See you after Vladivostok.
Here it is almost the end of July and yesterday was the first time I went swimming in the icy waters of the Atlantic. The official family gathering for Elizabeth's 8th birthday was at Donald & Michael's house on Salisbury beach. The multitudes assembled at 1:00 for swimming and beaching it before dinner at 4:00. Elizabeth and her Keefe side cousins turned into regular water babies even though the water was predictably cold. Andrea is not into swimming. She likes to dig around in the sand.
Being my mother's daughter, I love swimming. I got in the water and stayed in until little red spots broke out all over my skin an hour or so later. Maybe it was longer. I was so into bodysurfing the waves, swimming (parallel to the shore of course) , and just being in the water I lost all track of time.
On the way to D&M's house I passed a surf shop near the cat shelter. A big sign advertised boogie boards. I had this overwhelming desire for a boogie board but didn't stop then to buy one. D&M's tenants Nancy & Sue a sweet lesbian couple around my age were out paddling around on their boogie boards when I arrived. I really wished I'd bought one.
Nancy & Sue were beaching it with guests : two other lesbian couples and the 80-something neighbors from up the beach. I looked down off the porch at one point and noticed Mom surrounded by dykes. Really, a circle of women formed around her. It's the same wherever she goes. Lesbians and sometimes gay men find her by some kind of radar. We don't know why.
Later in the day Elizabeth finally opened her presents. I gave her "Lulu", Muffy's dog. Ma gave her a world globe. There was the usual assortment of clothes from various relatives, and a couple of sets of earrings since she just got her ears pierced 5 weeks ago and will be ready to take out the original earrings next week. She took Lulu walking on the Globe to the top of the world. We had a great time finding Bosnia on the globe. (It's labeled BOS-HER.).
This was the first time any of the Keefe relatives had seen us do the ritual "Hi Bob" photo. They were quite puzzled by the obsession with spelling out "Hi Bob" in ever more innovative media. Elizabeth explained to her cousins that we do this every time we get together. Explaining to beach walkers to please not walk on the "Hi Bob" until I'd finished it and photographed it was a different story. But eventually we got it done. One of the more artistic ones I think. What the other construction/humanitarian workers think of these bizarre pictures their supervisor gets from his family we can only imagine.
So, like today I had great hopes of buying that boogie board and heading back to the beach with that and my snorkeling gear for a little total immersion in preparation for dipping myself in the waters of Peter the Great Bay in the cause of science. Unfortunately, once I went back to bed, I slept 'til 11:30. Once I finally got up I stumbled to the Coffee Connection, err I mean Starbucks, for a grande latte and conversation with Tom. Always a delight. Tom had to take off to drive Julie to Lowell for a job interview and I zipped back home here thinking surely the travel agent would have called by now.
I haven't seen or heard the mockingbird all day. What I did hear this
afternoon unnerved me a bit. As I was sitting in the living room
reading The Size of the World, I heard a chant rising and
falling in the front yard. The refrain was "I love Bud". The chanters
were in their early teens, all male, mostly white, some Latino. I
couldn't catch all the words, but each verse was a hymn of praise to
the great god Budweiser. This went on for like 15 to 20 minutes.
These kids are not old enough to be drinking Bud or any other beer. Hey, I try to be a hip, kewl, laid-back, kind of aging dyke but I started to feel really worried about the "younger generation", not to mention angry at Budweiser and whoever their advertising agency is. Get kids singing about how much they love Bud with a snappy little tune and their hearts and minds and livers will follow.
And I thought the mockingbird was getting obnoxious...
RIP Roger Tory Peterson
I finished reading The Size of the World last night. I was relieved to read that Greenwald finally discovered Pepto Bismol was causing his "mysterious" black tongue ailment. I kept wanting to shout into the book "Didn't you read the label on the pink stuff?!?" A pretty good read.
Went to the 1 hour photo to pick up the "hi bob" pics from Sunday. They look ok. We've done better ones. Now to choose which ones to mail to Bosnia. I'll do that tomorrow.
Rhode Island is often used as a unit of measure. For example, the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous left a crater "the size of Rhode Island". As I was driving down to South County I had the inspiration to collect a bunch of those references to the size of Rhode Island and compare them to the actual size of RI. What exactly is the size of Rhode Island? It's got over 400 miles of coastline. It's got way more people than Iceland. If you measure square miles do you count Narragansett Bay or only the land area? So now I'm incubating this harebrained scheme to walk the length and breadth and coastline of Rhode Island and write about it. Better not let Jeff Greenwald beat me to it.
Nancy took the day off from work to wait for the electrician or someone like him and the plumber. Once they were done with fixing the doorbell and the kitchen sink We headed to our favorite birding spot at Watchemoket Cove. We saw a lot of cygnets. I'd been wondering how come we had never seen any since there are dozens of swans. They must hide them in the rushes until they're old enough to join the adults in begging for food from the humans. :-)
There are three greater scaup that seem to hang out on one side of the bridge. Nancy says their heads are too domed to be greater scaup so they must be lesser scaup. But I say their heads are moderately domed and have a greenish tinge instead of the purple characteristic of the lesser scaup. Anyway, I was finally in a position to get a really good look at them and a carful of kids arrived to feed the swans. The scaups immediately fled to the middle of the cove where even with binoculars all I could tell was they were roughly duck-shaped.
As we were first arriving a single file line of Atlantic mute swans on parade plodded slowly up the embankment to join some ring-billed gulls and Canada geese eating popcorn. The swans were so dignified it looked like a religious procession.
We also saw 2 egrets, who I think nest on the inaccessible side of the cove. They were over among the swans so I got a chance to look at them close up for a change.
After Watchemoket we headed south and ended up at Third Beach in
Middletown. The beach was alive with: arctic terns
common terns
least terns
cormorant
crow
redwing blackbirds
semipalmated plovers
sanderlings
horses
and one mermaid, Portuguese. Well the mermaid wasn't actually alive.
She was an extremely well done sand sculpture with seaweed and shells
for hair, quahog shells for a swim suit top, a necklace of various
shells, and a handful of ripe rose hips. A family walking the beach
speaking Portuguese stopped at the mermaid and the kids started added
scales to her tail.
Gray's in Tiverton is reputed to have the best ice cream in Rhode Island. Neither of us had ever been there so we capped off the day with a stop at Gray's. I can say for sure they make the best ginger ice cream I have ever tasted. And this was on a cold night. I bet coffee ice cream on a hot night there would transcend all.
When I got home, I had a message from the travel agent saying I'd have to stay 2 extra days on each end of the trip in order to get an Alaska Airlines flight to Vladivostok at all. There are no other flights. So I get to spend 4 extra days in the city that time forgot. If Iceland is "Wickford with volcanoes", Vlad is Wickford with rusting nuclear subs. The travel agent wanted to know if I thought it would be fun to fly into Khabarovsk and take the train to Vlad instead. I pulled out my guidebook and determined it is a 13 hour train ride from Khabarovsk. This is not calling out to me. I think I left my adventurous spirit on the road to Krisuvik.
I survived Juliet with no scratches and then got a surprise wound from Angie who is usually just scared, not aggressive. I was the only one cleaning the front room today and I worked myself into a workaholic frenzy trying to get everything done. Tibet gave me a hard time when I asked her to get a clean dish down from the shelf for me, so the next time I needed something off the shelf I tried jumping up and grabbing. I got pretty good at it but I ached by the time I got done. She finally said she didn't realize height was the issue, she thought I was just being lazy or something. I couldn't reach the damn things. The step ladder I usually use is in the sick room. I felt like I needed to be an Olympic high jumper to work there today.
Jaguar was asleep in the closet the whole time. On the top shelf.
Orangina got adopted. So did Rio & Isabel.
Vincent is still sick.
Holly quit. Friday is her last day. I thought of applying for the vet tech job but after I talked to Holly about why she was leaving I thought better of it. I am not trained for it and wouldn't be able to handle it without training.
Skipped lunch. Went for a walk with Joan and Priscilla and Harold and Sara the Priscilla & Harold grandchild. Still feel frantic.
Travel agent just called. Hotel Vladivostok needs a $200 deposit for the extra 4 nights. And it needs to be a check, not credit card.
Donald Egan, July 13, 36
Bob Egan (a.k.a. Bobby in Bosnia), July 30, 43
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan