Journal of a Sabbatical

May 18, 1999

unfamiliar hurry

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pedro Martinez

Pedro's strikeouts: 11 

Reading: Salt Tide by Christopher J. Badger, Wish You Were Here by Rita Mae Brown, Plovers, Snipes, and Sandpipers of the World by Paul Johnsgaard.

Unfamiliar children are playing on my front steps, sirens are passing here every half hour, larger numbers of unfamiliar children are playing and shouting in the parking lot. Pajama Woman opens her front door. Carthage, aka Chantel, barks and makes a beeline for my door. Wilbur, who had been sitting on my shoulder purring while I pounded the keyboard looking for an answer to why Word 97 gives Zsolt unwanted font changes when he hits enter followed by delete or was it delete followed by enter, leaves tiny scratches on my left arm as he leaps across the room and speeds down the stairs to threaten Carthage, aka Chantel. I follow him downstairs and observe his threat display and shake my head. The darn dog can't see his bared teeth and puffed up tail. Why doesn't he shriek at the top of his little cat voice to scare the dreaded being away?

Much later, everything has quieted down and returned to normal. I have no clue who all the unfamiliar children were or what the sirens were about. It'll have to remain a mystery.

I've felt like I was in a hurry all day. La Madre called just as I was leaving to go to my therapist's office. She wanted to have lunch because she had a birthday present for me. My birthday was a month and a half ago but she just found the perfect present. I couldn't do lunch but said I'd come over around 1:00. I gulped down my delicious lunch from Earth Food Store: Indian style tempeh, mmm, mmm, good. I even ordered my caffe latte to go, shocking the Starbucks baristas. Hussein came in just as I was about to leave. He wanted to talk and I was sorry I had to leave. He asked me to check out something for him with the people who own the teddy bear store because I know them and he doesn't. I said I would, and I did later when I came back from Mom's.

The perfect present turned out to be an autographed copy of Fenway Park A Biography in Pictures by Dan Shaughnessey and Stan Grossfeld. Autographed by both of them. Gorgeous book! I can see why she was so excited about it. I lent her my copy of Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies and gave her the coloring book I'd picked up at Wilbur's General Store on Sunday's outing to Little Compton (which will get written about shortly) to give to the kids since she was chauffeuring them to piano this afternoon.

I leafed through All Saints by Robert Ellsberg, which her ecumenical group had given her as a gift after she did a session on Catholic saints for them. Amazing book. His definition of saint includes inspirational people who weren't necessarily Catholic. Mixed in with the biographies of a goodly number of the Catholic saints I learned about in childhood are people like Dorothy Day, Ghandi, Thoreau, John Wesley (John Wesley?!?), Anne Hutchinson (!!!! - but not Roger Williams for some reason), a guy my Mom knew from Haley House, Jonathan Edwards (the Puritan theologian, not the singer), and many more interesting choices. I want to borrow this book to peruse in more detail sometime. The list of saints overlaps considerably with my personal list of most admired historical personages.

I've made no progress on researching Zsolt's Word 97 problem 'cause it's awfully hard to search Microsoft's knowledge base with a cat on my shoulder.

I finished reading Rita Mae Brown's Wish You Were Here, the first in the series of Mrs. Murphy mysteries. Fun, light reading with good insight into the inner lives of cats (for those unfamiliar with this series, Mrs. Murphy is a cat who solves mysteries and tries to communicate to her person the small town postmistress). I guessed whodunit well before the denouement, but it was still fun. I have the whole series in a pile that Priscilla (of walking buddy fame) gave me weeks and weeks ago after she read them. Priscilla reads really fast and was through with the whole stack of them in a few days. I've put off reading them, but now I'm hooked.

Part of the reason I've gotten hooked on the mysteries now is that they're easy to read. No big words I have to look up. No huge ideas I have to argue with mentally. No perfectly crafted passages I have to reread for their sheer beauty. Just plain plot and moderately interesting characters. Why on earth do I pick 1100 page books about the Balkans when I could be reading Mrs. Murphy mysteries? Beats me.

I reread the piping plover chapter from Salt Tide this afternoon too, for inspiration in trying to put together yesterday's entry. I'm having difficulty putting words on the experience of watching piping plovers courting and feeding for an hour and a half at close range.

Pedro Martinez rocks! He can win even without his best stuff and look good doing it.