let’s see, i woke up behind, was half an hour late; bad
the cook had the same power outtage, or whatever it was, so it wasn’t just me: good
broke a pot of pigment all over everything: bad
nola a zoo: same ol
connected with tutorman: good
tutorman says they need me badly: good
went to the studio and knit for 4 hours: same ol
too tired (or something) to eat anything but fast food again: bad
found my glasses!: GOOD!
served by the scammers: bad
emailed insurance lady in an attempt to “do something”: ?
was comforted by mouse and am not so anxious now: VERY GOOD
got up almost all the pigment, thereby cleaning the bathroom (almost): good
ascertained that a friend was not really sick: good

coming out somehow ahead on the count, even though it didn’t seem like it at the time?

Priceless.

a whole day! with nothing planned, nowhere i have to be, several projects to choose from and 23 free hours ahead! yippee!

my mood is… cheerful, a bit purposeful but somewhat cramped, as usual. i don’t have to pour cafes au lait until 4 this evening and it should be a quitet night, which i like, but of course quiet nights bring no tips, which is the point. and then i actually waded into the studio and pulled out all the yarn, for starters. the house is trashed and i must untrash it, but one little bit at a time (jo’s mom’s story of the man with the flowers) i figure, so i put all the yarn in two big bins (i take my own advice) and took it into the living room for catalogging tomorrow. tomorrow is a day off, and i have An Activity planned, and then i have Monday off, too, so that’s promising. must be purposeful, get things done. too many important things to do to get them done, it seems. which is why i’m torn between reading my blogs and email and getting down to the knit shop soon, beginning to straighten up the place or beginning to study for the teaching certificate stuff, and staring at the wall. my mood. and the clock creeps closer to 4.

my goal today is to get a few things accomplished in a way not to frazzle me out, and to appreciate the day for what it is without worrying what it isn’t. i guess that’s too big for a goal, huh? this should be a post to my own blog, going there now…

which i never have.  it must be the medication, which both times now i forgot to take and then took too late and it must keep me awake.  just great.  but at least tomorrow i don’t have to go in until 10, so i should be able to make it.

i’ve decided to remove nola from my financial plan and just let whatever i happen to make there be a stash.  that reduces the length of time the money ostensibly will hold out, but it’s still an acceptable range, and it frees me up from worrying about such an unreliable place.  i think i’ll still apply for the trib job tish recommended to me, although i remembered after i got the application from her that i really can’t take it, most likely, as i’ll be working full time teaching art during june and july.  but we shall see. we shall see.

still not a word from charles washington.  i don’t know what to do there, except give him semi-regular updates on his message machine or something.  and i have to start working in the self study, tomorrow i am hopeful (although now nola wants me all the way until 3. i wouldn’t, but i didn’t work on thursday….)  i have to get on that, it’s the only thing that makes sense to do, really.  i need to write to phyllis alexandroff, too.  all these things on the list and they remain on the list.  i guess it’s because i want to do everything at once.  well, i’ll have from tomorrow at 3 to tuesday at 7am, that’s a good block of time, isn’t it.

it’s just getting used to all this and watching time go by while i do so.  yikes!

am i depressed today? a little bit.  i don’t know what it is.  i’m not really worried about the insurance scam, i’ve been reassured about that.  i finally got to take the self-assessment on the ceritfication study, albeit not without what seems to be becoming the requisite disruption and unpleasant kerfluffle and agitation with the certifying people, but that’s better left to rot.  I even made shrimp creole last night and had it for dinner this.  and yet somehow i don’t feel like doing anything, or going anywhere, but just staying in aimlessly surfing, or knitting, or…depressed.

perhaps it’s too much agita lately.  everything seems to be a hassle somehow, and i get very little out of it.  maybe it’s because i haven’t brought in any money to speak of in over 2 months now.  well, the arts job starts monday and the nola job picks up tomorrow, so that will be remedied some.  i still have to deal with the land selling situation and all, but i’m not going to work on that at present.  i dont’ know what it is.  but it is.  here i am.  at loose ends.  so many things to do, nothing i want to.  i wonder if i will need to get a third job?  i wonder where, if so.

this, too, shall pass.

better, much better, but still not 100%.  i did go down to knitting for a couple of hours (got materials for a carpetbag which will complete a set) but i don’t think i’ll go today to the club.  i was up until 3, of course, since i was awake and doing at last, but i’m very physically tired today and i think i’ll just take it easy.  looks like it’s gonna rain;it was 85 degrees yesterday. sigh.

um, maybe not.  i finished unpacking the things that weren’t perishable (dirty laundry, now that was perishable) and even found my glasses, but now i seem to be as weak as jo’s jupiter.  my, my. litle tiny voice.  i bathed.  that may be it for the nonce.

i am Truly Better.  the acheys have receded, i was even out in the living room to drink my coffee.  i guess i really did have Something, since whatever it was is gone!  Yay!  I may even go down to knitting today, to see if that’s where i left my life.  Woot! (as i have learned to say.)  She’s back!

taking back my life here.  i’m tired of lying around and yet can’t seem to be able to stop.  the acheys, i am hopeful, exited in a last blast of worry during the night, when i curled up in a little ball that stretched out my spine in a way opposite to the way i’d been curled up all day, and fell asleep in that position.  day-for-night websurfing here and it ain’t necessarily good.

so today, as soon as i get off this thing and drink my coffee and eat my faux beignets, and finish my k.j. fowler book that i got in the airport going out to woolfcamp and still haven’t finished—one of the most alarming things about going online is that i no longer read a book in a gulp, my gulps being reserved now, it seems, for day-for-night websurfing—as soon as i’m tired of that…i will find something else to do, i’m sure.  the candidates are legion, surely something will occur.

i seem to have mislaid it somewhere, my life.  i was home for about 24 hours before i realized i had one, that it wasn’t just in semele’s screen here, which has blossomed into enough communities for two or three lives now. isn’t it always the way.  but anyway, i seem unable to pick up any threads.  to wit:

my house looks like grace’s living room on sunday night, only moreso.  i had a house once, where did it go?  gotta find that.
i seem to have come down with the flu.  achey achey achey, enough to give me an excuse for lying in.
my other communities have gone on in my absense, of course, when will i ever catch that up?
there’s all this uploading and bookmarking, and increased blog traffic….

sigh.  i went to publix and spent $63 on bagels, strawberries and cleaning supplies.  maybe buying cleaning supplies will work, huh?  or, no, i actually have to wield them i suppose.  so instead i compose a response to kristie’s latest post, a drop in the bucket of woolfcamp.  maybe i’ll have a bagel.

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.  i keep looking for the pace to get petty.  i will clean the house.  i will eat ibuprofen and clean and then I will remember what it is i’m supposed to be doing, right?  there was something…....strawberry?

I’ve decided to borrow this one from Dr. Summers as the answer to all “future” considerations:

“I have reluctantly concluded that the rifts between me and segments of the Arts and Sciences faculty make it infeasible for me to advance the agenda of renewal that I see as crucial to [my] future…”

I, however, will be reuniting that infinitive.

to my first NOLA morning shift.  still somewhat on edge this morning, still don’t know what that’s about, but it will probably disappear with working (i’m hoping.) spent yesterday afternoon at knitting so as not to fall into A Funk.  i’m off today at noon, so i expect to come back here for a study afternoon before going back to this evening’s knit in, but then we shall see what happens, won’t we.

tuesday in fact.  ended up spending much of monday regaling david and self, oh well.  tuesday in.  except mary is going to swoop by, so i will have to focus outward for the minute or so that she’s in the driveway. but THEN!  assessment!  the preliminary summation!  what i have amounted to (that which.)

or some such.

again. very different from the last monday, though.  today i must go out up to the U to pay the mortgage.  and then it is Self-Assessment Day.  I have to convince myself that my need to have Something Constructive To Do outweighs my fear of the Teaching Certificate Self Assessment Test.  No, not fear, it’s not really fear, but I have been procrastinating.  no.  gotta do it.  today.

or tomorrow, when there isn’t even mortgage on the calendar. this is the second mortgage payment since i’ve been unemployed, and so far i’ve only put in one half of an unemployment check.  everything takes forever to get started, you know?

it’s been massively rainy for 24 hours—some places as much as 13 inches!  today is gloomy, gloomy, but not quite so rainy.  i believe i will go to the shop pretty soon, it might be a nice day to do that.  Nola cafe called me and asked me to come in this morning instead of this evening, but I couldn’t, had already planned out the day for going in this evening and i’m not going to be able to change on a dime anymore.  so I’ll be there at 4 this afternoon and probably spend a slow evening there, which is fine, i think.  meanwhile, off to help people knit on a saturday.  i hope it’s not still flooded down there.

oh i finally watched 9 1/2 weeks yesterday, it seems a dvd kind of day and i’d never seen that one.  i got it maybe a year ago to see how jack’s paintings were used and as far as i could see, they weren’t, although he got art credits.  perhaps a brief flash of one, i don’t know, but if there was anything else i missed it.  of course, the movie was so bad, i could easily have been distracted by my knitting.

never did get to see D yesterday.  i called in the morning and planned to go by in the afternoon, but by the time it stopped raining enough to do so, around 4, she wasn’t answering her phone.  she hasn’t returned my message either, so maybe the chemo session isn’t going so great after all?

this is my day off, nothing on the calendar for today at last, except writing to people and perhaps driving up to the U to order transcripts, pay the mortgage, etc. that means i will have time to go visit D in the hospital, who is Not Doing Well.  she’s very positive, in spite of the depressing situation.  she left a message on my machine last night that she was there and i called her back as soon as i got back from knitting.  they start chemo today sometime and i thought I’d go knit with her for awhile later this afternoon.

but other than that, it’s a rest day.  it’s raining like july and thundering ditto.  only it’s 30 degrees cooler.  how can that be?

in january!

only it’s february. keep up, e.

i absolutely loved it!  what a hoot!  so much to learn my head spins around.  and people give me money!  and the man who cooks is from Italy with all the attendant craftsmanship that that entails.  and he likes me!  whooda thunk, i love it!

i’d better as, since the county hasn’t yet come through (it will, it just hasn’t yet) i’m still on unemployment, which means that i’m esentially working at NOLA for nothing, since they’ll deduct anything i make from unemployment.  the whole thing was dependent upon having the county job already, that’s why i went to NOLA cafe when I did—I just didn’t expect them to want me so soon!  tonight he called up and wanted me for the breakfast shift and again for the late afternoon one!  i told him i could do one of those and so he said late afternoon, and he’ll work me into the schedule after that.  i’m gonna hafta ask him to work me in a little bit less for the next week or so, just until i get the other job going, or i’ll be laboring for free! i hope that won’t be a problem.

always sumpin…

and i have to think of something to do again. tonight is the county schools meeting, to find our how to transcend into teacherhood.  i’m half tempted not to go, although i registered, since they didn’t have art on their list of subjects and i don’t want to get discouraged.  but i will go, that’s today’s thing.  and it’s rainy, and i need to get out, so I will do that.  I still have to complete more county forms, that will be tonight after i get home, i’ve decided. i really put those things off, i don’t know why, reluctance to accept myself, i guess.  I’m to take them to jackie when i meet the rest of the crew tomorrow at 11:30.

oh, i hope the schools meeting doesn’t discourage me.  i’m so easily discouraged…

i should have taken my own advice yesterday and rested, but no.  instead i got all excited (about woolfcamp!) and called jackie at the parks department and then went to knit and the result was i now have to convince myself to pay money (only $250, and if i return those shoes to zapppos…), fill out my application papers and attempt to find my documents sooner, and i then came home early from knitting anyway with a sinus headache and was asleep by 9:30.

so here I am, 4:30am, awake.  the headache left instantaneously once i took ibuprofen and 2 squirts of flonase and settled back onto my divan, and i do mean instantaneously as in within 5 minutes, which is how i know it’s a sinus headache. allergies.  bleh.  but by the time i had driven the four miles home from the shop it was a genunie owie headache.  all it needed, though, was to be at a 45 degree angle for just a few minutes, less than it took for any drugs to take affect, and it receded nicely.  and then, in an hour or so, i went to sleep chez chaise. zzzzzzz.

emails with gracie, who has so graciously (ow, but true) invited me into her home and to be my chauffeur and offered herself as tour guide in my old stomping grounds. 4 days!  i would arrive in San Francisco on the Friday at just before noon and she will come pick me up, can you imagine?  then saturday and sunday is woolfcamp and monday she has again offered to spend the day playing in san francisco and i fly out that night on the redeye. i had thought to rent a car and do that on my own, but gracie isn’t having it.  all this, and the first time in my old home in at least 25 years (i think i’ve worked it out now) and i only have to pay $250 airfare!  can i afford to? how can i afford not to?

i went to nola twice and to miami for art basel for the same amount of time and it was twice that.  how can i turn down such a wonderful opportunity, to see all these folks?  i can’t imagine, and yet it will reduce my stash.  but hey.  you know?  all i have to do is push that button.  and this is the new me, i do things like this.

no, wait, this is the old me, the real me, the one i’m reviving.  the one who went to new york in 79(80?) to see the picasso show and stayed with people i didn’t know in chelsea, when it was just unconverted meat lofts, on the floor of the ex-boyfriend of a roommate, just to see the picasso show, and i had no money then at all and i had the flu.  i was free-er when i had no money at all (and was in my 20s.)  well, soon i will be that way again, i suppose—have no money at all, not be in my 20s, thank god—so i’d better get practice.  when i was fre-er, i didn’t buy shoes but i did crawl across the country to see picasso.  i’m supposed to be becoming that person again, hey, it’s therapy!

how can i not?

“NEW YORK Jan 25, 2006 — The Rev. Al Sharpton has asked for an apology from Cartoon Network”

you go get ‘em, al.

ted is missing in action. he said he has a cold, but he’s dropped off the map!  maybe that’s he was, is cold.  oh ted!  ted!  yo, ted?

time for coffee and donuts (where donuts is said in new orleans language, which means beignets) and then get on with my day.  so much busywork to do every day.  transcripts, ss cards, mail, prescriptions, here there, somewhere….i have to find my passport, too, did it fall back down behind the piano?

here i am, monday morning.  i have many errands to do today, but i want to sleep.  phone calls. sleep. read. sleep.  well, here i am with my cappuccino and a plate of beignets.  mmm.

people want to know about beignets, how do i get them at home?  easy as beignets:  i make up a batch of dough and keep it in a greased ziplock bag in the refrigerator and when i want beignets i pull off a wodge and flatten it out, cut it in fourths and dump it in the fryer.  walgreens has a little one-person fryer (will only fry one person) that stores the cooking oil all the time and i need only take it down from its perch atop the refrigetrator and plug it in when turning on the coffee and voila, beignets.  this amazing object costs 20 bucks.  so beignets and cappuccino fresh and steaming in the morning.

now, the popular notion is donuts, but a beignet is not a donut like you’re thinking, it is more a small fried bread.  i can control what goes in the dough when i make it, of course, and there’s nothing in there less healthy than in regular bread, and much less of that as well.  the only objection would be to the frying but, checking the oil level in the pot, which changes imperceptibly, as long as the oil’s hot enough, which it is, there’s very little that gets absorbed and it’s about equivelent to buttered toast, i would say.  powdered sugar, that would be about the worst thing, then, and i got a keyboard protector against that. 

it’s such a delight.  beignets for breakfast. mmmmm.  and andrei codrescu, i got an amazon shipment.  and errands, i gots errands….

i continue to remember to post today’s random picture over on untitled, which pleases me greatly (that i remember.)

busy day yesterday, didn’t get back here until late last night.  the morning was predictibly somber.  i realized that it’s a milestone for me: the first loss of husband (for unfortunately normal causes) amogst my peers.  the first implies, of course, that there will be more, but r.‘s husband, who admittedly died young and freakishly suddenly, still was the first to go of this phase of our lives.  his children in high school and the first year of college.  sad, sad, sad.

the afternoon g. and i managed to connect and she pronounced my wheel in workable-enough shape and we went up to undcommon threads and used our birthday discount cards.  I got a purple heartwood drop spindle and 4 oz each of 2 different rovings!  I’m a spinner!  i still can’t use the wheel as i have to clean and oil it and put cup hooks on it and etc, but she got me started on the drop spndle right away.  4 oz is supposed to be enough for me to make socks, i can’t imagine spinning socks from these ball of fluff.  we shall see.  we shall also see if last night’s asthma attack, which has extended into this morning’s cough, is the result of the temperature swing from 44 to 80 yesterday as i expect, or of the merino/silk fluff bits floating all over.  i hope it’s the former.  i could get a mask, i suppose.  wouldn’t that be relaxing?

i must replace lightbulbs.  i’ve been burning out in increments, here.

a busy one today.  here i am before the sunrise again, it’s been awhile.  the ladies at the knit shop have deemed me the only one likely to find the cemetery and so i am the designated driver this morning for the services for r’s husband, b’s father.  i know the place well.  and so i must be at the shop by 10, with the car straightened out enough to put people in it—have i ever actually had people in it? i can’t remember, i can’t imagine.

then after that i’m to call g. to come survey my wheel to make sure it’s workable before showing me how to use it.  two things in one day, a full day, it’s likely to be evening before i can pause.  and i never took susan her slippersocks, which have been finished for a week, when will i do that?  over the weekend again, i suppose.

my, aren’t i a bee?  bee needs her cappuccino.

blog before reading, that’s the ticket today. the sun is a replay of yesterday but today it really is chilly.  i block the sun from my face with semele’s screen, and its rays stream around the sides to warm my arms.  how convenient it all is.

as opposed to today in general, which is not convenient.  yesterday i went out, today i’m not so sure.  i got the job applied for but not without extra kerfluffle and i’m not in the kerfluffle place these days.  today i should go to the knit shop, sad doings there as R just lost her husband and the services are suddenly tomorrow morning.  i’ve been supposed to connect with g about spinning and of course that’s more kerfluffle as i can’t find her number.  i hate kerfluffle.

not this morning, anyway; i shall surf and see what anybody’s saying after last night’s most active scrinefest.  then perhaps i’ll finish up that dvd on nola for folks.  i don’t know.  i’ve surfed the job apps, the end of the week draws nigh, and a short week it was, too.  no, i need to get out among folks, i think, i’m not to wallow.  i’ll go to the shop in a bit…

so you see.  kerfluffle.

i rest in sheets like light silk scarves wafting around my legs, enveloped in the rose satin pouf that my mother gave aunt anna belle for her wedding in 1940, floating slippily in down-filled pockets of warm over crochet and cotton and wooly felt bedslippers.  it is 44 degrees, the air is crisp and—what is this irritant, this niggly sharpy thing that’s poking under me?  oh.  potato chip.

sigh.

today looks a lovely day.  i should go out in it.  i will go out in it.  where?  the sun is streaming in the bedroom window as it does this time of year, and my cappuccino is steaming alongside some kind of berry-covered contraption the pizza parlor (do they have pizza parlors anymore?) sent along last night.  the drizzled sugars gleam in the sunlight, under the dancing dust motes.  and i have today to put to use.

i could just sit here.  but then tonight will come and i will have just sat here.  i plugged-back-in the phone and so my imperceptible connection to the world is restored. wwoz is streaming too, and i don’t remember the name of this guy, but he has that voice that says “owa” for those things that rush buy marking the course of a day. now he’s signed off without mentioning his so-well-known name, and tom morgan has come on. i’ll have to check the webpage..o silly me.  i forget, no schedule info is available: there is no schedule. i forget.

what to do.  surf some job apps.  pointless surfing.  checkout baubles, connect with the knit shop.  read. surf for realtors. work on the house.  change the lightbulb on the front porch. drive up to make some deposits, that still needs to be done.

bingo, a communique has just arrived reminding me that i need apply for a particular job opening at the U.  oh thank you, particular communique, for providing a purpose to my otherwise flailing day!  the drive up to the deposits and HR it is, then, after a pause for personal hygiene.

i will post a random picture.  i have a random picture generator that runs from my own picture file and continutally reminds me of pictures over there (you can’t see it, it’s on my desktop) in my google sidebar.  it had, at the moment i decided i had to try posting a picture on my new blog (MNB), a picture of my backyard former patio as seen from my diningroom window, which sounds much grander than it really is, trust me.  so I will remain true and go search out that one to put up here, or i’ll start thinking about it too much.  (pathological, am i.)  Voila:

YEEP!  i am not authorized to access this page? the upload pictures page?  oh, keith must not have turned something on yet is all, that’s what it must be.  save that thought….

i’ve decided is to take back my eccentricities.  i will wear my new virginia woolf hat.  i will wear all my hats!  i will stop censoring myself only so as to fly under the radar.  i will wear my cowboy boots and my jewelry. i’m middleaged, dammit, why not?  i’m so tired of parcelling myself out for people to accept around here, so that i am become entirely nondescript, i’m about to burst!