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May 9, 2000
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back to the routine I started work at home answering some e-mail. Finally, I started off for the physical place itself. A guy in a Gardens truck honked, a woman honked. Flat tire! It was pretty flat. I remember thinking, Wednesday, 'that tire is really too low.' It had a nail and a slow leak. I drove back home the few blocks I'd driven obliviously. FFP was still home and he took me to work. I worried a presentation all day. I took out stuff others put in. I put in stuff others left out. I gave the presentation twice to a wall and changed things. I gave it to the marketing person (one of the Nancys) while she scribbled changes on a copy. So it goes. "When do you want me to pick you up?" himself said on the phone. Oh, yeah. The flat. He'd gotten it fixed, of course. The maid helped him put the little play spare on (also flat, they used some of that fix-it stuff), he took it to the tire place, they took out the nail. They said the fix-it junk would rot the spare, 'nothing you could do about it.' Like it matters if it's gonna be flat when you need it. Hmmm...a nail in a tire? Time for a new car? We went to Brio Vista to catch a bite on the way home. Oddly, we had nixed a wine tasting there this very night. I was glad we were just catching a calm meal. The place was full of people we knew from Les Amis du Vin and the Wine and Food Festival board...they were having a wrap-up meeting. Forrest doesn't miss all that work. Know what? I think my duck with figs and a grain and chard was as good here as anything I had in New York City. Forrest was pretty happy with his tuna, too. I wanted to rush home and see Chalow. Her visit to the vet was successful, he was happy with her progress and care (thanks, Aunt Gayle!). Still it worried me to leave her alone. "Do you know PowerPoint?" FFP asked. "Not really, I struggle with it. I don't want to learn it, but I have to use it." "Maybe I should learn it. Maybe I should buy the Dummies book. Can we go to Barnes and Noble?" "I really want to get home." I'm too weary to ask why he wants to learn PowerPoint. Later he goes to Central Market to buy groceries and use a coupon to get free coffee. (Coupons make me weary. I'm always saving them and then don't want to use them.) He goes first to BookStop and buys some PowerPoint books. I think I have a book lying around. I'm too tired to look for it. It may be out-of-date, too. Although he buys '97 books, because we haven't upgraded our Office stuff to 2000 and likely won't for quite some time. I answer e-mail and try to deal with all the odds and ends. I even read some of the pile of papers that have accumulated. I work a couple of crosswords. I don't have time to work crosswords. But I do love them. Especially the Times on Monday or Tuesday when I can finish them and see the 'theme.' One had phrases with body parts. Like 'knee slapper' and 'elbow grease.' Another had 'animated film' in it and several films like 'Ugly Duckling' and 'The Lady and the Tramp.' We sent Aunt Gayle a report on Chalow. She was relieved and sent this reply. Well, thank goodness for the good report. Chalow is such a loving good little dog. She only deserves the best --- and she got that for owners. Glad she is so fast. You should have seen (and I guess you do any time you take her out) how people are just drawn to her. When I took her to the vets office there were several people who commented on her kind face and came over and talked. At Byrd & Block (where I took her to work) the people there were simply in love. One guy who is a writer who was there and will be for a week said, "This is just wonderful. I was sad because I was missing my dog I had to leave at home but this is great having Chalow here. She makes me feel like I am at home." People and dogs --- a winning combination. Every single person there had their own relationship going with her before we left. She is really special. Warning: Graphic content below with taboo female subjects. Late at night, we change Chalow's shirt and bandage. We spray peroxide on her little tubes, smelling the faint stink of infection. We arrange a sanitary napkin inside her little T-shirt. I think about the incredible taboo of feminine sanitary products. It's not just a bandage, is it? Good thing I saved some from my pre-menopause in case guests needed them and just because I hate throwing away useful things. Good thing I used pads sometimes as well as those, even more taboo, internal products. I think how Tandem, a company where I worked, was so advanced, so liberal that free sanitary products were available in the restrooms. And at the Met Club, the soon to be ended upscale downtown health club, too. Very civilized. If men didn't use toilet paper (ever), do you suppose it would be in machines for a quarter a pack? I'd betting yes. I think that not too many of my friends got through menopause without a surgery. Not too many have actually gone to the end, their body just naturally stopping. I suppose if my endometriosis hadn't infected my appendix at about age 22 resulting in the loss of one and only one ovary that I would have ended up in some major surgery in my forties.
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"We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine-work which is so large a part of life." Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean |
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"I sort of like the brown one, Chalow is thinking, because it goes nicely with my blond hair." |
