The Visible Woman...October 28, 2001

Sunday

Oct, 28, 2001

getting it done

We wake up and get around by eight-ish. And...I realize...they gave us back the hour! We spend a little of the time we gained back changing clocks. We have lots of clocks.

Let me just say these things. I love newspapers. I have a love/hate relationship with newspapers. I'm addicted to newspapers and I hate it.

I've long since learned to throw away the want-ads and the sports sections, without a thought. I can't keep myself from flipping through the ads on Sundays. Although the coupon sections I usually ignore. Except, once in a while, I just have to know what the Franklin Mint and other such outfits are turning out for the lower middle class to consume. What is it with stuff like that?

FFP let the papers pile up while I was gone. A groaning stack in the kitchen, over two feet high. Piles in the living room. Plus I had a thick pile that had made their way into my office and stayed there since, gasp, summer. Since June and July, for heaven's sake. I saved out the one that a 'what happened to the slackers' article on the occasion of the movie, Slacker, tenth anniversary. And one with an article on Wayne Thiebaud's painting. If there is one thing that has made me only moderately successful but infinitely interesting in my life, it is my wildly eclectic tastes. I can be interested in almost anything for fifteen minutes.

Yep, I looked at papers that could still put Janet Reno or Bill Gates on the front page without a spin of terror or anthrax. I also dealt with the special sections appearing in The New York Times since 9/11. For a while I was reading the lives of the victims. The stories, a dozen or so a day, try to center on something about the person that is mildly cheerful. Loved their families, loved to cook, fish, drink wine, etc. As I made my way through it, though, I quit reading. I just glanced at the faces and names and marvelled that I didn't know any of them. I did stop and read the obituary of the guy who sold me my current Honda. Someone FFP went to school with. Dead of colon cancer.

I sped up the newspaper sorting by allowing myself to save the technology, arts or travel sections in a much smaller pile. I clipped some crossword puzzles although none from a New York Times after Wednesday. I feel silly spending my time sorting newspapers. I vow to not let it get out of control again.

I also spent time trying to plan things. A trip to New York City the first days of January. And a massive Thanksgiving dinner with either 16 or 21 guests. Or some other number, perhaps. So I looked at airline flights. Tried to determine what my out of town relatives might need in the way of rooms. Tried to contact someone I heard could get us a deal in NYC on rooms or show tickets. (By the way, I read in a New York Times article that you could get the best seats to see Producers and such by paying, gulp, $480 a person. In a move to prevent scalping, the theater themselves is offering astronomical prices.)

Trying to plan such things is nebulous. Is a direct flight worth more money? If it leaves at 6am? If it's on American with the additional room in coach?

Talking with my aunts, I realize how much they are looking forward to a Thanksgiving get-together. It makes me want to host it all the more. (Although the thought of getting the house in order to feed 21 people at a sit down dinner is certainly daunting.)

We have an event in the late afternoon (made later-seeming by the time change) at Fonda San Miguel. Life always presents something interesting at such things. In this case, it was meeting someone's mother. Didn't look old enough, for sure.

I am sleepy when we get home. I'm so useless. I doze and sort some more newspapers, clipping a few crosswords, as the Yankees get bashed in a pitcher's duel. I didn't accomplish much this weekend. But there are a few things checked off my list and a few more things that I have 'in progress.' That's good, isn't it?