Tuesday, December 10, 2002

a friend's hands making a painting of a pear...I was thinking of her today

"Time is very dangerous without a rigid routine. If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival."

Flannery O'Connor

Getting time alone feeds on itself, I think. More and more I want to be left alone. I don't mind being alone or just being around the house with FFP, occasionally discussing something. When I ease into reclusiveness, I often consider giving up the journal. Because it is, after all, the ultimate in exposure and because I could spend the time in some other less sociable pursuit. (Sitting alone writing a journal is a sociable pursuit? Hmmm.)

I spend a little time in the morning changing over to McAfee virus protection because Norton has made me crazy and my subscription is up. I get in the aerobic part of my workout but don't do any weights. I start some wash and strip the bed. I get cleaned up and go to El Arroyo and meet SuRu. I start to tell her I don't want to go because of the whole recluse thing. I have a lunch date tomorrow, too. You'd think if you didn't work that making time for lunch dates would be the easiest thing in the world, but you would be wrong. If you are working, you're at work and, barring some stupid meeting, you can leave and go meet someone. You're already cleaned up and everything. Perhaps you are even eager for an hour or two of escape. But when you are retired, you might be all sweaty or in the middle of something genuinely interesting when lunch time comes. Or dinner time, for that matter. This causes a spiral toward hermithood.

But, anyway, I do go to El Arroyo and have the barbecue chicken enchiladas which I've been thinking about for a while for some reason. They are even the days' special. At $4.95 a good bargain. After the meal I go by Northwest Hills Pharmacy and see if they have anything, among their overpriced gifts, for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I find nothing. I do find they have these $10 leather travel journals that I like because they are nice and fit in your pocket. I don't buy anything, however.

I go to Dad's by a circuitous route and I get yesterday's mail in and then fool around with the computer. Something is awry with the virus scan. I'm thinking of switching this machine from Norton, too. But no one will be using it for a while so I won't bother until someone is using it. My dad's friend, who he is visiting in Germany, says that he has agreed to e-mail, but I don't believe it. I fool around, watch CNBC, download some WIN ME updates and go through some of Mom's stuff until today's mail has come. When I'm looking through my mom's things, I continue to find it depressing. There are more clothes in another closet. There are lots of craft supplies and yarn and I find a bunch of books on weaving and such. I wish I knew someone who could use them.

I go home. It's the maid's day. I don't like it when the maid is around. It's part of the recluse thing. Of course, I don't want to clean the showers or mop the floors or vacuum. I don't mind cleaning dishes, doing laundry, taking out trash, changing the beds.

Of course, I could do all of it. All the housework. (With FFP's help.) I have. We have. Of course, the house was never quite as clean then. But it was always my intention to retire and do creative things, not retire and do the things that I paid others to do. Yes, I know I've been chopping bamboo and cleaning out closets. It's not that I don't want to do anything domestic. Just not the basics. Or not some of them. The yard service is outside mowing and edging.

It gets to be five thirty. I still haven't finished the day's papers. Which I promised I was going to read in 'real time.' Which means: the same day they come.

So I do it. I finish the papers. I do the crossword in the Times while FFP cooks and we eat. (Catfish, squash casserole.) I finish them in my chair while we 'sort of' watch TV shows. I don't like 24 but FFP does. I only vaguely watch it.

So today's paper read, I dispense with some of the old ones still piled up. Progress, slowly toward a more orderly life? Or just a bump on the spiral down?

JUST TYPING
You would think.
There would be time for everything.
But there doesn't seem to be.
Still twenty-four hours.
Still takes an hour to exercise, thirty minutes to shower and dress.
Still takes just as long to read.
A paragraph.
Just as long.
To write.
Just typing.
Too lazy.
To look up a new quote.