Tuesday, January 7, 2003

I'm off to work out a little before nine, signing in at 9:05. The gym is crowded with 'rich husbands, stay-at-home with kids' ladies. (Who knows if this is accurate, but that's my prejudice.) Because they are warming up before yoga? Two ladies plan something at the coffee bar. A benefit for All Saints Episcopal Day School I think, hearing snatches of conversation and seeing letters on the counter as I squeeze by to the water dispensers.

Miraculously, no one gets in my way. I get the bike I want, read my short story book, get on all the machines. Only once do I skip to a different machine than the one I was headed for when a personal trainer sets her charge up there, mummuring sympathetically about some story the woman has told her, probably about husbands or children or charity events. But they abandon that machine before I'm too far out of my rhythm. Life is great.

On the way home I see a guy leaving the highway department parking lot who feels in his pocket and then looks dismayed and turns around. On 39th Street a woman comes out of her house with a load of stuff. A car sits with several doors open and a rent-a-truck is at the curb. Lamps and shelves and other possessions are arrayed in the yard.

Now the maid comes on Tuesday and I need to let her get things in good order because Saturday we have people coming. So, I talk to my dad briefly on the phone about some of his investing and then I get in the shower, to get clean and get out of her way. First I strip the bed and myself and start some wash, though. She doesn't stay long enough to do the wash and will become distracted by it, even if we tell her not to do it.

I get all cleaned up but I don't bother to blow dry my hair. This is one of the little things the retired Linda Ball lets go. I just stick some gel in it and comb.

I change the wash once, do a little organizing and gather myself to go pay our property taxes. They aren't due until January 31 but we just want to get it done. I could just put stamps on the envelopes, but FFP says there is a drop box and that seems safer. He says it is across the street from the back of the Governor's mansion on La Vaca.

I drive leisurely down through campus, find a place to park at a meter a few blocks up from the mansion and get out and walk to enjoy the day. People are out of their offices getting lunch. A nicely-dressed woman is talking to herself on one corner. She turns to me and says, "I was just talking to myself while I figured out where I was." There are people obviously going to a conference, with name tags on. There is a tent on the capitol grounds, crowded with people.

I find the office and see the drop box (I could have driven by) but as long as I'm walking I just decide to go in and get receipts. The first door I go in is the wrong one. A willowy, attractive black woman in a business suit says to the guard, "I'm always in a rush. I need to manage my time better."

I find the right door, take a number, wait a short time and get receipts.

Then I leisurely walk back to the car. It's really an amazingly glorious day. It's cool and cooler still because I still have wet hair. It feels great. I see a guy I know. He's in a suit with a briefcase. He must be a lawyer. I'm trying to think of his name. I feel that I could think of it if his wife were with him. I see them together at charity events.

I decide to stop at Toy Joy and look around and shop for something I have in mind for my great nephew's birthday. Toy Joy is so cool. If you can't find a gift for someone here, either you or he just lack imagination. Maybe you both have to lack it. If the person is a child, it's especially true but for adults, too, it's hard to go wrong. I almost buy the Rabbi punching puppet for a friend. But I just buy this magnet board thing for my great nephew that I'm going to give him with some added homemade magnets.

It's such a nice day! I feel so good (and yet unproductive).

I am heading home (taking the long, slow way still) when I see the vet's office and think 'Chalow needs some of her liver disease prescription diet.' So I phone FFP to make sure he really said that and go back and get it. See? Two errands done!

At home I stay out of the way of the maid. At one point, I go back to work in the guest room but I get so fascinated with an old rock concert poster that I find that I get stalled. Actually I do get everything out and the shelves dusted and floor swept and start to replace stuff. I make a pile for the thrift store. I consider keeping some things for white elephant gifts but I don't think I will. Somehow there are always plenty of candidates for that. I keep a lot of books I doubt I will refer to again. But you never know. Books are hard to toss.

I have called a neighbor who has a little business doing ebay and told her that I have some peanuts and boxes and bubble wrap for her. She calls back and wants it along with some Sweet and Low for a science project for her twelve-year-old daugther. (We don't use artificial sweetener or sugar in our coffee for that matter, but have about 10,000 packets bought for parties. It's probably a hundred years old I tell her. The kid's science project is to see how different substances might preserve flowers. Wouldn't it be funny if artificial sweetener actually worked? More likely it will kill them.)

The (beautiful) day is gone. After helping her take the stuff across the street and talking a few minutes I have to wait for the rush hour traffic to cross my street.

It's funny but when 5:30 or 6 PM arrives, I feel like I should switch into a different mode. Have dinner, watch TV, stuff like that. But today I go back to the guest room cleanup project.

However, FFP considers sixish his time to kick back, have dinner, watch TV. So he cooks up some chicken for a chicken Caesar salad and opens a 1996 Burgundy. The salad is delicious and soon we've had dinner and cleaned up from it. As soon as the maid leaves we cook something that spatters in the kitchen, dirty some wine glasses, leave wine stains on the white kitchen table. It's sort of a tradition. But we just as quickly clean up. We don't live like pigs. But you wouldn't know it from my office and the guest room. However, I can always close those rooms when we have parties.

There isn't much of interest on TV after watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire and discussing the answers. (Did you know that Strawberry Fields was an orphanage?) So I surf, write some e-mails and watch stuff like Biography and HGTV.

When it's almost time for NYPD Blue I go to the big room. I gather up papers to read, the last of the wine. FFP is asleep listening to the show tune channel on digital cable. He was going to watch 24, I thought. But he wakes and says that he decided he didn't want to watch it. After the news, I'm dozing over a New York Times crossword puzzle that I can't finish. Forrest gets up abruptly. I wake up. He says the door bell is ringing. I truly haven't heard it.

Two old work pals, one from The Netherlands, one from the office here, are at the door. I laugh about not hearing the bell. I offer drinks. He takes one. We talk. Work is the same, I can tell. Changes, but the same kind of changes. It's odd, but sometimes I feel more in touch with the company and the business it is in by not working there. We talk about trips. I threaten to toss the LPs my pal from across the pond has been promising to go through for a couple of years. I tell him he'll probably be saved by my laziness. I threaten to come see him and ring the bell in the middle of the night. My local work pal is helping organize the benefit here Saturday. We talk a little about that and about the board for the dance company which she is on. They leave and we watch some movie until the completion, staying up too late.

window reflection at Toy Joy

"Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's law into account."

It is not enough to be h

JUST TYPING
I need some hours.
There are only twenty-four.
I could sleep a little less.
Or be more efficient.
But whatever for?