 Himself: Found two jobs to apply for. Swam, job hunted, Amvets….he found two shirts, dinner, and a meeting. Herself: Posted blog, swam in a way too warm indoor pool, edited until oneish trying to get these entries down to tiny bytes, and got to go to Amvets as a reward. Found a second pair of jeans that fit. Reading: Newsweek, and all the rest of the periodicals that fill my footstool. Balance: Enjoying the living room in its new guise. |
September 24:
A long comfortable conversation with Jo this evening. We read several poems back and forth to each other, and I asked her what she was going to do with them.
“Get famous posthumously,” she laughed for a moment then continued. “The main reason I so cherish my poetry is that it makes me feel like a real, thinking human outside of my children and grocery lists. A thinking person.”
October 5:
This morning, filled with fear and trepidation as I have put this off as long as I could, I phoned Lenora’s school and asked the good Doctor Gonzales if she could be transferred to the same school Lessa attends instead of our local high school. I had expected a blast of “no” and an hour of reasons why she should. He immediately said yes, and that the paperwork would be started this very day. I almost fell off the bed.
He asked me in that booming voice of his, “Did I know how much her attitude had changed this year?”
“No,” I replied, then tentatively asked if it were for the better or worse.
“Much better,” he replied, and I let lose a big sigh of relief. One never knows.
October 10:
Three days ago the kid caused hysteria reached a peak unknown in quite a while around here. I took a short break from it all to retire to my room, take on a fetal position while I cried and reassessed my options. One choice would be to give the kids their own rooms.
Within moments, it seemed, I was on my way to get Frankie and start moving the furniture. By the time we got back, the house was full of sailors who had begun moving my multitudinous belongings out of my room. PB, Dan, and Raul arrived to help too. A few hours later my nice living room had vanished, and an artist’s atelier had been created. Lessa was in my old room, and Lenora in the other. I set up my bed and slept very poorly. I’ll get used to it.
October 12:
I’m still settling into my new space. Bookcases are done. No privacy.
October 26
I found myself outside restretching a five by four canvas. It was texture deep and layers thick. I was attempting to resurrect it by turning it, something that it is very hard to do correctly. My glasses had slipped to the end of my nose, the sweat was dripping down and over my body to puddle at my waist band, and my hands had reached that tired stage where I could barely hold on to the canvas. I remember looking up from my struggles and thinking that I was well.
For the first time since 1970, I am not mad, crazy, insane, bonkers, gone…. just this moment, I am well,” ran through my head. What a clear realization this was for me. A wonderful feeling, a joyful feeling.
November 9:
Ah, friends. Duck attempted suicide with a pill-booze cocktail. He’s hospitalized and a bit better today. Two of his old friends are taking care of matters and discovered he was bankrupt. Jo is better today too. JR has been wearing me out with errands, tasks, and drinking. The terrible news is that Pete has Hodgkin’s disease. I am very depressed about this.
December 20:
At the Christmas tree lot, I looked for the advertised tabletop trees. They were all gone. Behind the rows of big trees, there was a pile of old, dried up trees. When I asked if I could have one, the young boss man said no.
A fat man sitting on a pile of fresh trees started saying over and over, “Oh man, let her have a Christmas.”
I never said a word, never got a word in, for they did all the arguing for me. In the end, I got a nice, slightly dry, fir that looks very nice with all our lights and ornaments.
December 24:
I am getting a lot of mileage out of the latest tarot card reading from Don. It said, “Sex without love, unbridled passion, famine, and sickness.” First there was lots of sex, then we ate a lot out of dumpsters, now all this holiday season I have been sick…first scabies, then hives, and then Non Specific Urethritis or NSU as Public Health calls it. Finally, I got a good, old-fashioned cold. It's been fun to tease Don gently about this reading he gave me.
I've been reading every day. Couldn't always comment. I'm glad you finally got to "well."
ReplyDeleteMany hugs.
You life has been one amazing journey. I keep forgetting that most (all?) of this is real. Do you sometimes look back on it and wonder how you got to today?
ReplyDeleteI, too, keep thinking it's a novel I'm reading, and then I remember. Like Tabor, I wonder how you feel about reading this all these years later. It seems to have been a different person all this happened to. This must be how you feel.
ReplyDeleteAh Duck. He was there when I started to read you. Your life was so troubled.
ReplyDelete