The cat is completely traumatized. So am I.
Author: Jinx
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I also prefer dark to milk chocolate.
In my youth, I could eat anything I wanted to eat and remain slender. I made the most of it, keeping up a steady diet of chocolates, mints, jawbreakers, taffeys, toffees, brickles, Necco Wafers, Lifesavers, Butterfingers, fudge, cordials, etc. It wasn’t until fairly recently that rising cholesterol & blood pressure, not to mention vanity, made me change my diet. I can’t have sweets without guilt anymore, but I figure I am luckier than most.
I have lovely memories of using Milky Way bars as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.
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I wait for word that I have been returned to the rolls of the insured, and I wait, and I begin to doubt it is ever going to happen.
When we first learned about this SNAFU and phoned them, we were told it would take one week, maybe three to get me covered again. It has now been a month. I no longer believe anyone is doing anything at all.
Which is, I tell myself, untrue. I’ve worked in a bureaucracy and handled paperwork. I know the wheels can turn slowly, silently and out of sight. But I can’t make myself believe anyone is even looking at the mass of documents we sent them.
We’ll call them again today.
It’s a brilliantly sunny day. I’ll walk on the roof, but no more brisk turns about it. When I went up yesterday, our neighbor across the hall , Nina, had left a cheerful and politely worded note on the roof access door that began with “Tread lightly!” I hadn’t been stomping, but apparently even a quick tread makes her fear for her ceiling. From here on my exercise must be on my stationary bike. The roof will be for air, sun, a look at the view, and perhaps a gentle saunter.
Speaking of roofs, at the moment a slight mystery has been enacted three roofs down. For the past couple of mornings, I’ve seen a fellow in a t-shirt and sweats take a walk there, pacing and talking on a cellphone. This morning he appeared in his usual dark tee and a pair of bright red pants. Instead of talking on the phone, he set something small, dark and rectangular near the side facing the street and bent over it, presumably to turn it on.
Looks like a portable radio. I expected him to settle down to listen to music, or perhaps do some calisthenics, but instead he walked away and is no longer in sight. He could be hidden behind some of the vents. I’ve toyed idly with the thought it might be a bomb, but the fact that I’m still sitting here indicates just how seriously I take that.
Update: As of May 1st, I will be covered again. An email arrived today announcing this. Michael spent forty-five minutes on the phone with someone working out the details. Greater love hath no man.
On May 1st, I’m going to paint this town red. I am going to walk around the block! I am going to visit Le Beau and buy things. I’m going to go downstairs to the laundromat and wash clothes!
The little black rectangle is still out there on the roof. Red Pants is nowhere in sight. Michael thinks he might be recording something — maybe bird song?
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I love babies. I love puppies. I love kittens. I love my cat when she tries to endear herself to me by rolling over and looking at me upside down. I will waste hours watching videos of rescued animals restored to health and children saying the darndest things.
The “cuteness” I dislike is the depiction of a human form in which all nuance, all complexity, everything that makes an individual an individual is erased, leaving only an impersonal, blank, prettiness. This has its place, in advertisements, children’s books, stuffed animals, comics, funny cartoons, etc. In that context it can make me smile or even laugh.
In an adult context, however, and online, it’s frequently used as a cover for sheer nastiness. It makes me shudder the same way I gag when I think of licking a spot of sugar residue off a sheet of paper.
Some of the dumbest, most violent and threatening posts I have received have been from people who depict themselves as adorable, big-eyed schoolgirls in academy uniforms.
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THEODOSIA “‘What is this Theodosia?’ demanded Gwennoelle.
‘Why, Madame,’ The man bowed to her slightly. ‘It is a little town on the east side of the island. Very pretty place, with its own market, and lovely cottages, newly built and ready for newcomers like you. It’s where many of our workers live.‘”
The Island Council is especially proud of the “workers’” cottages that cluster around plantations throughout Theodosia, freshly painted in red and white and each with their own small vegetable plot. This housing is prominently pictured and described in advertisements for plantation workers in ports like New Orleans, Naples, and Dublin, their sturdiness and comfort extolled, along with the availability of schooling for children.
The heat, the uncovered cisterns, Yellow Fever, and the houses’ actual tenants are not mentioned.
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One of the most prescient science fiction stories I ever read was written in the second half of the 20th century, well before the internet as we know it existed. In it, a terrorist has given the date and the time when he plans to destroy society. The future-cop protagonist naturally assumes this means some sort of weapon, a massive bomb, perhaps exploded on a subway or the center of a city.
In fact, all the terrorist does is take down the internet – not of course, called the “internet” in the story, but still, the internet. In that futuristic, science fictional vision of the 21st century, you see, everyone carries their own phone and everyone is in constant contact with everybody else. On the time and date predicted, that contact is cut off.
Chaos ensues. Businesses, transportation, government, the judicial system, public services, entertainment, the media, can’t function.
But more important than all that, neither can human beings. For the first time in their lives, people cannot communicate instantly with anyone other than other human beings who are within a few feet or yards from them.The result is not pretty.
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Where Aaben on California is small, dark, and claustrophobic, Acorn, around the corner on Polk, is airy and brightly lit. In Aaben, every customer is privy to every conversation at the front desk or anywhere else, while in Acorn, in spite of the brightness, there is complete privacy within the stacks. Conversations — even those close by — always seem faint and far away. The people behind the front desk are always busy at something, tapping into the computerized inventory, going through books, completing transactions… In Aaben, the only music possible would have to come from the radio behind the front counter. In Acorn, there is always interesting music being piped in over the sound system — classical, or folk, never top forty.
Last summer I applied for a part-time job there and was given what amounted to a written IQ test which included questions about my favorite authors and the last ten books I had read for pleasure. Apparently I did well, because the owner called me in for an interview. He is a tall, handsome, serious looking man with a gray beard, an ex-radical. He reminisced once about time spent in a jail after a demonstration.
Unfortunately, for the part-time job he had to ask for a commitment of twenty hours a week. I could not afford that at what he was offering in an hourly salary, so I politely declined.
Acorn, too, is gone. It’s now a gym. I miss it terribly, have missed it for years. To this day, when I’m walking down California towards Polk, something inside me tugs me in the direction of that lost, wonderful bookstore.
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A long walk in the afternoon, stopping at a wine bar or cafe at the end of the day for a glass of rose or a decaf cappuccino. An hour of reading there.
Then the walk home, stopping to talk to a friend or two.
Dinner is leftovers, something delicious I made the day before but don’t have to bother cooking now. For dessert, a single chocolate from a box, something with dark chocolate and cream filling. No coconut or nuts. Nothing nubbly.
A movie or some streaming whodunnit on the sofa with Michael. Then bed.
Simple. Perhaps boring. But you asked.
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Thursday, March 10
At work today Charlie took a few pictures of Trevin, Shelly and me. I had dressed up in a mini-skirt and black sweater, though I didn’t have much makeup on. If the photos are black and white it shouldn’t make much difference.
I took the cat carrier back this morning. As I went in, the blonde lady breathed the word “safe,” with relief. I hope the fact that the carrier’s been chewed on one side doesn’t get her into trouble.
Friday, March 11
This morning on my way to work, I heard that Ronn Owens would be interviewing Gerald Straub, the man who used to work for Pat Robertson. Because I didn’t want to miss it, I bought a cheap transistor radio at the Montclair Pharmacy and listened to the interview with the earplugs while I worked.
Straub is a voice in the wilderness. He wants to talk about the Robertson political agenda and everyone else wants to talk about money and sex scandals in TV evangelism.
We finished the first section today. Tomorrow, Charles and Shelly will take it in. We developed the pictures Charlie took yesterday and decided on one where I am being squashed between Shelly and Trevin. If none of those had turned out, we would have used a Christmas shot in which I’m sort of leering into the camera looking like one of the children from Village of the Damned.
Ronn Owens was San Francico’s morning talk show DJ, in the prime spot of 9:00 am. He prided himself on being the “reasonable” alternative to Rush Limbaugh. For me, Owens is best summed up by his response one morning to the single black caller who phoned in to answer Owens’ question to his viewers, “Are you better off now than you were before Reagan was president?”
“No,” the caller had said. “I’m WORSE off. And so is every other black person I know.”
“Oh come now,” Owens had responded, in his friendly, “reasonable” tones, “I’m better off. Everyone else so far who’s called says they’re better off. Don’t you think you’re being just a LITTLE myopic?”“
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All gray, all wet, the pane spotted with rain, gusts of wind roaring and diving around hills and buildings like invisible, giant, avenging angels. The green treetops just over the roofs nearby thrash and pitch. Thunder rumbles and scrapes (never bangs) overhead. Not many cars are visible on the rising slope of our street blocks away, and the ones approaching have their headlights on, even though its just half past noon. That road, as always during storms, vanishes at its summit into gray nothingness. The Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands have been erased.Have our reservoirs been replenished?
Whether or not the drought is actually over, rain is no longer a novelty.
Pam Troy 