I’m still here…
Hideous headaches, and the work schedule limit my ability to think clearly enough to write…looks like it might be migrane (never had any before.) because excedrin migraine seems to help
But, things that peeved me out this week. I don’t have energy or time to find the linkage
Elizabeth Edwards was characterized (on my own favorite newstainment show no less, pout)
as a cancer “victim”
Note to Keith Olbermann: Anyone who lives with cancer is a warrior, no victim…
2nd.
The story about the longtime resident, an immigrant who was arrested when he had every expectation he was going to be interviwed for his green card, detained, later, when he complained of back pain, he was treated like a thing, rather than a person, refused the doctor visit that may have found a cancer early, and refused treatment …he suffered incredible pain, and died in captivity, his cancer ignored, undiagnosed…..
3rd.
Some business news toad was talking about the fact that gas prices have dipped a bit from their binge high of 4.00 plus a gallon…and he characterized it as a “weakness” in the oil markets
Jeebus…it’s not a ‘weakness’ it’s a small step back toward ‘normal’
Got to go, the head is killing me.
So, which to keep.
First, know.
I prefer fiction to reality (still) Mystery to science, and past or future to present. (I often think that one of my best friends who comments here is spending her life learning the truths of the past, and I spend my learning time lost in myth and legend, past, present or future. Laugh.) The only rigidly current non-fiction I ready are biographies [which all have some level of fiction in them] and angry political potboilers.
[the following are cited incorrectly because I have no clue how to underline.
I have to winnow out my collection of books. Was going to go down to twenty from 200, but then I got realistic. The small remaining bookcase does hold sixty or so. So, sixty or so.
Only the non-fiction essays of Harlan Ellison:
"Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed."
"Angry Candy."
"Slippage"
And the once-banned "The Glass Teat." and "The Other Glass Teat"
My collection of Moliere's plays in French. Also "Nest of Vipers" in French
My one Mary Poppins hardback.
"Little Women"
"Eight Cousins"
John Dean's "Broken Goverment"
Only five Chelsea Quinn Yarbro books, of perhaps thirty in one series.
I'm not going to list them. They're elegant, but still really just historical novel smut.
The Narnia books
The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit
A hardback of "The Silmarillion" that my late husband gave me at Christmastime, 1977
Three Star Trek novels, that are not just well written Trek, but well written books, either written by feminists, or with main characters with surprsingly feminist sensibilities. "Spock's World and "My Enemy My Ally," both by Diane Duane and "Dwellers In The Crucible" by Margaret Wander Bonnano
That is the only Trek I'm keeping. [out in the ether somewhere, Hell is freezing over.]
Three of Heinlien’s, “Time Enough For Love,” “I Will Fear No Evil,” and “To Sail Beyond the Sunset,”
All of the Callahan’s novels and collections by Spider Robinson, along with the related Lady Sally’s ‘house’ books.
A hardbound bible, written in French, printed sometime in the 19th century, that my husband was given by one if his retiring mentors.
Three antiques, 18th century picked up in one of the gazillion bookshops in Boston in 1988
The script of the play “Blood Wedding,” by Frederico Garcia Lorca.
Ingrid Bergman’s biograpy,
“The Band Played On”
And more saving spots, I haven’t filled yet.
I hate doing this, even though the others that belong to me are going to used bookshops and or Ebay.
(I have some collections of five books each or so that I have to return to others, and that wil happen in September)
I hope to Deity some good, some relief that I’m not seeing comes of this…I couldn’t pay to move the large bookcase anyhow, if it had not been shattered by time…so the small one it is
Personal Space
I figure I can make this post generic enough that it won’t divulge anything proprietary about my present employer…
There’s a ghost in my department, a poltergeist, a gnome, a trickster…or some real person crossing a line, I’m not sure which
I have an ergonomically designed chair and desk, that have been altered to suit my specifications.
Every morning for nearly two weeks I come into work, and my chair is raised to its maximum height, as are the chair’s armrests. No one elses chair has been subject to nocturnal alteration.
Since I cannot reach the lever by myself, a coworker has to come and sit in the chair and lower it back down each morning…
This began to hack me off.
Boss and co-workers have said they have not been there, and are gone by the time I leave, anyway so they’re ruled out. (there may be some covert investigation going on that they are not allowed to disclose, but there’s been little tension at work lately, so I discount that)
I checked with IT…none of them have had to do any long term nocturnal fixes to my computer.
I checked with Maintenance, and they advised that they’d checked and they have no people up there either…
I then wrote a professional letter and attached it to the back of my chair, making a pointed, albeit professionally polite request that no one adjust my chair after working hours period, and that no one sit in that chair unless business needs compel them to do so. (I don’t want some loose cannon in amongst my desk and computer, with the potential to make me look bad, mess up my email, jeopardize the job, etc )
It is taped to the back of my chair.
And still this morning the chair and arms were again into the stratosphere
Our strategy tonight was to hide the chair in the departmental “food cube” the unoccupied corner reserved for smaller potluck foods, or Friday’s muffin, donut, or bagel departmental treat.
If the chair is raised up, in the food cube, dragged back to my cube and raised up, or someone has moved another chair into my cube, then this will be serious…
We’ll see.
My cat…
Yes, unbelievers me, one of the most terrified-of-animals people I know, I once had a cat.
He had an unremarkable name, but he was a great good friend for the time I had him…
I think I was about eleven.
He was a Christmas gift, a grey and white calico that my mother was appalled by and my father’s brother and his wife insisted on giving to me…
The most fun we had was our nightly patrol. He had learned that I was possesive about my bed, and didn’t want visitors. But he understood that it was ok to wake me at patrol time.
Sometime in the dark of night…when even my father was sleeping [it off] My cat would jump to the head of the bed, and bat me on the nose with his declawed front paws…until I woke up…
The rule was, we had to patrol all the rooms on the main floor, except my parents room. He would look behind to see if I was following (I was), and had learned quite early in our association not to outrace me, or I might sulk. The end of the vigil was always the back room, with its wall of windows. And then, he’d stop. Precisely in the middle of the carpet. And sit watching anything that might interest a cat that was going on outside.
I would also sit quiet and watch the things that caught my eye…snowglow, reflected by a bit of lamplight. On a clear night, it was my chance to look up and lose myself watching the stars…not to catalog or understand them…but just examination…
Then, after some ten minutes he would turn and we would head back to my room, where I would permit him to take a spot near my shoulder, sitting on my bed, so I could pet him easily…and then the purring engine started…it was just enough to get me back to sleep…and he’d slip away and hang out alone until the day began.
He was never taken to the vet for the necessary shots, a job assigned to my alchoholic father that he never completed..(Surprise) so my cat fell seriously ill early, suffered a great deal that my parents and I both had to watch…and then my father did finally make that trip to the vet, to end my cat’s misery…
You aren’t supposed to hate your father, and thank goodness we got things straight and loved each other for the last year he was around, so it *ended* well.
But just writing this post made me realize where the hate began, a genuine hate that would last through the end of my adolescence, to be replaced by pity, and with contempt oddly mixed with concern when I became an adult.
When I realized I wasn’t the only inoccent losing the battle against the chaos in the house.
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I’m going to try the pet thing again, within the year, since newhouse allows pets.
But, due to roomates allergies to all pets *except* one particular breed of dog, it’ll be a schnauser pup….
I’m kinda excited to try it, and in memory of my cat, will be damn watchful to take care of the vet needs of the new housemate…I’ll probably try to get said pup next summer.
This pet will have a safe house.
Nothing Ventured…
So, one of the benefits of newhouse, is that a grocery store is right across the street, thus enabling my own input into healthier choices by riding the scooter across the street….
The problem is, there’s this giant hill going up and down to the main parking lot of the store….I was able to avoid it going in by skirting the top of the parking lot… but…when leaving got myself into a blocked off space and had to go *backwards* down part of the hill to get to the base and then go straight up….
The entirety of my bravado disappeared and I became the scared five year old before they cross the street…
“Turn the thing and pray alot, pray alot…”
I did not get dumped out…or tipped over, but I did investigate a way to go three quarters of the way around the dang store to find a level entrance…not doing that acrobatic hill again on a scooter with no seatbelt…
Going into a store again, something I hadn’t done myself much since the mid 1990’s relying on others and/or grocery delivery services…
Everyone in the world told me that no one made fully cooked, grilled chicken strips anymore…
Liars, Liars all, because Tyson does…got myself some.
Roommate and myself seem to be adverse to eating the chicken we cook, so I thought of these….
Also a marvelous locally made black cherry soda with Splenda…tastes perfect
(Thankfully the movie theater next door is just a straight shot out of the complex…no hills…)
Learning the new neighborhood a bit at a time…
Inside begins to look more like home also…Wooden DVD rack handmade by a stepbrother, a beautiful thing… computer table, tables, refurbished recliners
(but I have to get rid of all of my books but twenty [Sob!] since the 7 foot wood bookcase given to me by my maternal parent has been inadvertently destroyed…and this space is *small*)
(and am saving only twenty VHS to convert to DVD’s The rest are going….)
Moving is always difficult, but also interesting.
