30 March 2002, 5:37 peeyem

I can't find my other heart-shaped cake pan. I am making a birthday cake for Leanne, and I need the other pan. I was up on the stepladder seeing if it's on top of the refrigerator. I had determined that it's not up there and I fell backwards off the stepladder and landed right on my ass and hands in the kitchen floor.

I know that I am getting old because as I saw the ceiling getting further and further away from me, all I could think was, "I'm going to break my hip and I can't reach the phone. I'm going to break my hip and die right here in the kitchen floor."

It used to be that when things like that happened I thought, "I'm glad no one saw that."

Shit.

I tried to call Martin, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't reach him, because I don't know that I could have taken the gales of laughter.

So I called Leanne instead and told her I thought I might have broken something in that real literal way. She said, "Something on your body?" "Yes, my hip." Of course she said she'd be here in just a minute, but the thought of all the dust snapped me to and I knew I had to be okay right away. But I had visions of being in the nursing home, smelling of pee and cling peaches until my recuperation was complete.

28 March 2002, 4:11 peeyem

Something's wrong with my home DSL and I am beside myself. I can use the dialup, but I see now that I have become a fucking speed junkie. Now I've got to download something from somewhere and install new things.

Tonight is early makeups for the Easter matches. I hope that it's not nearly as cold as it was at practice last night, because I don't think I can stand it if it is. yeesh.

27 March 2002, 4:40 peeyem

It seems that my life runs on shoes. I have finally gotten new tennis shoes, that is to say shoes for tennis, not athleisure shoes, which I am mightily fond of as well. It's hard to find a pair that doesn't look like marshmallows. If they fit in that dreamy way, I'm going to go buy a few more pairs, dammit.

27 March 2002, 2:17 peeyem

Today is my oldest nephew's birthday. His name is Blake, and I was there when he was born. Well, not there there, you understand, but at the hospital. I waited up all night for his appearance, and I gave him his first bottle, during the course of which he turned blue. Luckily my brother, Charlie, was standing nearby to say, "Should he be turning purple?" Now I no longer wait up all night in hospitals.

I have a little hydroponic gardening project going. Go here to see it. I can't grow things in dirt, only in water.

It's a beautiful day out, and my mood seems a little better. At the very least, I don't feel like running in circles shrieking You people! You people!

26 March 2002, 6:50 peeyem

I am having a lyric kinda day. The weather inside and outside my head is gray and verging on stormy. I have been grumpy all day long. Too much outside influence. It kills me how others, without even knowing they are doing it, can tear me down so quickly, make me doubt myself and my abilities, make me want to say Just screw it. I don't want to play. If you're so damn smart, you figure it out. But of course, I won't do that, because if there's one lesson my mama tried to teach me that I listened to and believe with all my heart, it's that you shouldn't cut off your nose to spite your face.

I find myself increasingly annoyed with the conundrums of others. Or at least with the conundrums that could have been avoided through due diligence. I swear I'm going to cross stitch on a pillow:

Pay Attention
Be Prepared
Be Particular

Most of all, I just wish for one productive day. Maybe I should clean the bathroom – at least that's a way I can see what I've done.

22 March 2002, 4:08 peeyem

Something distasteful is happening and I cannot discuss it. This, in and of itself, peeves me. Not only that, there's nothing I can do about it at this time except wait, as the other party is away. Things shouldn't be this hard. Maybe they aren't for others, but I don't really know and I don't have a point of reference.

21 March 2002, 4:13 peeyem

I have spent a great deal of time redoing www.susanscarbrough.com/index.html. Go take a look.

20 March 2002, 12:38 peeyem

This is my life:

Saturday I did a little shopping. I got 16 of these chickens.

They're for butter pats. I am so damned tickled with myself that I can't see straight. The man at the counter seemed shocked when I said, "I'll take all you've got." I imagine he was thinking "we've got a live one out here."

This morning my car had that fine gold sheen on it that heralds the sinus headaches and the itching ears. I keep looking out the window, thinking it's raining, but it's not; it's tiny little petals from what my grandmother used to call Snow on the Mountain. Goodgodamighty I love springtime in Atlanta, but it nearly kills me, both because of the allergy agita and because it's so pretty it breaks my heart.

19 March 2002, 4:25 peeyem

Ergh.

That is all.

15 March 2002, 3:31 peeyem

Beware the Ides of March. I should have known better. I should have known that walking through the shoe department in a department store was treacherous, that going to it was downright deadly. I should have gone right to the sporting goods store and gotten some new tennis shoes and been done with it. I know that now, and I knew it when I pulled open the big glass door at Rich's, my heart pounding and my palms sweating, yet I did it anyway. These are what I got, only not crocodile embossed:

In other exciting news, I have taken to toting my things around in a brown paper lunch bag, well, the things that don't fit in my pocketbook, that is. I am concerned that this might be a sign of encroaching old age. Not all of the things are necessarily even related to each other; for instance, today in my brown paper bag, I have a CD from mish, photoshop, a little tiny tripod, a pair of thin white ankle socks, a ziploc bag, my camera, the battery charger for same, a gemclip, a tube of mascara, and some change. Before lunch, there was also a hummus sandwich, an apple, and a banana. Sometimes I have brochures or other little pieces of paper I pick up along the way. For some reason, as I read back over this, I feel like Walter Matthau.

Your first thought might be that eventually the bag will wear out and I'll quit it, but worse than toting the bag everywhere I go is the fact that the little place where I like to get my lunch (and I can't name it because the line's already out the door) gives me a new bag every time I go in there, and I have been hoarding them...this, I am morally certain, is a sign that I am losing my mind.

14 March 2002, 2:35 peeyem

Joanna sent an email. She and Ethan are on a jet plane, moving to Virginia, where Tod has been for months. She took E. to the Varsity for his last (for now, at least) Atlanta meal. I miss them already.

My head finally doesn't hurt, but that's likely because I am numb from the decongestants and caffiene wending its way through my system; I'm expecting my scalp to go walking across my skull just any second now.

13 March 2002, 2:49 peeyem

This is just not my week. My head hurts. I think it's because of the weather. I'm in a mood. I need to go on a trip or something.

My sister emailed me. She wants to know where is the part about her. The answer to that is, "send me a photo or something and I'll do something with it." That goes for you, too.

My sister is actually one of the funniest people I know. One time I said to her, "It's not easy going through life being the smart one." She responded, "Honey, it ain't that easy being the pretty one, either."

I will absolutely scream if practice tonight gets rained out.

12 March 2002, 12:53 peeyem

In a moment of impulse, I called Uncle George's house. I spoke with his daughter Cathy, who I met aeons ago. She tells me that he went well and wasn't sick for long, and that they were all there with him. I feel better now.

12 March 2002, 12:16 peeyem

My mother just called. The last of my grandmother's brothers died yesterday. He was in his eighties. There's a memorial in LA this week, but I can't get there fast enough, and I don't know his remaining kids that well anyway. They're bringing his ashes here in April, and piggybacked onto this information was the fact that they're bringing Tommy's too; I didn't even know Tommy had died, and he was the one of the kids that I knew.

It's grey and rainy here.

And finally, her whole face hurts because her carotid is inflamed or irritated or some such.

The fun never ends.

11 March 2002, 4:44 peeyem

This day. Christ.

I started off with a meeting. I make a fantastic benevolent despot. I'm not really good at committees. Because I'm bossy and particular.

I just finished affixing photographs to the inside covers of books with photo corners, and I'm here to tell you that there's no good way to get those sumbitches wet without getting it all over the place.

What I didn't get around to posting on Saturday was that on the way back from beautiful Macon, Georgia, we encountered a good bit of NASCAR traffic. There were googobs of RVs and quite a few custom painted motorcycles on trailers behind big flashy pickup trucks.

There was also the thing to the right, which was just too good to make you have to go to a link for.

9 March 2002, 10:59 peeyem

My first update from home! Whee!

The Georgia Music Hall of Fame was a great big waste of an hour and eight bucks. It was poorly organized and there was woefully little about REM and the B52s, and nothing about the Indigo Girls. They didn't even have one of those things you smash your penny in.

The Hay House, on the other hand, was a pretty good tour. It was exactly as I remember it from tenth grade or whenever it was that I went, and I'm thinking about going back for the behind-the-scenes tour that involves all seven (!) floors.

8 March 2002, 1:56 peeyem

I am growing to hate Photoshop. I had a class, but that was, oh, I don't know, six months ago. Due to my laxity in getting my company's page up, I now have to go back and teach myself what I should have been doing all this time. I need a graphics tablet, or at least I think I do. My shoulder is aching and my wrist is tight and the mouse area isn't nearly large enough. Also, I need a new keyboard in the worst way, since the keys on the window side don't work if it's the least bit chilly in here.

Tonight is cheese whore and chocolate cupcake night at Leanne's, and tomorrow is a trip to Macon to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and a potential stop at Rose Hill Cemetery (which, oddly enough - to me anyway - has its own website) to see Duane Allman and Berry Oakley's twin-bed-shaped-side-by-side graves, because who can resist that?

7 March 2002, 1:57 peeyem

There is an entire website devoted to cereal (www.emptybowl.com). I love cereal, though I have only ever had Rice Krispies, Frosted Flakes, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Apple Jacks, Almond Date Nut (?) something or other, and Frosted Mini Wheats. Nope, never had Count Chocula, Fruity Pebbles, Captain Crunch, Oreo Os, or anything exciting like that. I'm reasonably certain this has nothing to do with any concern about the amount of sugar in cereal, but more to do with the fact that breakfast in our house when I was growing up was a grits and bacon and chocolate milk affair, something that would stick to your ribs until lunch time. Cereal was more of an ingredient for other things than an end in itself. Anyway, there's this website, which I find oddly fascinating. I know about the website because the venerable Atlanta Journal-Constitution (all the news that fits) ran a COVER STORY about cereal! With color graphics and everything! Bo Emerson calls cereal the "linchpin of Generation X" I had no idea that every morning as I wash and slice my strawberries and throw them on top of my Bite Size Frosted Mini Wheats that I am actually consuming the Linchpin of Generation X! I feel so hip, so now, so Generation X!

In other food matters, I took myself today to my favorite luncheteria, which I cannot name here lest even one more person go there and clog up the line, for a delicious tuna salad sammich. To my extreme dismay, there were carrots in it. Shredded ones. I cannot abide carrots, and shredded carrots remind me of raisin carrot salad ("You'll like my raisin carrot salad. My raisin carrot salad is different!"), which I would sooner have my entire body shaved and be sat in a tub of gin than have to eat, although I could probably eat a tablespoon or two of mayonnaise if the situation warranted. I considered picking the carrots out but finally gave up and ate it anyway.

6 March 2002, 4:36 peeyem

Now they think the bodies at Tri-State are not any older than since 1998. They're older than that, you understand, but they haven't been dead bodies since before then. It's a huge mess. The saddest thing I think I've seen about it is some poor man holding an urn and saying, "This ain't my mama. This could be anybody's mama." The representative from that district is likely going to get hit with the blivet over this thing, because he did what representatives are supposed to do, namely help his constituents out.

The desk man came today to fix my desktop and drill holes for Cord Management. I must say he was much more pleasant than I expected him to be after talking to him on the phone on a number of occasions. Every time we talked, he seemed to be getting tenty with me about the desktop that I ordered last August, as though it's my fault that someone there didn't send the order on through and get it to me. At any rate, my cords are managed and my office is now navigable again, which is more than I can say for it since I started accumulating things like hubs and modems and CAT-5 cables and scanners and cords; now all that stuff is stashed under the desk where at least I don't have to look at it. Now if only all the keys worked on my keyboard, regardless of the temperature in the room.

Tonight is the first practice of the season, and finally the weather is doing its thing to make it all possible. Of course, now it's been so long since I played that I'm not alltogether sure where my racquet is.

5 March 2002, 2:22 peeyem

Despite the minor headache, I am oddly happy with myself today. I know why I'm happy, though, and I suppose that's enough.

Two friends of mine, Sammy and Kathy, had a baby, a little girl named Ashley. I think she was born last night, but I have no idea how much she weighed or how long she is.

It's getting a little warmer out, and that's a good thing. I hate to be cold. I'm tired of the drear. Of course, when it's 96 in the shade, I'll be bitching about that too. I don't like weather of any sort. I can deal with the rain, but think it needs to happen between the hours of, say, 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., and I think it needs to be a daily occurence.

4 March 2002, 1:25 peeyem

It's no wonder my head hurts...

4 March 2002, 11:42 ayem

I didn't bring my lunch today. Because I went to brunch yesterday and it was so cold that when I got home I went back to bed instead of going to the grocery store and doing the laundry and the other errands I should have run. This is bad only because it's still really cold and I don't want to go anywhere to get lunch.

However, even though I accomplished actually nothing all weekend, it was a stellar weekend, insofar as I saw people I wanted to see and enjoyed their company and was sad to see them go. Or me go. Or something.

I have been amusing myself with Photoshop this morning. This is what I did. I crack myself up.

1 March 2002, 1:43 peeyem

My brokerbabe called this morning to get some info about Andy, who is the beneficiary of an IRA I have, should I go first. Andy asked why he's the beneficiary, and I told him that it's because when I am finally a drooling idiot, he's going to have to handle it, and because cute cuts it. He also asked how he'd know what to do with it. I told him that they are to spend it all in one place on something frivolous, after which ensued the conversation of ridiculous things to do with the money (not like it's a shitpot full or anything).

The office continues to look like I've been playing war in here. I don't even have the gumption to organize it all into neat piles. I feel like it's all very precariously arranged and if I move anything at all it will all come crashing down.

What would make my life better is more shoes.