31 October 2002, 5:29 peeyem

Well, now, Happy Halloween.

I have managed, inadvertantly, to make my hair puffy and flipped, a la That Girl. Not a bad costume for not trying, I suppose.

Leanne and I went to dinner at the The Flatiron in East Atlanta last night. Two of those things were not like the others, and those two things were us. Everyone else was just...goth. Except for the parents that one pair of the goths dragged in.

Then we went shopping, where Leanne rationalized us both into shameful impulse purchases. I have been a bad, bad influence on her. Next thing you know she will start being late to everything and distinguishing between treat and dessert.

After dinner we went for a little jaunt further out Columbia than our neighborhood, because I found myself there once before and it looked nice. One neighborhood in particular caught our attention because, well, look:

The neighborhood sign glows in the dark! And the letters are big. I was thinking that might be my next target neighborhood (since I've made such a swimming success of gentrifying the one I'm already in). The yards were nicely kept up and the houses were all circa 1968-73 and nicely kept, too. Then one of the local gentry turned in and stopped to talk to the gentleman in the tricked-out Pontiac in front of us. As the headlights glimmered off each and every one of his gold-covered front teeth, I had to make a note to rethink it all.

Then when we were heading back to Belvedere, I said, "turn right. we have to turn right here!" Leanne said, "Nuh-uh. That's not the right road." We drove and drove until finally we were at South Dekalb Mall (which has a mausoleum in it), where we saw this license plate:

Do God one what?

We kept seeing Supreme Fried Fish places alongside CVS drugstores and Club Club Monaco (yes, I meant it to say Club Club...that's what the sign said) and thinking we must be driving in one giant circle. The circuit was made only more complete by the church sign that read My God Has a Big Eraser.

There's never a dull moment when one of us has been under her house and the other orders a Shirley Temple in a bar where everyone's wearing black. By the time we got home we were laughing so hard we were crying and wheezing..in a few more years, I imagine when that happens our bladders will turn loose.

29 October 2002, 3:33 peeyem

My nerves are standing up waving at each other.

My mother says that. I know just what she means. I am feeling exceedingly tense. It might be because I keep waking up at around 3:37 in the morning with a headache, which I can take an excedrin for and go back to bed, but still, it's annoying. It might be because tennis season is over and I'm feeling an excess of energy. It might be because several people I love have something out-of-whack and I'm feeling empathic (empathetic?). Or maybe I'm just feeling pathetic.

If you are one of the Shears girls reading this, please send me your email address. I have lost my address book in the process of upgrading to OSX and can't write you back.

That is all.

28 October 2002, 3:36 peeyem

It is raining sideways. Care to guess where my slicker is?

28 October 2002, 2:24 peeyem

So I took the day off on Friday. And it was good. Until I got the headache. Which resulted in me going to bed at Trace's (in her fabulous bed) while they all went to the play. Somehow the headache was connected to my stomach, and that's all I have to say about that.

As the first phase of upgrading the computers in my office to OSX, I upgraded the one at home, figuring it's a different enough operating system that I'm going to have to be very familiar with it before unleashing it there. Man, it's really different. I know there's a way to import address books and mailboxes and what have you, but I can't seem to do it. I did manage to get on the DSL at home, and now on the dirty dial-up at my housesitting gig, but I need to figure out how to import that stuff and get rid of Eudora in that very complete way. It's a nice OS, though, it looks pretty. The bad thing is that I've lost the chainsaw sound effect, and I was rather fond of it.

I have received from a few people a petition to "put prayer back in the public schools." I am not opposed to anyone praying anywhere and anyhow they want. I am in favor of freedom of religion. I am also in favor of freedom from religion.

And I am opposed to being forwarded email that is going to 400 of your closest friends, especially if you don't bother to clean out all the old addresses and those annoying >>>>s.

24 October 2002, 4:27 peeyem

I am taking tomorrow off. I just am. I was out for a bunch of days because I was sick. Now I just need to take a day off, for the hell of it. I don't have anything I want to get done, I don't have anywhere to be, I just want to not be here.

23 October 2002, 2:26 peeyem

They have re-opened the Target on North Druid Hills and it's huge. Mercifully it's not also a grocery store, because I don't like to be able to buy underwear where I might be buying, say, a gallon of milk and a bag of bagels.

Anyway. Leanne and I had planned to be there when they opened the doors for the first time and somehow missed the announcement. Which puzzles me, because I was Paying Attention.

I tried to hold out and wait for Leanne, but today I finally had to go. My visit was both interesting and informative, and marred only by one screaming child with a piercing voice which I could hear in every corner of the store, and by one elderly lady who was squinchy faced and disagreeable and treated the employees as though they were her own personal staff of step-n-fetchits. Inexplicably, I never laid eyes on the child, but the woman was under my coattails every time I turned around. None of this, however, stopped me from spending $38.35 on things that I apparently can't live without. What I really wanted was the 20th Anniversary Trivial Pursuit, but I was so rattled by the new rectangular box that I couldn't get my mind around it and had to leave it right where it was for the moment.

It's raining and I was tired to begin with. Now I want to crawl under the carpet here in my office and have myself a little lie down. Don't know what we're going to do if it doesn't let up pretty damn fast, because make up matches have to be done tonight due to playoffs. The team we're playing is perhaps the pushiest group of women I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with. The other captain called me in 3 – that's THREE – locations last night for directions which she already has. Yes, I know, that hate's gonna burn a hole in my heart.

22 October 2002, 2:44 peeyem

You know, if you think about it, Jesus really got around.

He was born in Bethlehem, which, according to the little scale on the map above, was about 106 miles from Nazareth, where he grew up. Then he died about a hundred miles south of Nazareth. This doesn't include his wanderings in his lifetime. 100 miles to us today is, of course, nothing. But then, we're not traveling on foot or donkey, for the most part.

There's an interesting article in today's AJC about Jesus and his (purported) brothers and sisters, which is where the map above came from.

22 October 2002, 11:09 ayem

I am wearing flowered socks with Mary Janes today. I did not get dressed in the dark. I don't know what I was thinking.

21 October 2002, 2:40 peeyem

The lipstick saga continues. I am looking for a color that looks kinda natural, like I might have even the faintest inkling of my own color. It's not as easy as you might think. I just took one back because it turned Barbie pink and got another. The Barbie pink one was called Chinese Lacquer, which I would have thought might have been, you know, RED, or at least reddish. The one I just got is called Tibetan Poppy, which I would have thought might have been, you know, RED, or at least reddish. No such luck. I suppose I will hie myself back up there tomorrow to try again. It's exhausting, really. And when you're trying on lipstick, you don't put it on nearly the way they do, which is to say with a brush and slowly, like they're painting a fresco or something, so it takes a really long time and you're up too close to someone else's face for actual comfort. So, here I sit, my lips 1962 pink. I should just paint them with a marker and be done with it.

My little friend Riley talks now. He repeats things like walk gingerly around it. And he points out, of all things, cell sites.

18 October 2002, 3:19 peeyem

In my line of work, I have to keep up with a lot of very different pieces of information and paper. Which I do gladly. Now, if you call me up and ask me something, I will give you the best and most well-thought-out answer I can. If you ask me for a piece of paper that is not within my purview and I tell you I cannot produce it, I'm not trying to screw with you, I just can't produce it, and no matter how many ways you rephrase the question, I'm not going to be able to do it. If I could, I would have already done so, just to get you out of my hair. Furthermore, if I tell you what I can do for you, then I will happily do one or all of those things, but I still won't do the one I can't do. And if it is your company that is having the inefficiency, I don't see where it's my company's responsibility to take up the slack. And repeating my name over and over and taking a motherly tone will not make me want to be more helpful – you can ask my mother about that if you don't believe me.

17 October 2002, 3:23 peeyem

Woody Harrelson...not just another pretty face. And he was nothing short of brilliant in The Cowboy Way.

17 October 2002, 2:57 peeyem

It's crisp out. Not cold enough for a jacket, but almost.

The sky is the blue that I remember seeing when I looked through the hole in the top of the Pantheon. Heartbreaking, really, how beautiful it is. On a day like this, it's possible to imagine that there is peace on earth.

16 October 2002, 4:06 peeyem

So I have cleaned up the office. Sort of. The problem is, I'm a stacker. I'm really creative and really organized and I generally am able to put my hands on whatever I need, but I'm a stacker. I have read Taming the Paper Tiger and I understand that every time something lands on my desk or in my mailbox, I should make a decision: deal with it, file it, or toss it. But I don't do these things. I leave them until they drive me crazy (and it's not a far trip, I'm here to tell you) and then I go through all of it in one fell swoop. This has caused me not very much misery, which is why I suppose I haven't stopped it.

The house looks clean, as long as you don't look at the floors. They need to be swept in the worst way. The kitchen needs to be mopped (or, in my case, Swiffered), and it would take all of two minutes to do it, yet, I do not do it.

My fruitflies seem to be dying off, finally. This pleases me endlessly because they are quite the distraction. I got rid of the offending vegetable matter (potatoes and lemons and an apple), I sprayed, I even asked the exterminator for advice. It seems that patience is the only way. That and not fermenting fruit. But I am the world's worst about buying fruit (particularly bananas) and letting it die there in the kitchen. I kept putting brown bananas in the freezer, thinking I'd make banana muffins; when I finally did, I made three batches because I had accumulated 14 – that's FOURTEEN – brown bananas. Frozen bananas take up much more room in the freezer than you might expect.

15 October 2002, 4:47 peeyem

By the way...

My friend who I feared was making the colossal mistake has presumably done so by now.

And no, I didn't say anything about it. You can only look after people so much, and then you can't anymore.

15 October 2002, 2:43 peeyem

It's cold out. And rainy. Had I made better (or different, at any rate) decisions much earlier, I might be at home, where I can control the temperature inside.

I have so much work to do here that has to be done in a specific order that I can't see straight. I have two piles of things, one on each desk, that are 6 inches high that need to be gone through and dispatched appropriately. These two piles are in addition to the shallow layer of stuff to be dealt with right away.

In addition to all this, I have the extreme delight of reporting that I might have a nail in my right front tire. After my haircut, I noticed it looked the least little bit slack, so I had some air put in. I don't feel like handling this (see paragraph 1), but it has come to my attention that if I don't do it, it won't get done at all, and then I'll be stranded on the side of the road somewhere, bitching and moaning about it.

This, by the way, is not a bad mood.

14 October 2002, 4:54 peeyem

you and me, both, buddy...

11 October 2002, 4:42 peeyem

Here's something you don't know about me:

I ran over a man once. His actual fleshy body. With my car.

Ponce de Leon is one of the major east-to-west thoroughfares in our fair city, and back when I worked at the paper, I had to be there at 6 on Wednesdays. It was about this time of year, because I just gotten the Honda, so it was dusk out when I was leaving. I was stopped at the light and about to make a right-hand turn on red. I looked both ways and, seeing no one, started executing the turn. I felt something bump into the car, and it was a black gentleman, who grinned and waved at me. Of course, by now a car was coming so I waited. I glanced around and he was nowhere to be found. I ooched up in my seat and looked at the sidewalk to the right of the car and he was lying on the ground, clutching his leg, proclaiming "I got a bullet in my knee. I got a bullet in my knee."

Now, you should know that Ponce is where the Least of These Our Brethren can be found in great quantity. I got out of the car and went around to see about him. He said he needed to go the Grady's, which is Grady Memorial Hospital, and it's where you go if you are The Least of These Our Brethren, in a trauma, or without insurance. I could envision myself getting him in my car and him hijacking me or vomiting or something, so I said, "You wait right here. I'm going to go call an ambulance."

I hied myself up the street to the Sam Verly College of Beauty and Barber, which is a hair school for the styling of ethnic hair. That's not really what you call it, but anyway. So in I trot, and I am the only white person who has probably been in there in years, and certainly the perkiest.

I tell them there's a man down on the sidewalk and ask to use the telephone. The head gentleman twists his mustache around and looks at me appraisingly for a long second before uttering one word: No.

I see that there's an old-fashioned payphone, but I only have a twenty and he is not inclined to give me change. We have a little stand off there at The Sam Verly College of Beauty and Barber, until finally one of the ladies in a chair heaves herself out and brings me a quarter (oh, for the days of the quarter payphone).

I call 911 and explain to them there's a man down on the corner of Charles Allen and Ponce, and they ask me for the address. I explain over and over that he's just outside and finally they agree to send an ambulance. When I get back outside, he is nowhere to be found. There are about 15 other homeless men, though, and I ask if they just saw a man lying on the sidewalk. Nobody knows nothin'.

Lacking a better plan, I drive around the corner to my landlady and former manager's house. Her partner is there, and I get out of the car and burst into tears. She gives me a cupcake or something and I go about my bidness, not even late for work.

For the record, I don't think I killed him, or even hit him. I think he smacked the hood with his hand and was pulling my leg, as it were.

10 October 2002, 4:30 peeyem

I just received this email:

I just received your flyer and subscription form for the Law Office Administrator publication. It seems very interesting. But after scanning through the flyer, I noticed a misspelled word under MANAGING YOUR OFFICE (assignemnt). That kind of concerns me, being as you are a publishing company.

If you ever are looking for a proofreader, let me know. I might be interested.

Before thinking, I responded:

How good of you to notice.

Did you want to see a sample?

I'm pretty sure that one way or the other, that might jump up and bite me on the ass.

10 October 2002, 2:26 peeyem

Every day at about this time, I think, Man, I really have to go. And every day, I don't go. By the time I do go, the man is cleaning the bathroom, and I have to come back to my office and wait, while my teeth threaten to float right out of my head. Do you think I'll ever learn?

9 October 2002, 2:29 peeyem

It is time to start thinking about upgrading the softwares we use in my office. Despite the fact that I am very proficient when it comes to computers, and despite the fact that I have done successful installations on numerous occasions, I would rather have a soapsuds enema than have to do this. I think it's the dread while the machine is chugging along and restarting. Will it all still be there? Will I be able to open everything I used to be able to open? Will everyone be able to figure out how to use it without too much distress?

I need new loafers. I need some new black Bass Weejuns. These apparently can no longer be obtained in an actual store. They want me to order them off the internet. I can't be ordering shoes off the internet. What if they don't fit right? Besides, I need the instant gratification of paying for them and wearing them out of the store. Is it too much to ask?

I also need a new cordovan pocketbook, but that's not nearly so stressful. Either it's pretty or it's not. And they have millions of them down at the mall.

8 October 2002, 2:27 peeyem

My fourth grade teacher, Mizz Cassel, was a steaming bucket of bitch. She was not fond of smart children, especially smart children with fresh mouths. I think she just hated kids, in fact. She couldn't have been more than 25 at the time, and nobody I know knows whatever happened to her, although Judy Murkerson and I have considered suing her for mental cruelty.

Anyway. There was a certain little group of us whom she always marked for torture. She used to make Judy drag her desk into the closet and listen from in there, and she made me stand in the corner with the spider webs. For hours. She just harrassed Mark Davidson and Russell Manley. She was constantly harping at us about something. I think she's responsible for my fear of spiders.

I think she loathed all of us with a passion normally reserved for the HVM.

Mizz Cassel had grown up in South Africa and our very way of speaking infuriated her. She was ever vigilant of our speech and was forever correcting us. One of our spelling words one day was S-A-L-M-O-N, which we, naturally, pronounced SALmun, just like it looks. This made her noony. Scott Pharis piped up and said "My daddy says it like that and I bet he knows a lot more about fishing than you do." She was livid. I'm sure she made him do something ludicrous like stand in front of the class on one foot for three days.

But here's what made me think of that. Yesterday, while sitting at the light at North Decatur and Briarcliff, a woman bustled along the sidewalk, very determined, and looking very squinchy-faced and disagreeable. Dressed too warmly for the weather in a turtleneck and a suit that showed off her granny pantylines. Wearing a bow in the back of her head

.

And I thought to myself right then, "I hope that's what Mizz Cassel turned out to be, that right there." And you know, that would be enough to make me drop my lawsuit.

7 October 2002, 2:38 peeyem

Egads.

I ended up leaving early on the third to go see Brenda to find out if I have strep or not. Which I don't. I just had a viral something. She sent me to the lab to have a tube of blood drawn. I'm accustomed to having blood drawn, what with the anthrax thing and all, and I was fine until the nurse started being so nice and reminding me of Roberta. Then I burst into tears. Sheesh.

Enough of that. I'm not nearly old enough to be fixated on my health yet.

Have you ever seen one of those gigantic flying things that looks like a tennis ball-sized mosquito? There was one in the house last night and I smushed him with my dainty blue suede shoe. Splat. Another of God's creatures, no more. Now I am told that it was a mosquito-eating mosquito hawk and if I knew what was good for me, I wouldn't go around killing them.

If I knew what was good for me, though, I wouldn't be in this fix, now would I? (raises eyebrows and looks superior)

Here's today's ethical dilemma, and feel free to chime in with your opinion, since I clearly am stumped:

If someone of whom you were fond was about to do something that you were pretty sure was a ginormous mistake with life-altering consequences, would you express your opinion, or let it be? I don't think the person is necessarily unaware of the mistake, but more feels that it's just too late to stop it now. I stand nothing to gain or lose either way, I just feel that the locomotive is picking up speed and will soon run out of track.

3 October 2002, 1:36 peeyem

No, in fact, I don't feel better. My glands are swollen, whatever that means. I have an intermittent fever and I'm tired of it. God forbid, I might have to take myself out of the lineup this weekend...noooooo!

I need to be at home in bed, or on the sofa, but I think Susan doesn't believe that I'm sick.

It's an awfully pretty day here in Atlanta. It's one of those cottonball cloud days, where there's a little tiny breeze and it's not too hot. It would be a good day to have a little lie-down outside with a beach read.

2 October 2002, 2:41 peeyem

When last we met, I had a headache. The headache morphed into queasiness on Friday night, so I went to sleep in a hurry to avoid vomiting.

Saturday I didn't feel well and there was tennis agita and I had to drop the car off for service. I actually sat on the curb at Jim Ellis and cried. The poor lot porters looked absolutely panicked by the whole thing. Look lady, it's just an oil change.

The dog kept throwing up.

Dinner Saturday was nice, though. Katie, Martin, and I went out for a late dinner, and it was all very grown-up and pleasant and funny.

Sunday, the dog threw up again, and I very nearly threw up during my match. Sunday night, I had the quease again, and did, in fact, toss for the first time in probably eight years.

So I've spent the last two days at home, bored senseless by daytime television.

Today I'm back where I belong, but my throat hurts.

How was that for a most boring accounting of my time?

{3 times.
2 days and counting}