the screaming children will not win

I am so very ready for the sickness to be over (down with the sickness?). It's at the embarrassing leaking stage now where snot explodes down the nose while both eyes (or, more often, one solitary eye) tear up and a single cough could send my whole face sideways. All of this happening at the most inconvenient time every time, like when I'm pouring water for a customer or about to hover over someone else's food. I was at Fred Meyer buying stuff that also included leg warmers and enough tea to float boats (many many boats) and the cashier said, "Sounds like you're sick."

"It's evolving," I said.

"Ahhh," he said, "it will last two more weeks."

"Don't tell me that."

"I'm just preparing you."

Thus spake the prophet Isaiah unto the children of Israel in the days of the
tribulation.

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Also, I weary of my computer but am not even sure where to begin with replacing it. Did some cursory research yesterday and ended up on the National Park Service page for someplace called Buffalo Lake. I think. Or was it River? A nationally significant space of water.

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Only a four-hour shift today. But caution, my love. Last time I got excited about a short and easy Friday I ended up staying on a second shift and working very late and what with my early early morning at the coffee shop tomorrow... no good, no good.

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The apartment is ridiculous (and dogless, but let's not reopen that wound). I've been in it almost a month and it still looks more like a hobo encampment than a place I've lived in for... almost a month. The living room is presentable and put together. Half the kitchen is still in boxes, though, and the study is more of a study in despair than anything else and I need to clean the fish tank so the inherited fish won't die.

And speaking of dogless. I'm launching Plan Don't Let Baby-the-Pound-Dog Die Part 2 where I go to the church council and petition them in person and question how they could possibly worry about a barking dog in my apartment when they have forty million screaming children running loose below me who begin screaming at 6:45 a.m. and don't stop until 6 p.m.

common colds for cures

Sun, fresh air and avoidance of anything newspaper-related didn't work. So here we have come to The Sick Day which, while wise and mature and self-loving in all the best ways, just makes me feel like a pathetic, weak-willed sloven-type person who would get kicked out of the tribe for failing to hold up my end of our survival. I'm laying in bed coughing and reading and drinking coffee with all the shades drawn because it's ugly outside and I don't feel like seeing the Smoking Man out on his porch. If I ever disappear without warning, check the Smoking Man's apartment first. I'll be the body that's shoved up into the air vent.

I suppose I should be drinking something herbal and more like tea but tea makes me think of grass which makes me think of horses. I am not a horse. Coffee, meanwhile, makes me think of edgy intellectuals sitting around being Communists and writing Russian novels and caring about things passionately and with great ignorance a couple years before falling into corrupt bureaucracy and killing everyone they shouldn't and creating rulers out of those they should kill. It also makes me think of "Coffee and Cigarettes" which makes me remember how much I love divey breakfast diners and Jack White.



But man, Jack White. I have written of him previously. How can you not adore/idolize/sinfully erect pagan alters to him? You're welcome:

#133: oh paddy, your daddy, well he's richer than everyone

I finally got around to editing the pictures I took circa Liz's wedding. They all look grainy and wobbly because we inhabited inadequately-lit spaces all three days and I hate using the flash because it's disruptive and also I don't like light. Or happiness, rainbows, unicorns, singing Irish maids?

Here's the main piece I wrote for yesterday paper. The doom-laden headline is only 1/16 accurate. "BLAAAAAAAAASTED!!!!" I like to imagine the city council leaping as one body atop the bench while the angry citizens rush forward jeering and rattling their pitchforks. But that never happens here.

In other news, there is something wrong with me. I've felt horrible the last few days. I'm not sure if it's sickness or sleep deprivation or an early onset of death. Thankfully, my week slows down a bit today so I should be able to come home and sleep for an absurd amount of time after I finish up proofing and water districting and observing in the morning and early afternoon.

Also, I've decided to start reading again. It seemed like a good idea.

1) "Silent Spring" Rachel Carson -- I expect this book to upset me because I'm always upset when I rediscover how careless we all are and that there are, in fact, more of us in the world than I realized and there is no Wilderness, but neither is there a Garden. And NOWHERE on this earth can one escape government regulations or people trying to influence government regulations, nor can you get more than one mile away from a county road. I used to be amused when our family would think about moving somewhere and Dad would stop at a potential house, get out of the car, and look with distaste at the trees: "Hmmmph. Not enough prairie." But I think I have some of that in me. Also, the hiking obsession, just like Dad. Get away get away get away from the babel. You never can though. This is another reason I love the ocean: it drowns out the noise of the highways and people like nothing else can.

2) "Lord Peter: The Complete Stories" Dorothy L. Sayers -- Lord Peter is better in novels than in short stories, but it's a big, long book so that's not my final judgment. It's true though that I'm enjoying the non-Lord Peter stories in this collection ever so much more than the Lord Peter front-and-center stories.

3) "The Day We Found the Universe" by Marcia Bartusiak -- Stars and, you know, stuff.