house-bound no longer

I’m going to visit Kim in Philly next week! This is getting out of the house with a vengeance.

I was thinking about it and I realized I’ve only ever flown in and out of Tacoma on my own. Imagine that. All those years when I thought I would grow up to be an intrepid, solitary traveler, roaming the globe in a dusty coat and indifferent hair and only pausing occasionally to send some curious shrunken head home to my doting ‘rents; yet here I am, 30 years old, and my most exotic solo trip has been to SeaTac and back. I don’t know how far a trip to Philadelphia will go to correct this tendency, especially with a friend waiting at the other end, but it’s a start, anyway. Maybe after this I’ll finally have the nerve to take that Paris trip on my own.

Meanwhile, Kim and I have big, adventurous plans involving coffee shops, thesis writing and probably a lot of tense swearing at our thesis writing. (I intend to perform all actions in the first person plural while I’m there. For helpfulness.) I’ll keep my eyes peeled for shrunken heads, or at least for all representations of pigs that the neighborhood has to offer.

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Friday

Stuff that makes me uncomfortable:

– Being seen with luggage

– Saying what I’m about to order at a restaurant

– Interacting with shoe salesmen

Stuff that does not make me uncomfortable:

– Being pressed against other people on the subway

– Eating things that are stale

– Seeing really old people naked

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Thor, With Angels

Been reading Thor, With Angels, a play by Christopher Fry about Vikings and so on. In the margins, some long-ago student has stubbornly written “Odin” every time Fry writes “Woden.” It’s endearing, this enduring obedience to the known name, but still better is when Fry writes “Death is what conquers the killer, not the killed,” and the unseen student thoughtfully adds “O.J.”

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Squish’n’chill

After years of thinkering, Gene finally bought an ice cream maker. He’d always talked about getting one of the DIY hand-cranked versions, one step up from the can you roll around on the floor, but wound up going with a brand-new Cuisinart. It’s as if we’d been wandering around a lot full of Gremlins and he decided to go with the Lamborghini.

My folks also got me a food processor for Christmas. I had asked for a dinky little guy to mush up herbs and stuff, but they got me a 12-cup Cuisinart so powerful that the lights dim when we use it. The first recipe I tried suggested that we blend for one to two minutes — it took six seconds with our machine.

I am fascinated by the possibilities offered by these machines. All I want to do now is blend stuff into paste and freeze it into ice cream. Bananas! Ike’s sandwiches! Aquarium gravel!

Dinner at our house has always been kind of a gamble, and now dessert is coming into its own, too.

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R.I.P. Salinger

Well, that’s the end of that dream.

Also, the clouds are back.

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Sun!

The sun is stretching through the window and lying alllll over my legs. In this fresh light I’m suddenly noticing how dirty the carpet has gotten while I’ve been hibernating and not doing anything. Wow, the windows are also filthy. For the first time I understand why spring cleaning happens in the spring, when all the grime becomes visible.

Yesterday I wrote ten and a half pages (at only 400 words a pop, don’t get too excited) because working on the book was not the most exciting but merely the least boring option available to me. But today…today there is sun outside. I could go to the grocery store! I could go to the Botanical Gardens! I could go to the Zoo!

Except I have to write another 2600 words first. Sigh.

When is it time for croquet and bocce and baseball and playing on the secret rope swing? When is it time for archery at Golden Gate Park? When is it time to swim in the Yuba? I have my leash, weather. I am standing by the door. When is it time for walkies?

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the little rift

What flaw is there in my essential makeup which causes me, when purging my shelves, to get rid of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel Orlando but retain Betty Ren Wright’s underwhelming YA mystery The Dollhouse Murders?

Am I basing my entire library on which books I read in third grade?

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Winter Week

Wake up, make coffee, write. Wash. Eat. Close the blinds. Read. Turn on the lights. Open the blinds. Wash the dishes. Cook, eat. Read. Turn off the lights, sleep. Wake up, make coffee, write. Wash. Eat. Close the blinds. Read. Turn on the lights. Open the blinds. Wash the dishes. Cook, eat. Read. Turn off the lights, sleep. Wake up, make coffee, write. Wash. Eat. Close the blinds. Read. Turn on the lights. Open the blinds. Wash the dishes. Cook, eat. Read. Turn off the lights, sleep. Wake up, make coffee, write. Wash. Eat. Close the blinds. Read. Turn on the lights. Open the blinds. Wash the dishes. Cook, eat. Read. Turn off the lights, sleep. Wake up, make coffee, write. Wash. Eat. Close the blinds. Read. Turn on the lights. Open the blinds. Wash the dishes. Cook, eat. Read. Turn off the lights, sleep.

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Pillow talk

I’m having my groceries delivered today, octogenarian-style. A couple of days ago I realized there were more things on my list than could be carried home on my back, so I thought I’d try this service out because the first delivery is free.

But now the guy is actually coming today and I’m a little nervous. I’m going to open the door, thirty years old, no broken leg, no squalling infant, no visible mental illness, and be like, “Yeah, I could have walked the eight blocks, but basically I’m lazy and it’s wet out there.” If I were the delivery guy, I would deny me these groceries just on principle.

So I’m thinking I’m going to fake a baby. We have a lot of DVDs, probably one of them has baby sounds. I’ll put one on the bedroom TV and close the door and pretend there’s a baby in there. I’m pretty sure this will work.

My only concern is that I might come to like having the company, and go on pretending there’s a baby in the bedroom every day. It’s not impossible that Gene might come home one evening to find I’ve diapered his pillow.

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Near/Far

Been spending the week fighting with my novel’s heroine because I want her to do something foreign to her character, e.g. anything interesting at all, and she wants to stay at home and draw fish and never meet anyone.

If I were really good at this I’d recognize that I myself am this woman, and rather than staying in and writing about a woman who draws fish, I’d force myself to go out and talk to a stranger and visit a new part of town, thus learning exactly how a shut-in makes herself open the door and how it feels to do that. But it’s really raining a lot out there, and inside I have a heater, and snacks.

For the sake of my future test readers, who will be forced to read this story whether it’s entertaining or not, I must kick my proxy out of doors and into a world of substance and adventure. But when she turns around and sees me still wrapped up in bedclothes, warm and dry and drinking my second cup of coffee, I fear our relationship may be irreparably damaged.

On the other hand, most of you are presumably turning to look at me, swaddled and cozy, from your wind-and-weather, outside-the-house jobs, and you don’t hate me. Probably. Much. So maybe it will be all right.

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