So Late and So Loud

I really only have one complaint about this apartment, it is so perfect for me. I mean, yes, it's shabby outside, and yes, the deck is sort of rundown. And the landlords themselves are nobody's joy. But as for the apartment itself? Nothing but great things to say about it, except for one. And that has just recently begun. Only for the past month or thereabouts. It's my downstairs neighbor.

See, when I moved in here, in October of whatever year that was, 2009, I think, (wow, I missed my two-year anniversary!) a little old lady lived below me, named Helen. She was a little, bent woman, very polite and civil, and pleasantly friendly, but not outgoing, and she drove an enormous Cadillac. But sometime about two or three months ago, she quietly disappeared. I was out of the house when it happened, so I don't know if she moved to a nursing home, or dropped dead, or what. I wasn't even aware she had left until the painters started having their radios on loudly while they painted. One day I was home from work early, or something, and heard them, and then I knew she was gone.

And then the new tenant moved in. I have only seen him through a glass darkly, so I have no idea how old or young or dark or fair he is. I'm assuming he is youngish, cuz his parties last all night long (but that could be forty-ish, too). Anyway, he sleeps in the larger bedroom, as do I, so he is directly below me. And, not unlike my ex-husband and son, he has the TV on all night. Or at least, he goes to sleep with the movie playing. I am not in the room with him, of course, so I don't know whether he is awake or asleep -- his snoring has never drowned out the dialogue. And it isn't on when I wake up in the morning. BUT! the other night when I couldn't sleep for several hours, it was still playing below at one-thirty. So the muffled swoops and bangs and screams and surges of background music keep me company until I fall asleep. So far it isn't dreadful, it doesn't keep me from sleeping, but it does annoy me while I am awake.

So! First official complaint: late-night movies in the bedroom. And it's not that I don't like movies, as we all know, I love them. I am leaving to go and see The Rum Diaries in a few minutes. It's just that it makes me feel sort of getting-even when I hear the floor creak as I walk around. It's a very creaky floor, you know, and I used to walk so softly, thinking of Helen below me. But now I tromp around like a big dog, because he leaves his movie on so late and so loud.

Early Autumn Morning

What a gorgeous Autumn day, pale blue sky, bright thin sunshine, cool air, and colors, colors, everywhere. This change was dramatic and overnight, and everything is some russet shade now, from pale yellow through to flaming scarlet, and every shade in between. I am really enjoying this Saturday so far, partly because I got up at my usual time, instead of lolling abed for longer in the mornings, as I have been doing lately. This morning as I woke, I was confusedly thinking that there was something going on about the Rand family, and a tall clothes cupboard, and someone's nephew going to jail...? And all that being expressed, somehow, in the beeping of my alarm clock. Strange, (shaking head) how one's sleeping mind can weave a tale. Instead of waking me up sharply and cleanly at the sound of the beep, as I always used to.

However, in spite of the dreaming, I was up and about in the crisp lovely morning, and got my packages mailed at the post office, and then walked over to Sully's and ate French toast and sausages and drank that gorgeous, award-deserving coffee, all before anyone in my building was even awake. I love that feeling. Like I know more about the day and the world than anyone else.


Now, of course, it is early afternoon, and there are sounds coming from the other apartments, thumping and scuffling from downstairs, and a door closing...a muffled voice...

Crrrunch, crrrrunch, crrrrrunch.

Ice on my windshield, I said yesterday, without a thought to what it might mean. And today I was gawking away like a mooncalf at all the suddenly -- overnight! -- bright orange and flame red and golden yellow trees. And being amazed at the crisp crrrunchiness of the leaves drifting to the ground all around. It wasn't until my drive home that it hit me: ice on the windshield, dummy!

All Day Long

Goodness, it has been over a month since the last time I wrote. At first thought it doesn't seem nearly that long, but then when I think twice, it seems even longer. The idea of having a blog and keeping it up to date seems far off and foreign to me. Can't tell you why -- perhaps I am merely getting older with each passing day, and my memory is becoming more and more aged. Or there may be any number of other reasons -- we may never know.

In any case, part of the reason that it has been so long is because of the recent events in the life of Joe. They were big, and important, and filled my whole window for a few weeks. But he asked me not to tell anyone about them, so I'm not. And trying to think of what to write about when I couldn't write about that? Like trying not to tell someone that their hair is on fire.

It is a chilly morning today! My last entry was about the dreadful heat of this past summer. And it was dreadful, too, but isn't it interesting, how rapidly the memory of weather changes? As I sit in comfort (in my cardigan) and think about summer, I can pooh-pooh the idea of buying one of those portable, mount-in-your-window air conditioners, like so many of my neighbors did this past summer. I hate air conditioners because of that -- walking past so many windows with air-conditioner vents spewing hot air out onto the walkway -- ugh!

But I repeat, it is a cold one today, and there was ice on my windshield this morning. Only a bit, and soon succombed to the heater, but there it was. Forty degrees this morning, and still only 44 out there. I have yet to turn the heat on in the house -- holding out until November, is the idea, but if it is still this cold, or gets any colder in the next week, I may just give in. It is hard to get out of bed when you are so very cozy and delicious and you can tell by the numbness of your nose how cold the bedroom is. Takes me less than an hour to get up, make coffee, shower, dress, make lunch, do the hair, and walk out the door, but that hour is getting slimmer by the day as I snuggle down for one last ten minute snooze.

Did my grocery shopping last night -- bread and milk is all I ever really need, and a few non-food items like eye pencil or shampoo. But last night I gave in to the used-meat bin, and bought myself a tiny, fat little sirloin steak. And I will grill it tonight, with a baked potato -- yum. Looking forward to that. I also baked some chocolate chunk cookies, which are quite tasty, although the bottoms burned. I'll do another panful this evening, and put the shelf up a notch, see if that helps. This is pre-mixed cookie dough, that came in the food box, but it is gourmet and all, so I gave it a try. And it's pretty good -- they have a faint caramel taste that I frequently try to achieve with brown sugar and brown flour, but have never managed like this. Don't know how they did it, but it probably involved caramel flavoring, so. At least I'm going to tell myself that.

I had dinner last Friday with my friends Alan and Jody, and I'm afraid I was not a very polite guest. I mean, we had a very nice visit, and all, but the dinner contained several items which I do not enjoy, and so I just did not eat them. It was an orange meal, by the way, just happened that way, with no intention -- and I told them about the Marquess of Malyn, from The Whispering Mountain who loved gold and would only eat yellow food -- and his unhapy guest, the Seljuk of Rum: "Alas, alack, more yellow comestibles!"

The next day, I had a date for dinner at Dina and Mark's house, and had planned to get up and bustle about the house, getting a great many chores done before driving over there. Instead, I got up and sagged limply about the house, revelling in my bathrobe and pajamas and standing-on-end hair, enjoying the feeling of laziness that comes with eating in front of the computer, and later, of making a banana cream pie without doing the dishes first. And then, at about 12:30, the phone rang, and it was my cousin Mickey, saying she was on her way over and let's get some lunch. So THEN! I had to do a great deal more than I had even intended to do all morning long, and get it done in forty minutes! So I look around my clean and shiny kitchen now and bow my head in thanks to Mickey.

So at four I left the restaurant and walked back home with Mickey, and then at four-forty-five, I drove away to get to Dina's by five. So it was pretty much a day of play. All day long!

Take the Newspapers Out!

This may be the hottest of the hot days yet. I walked over to the Farmer's Market, and before I even got to the end of the second block I was sweating. Actually, noticeably sweating, with liquid sweat running down my sides. Pretty unpleasant. But I continued on the few blocks more, and did a short walk round at the Market -- looking at jewelry and drinking pineapple juice and then heading home. But I was so weak and damp and enervated by the heat, that I stopped off at the library on the way. Two hours later, the air-conditioning has completely changed my world-view, if not my life.

For the past two weeks, the weather has been so dreadfully hot and still that the most I have ever been willing to do in the house has to be done while sitting still. So I can read and write and occasionally wrap a package, I can talk on the phone a bit or send an e-mail, I can watch a movie or drink some juice. But I cannot take out the garbage, wash the dishes, vacuum or put clothes away, cannot make the bed or fold towels or iron things. Easy to tell this, all you have to do is look around the apartment, where piles are rapidly accumulating. The dining room and the bedroom, in particular, are disappearing under piles of various types.

As a result of this world-view change, now, I feel as though I could easily go home and fold the laundry from the various piles in my bedroom, sort and throw away the various vegetables and what-not left over from the food box, and definitely take the basket of newspapers out to the recycling bin. Who knows, though. My energy level has risen as my body thermometer descended, but the opposite might just as well be true. They might even occupy the same container inside me, so that the absence of one guarantees the presence of the other. I am so looking forward to the lovely grey cool rainy autumn which is just around the corner. And I am not looking forward to the idea of a globally-warmed globe.

Today is September 11th, the ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States by al-Queada. The comics page was full of references to it, and so was my Facebook page. I'm not about to forget it myself, since it was not only the first time America has been attacked by a foreign power since the 1940s, and cost many citizens their lives, but also because it was the beginning of the end for me at the MAC, thank you, Michael, who could not resist the opportunity to fool a bunch of people whom he had never met, through me, so that I would look stupid and take the blame. I still cannot believe that he called me at the office, from the den where he was watching television, and told me that the latest news was that Disneyland had just been struck by an airliner, killing hundreds of children and their families, and when I had passed this along to my co-workers and bosses, burst out laughing and said he had made it up, and weren't we all stupid to believe such a ridiculous story. I didn't pass along that last, but they all felt it anyway, and turned their obvious and justified anger and offence onto me. After that, my firing by Elda was merely a matter of time. So it is hard to think of this tragedy without also remembering Michael, which I am able to go days and never do.

Yesterday was Second Saturday, so I headed out to the Westside office and set up the food for the class. I took along some canteloupes and muskmelons from the Box, and sliced them up, and they were all eaten, so that was good thing. Then I went out to a brief breakfast with Mickey, and then we went to begin getting ready for Mavis's birthday party, which Monica throws at Mickey's but is supposed to completely cater herself so that Mickey is only required to provide a locale and some tables and chairs. It started out very miserably (I felt) since Billy was very grumpy and crabby and Mickey was not helping at all, but being very in-his-face. The temperature kept rising and rising and there was nowhere cool to be, even though the house was so much cooler than the outside. After I had sliced the remaining melons, a watermelon, a pineapple, celery and peppers and a roasted chicken, I couldn't hide indoors anymore and went out to join the horribly hot fray.

The children were the only ones who enjoyed themselves, it seemed clear to me, even though there were a great many people there. There was a sprinkler and a slip-and-slide, and they were running around in the bamboo forest, which must have been cooler than the open field. I listened to one remarkably stupid conversation between two mothers about what they would, and would not allow their children to do by themselves, because I was too stunned-by-heat to leave my chair. When finally the last person left, and we dragged ourselves into the house, I was a little more cheerful, and much cooler, and ended up staying until nearly eleven.

The woman on the computer next to me has a habit of sighing loudly every few breaths and muttering curses under her breath, even though she looks totally normal and intelligent and a lot like Elizabeth Moss. Don't know what the problem is, since it doesn't look like she is finding out that her child was killed, or that she owes someone a huge sum of money, or anything, so I think I will merely draw this to a close and go on home. See if my bright and vivid energy lasts beyond the three blocks and into the house. I am determined at least to take the newspapapers out.

Sleepy Sunday morning

Sunday morning, and I'm at the Retirement Home, enjoying the peace of a Sunday morning. Or at least, what remains of the peace since the neighbors are here, working on a weekend-fix-the-house project, which requires constant music. And they like repetitive alternative-type stuff, over and over. Arg.

But it is beautifully blue-and-gold with a warm sun and a cool breeze. Faint smell of neighbor's bonfire a pleasant backdrop to my mother's air fresheners. I went for a short walk this morning with my first cup of coffee and enjoyed the mist still filling the trees and lying low in the roadway. And now I am sleepy again, even though is is barely noon. Mom and Dad will soon be home from church, but I might sneak in a tiny nap before they make it. I'll bet we are having store-roasted chicken for lunch! Mmmm...

Spent the pre-church morning having some fairly interesting conversations, one with each parent. With my mom I was discussing the value and/or lack thereof of multitasking, and how much of the various things one was doing at the same time one could retain or pass a test on. That seemed to be her method for ascribing value to something. I was saying that while reading a book, even one I was very interested by, I would feel as though part of my brain was empty and flopping about unused, and I would want there to be something else going on, to occupy it. Therefore, I would often get up, go to the computer and at least have e-mail present to my peripheral vision, which seemed to do the trick. Mom complained that unless I was fruitfully reading both book and e-mail, it was the wrong thing to do. And I know that the prevailing wisdom of the moment is that a human being is not capable of ingesting (?) two streams of information at the same time, but I'll bet that's coming! How long has it been since we were unable to read and write, to speak, to walk uprightly?

With Dad, I was discussing several things: the new prevalence of autism, the way public schools are set up, the downsides in the long run of agribiz, the way any school of thought or scientific discovery seems to affect the world forever, but they are all temporary, as anyone looking back down history can see, quantum physics, health care and the lengthening of life.

YA-AWWWN -- think I'd better go lie down for just a minute....

The lowest it has EVER been

Well.

I am pleased with myself.

Yes, I am.

I got my electric bill in the mail yesterday (paid it today, while I still have money -- some things haven't changed) and would you like to take a guess at how much money they were asking for, from me? Bearing in mind that it has been hotter than a big dog all this month, and I have had two fans going all night long every night? No? No takers?

$47.

That's forty-seven dollars.

FOR-TY-SEV-EN-DOLL-ARS.

That is the lowest my electric bill has ever been, I do believe.