Monday was great until I came home. Spent a day subbing for a terrific Math/Computer Tech teacher at a major northeast Springfield high school. The pre-class conference with Mrs. P. who also introduced me to her husband, Mr. P. who also teaches there a few doors down, was a breeze, a godsend to me. I don’t often encounter the regular teachers I’m subbing for, and it’s always a great help. The day was textbook perfect.
True, my secondary computer has crashed and will probably remain crashed until I get work or it finds a new owner at my estate sale — no date set, but it seems a sure bet. But that’s not a big deal. I still have my primary unit, so to speak. I’ll get by — or Bayh, if you live in Indiana.
After school, I deposited a pay check from last week to find I”m $100 bleeding overdrawn — DRAT!
BOOM to the post office and mailed some model kits and traded airplane slides to distant destinations. Long overdue, this but FINALLY trumps “someday, maybe” every time.
BOOM a dash to Shop N Save South because I will no longer set foot into the North Grand store. Mostly I needed dog food. It’s a bummer that Cub and County Market don’t sell dog chow in larger-than-22-pound bags. Shop N Save does, and that’s why I intend to shop at the south store exclusively in the future.. I also picked up some soup — the first in this house in three weeks — and a baked chicken.. If I can buy one a baked chicken a week, good for dinner on two consecutive nights, I can live okay on Ramen noodles and sliced turkey sandwiches on sub teaching days. And ice cream at the end of the day. I can live on darn near anything as long as there’s ice cream during the Charlie Rose show.
And thanks to my focus on thrift, I have discovered the worst ice cream to chill my tongue. Shopper’s Value Chocolate Swirl. I had purchased a gallon of the brand’s Neapolotan about three weeks ago at County Market and was unimpressed for sure, but I thoguht the flavor might have been a bad choice. It was the brand. A week ago, I grabbed Chocolate Swirl to be sure I wasn’t getting Chocolate, Vanilla or Neapolitan, and since bringing it home, have been torn by options of either avoiding it on some nights (never an option with Prairie Farms; deLIcious!) and eating as much as I could hold each night just to get the container out of my freezer.
BOOM Home. A call from the renter upstairs, impatient for the new air conditioner.. I DREAD this. Even though a good friend volunteered to co-sign a loan, I”m not confident I have a chance in hell of getting a loan. Why don’t I stop frikkin’ worrying and ACT? They don’t call me the Procrastination Qing for nothings!
SIGH . . . Was truly flat by the time American Experience came on. I had eaten dinner during Antiques Roadshow, a program I don’t watch unless I’m overruled by my appetite, as I was Monday night. I was so flat that I ate icecream without waiting for Charlie Rose. And I napped in the chair until I awoke to the strains of the CR theme song. Even the show was flat: excerpts from interviews with journalists who have died in 07: David Halberstam, Arthur Schlesinger and Molly Ivens. Great journalists all. As an incredibly intelligent interview subject, Halberstam and Schlesinger have voices as varied in tone and emphasis as your ceiling fan you may be listening to as you read this. But that’s okay. Their wonderful books speak VOLUMES about them, pun intended, all of them as much art as historyl Ivens was short shrifted; deserved more than the 10 minutes given to her, but she doesn’t care. She’s been on permanent hiatus from life for months now.
LURCH . . . Having come out of the nap and watching the who CR show, precedent suggests I would have worked in the offiice until 3, but not last night. I went to bed. IF the sub teacher line were to call Tues morn, I wanted to be alert for the students. Besides, I just didn’t feel like being awake im my current state of mind any more than necessary.
I have been HOPING for a day to catch up with life, feeling guilty as hell for daring to feel this way since I absolutely need to sub teach all I can. School’s out soon, and then I will REALLY learn the meaning of flat without that income. But school did not call, my prayers (yes, I pray) were answered and I have today. Only today I hope.
TUESDAY — Before signing off. . . I’m a subscriber to the State Journal-Register and urge all Honey & Quiinine readers to subscribe as well — AND to read Illinois Times and support the fine advertisers in both publications. As I journalist, and a hummin’ bean, I had to scratch my noggin when I saw the SJ-R’s front page today. The Blue Man Goup is coming to the Prairie Capital Convention Center. FRONT PAGE NEWS! Can you believe it? Has Mary Hartman replaced Barry Locher at Ninth at Capitol? Would this Entertainment Section fluff have graced the front page of a Copley publication? I don’t think so. Do you?
Live long . . . . . and proper.
I liked the piece where you said, “torn by options of either avoiding it on some nights …. and eating as much as I could hold each night just to get the container out of my freezer.”
It is very noble not to waste food for sure, but I fell to considering alternative uses for uneaten ice cream. There really aren’t any I can think of. There really isn’t a lot you can do ice cream with apart from eating it is there.
Now, frozen peas. That’s different matter! Now those peas have been used so many times as a great soother, when used as a cold compress for bumps and bruises! Now we are talking!!!