CHEESES, I was angry today! By 10 a I was slogging through the usual note card transcribing and detesting every minute I was tied to the fripping computer. I made myself go on the way Charles Bukowski made himself go on when he worked at a job he hated. He knew he could eat if he persisted at the helm of his canoe. I knew I could not face myself in the mirror if I stopped to read the new Time and Newsweek that arrived a few minutes before. I had to stay with my program; not because I was earning a penney from the effort. I’m not.
They’re not even supporting my web sites. There was a movie with a trailer slogan that went something like “In deep space, no one can hear you when you scream.” Shucks you don’t have to travel to deep space for that; you can launch a web site or two; same result.
The nice thing about not eating more than one meal a day is that by skipping the bother of lunch, I can stay focused and miserbabble at the keyboard from 9 when I usually boot up, so to speak through 1:30 when I stop to feed Thelonius Dog and Slick Richard. The 15 minute break that provides also allows me to heat water for my third cup of Folgers Instant, be sure the dogs have fresh water and chow and detach mine eyes from notecards for awhile. And so it did..
When i returned to the office at 1:45, I KNEW I was not about to resume the nutty transcription action after checking email. Instead, I hauled me to the basement to catch up with filing the hundreds — maybe thousesnds — of articles and clippings stacked on filing cabinets and waiting, incomplaining, to be distributed in the thousands of files in the 15 cabinets. I was so frikking MAD that
- I still have no car insurance,
- - that there was a chance my cherished renter upstairs would give me a 30 day notice to vacate next month,
- - - that I am frikking over frikking drawn at the bank,
- - - - that I have another real estate tax payment of more tha $1,000 due in September and not a frikkng CLUE how the hey I’m going to come up with it,
- - - - - that some points made a few evenings ago by a restored friend regarding illegal immigrants have all the logic of a 600 mile per hour yellow
- - - - - - - and that I need to start thinking about poetry again (details later this week right here)
that for the first few minutes in the kinder, cooler subterranea I stood almost on the balls of my feet as I went through a routine of sorting hands fulls of papers, initially almost yanking file drawers out and shoving said papers into files and repeating this until 4::15. The filing frenzy, I determined, would take the place of my promised 30 minute hike today, though I’ve not ruled that out after dinner. I was amazed over how much more I accomplished with that filing than I would have if I felt good or sad. No manual dexterity, necessary for transcribing with keyboard was required for this. As long as I could stand, I was fine. And I could have stood for another two hours.
I returned to my office because I wanted (believe it or not) to FINISH transcribing a respectable portion of references to aircraft built in Italy before calling it a dia. And I did. slogged through a hefty three quarter inch pile of them. Also, in my office, I was closer to the phone, and I’m glad I was.
Esteeemed renter called. The rent check for August was in the usual place. Not a whisper of feared unhappy news. THANK GOD.
Instead there was different unhappy news. One of the showers in her place isn’t working. We need to get a plumber in. AND the exhaust fan in one of her bathrooms is making a racket when she turns on the light. We will talk about this in detail this weekend. So what the heq does THAT mean to my plans for catching up with car insurance and phone bill and other bills? It does not mean easy to frikking SLEEP tonight.
It’s almost enough to get me angry enough to look for a freaking job!
Live long . . . . and proper.
