is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Kneedeep in the Hoopla.
Kneedeep in the Hoopla.
This morning I woke up feeling off. Just not right. When we found somewhere to eat, I ordered two eggs over medium with two buttermilk pancakes, homefries and a pepsi. Surely that would fix things. When the food arrived, the homefries had their own plate, but the eggs and pancakes were sharing a plate, and one of the yolks was already broken and was TOUCHING MY PANCAKES. It made me sad.
But I've grown. When I was a wee slip of a thing I would have refused to eat such a thing. Now I'll eat it. Except that I still tend to leave an uneaten line where the food is touching. Some days such things matter much less than other days. Today it was bothersome.
This, the twelfth day of our road trip, hung over us with the power of an ending. We both have to return to our changing lives now (though Evany still has a few days of vacation left in NYC). Also, today we heard the WORST SONG EVER while driving into NYC. We heard "We Built This City (on Rock and Roll)" by Jefferson Starship. Oh. My. Lord. What went so very wrong with them?
When we got to Paul's place on the upper upper upper west side, I found a parking place right outside his house, which seemed miraculous. I hung out in NYC for a few hours and had some yummy Korean food. This made me happy because I love Kim Chee very very much. I had a Kim Chee pancake and a hot hot Kim Chee and Tofu stir-fry dish. Plus some Kim Chee and tiny chewy fish and broccoli as an appetizer. It was good to see Paul and Linda and Heidi and to get out of the car for awhile, but I was also a bit preoccupied with my impending new life.
When I got to my new place (about three hours of driving from upper Manhattan under good traffic conditions), which is someone else's place but now mine for nine months, it felt odd. Not only because there is a dead mouse on the floor in the kitchen and a very old egg in the refrigerator, mind you. (I put an upside down garbage can over the dead mouse and filed it in the "deal with it tomorrow" category. The mouse is not only dead. It is FUCKED UP. Like it is all gross and seemingly poisoned and rigor-mortis-y and greasy and stuff. Like maybe it was swallowed whole by a cat and then barfed back up, then flattened on one side after having its hair teased and gelled? But it doesn't smell. As far as I can tell. No, it just looks like hell. So it's fine to deal with it tomorrow.)
Linda gave me a bobbing head doll of Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy in Anchorman. It is sitting on my refrigerator. It is an odd thing.
This week I will be CLEANING and DUSTING and MOPPING and taking down someone else's art and replacing it with my own and unpacking boxes, which I hope will arrive on Tuesday. The house isn't exactly left bare. There are some papers laying around, and stuff in the backs of the closets, and things I will want to stash, etc. Also, there's a dead mouse. So arriving here is like moving, but unlike moving, because I can't do just anything I want with the place, and I also know I won't be here permanently, and I'm surrounded by someone else's stuff. BUT. I am so very very thankful that I found such a great furnished place to sublet. It has hardwood floors and lots of windows and a guest bed for when I have friends stay. Getting this sublet has made my life immeasurably easier and less anxious in the transition from CA to MA. Can you imagine having to move all your furniture, etc., for just nine months? Oy! So let none of this listing of tasks-that-must-be-completed be construed as complaining.
Also--Horrors! I think it is going to be a problem getting sidekick coverage in my apartment. So far I have been able to receive three AIM sentences from Evany, and send two back before I was faced with dreaded blinking "X" which marks the "service unavailable" spot. I also received one email from Natalie called "The Phenomenology of Hans Blix 3K (or: On How Your Cat Is Whacked)" (Natalie and The Lamb house-sat for Colleen and I in SF this weekend, which left them in charge of The Blixinator). I tried to call Mr. Perrone but the phone function would not work. So that ruled out calling Mom, Dad, all of that. All of this will push me to do something about phone and internet coverage more quickly than I might otherwise have acted, given that I intend to do the bulk of my work here in the apartment.
Also also. There is some kind of strange machine noise in the apartment. I get driven crazy by machine noises. When Richard and I lived together he had to set up an elaborate system that allowed him to turn off all the power sources in the bedroom (and there were many as he has a lot of computers and uninterruptible power sources and unexplainable machines for his calculating and richarding) so I could sleep without earplugs. To make things more complicated, it makes me sad when I am in an otherwise silent place and there are machine noises. Like when we had to have the air conditioner on in the Badlands. We missed all that glorious rare silence. So why am I living on a rural road and wearing earplugs?
The noise might be coming from the radiator? Or from outside the house? Maybe this will be the excuse I need to buy the $90 high quality sound machine from sharper image? (And no, when it comes to my use of sound machines, I am not missing the irony of me using a machine to drown out machine noises. PS: I LOVE THE SOUND MACHINE INVENTION. Rain. Ocean. Summer Night. Passing Train. Just don't press the dreaded Poe-Raven-tastic Heartbeat button. Don't!)
In my Alamo Square apartment in SF, back in the early 90s, the radiator in the main room used to make a high-pitched sound that only I and a few other people could hear. I have super(wo)man ears. I can also see long distances so that people often think I'm predicting things when I'm actually reading signs in the distance. Anyway, the building manager in my Alamo Square apartment couldn't hear the high pitched noises so he thought I was CRAZY. But he also thought I was cute so he didn't mind having someone come in and remove the radiator. But that's San Francisco, where you don't really need a heater. This is Massachusetts, where you do.
In sum: Dead Mouse. Strange Machine Noises. Dust. Dirt. Other Person's Art. These are the things that need to be dealt with in coming days. Oh, and I have to start teaching. Oh, and even sooner, as in tomorrow morning, I have to go be part of the Amherst College faculty at a faculty meeting. Some of this will already have happened by the time I figure out how to post this without a phone in my house.
Stats:
Sayre, PA to New York City to Amherst, MA
Miles--
with Evany: 225
Total for day: 393
Lodging: Evany's with Paul, I'm in Amherst with a Dead Mouse.
11:00 p.m. - September 05, 2004
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