is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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Not Quite Fitting.

Man, I�ve had a frustrating week. Nothing went intolerably wrong and, after all, I�m on spring break, so that�s nice, but all in all the week has not been good. Sure, it�s only Wednesday. Normally it would be good if spring break seemed like it lasted a long time. But you know how time is. It passes quickly when you�re enjoying it.

Part of the week�s slow-passing is the incredible aged creakiness of my �up to the gym� legs. I�m sure this will all be good for me in the long run, but in the short run, the last thing I feel like doing is running, or moving in general. And then lots of things have gone annoyingly wrong.

The big one: I inherited a daybed from Marian (it�s less of an inheritance, more of a longterm loan). It is a glorious daybed. It is fairly good looking (though, in my sunlit second bedroom it looks a lot more tattered than it did in the dark office-room of the Linda/Marian zone for all the years I slept on it), but mostly its glory comes from how it is equally comfortable for daytime sitting and nighttime sleeping. I guess that�s what a �daybed� is supposed to be, but in my experience usually you end up trading one comfort for another�rarely do you end up with both. Heidi will attest to the virtues of the daybed, as will Marilyn, and countless others who have slept in the dimly lit office-room on 22nd street. And now I can take reading breaks in my office on a comfy couch. And out of town guests won't have to sleep in my living room. So what�s the problem, you might ask?

(Let me digress to state that I inherited this daybed, along with a cute and large filing cabinet, many, many months ago, and my office has been distressingly unusable ever since. That�s annoying, but there wasn�t much I could do, because before I could put the daybed and filing cabinet into the room in a workable way, I would have to pack up all the books on my old bookcase, install a new bookcase in a different location, get rid of the old bookcase, and get rid of the older, smaller filing cabinet. I�ve had no time to do all that. This week I finally got much of that done! So what�s the problem, you�re still wondering�.)

Before I agreed to inherit the daybed I asked for its measurements, so I could make sure it would fit in my second bedroom, which is not really a bedroom (it doesn�t even have a closet) and functions as my office. Marian dutifully sent me the measurements. She sent me the measurements to the area taken up by the base of the bed, which was a sensible thing to do. It�s what I would have done. But the bed actually sticks out from the wall four or five inches more than that, because of the way the back structure is attached to the frame. Which means I can�t put the daybed where I thought I would put it and also close the door to the office. MAN! You would not believe how much measuring and computing and planning I�ve done for this office-remodel, and it all gets shot to shit by one little feature of daybed architecture. I mean, if the daybed isn�t going to go along that wall, then I didn�t even have to get rid of the old bookcase and buy a new one! And so on, frustrating, ugh.

I�ve conceived of a couple of Plan Bs, but I�ve also decided to let implementing either of them wait for a couple of weeks, until I get over being annoyed by the whole scenario. It will all be OK.

The good news is that the filing cabinet is in place, the books are mostly installed in the new bookshelf (which is quite attractive), the daybed is no longer on its side leaning against a wall, and the room is much, much closer to being usable than it has been for a very long time.

The bad news is that there is newly visible water damage from the plumbing leak in December. It had been hidden by the old bookcase. So now I have to the very very irie local worker guys come back and spend time working on my office. That is bound to be frustrating, what with the total uncertainty as to whether they�ll show up on time, four hours late, or ever, and so on.

So Operation: Daybed and its attendant glitches form the big problem. There have also been some tiny frustrations, not really worth mentioning. Except that one of them is almost comic. On my trip to Target one mission was to buy two lampshades. I have two lamps that have recently been rendered shadeless by lampshade tragedy. I remembered to check what kind of lampshade the lamps would take, and I remembered to measure how large the parts where the lampshade-fastening mechanism were, so everything would fit. And then I took a Very Long Time looking for the perfect lampshades. I only bought one because I could only find one that was perfect for its intended purpose. And yet it doesn�t quite fit. The little circle that is supposed to slip around the base of the socket area and get fastened with a plastic screw-thing is just a RCH too small to fit on the freaking base. So now I have two lamps with out lampshades and one lampshade without a lamp. (Cue that mocking trombone-y Wah-Wah sound of disappointment.) But I love the shade so much that I think I�m just going to buy a lamp that will fit the damned shade.

That, also, can wait until I�m less annoyed by everything. Because tomorrow I�m off to Philly, to see my Gus.

12:00 a.m. - April 24, 2008

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