16 September 2003

This week our newspaper is running the TV fall lineup, once in a full-page spread on Sunday and then each day as it comes, with commentary from their TV critic. And each day, I've gone through the schedule going, "Ew; yuck; no way; never; bleh...." Which is probably just as well: I'm going to have far better things to do than watching sitcoms, this winter. But I would prefer to have the choice. I'd prefer to be thinking, "Oh, there are just so many good shows, too bad I don't have the time for them." It would be an improvement over, "Did they give people money for this crap? Really? Like, more than a dollar?"

Yesterday I was the erranding queen. I went everywhere. (And yet, there are now two more things on the "to buy" list, and I still have to go to the library at some point. Yarg.) I bought a tarp so that some of our packed boxes could go out on the deck without being subject to the elements, and I got a few more boxes. And groceries, stamps, and money, and I dropped off things at a couple charities. Also, I picked up two treats for myself. One was a Reese's peanut butter pumpkin, in spite of my objection to celebrating Halloween this early. My mother says gather ye peanut butter pumpkins while ye may, but I haven't eaten it yet. Yesterday was just not a peanut butter pumpkin day. (Those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, please note that it is pumpkin-shaped and contains no actual pumpkin.) The other treat for myself was paint samples.

Ohhhhhh. Paint samples. So very, very many colors of blue, and with such nifty names. I have already ruled out Boat Blue, Mercer Blue, Stonewashed, Bottle Blue, Powdered Snows of Aspen: Summit Sky, Harvest Blue, Nautical Navy, Yacht Club Blue, Blue Calico, Pail, Neptune Blue, and the entire range from Filigree to Star Spangled, including Sentimental Lady, Heavenly Blue, Walden Pond, Stormy Ridge, and Animation. (Mark likes Walden Pond, but it's too gray for me. Also, who wants a room to make them think of Thoreau? Nobody in my house.) Also just now I decided no on Hint of Ice through Electric Blue.

I am still considering so many lovely lovely colors.Arctic Sky and Blue Jewel, Batik, Hydrangea, Mineral Blue, Danish Blue -- Danish Blue is special, because it's blue in the light and green in the dark, and the blue and the green are both nice. Then there's Caruso and Millennium, the Astral-Dover Straits-Remembrance-Lapis series, Florentine Lapis, Teeny Bikini, Sorcerer, Newport Blue, Cobalt Glaze, Planetarium -- and how cool would it be, to have a room color named Planetarium? My cousin Rebecca would love me forever. Wait. Rebecca already does love me forever, and I love her and her brother, too; they're great kids. But still, Planetarium is a darn cool color. Then there's Windjammer, Electric Blue, and Cobalt Stone, skipping Magical Merlin in the middle despite its name, because I just don't like it. Don't know why. And then Ship's Harbor, Blue Dart, and Royal Plume. Or I could get a different color entirely from a different line of paint. The possibilities are so nifty. I'm not even sure how to choose. I think I'd be pretty happy with an office in most of these colors.

Ack, and Denim, where did you come from? All of a sudden I had a piece of Denim paper on my lap. It's going in the no pile. It's nice, but there are others.

When I took Japanese Lit, we studied noh drama a bit, and made references about them playing noh instruments and wearing noh pants. The professor didn't catch anything about noh pants. It was that sort of class, really, where you just had the urge to be totally juvenile. For awhile I was convinced that either there was nothing that interested me in Japanese literature, or that the prof was involved in a conspiracy to hide the good stuff. By the end of the semester and my own poking around, I lean strongly towards the latter notion.

One of the things I will have in the house is more books. I know, I know: what do we need with more books? But I do. I need my children's books. I have the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Westmark trilogy and the Prydain Chronicles and the Dark Is Rising series and The Song of the Lioness Quartet, and I have other people's children's books, ones I discovered as an adult. But I need mine. I need the rest of my L'Engles and The Phantom Tollbooth and Eight Cousins and The Blue Castle and Five Children and It and Half Magic. I need to be able to pick them up and open them and start reading at random, especially on days when I don't feel quite so well.

Not that I don't feel quite so well today. Noooooo. Because, you see, there is stuff to be done. And Cuban food to be had. And the Cuban food is not to be had right here -- it's to be had in Palo Alto. And therefore I feel just fine. Or will by the time we need to leave for Palo Alto. Whatever it is, it's nothing a little habanero-infused oil won't cure. And plantains. Plantains are good for what ails ya.

In the meantime, I'm going to drink some cranberry juice, my cure-all. And read a little more of that dratted Beard book. And get showered, and work on a short story, and work on a book, and so on. But I'll be taking it kind of easy today. Really.