17 July 2002

I would dub yesterday the Day of Workaholic M'rissa, except that it was probably the Day of Minor Domestic Mishaps. Really minor ones. I was making blueberry muffins with the mix -- I use the mix with the tinned blueberries, because it's the one my grandma and I always used when I was little. I had heated the oven, lined the muffin cups, and mixed up the batter except for the blueberries. I opened the tinned blueberries. They had gone south. I mean really south. Very, very far south. It was probably reasonable for it to be colder than 61 degrees where they were. Ack! I mean, whoever heard of tinned blueberries going south? We are now the proud possessors of strawberry muffins, since I just finely diced some fresh strawberries and threw them in. Still, though, whoever heard of replacing spoiled tinned stuff with fresh?

And my brutish husband dropped one of our good butter-knives and snapped the blade from the handle. Watch out! You don't know what he'll do next! (I certainly don't know what he'll do next.) I have cousins who referred to their father as Daddy The Hulk. I thought that my kids might perhaps have Timprov The Hulk. UncaScott The Hulk. Their Grandpa was The Giant when I was a kid, which is not really the same thing as a Hulk, but, you know, might substitute in a pinch. But it looks like they might have Daddy The Hulk after all.

Rrraghhhh.

There are other, less curious events, but ours is (or, in the one case, was) nice silverware, and I just hadn't heard of tinned blueberries going south, so they stuck with me all day.

I worked a lot on the book. It was good to work that much. I'm going up to David's for lunch, and Timprov and I are going to the They Might Be Giants concert tonight in the City, so I probably won't get as much done today. That's all right, I guess.

We'll be hoping to go to TMBG in the City, that is, because the tickets haven't arrived yet. I have a number to call if they still haven't arrived this afternoon. It's worrying, and I also have to wonder what else is taking a long time. I'm entirely too mail-dependent.

Ah well. Timprov and I didn't really plan to do one rock concert per summer, but it seems to be working out that way, and it's been cool. So far Mark and I have done a symphony a year, but I wouldn't mind if we found something else this year, jazz or something different, and it hasn't been a yearly on-the-dot thing, in either case.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, though.

Sometimes I think that reading Salman Rushdie is like driving out to Elkhorn: you can enjoy the ride while knowing full well that the ending is unlikely to be anything special. Maybe I'll be wrong this time. Who knows. Whatever he does with The Ground Beneath Her Feet, it's a relief after a few chapters of The Uses of Enchantment. It's frustrating to read a book and know that the author would not have been able to acknowledge my existence if he'd met me when I was a kid. Not to mention everything else he screws up...he's willing to make vast and sweeping statements that are backed only by anecdotal evidence (or at least, by no stated stats or numerical studies) -- and aren't even firmly backed by those. Maddening. Ah well. It'll soon be over.

I'm going to get some work done before I head up to Oakland. Wish me luck and the tickets I paid for.