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Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2002 / 8:09 p.m. ~My First Major Spill - I'm a Trip~ I've had my futon sofa for about 10 years, and I've never spilled anything on it. I've even had sex on it, and still, nothing. No spillage. It has a cover that is zippered on three sides for easy on/off action, and it's dry cleanable. Dry clean only, I guess. I've never removed it. I used to flip the futon, rotate it, open the frame to make it into a bed, clean the cover of all cat hair and residual whatever with packing tape. Yeah, it's really good for picking up cat hair. I'd use almost half a roll, maybe more. Since I moved here, since I got my job, since I got my computer, which all happened around the same time, by the way, I haven't paid it much attention, my futon. I sit on it. I lie on it, and when I do I fall asleep. It puts me to sleep. Every so often someone else comes in and he or she will sit on it and I'll think how wrong it seems, two of us on it. It's mine. I'm not too good at sharing my things. Or myself.... Tonight, just before the big first season ender climax on "Felicity", you know, the big "Noel or Ben" season ender climax, I spilled my glass of water on the futon sofa. I watched it spill down from the edge to the folded portion, I watched it soak into the cover, I watched it pool and spread and I watched it all in slow motion. I spilled. Water, thank god only water, but still. And down my flannel pants, my heather plaid flannel pants, soaking wet. Only half a glass of water, how could it produce so much?! I blotted, I wiped, but I ended up sitting with my diffuser hair dryer, the dryer I never use to dry my hair, anymore, and I dried the cover while I watched Felicity try to decide between them, Noel and Ben, thinking this has replaced "Guding Light" since my VCR fried itself. My new soap. A weekly drama, on every single night. What could be better? When it ended, the show, the whole drama, in May of this year, I was really disappointed, but here it is again, and I've only missed one episode so far. It killed me to miss that one, but I did, and there you have it. I dried the cover, again, it was only water. Not wine, not stew, not soup. Although I haven't eaten stew in years, but it could've been soup, I eat soup. It could've been my tofu and vegetable lasagna I ate for dinner, which was really good by the way. Sometimes I pick up a bowl of food, or soup, or a plate filled with food, or a glass filled to the rim, and I see myself spilling it, I fast forward to a preventable future and I see it all over the floor. I see me gasping, grabbing at my chest, or covering my mouth in shock, or shouting "FUCK" really loudly, I see it, I even see me cleaning it, on the floor, bending down, kneeling, dustpan in hand, or paper towels all wadded. But I'm careful. The same way I can see me tumbling down the steps outside. And falling head first, cracking open my skull, gooey brain and blood everywhere. I can be clumsy. I have spilled sugar all over, and I have dropped whole bowls of soup, and plates of food. This is how the visualization can occur. It's not all imagination, it's actually happened. When I lived in my old apartment in the duplex in Midtown, Gladys discovered my open sugar bowl on the kitchen counter. I'd come home to see her pawprints in it, in the sugar, and sugar all around on the counter, and one time the whole bowl was emptied, sugar all over the floor. I swept it up as best I could. I couldn't be mad at her, she had no idea the extent of the damage.... or had she? (I no longer store sugar in that bowl, by the way) "Gilmore Girls" is a repeat tonight. Isn't that insane? Repeats already! "CSI" was a repeat last Thursday, and "ER" wasn't even on. How can these people do this, so soon in the season? I spent a good portion of this day reading the EW "Power Issue" from two weeks ago. Hollywood! Bah! Those people make SO much money. $15 million, $20 million, $100 million. All these millions I read about all day. Who's the mover, who's the shaker, which actress has the most power, the most money, which actor, which producer, which CEO?? Insane. I trained the new woman, briefly, for just one hour, but only after D., the Supervisor, and I had it out, so to speak, at her request. She called me over, she wanted to tell me I don't have a choice but to train. I said fine, don't ask me what I want to do, expect me to answer, then disregard what I say. If you need me to train, tell me "I need you to train", don't fucking ask me if I'd like to. She thought she was being polite. She thought we were compromising when after I told her I didn't want to she asked me which day. No, no, no. We have an odd rapport. It's a long, long story. I can't start it now. Actually, this diary encompasses the whole story. It's here. Okay, not the whole, but the gist. It's mostly here, the story. The new woman wasn't bad. In fact, I liked her. She hangs out intown, everywhere really. She gets out, about. She's eaten sweetbreads. She likes sushi. We talked. A bit. And I have this thing where I won't talk about my 'private life' lately. The 'new boy' asked about my brother and sister, and I couldn't possibly explain it. So, when the new woman asked if the pictures are of my cats, the ones on the wall of my cube, or rather she asked their names, not if they're mine, and I told her, but the 'new boy' said, "She doesn't want to talk about her 'private life', don't ask her about her 'private life'" and I laughed. I don't know where any of it will go. She asked if I'd been there since '98 when she saw a Certificate hanging on the same wall as the cat photos, and I said yes, she said I must like my job, and I became very quiet, measuring what I might say to that, then she said, "Or you're too lazy to look for another one".... and still, I was quiet. I'm using a Puppy notifier for my email now. (I know, I change subjects without one of those 'separators' - it's to keep you on your toes, see if you can play along). It's so cute! He/she comes galumping on the screen with a little yipping sound, okay, a bark, and he/she has a letter in his/her mouth (I don't know the gender, can't tell). When I double click on him/her, the puppy disappears by digging into my email pile, at least it looks like he/she is digging up paper..... Very cute. I actually went to Publix after work. Yay me! In spite of a downpour just as I arrived in the parking lot. I had an umbrella, I braved it. I had the deli man slice me up some rosemary sun dried tomato ham, and some garlic bologna and provolone because it's been too long since I've made sandwiches. And I bought some fun frozen foods, like the tofu vegetable lasagna I didn't spill on the sofa tonight. And..... the nice cashier hoisted my handbasket atop the conveyer belt for me, on account of I looked like I was struggling. I love Publix. It's like the Stepford Store. Everyone is SO nice, the items on the shelves are all just so, and there are always people placing them just so. I almost hate to touch anything. It's all too perfect. But it's expensive. But, I think everything is expensive. Why, in My day....... Yeah, I remember when gasoline cost 35 cents per gallon, and you could drive up to the pump and a cute young guy, well, or an old fart, but often a cute young grease monkey would pump your gas for you!!!! And check your oil!!! Can you imagine?! In fact, (boy, this entry is ALL over the place!) I was thinking last night, as I fell asleep just before "Spellbound" started (Hitchcock actually placed an Overture before the film, and I almost fell asleep during it instead of the movie as I intended), that in 1945, the year "Spellbound" was released, there wasn't even television! Then I thought about people who lived through that time and are still alive and all the changes they've seen, then I thought about me and all the changes I've seen in my lifetime. Yeah, it's fun to think about. I hope I get to tell some little kid all about it some time, amaze the shit out of him or her. You know, tell her the gas station story. "And then we'd pay him and we'd drive off, never having gotten out of the car!".... Anyway, tonight is the second season premiere of "24", and I think I read somewhere (most likely on the Interweb) that Ford paid for there to be no commercial interruptions, which would mean there will be some really long Ford ad in the beginning, or at the end, or both. Was it Ford? We'll find out. Oh, speaking of my early Alzheimer's disease, or at least my aging, failing memory, the 'new boy' was testing me on Presidential Trivia, for which I would not ask Alex to read me a clue, and I did great! He thought I wouldn't know anything, but I knew that it was a Roosevelt who lived in Warm Springs, and I knew the house was called the Little White House, or that it had 'white' in there somewhere, and that the Roosevelt guy took the hot springs there for therapeutic reasons, for rheumatism or arthritis, or yeah, Polio, I knew that! And that Ho Chi Minh was the name of the President or whoever in Vietnam back during the Vietnam war, and that Ho Chi Minh City is now the name of what used to be some other city, and I knew it was Saigon, from reading Tony Bourdain's book. See?! I'm choking/coughing. And I have no clue why. I started when I got home after the Stepford Store. All part of the throat cancer. One day, if I ever pay for health insurance, I would like to ask about my throat, ask a doctor, I mean. Hey, why can I never clear my throat? Why is it when I get a cold I get a lingerig cough? Why is it I can't clear my throat after I laugh a lot? Do I have throat cancer? Was it a bad idea to start smoking at 10? And to smoke marijuana all throughout high school and most of college? And to live with second hand smoke during my formative years? Is it cancer? Do I have nodes or something? And why do Southerners call pens 'inkpens'? Our current password to get into the employee database at work is 'INKPEN...' and a number, but I'm not going to tell you the number. Still, when they gave it to us I laughed. 'INKPEN'???!!!! Ho, ho, ho, heee heee, haa, haaaaa, haaa!!!! Today I told the 'new boy' it's redundant. "It's redundant. Of course a pen has ink. By definition a pen has ink in it. What pen does NOT have ink? It's crazy, it's stupid, why do Southerners say it? Northerners don't say it!" (I don't have cancer, but pens do have ink in them, unless they're cartridge pens, in which case one must procure a cartridge filled with ink. God, I love cartridge pens! Are they the same thing as 'fountain pens'? Or does a 'fountain' pen really require dipping into a fountain of ink? Not the use of a cartridge? I'm thinking too hard, aren't I? The 'new boy' said, "You're a trip" today, and I said, "And don't you forget it".) I almost forgot.... there is an odor emanating from my downstairs neighbor's apartment..... an odor reminiscent of the old self-cleaning oven in the house where I spent my formative years. We'd turn it on, it would get very hot, and it would burn off all the greasy grime from the oven walls. It was amazing. And it smelled. Like what's coming up from downstairs. I think she's burning her hair, or her oven. Or she's cooking her shoes. I'm not sure, but I wish she'd go back to roasting chickens. I prefer it. Cost of the War in Iraq
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