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Idle essays

Driven?

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So, did I end up driven to drive, drive, drive around the city yesterday afternoon? Did I reserve a space at this afternoon’s writer’s group, where I would like to peddle my services in the guise of seeking feedback on my half-baked unfinished noveloid?

Well. No. And also, no.

Yes, I did climb in the car and turn on the ignition. About the time I got to the end of the driveway, a thought occurred: Why am I doing this???????

Got about 200 feet down the road…and then drove around the block, returned to the Funny Farm, parked the car, and proceeded back inside. Where I’ve been fairly happily ensconced ever since, except for a dog-walk or two.

Yes.

Thought: Hey, estúpida! What do you think you’re doing?

Human: Driving to the credit union and to the grocery store on…uhm…some road over there.

Thought: You’re kidding, right?

Human: Uhm…

Thought: Tell me you’re not serious. You’re REALLY going to drive FORTY MINUTES so as to avoid farting around with the accursed Internet for 10 or 15 minutes to deposit two measly checks?

Human: Well, but…

Thought: And this vaunted grocery store is on…WHAT road?

Human: I think it’s at 43rd and Peoria.

Thought: NO, you moron! That’s an Albertson’s, not a Fry’s. And it’s not even a halfway decent Albertson’s. It is, in a word, a CRUMMY store!

Human: Oh. Yeah. Well…but…

I gave up. It took less than 10 minutes to deposit $2500 worth of client monnaie online. This was good. There was plenty of food in the house: two chops from a rack of lamb; tiny delicious little beets to grill (this worked exceptionally well, BTW); excellent buttered spinach to heat, also on the grill. And half a bottle of wine.

Truly, I hate farting with the computer and the credit union’s website to deposit checks electronically. But…hate it SO MUCH that it’s worth driving 20 minutes to the CU, standing in line, and driving 20 minutes back?

Maybe not.

As for today’s proposed introduction to the midtown writer’s group: they meet weekly. The local Play-Nooz reported that the police and fire department are occupying lovely downtown Phoenix with a mock Emergency Response today…and that chivaree sounds like something to avoid.

So I decided to put that little marketing maneuver off for a week: Next Sunday, thankyouverymuch. This will give me time to schlep the printout of the current installment of Ella’s story down to the UPS store and put them up to making and stapling together 10 or 12 copies, rather than expending my own ink & paper for the purpose.

Hmmmmm… Lookee here: for $30, you can get 50 pens with your bidness name on them. 😀 The MO of these writer’s groups is that you hand out a few pages of your golden words and people critique the stuff. What if in addition to a sheaf of paper, you gave each person a pen with your editing outfit’s name and URL? 😀

Apparently this outfit will deliver in four or five days, which would get said little treat here by the end of the week if I ordered it today.

If ten people show up (that’s how many were signed up for this weekend), one order would last for five weeks. Lots more then 10 show up at the West Valley Writer’s Workshop, but there’d still be enough to hand out gift pens there and still supply one or two of the in-town meeting’s participants.

Putting it off for a week will also give time for me to get off my virtual duff and write a plot outline. One of the reasons (one of several reasons) this story has petered out is that I’ve been writing it like topsy, as it grows. Frankly, I have no idea where it’s going.

Well. I know where Ella’s recollected life on Zaitaf goes. But what happens on Varnis, where her currently lived experience is happening, is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. It’s topsy…I do need to cultivate that garden.

And speaking of uncultivated gardens, now I need to return to the client’s magnum opus…

Conundrum of the Day: To Drive or Not to Drive?

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So today’s conundrum — it’s huge, hyuuuge, I tellya! — is whether to dork around with scanning and uploading checks to the credit union or just to schlep them up there.

I need to pick up some groceries, too. The credit union is way over on the west side and the grocery stores where I would look for quality produce are way to the east or down to the south. And…few things do I hate more than driving around in Phoenix’s noxious traffic.

However…the other day I discovered a Fry’s (Kroger’s, for those in more civilized venues) over on West Peoria, conveniently on the way (more or less) to the credit union. The neighborhood is sketchy. But probably only a little more so than mine. It doesn’t look, at a glance, like the parking lot is too dangerous to walk across — and now that I no longer carry a purse slung over my shoulder, there’s relatively less risk of mugging.

So much do I dislike the scan/scan/crop/crop/upload/upload hoo-hah (x however many checks you have to deposit) that really…sometimes I’d actually rather drive all the way up to the CU and just fork the money over to a teller.

This is do-able when I have to go to a Costco, too — a decent Costco resides on that side of town, only about six or eight miles from the credit union. (Yeah…jolly, eh?) It’s also relatively safer than the one closest to where I live — although you’ll see a fake crippled vet sitting in a lawn chair holding up his sign at one of the entrances to the parking lot, you never run into anyone in the lot actively accosting you to panhandle.

Don’t need to make a Costco run, though. All that’s really needed is just enough produce to tide me over until next month’s Costco junket. Which, we might add, I would like to put off as long as possible.

Meanwhile, I need to meet people.

Do I want to meet people? Not especially. I’m happy enough here in my cave. Indeed, I’d be just as happy if the cave were in the side of a slab of southern Utah sandstone. But…I suppose, for one’s mental health, one needs to meet people.

Also, conveniently, I’ve discovered that folks who crave to be published writers will pay The Copyeditor’s Desk’s going rate of 4 cents a word, just to get me to read their golden copy and advise.

For the current client, what I’m doing, really, is instructing: essentially teaching the guy creative writing techniques at about the university sophomore of junior level. This is pretty easy for me…because of course it’s what I spent 15 years doing at the Great Desert University. It crossed my mind, as I was contemplating that project, that I could actually offer to teach people creative writing, along with editing their copy. And that would be worth paying 4 cents a word for.

Or more. Whatever the market would bear.

The problem is, I’d need to find folks who crave so much to give their golden words to the dark and the waiting sky that they’re willing to pay for the privilege.

Well, here in Amazon’s Self-Publishing Dystopia, the woodwork is crawling with writer’s groups, some small and some large. This weekend one meets downtown, at a coffeeshop associated with the Episcopal Cathedral — and one can (usually) park for free in the Cathedral’s lot.

To engage oneself with this group, one has to send in 1500 of one’s golden words for members to read and critique, and then print out a half-dozen copies for the purpose.

Do I want to do this?

Hm. The cave beckons (don’t leave me, humann!)

Well, I could send them the current chapter of Ella’s story, which no, I have not updated since I sank into the current slough of despond. It’s actually about 1800 words, if you count the blurb at the top. Close enough, I reckon.

How much explaining do I want to do, though? Do I seriously want to tell a passel of wannabe writers that I consider publishing stuff on Amazon to be a colossal waste of time and effort, and that I publish my stuff for free at my website, where it probably garners more readers than books on Amazon get? Do I really want to tell them that if you want to succeed as a writer you have to succeed as a marketer, and that if I wanted to spend my time marketing, I’d be making a decent living selling ad space for magazines, peddling cars for Toyota, or hawking refrigerators and stoves?

Not. so. much.

Well, I really don’t know. As you can see by the length of this squib, I’m having quite enough trouble bestirring myself to get off my duff and drive to a credit union & a grocery store.

 

Weaseled Out!

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Ohhh naughty human! SDXB has been trying to wrangle me into a day trip. The poor guy has been working at it literally for weeks. Nay, even months. He wants to drive up to the newly revived Castle Hot Springs, a historic resort that has been massively and expensively renovated. Every time he’s made a plan, though, something has come up to dash his hopes — usually rain.

Well. Entre nous, I’ve been to Castle Hot Springs, and I’ve been to expensive fancified historic resorts, most notably the Greenbrier. And I kinda think once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Simply haven’t been able to work myself up to much enthusiasm for this proposed junket.

He put up another lady friend of his to come along on the trip…which is good…because… Along about 5 p.m. I realized said journey was going to occupy the entire damn day tomorrow. And…there’s no way I’m going to go off and leave a dog door big enough to admit a 200-pound man standing open with only a 25-pound pooch between some sh!thead and a houseful of possessions. Including the cute, highly stealable pooch herself.

In a desultory way, I e-mailed M’hijito and asked if he could come by during the noon hour and let her out. He said he would be working at home tomorrow and I could leave her at his place. To do that and then get out to Sun City by the appointed hour — 8:30 in the freaking morning — I’d have to feed her; feed me; get myself washed painted combed, and dressed; and leave the house by no later than 7:3o. Matter of fact, 7:15 would be more like it. Then after dropping off the dog, brave the unholy rush-hour traffic on the 17 and the 101. Then along about 5 p.m., repeat the process in reverse.

Whee. What fun.

When I hadn’t heard back from the kid — after all of about 15 minutes — I told SDXB that I felt it would be cruel and irresponsible to leave the dog here with no way to get out and relieve herself all day. He seemed…unsurprised.

Oh, well.

 

Joys of the Day

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Today has been a day of small joys. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Just imagine…

1. The phone stopped jangling

Yes! The minute the new CPR v5000 Call Blocker was plugged in, the nonstop robo-harassment came to a proverbial screeching halt. The nuisance call rate is down from upwards of a dozen a day to one. That’s right. And none of those once-a-day nuisances have come at some wacky hour like 7:30 or 8 in the morning or 8 or 9 at night.

2. The clindamycin pills ran out.

Woo hoo! I got through the whole ten-day prescription without any noticeable side effects!

Yet.

You can enjoy a C. difficile infection as much as six months after a course of this stuff. That’s the worst of a raft of potential unpleasant outcomes.

Really unpleasant. SDXB’s former wife died of a C. diff infection. On her living-room floor. She lay dead for two days, before a neighbor and friend came over to check on her, looked in a window, and saw her corpse there.

Wonder-Endodontist recommended scarfing down probiotics whilst taking this fine drug, so I went out and bought a box of that stuff at Sprouts. Look it up on NNT: as a prophylactic to head off C. diff-related to antibiotic treatment, 42 people have to be treated for 1 person to be helped. Among high-risk patients, 1 in 12 is helped.

Yeah.

Well. It’s better than none. “C. difficile infection is the leading cause of gastroenteritis-associated death,” says NNT, “and was estimated to cause 14,000 deaths in 2007.Although almost half of infections occur in people younger than 65, more than 90% of deaths occur in those 65 and older.” Since “65 and older” appears to equate to “high-risk,” it looks a lot like swallowing this stuff is worthwhile.

But swallowing it is a challenge. You have to take three a day on top of the four clindamyacin horse pills, and the probiotic pills are also horse pills, about the same as the Big Gulps of the antibiotics.

My plan is to finish the entire box, which included enough pills for another five days. Then for the next six months or so, eat plenty of foods allegedly rich in the magical probiotics. I already do that, because I eat a slice or two of cheddar cheese almost every day. I hate yogurt, but can tolerate it mixed with other foodoids, such as soups and sauces. And I’m very fond of fresh (unpasteurized) sauerkraut and kimchi. Love olives — this house has two trees full of them, and I happen to know how to brine them in the Greek manner. One site claims chocolate contains probiotics…that, too, I eat in modest amounts every day.

3. Amazing weather lingers

It’s the end of May — by now summer should be y-cumen in. But no! It’s 60 degrees in the morning, and the days are still cool enough to loaf around outdoors all day long. That is weird.

The place is overrun with doves and tweety-birds. This afternoon I bought another gigantic bag of birdseed from the WalMart, since the little dinosaurs have gone through the existing supply.

Also cleaned and refilled the hummingbird feeders; relocated one to the newly pruned paloverde tree.

4. Finally deposited about $2,000 worth of checks. I hate the credit union’s at-home deposit function. Sometimes it’s so time-consuming, especially if you have several checks, that it’s less annoying to drive up there and drop the checks off in person.

5. Pleased to recall that I put two grand aside in emergency savings: covered Luis, thank God. Luis and a sidekick cleaned out the front porch, thinned the giant mesquite tree, cleaned up the shaggy desert willow, trimmed the yellow oleander, pruned the paloverde branches off the roof, and cut about a third of the looming goddamned Australian weeping acacia out, thereby eliminating most of the risk of the damn thing falling on my house or my neighbor’s during this summer’s monsoon winds. For two day’s heavy labor by two men, he charged $940. A bargain, I’d say.

6. Remembered that I needed to download all the checking account transactions since the first of the year. The credit union has upgraded its system so it took all of 5 minutes to download 6 months’ worth of data for 3 accounts!

7. When I put off a chore because I hate doing it, I tend not to do the other chores I’m supposed to do that day. Then I put everything off and get nothing done. The ditzy bookkeeping tasks done, I went so far as to clean the bathrooms and pick up most of the litter and run a load through the clothes washer.

Woot!

8. Then it was off to Walmart, Walgreen’s, and Costco, what fun. Got an external hard drive, needed for Time Machine backups, for $10 off, it being the last one on the shelf. Whilst ambling around Costco, remembered that the barbecue repairman was supposed to have shown up at 1 p.m. At this point, it was after that.

Luckily, the lines were short. Flew out of the store and raced home, but by the time I got here it was 2:00 p.m. However…

9. The BBQ guy had let himself in. By the time I got here, he had about fixed the broken igniter switch. Then he cleaned the entire, very dirty unit. Thing looks like new and works as well.

All in all, it was a productive and pleasant day.

Or would be, if I could count… 😉

 

Dog Joy!

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What a wonderful morning!

I thought I was supposed to be down at the church office shortly after dawn cracked, to stand in for one of the volunteer receptionists. So I arrive, plug in the computer (having brought 27 pages of client copy to while away the time), and settle in.

Shortly, in pops the Boss Volunteer.

“Hey! You’re supposed to be here this afternoon. I’m on this morning.”

😀

Well. Ahem. Naturally I suggest that if she wants the morning off, I’d be happy to switch. (“Happy” being a highly qualified term in this context.) What a shame: she has to pick up the grandchild shortly after 12:30.

Out the door like a rocket!

Arrive back at the Funny Farm to find the dog moping under the toilet in the back bathroom. (Don’t ask: I have no clue why the dog thinks the cubby under the toilet amounts to a dog den.) At the words let’s go for a doggy walk, she shoots out of the bathroom and flies to the front door

Out the door like two rockets!

It’s still cool enough to manage a mile-and-a-half circuit of the ’Hood.  It’s a strangely lovely little enclave of affluence, despite being bordered on two sides by drug-ridden slums.

Over in Lower Richistan, one house harbors a huge, beautiful jacaranda tree, now in full, brilliant blue bloom. It is the most gorgeous tree you could ever hope to see.

Across the lane into Upper Richistan, an elderly lady lives in a big old sprawling mansion of a ranch house on about an acre of land, which she keeps up like a park. Her property is meticulously, spectacularly groomed. Most days when we pass there, her yard service, whose proprietors dub themselves “Paradise Ponds and Gardens,” are there puttering around. They must visit almost every day. The place reflects it, too.

Other shacks there are less ostentatiously landscaped but equally tidy — they don’t require a gardener’s daily attention, but nevertheless they’re expensively mown and trimmed.

As usual, we run into morons. Honestly…it’s hard to understand how some people ever learn to tie their shoelaces….

First one is putzing up Feeder Street NW, evidently in no hurry. The hound and I are stopped on the sidewalk, under the stop sign that clearly says traffic crossing Feeder is to cede the right of way. We wait for him to go by.

But no. Ohhh, nooooo! He’s polite. And the little dog is so cute he’s driven to feel even more polite. He stops his car. I wait for him to go by. He waves his paw at me, a sappy grin on his face: go ahead go ahead!

I hate that. I just hate it when some idiot thinks he’s doing me a favor by stopping in the right of way and frantically motioning to proceed in front of him — illegally. What the hell is the matter with people?

Does he really think that my standing there for three whole seconds while his car passes by is THAT big an inconvenience to me? Does he seriously believe he’s doing me some great favor with this silly trick? Does he truly not grasp the concept that urging someone to cross a road illegally puts that person at risk?

God, but people are stupid.

This particular brand of stupidity irritates me most radically because I once got T-boned when some idiot stopped, waved me across in front of him (and the as-yet unnoticed guy tooling along in the lane to his left…), and I took him up on it. With my infant son in the car. In that case, we had two idiots in collaboration: him and me.

So we make a loop through the forested lanes. On the homeward leg, toward our low-rent tract, we encounter a woman with a large furry dog in tow. She is not paying the slightest bit of attention to anything that’s going on around her. She holds a phone up to her ear. From the phone blares a stream of dopey-sounding music. She is, in a word, entranced…

Not caring to discuss the time of day with her barely-under-control dog, I cross the road so as to put some distance between us and the oblivious woman and her not-at-all oblivious beast.

It notices. It lunges at Ruby, growling and barking.

Recovering from nearly being jerked off her feet, the Blithe Soul coos, “Ohhhh, what a cute little dog!”

“Uhm… Uh huh.”

“Grrrrrrrr ARF ARF ROARRRRRgrrrrrrrrrrrr”

“He’s really friendly. I usually let him off the leash so they can play!”

holy shit! “Please don’t!”

I dodge across Feeder Street Northwest, hoping some driver in a ball-busting hurry will come blasting between us. Fortunately, she’s too interested in the racket coming out of her toy to pursue the idea.

At any rate, it was a beautiful morning (and remains a beautiful day). The little dog was beside herself with doggy joy to come out from under the toilet and circumambulate the neighborhood. That was a very, very happy dog.

Human, too.

I realized that I was secretly (not so secretly, maybe) relieved not to have to sit here all morning, editing a client’s copy while nothing much happened in the office.

Indeed, a small revelation dawned:

What do I want to do in retirement? What do I most want to do with the small portion of time remaining to me?

I’ll tell you what I wanna do.

♦ I want to loaf.

• I do not want to work.
• I do not want to master some hobby.
• I do not want to participate in volunteer efforts.
• I do not want to lobby for some worthy political candidate.
• I do not want to travel.

♦ All I want to do is loaf.

♦ That is, I wish to do as little as possible. Nothing, preferably.

♦ Nothing is plenty enough to keep me busy.

• Today, for example, I need to traipse up to Home Depot to pick up a bag or two of potting soil, therewith to plant some new chard and refresh a number of other plants.  While there, I probably should get a basil plant to replace the one that’s expiring of old age.
• Or maybe go by AJ’s and spend too much money on something good to eat.
• Or take the dog for another walk.
• Or just anything that does not require the expenditure of anything resembling mental or physical energy.

Loafing. The highest and best use of one’s time.

The Costco Glasses Jamboree

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New-glasses
Out, alas, with the old…

So this afternoon, after having spent the morning finishing up the first of two indexes for a couple of 380-page books only four or five days late, it was off to the Paradise Valley Costco to collect the new progressive glasses that have been sitting there for a week, while I’ve been wrestling with various crises editorial and otherwise. This, because my beloved stylish fancy guy, who was forced out of Uptown Plaza when the proprietors “upgraded” the mall and jacked up the rent, wanted $395 just to replace the lenses after I fell and irredeemably scratched one of them. And…how did that work out?

Not too bad.

The frames are clunky, no question of it. But for what I paid, one could hardly expect the airy height of style. They’re clunky, wouldn’t be my first choice if I had a job, but WTF!? At this age, no one notices you.

Annd…in with the…uhm…old-fashioned…

Seriously: it is literally true that very few people actually register the presence of a woman my age, much less care one way or another how she looks. She’s just part of the background, like leaves in an oleander hedge.

That is, after all, not a bad thing…

It means you can get away with clunky, which means you can get away with buying a whole new pair of frames along with a whole new pair of progressive lenses for a fraction of the cost of a classier pair of lenses to fit your now-defunct classy pair of practically invisible frames.

So… In the store I try on the new pair of specs, and WOW! It’s a whole new world! Like the entire interior of Costco has been electronically enhanced.

Put them on to drive home, and yeah: pretty impressive. I can see the car’s dashboard as though through a microscope, and the road adorned with my fellow homicidal drivers as though through a telescope. I am, in a word, wowed.

Notsomuch when I get home and sit down to the computer. I can’t see either screen — laptop or desktop — without cocking my head like a blue heron. And this, as you can imagine, is ever-so-slightly painful.

Luckily, I have two old, supposedly outdated pairs of glasses — both progressives, which provide a more or less intelligible view of the distance. These allow me to see what I’m doing when I’m passing hour after fuckin’ endless hour working for pay. Or for fun, as in blogging.

So. We have yet to see whether these new glasses will allow me to read music scores for choir. We’ll know in a few hours, because rehearsal comes up in about two and a half hours. If they work for that purpose, then I’ll use the new thangs for driving, shopping, and choir, and put one older pair in the office next to the desktop and one pair in the family room next to the laptop.

If they don’t? Well…I haven’t a clue.

Figure that out when I come to it, I guess.

Old age is not for the young or the faint of heart. That’s for damn sure.