Idle essays

Okay, this is it. I have GOT to get my act together!

This morning I overslept big time. Awoke at 7:30, about the time the Thursday ayem meeting was starting. Called the speaker to let him know I’d be a half-hour or forty minutes late — he wasn’t there yet, either. Ten minutes later, FLEW out the door and hit the road.

No. Make that “hit a wall of traffic making like a molasses tsunami.”

The fake cowboy DJ on the radio remarks that there’s an estimated 95-minute back-up — that would be an hour and a half, he helpfully translates — on the eastbound 101 at a downtown exit.

We sit through six signals at the intersection of eastbound Glendale and State Route 51. Evidently every eastbound commuter who’s heard this news has dodged off the I-17 (which merges with the 101 downtown and is capable coming to a dead standstill when any significant event occurs). They’re all headed across the surface streets to the other southbound freeway, which arrives downtown several miles to the east of the wreck site.

So it’s quarter after 8 by the time I reach Scottsdale. The program is over and people are sitting around chatting. The chiropractor has already fled for another meeting, but others are socializing, and that’s nice. Chat for awhile; then burn some more gas to get back home.

The assembled company is looking and feeling a little groggy. At 3:49 a.m., reports George the Elder, an Amber Alert went off and rousted EVERYONE out of the sack with a shrill squeal and a desperate-sounding announcement. Some woman’s ex-boyfriend called the cops and claimed she threatened to harm  herself and her brats. She claims that is not so. The cops apparently doubt the accusation enough that they are not filing charges.

Whatever is true, the result was to jolt every cell phone owner in the city awake in the wee hours of the morning.

I’m thinking I may try again with the cell phones. So far I’ve really hated the android-type phones I’ve tried and deeply resent having to pay so goddamn much for something that a) I consider a nuisance; b) I can’t figure out how to work; and c) I hardly ever use and don’t want to use. However, it’s just so risky to be schlepping around the city without a phone when there are no pay phones left anywhere… My son has extracted 100 minutes a month with no contract for his iPhone with T-Mobile (whose service I loathed) for just $30 a month (plus the cost of the contraption). That’s annoying but not impossible. So if — and only if — I can persuade him to help me learn how to use it and help me get T-Mobile’s erratic billing practices as much under control as possible (they don’t bill you and then they cut off your service), maybe I’ll sign up for that. At least I know how to operate Apple’s hardware.

Lo and behold, it’s very easy to turn off the Amber Alerts on an iPhone. If and when I get this device, that will be the first order of business.

What an annoyance! As though in a city of 4.2 million people, I’m likely to spot some homeless woman’s three children at 4 in the morning! A homeless woman who lives halfway to Tucson…

Back at the Funny Farm at 9:30. Starved, of course: no time for breakfast, and I do not eat at The Good Egg (our meeting place), which like most chain restaurants serves processed foods poured out of boxes, bags, and cans. Still haven’t lost the two pounds I picked up on Monday at the IHOP.

And in the “still haven’t” department, it’s now 11:30 in the morning and I have not started on the client’s project, which I surely would like to get done today, so as to ship it off to him at the earliest. If I don’t quit writing this blog post soon, though, the possibility of reaching that little goal will be much diminished.

Met with him for almost two hours yesterday (imagine the number of hours that will be required to put all that content-heavy palaver on paper!). He arrived back from London with an airplane cold, thank you very much. By yesterday evening, it looked like I was coming down with it, in spite of my having driven straight to a store and purchased a package of sanitary wipes with which to scrub the hands, the computer, and the car’s steering wheel. But this morning I seem to have thrown it off.

What I have not thrown off, evidently, is stone laziness.

And so, to work. I suppose…

…lordie, lordie! How many hours is it between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.? Only 16? Really?

After tossing off yesterday’s FaM post, I worked until 6:00 p.m. on the client’s book. Then spent the entire evening setting up the Canvas site for the magazine-writing section that starts on March 3. It now has just enough students to make — if one drops between now and then, four hours of free work go down the drain. But if I don’t get started on it now, then I’ll have a bitch of a crush at the last minute.

All of the announcements have to be redone, Spring Break having thrown a monkey-wrench into my carefully calibrated calendar. (Oh! alliteration!!!) That’ll be another hour or two of work. Hope that’s all.

The client is pushing to finish the book before he has to leave the country in two weeks. And last night a new project came in from another client, one of the bright lights of the Far East whom I’m not about to turn down.

Gained another pound overnight, even though I didn’t eat much. That’s two pounds in two days, after Monday’s salt-filled breakfast at IHOP followed by a lunch of pasta and scallops. Am getting exactly zero exercise. The dog is sick and can’t walk far, and I haven’t had time to break loose an hour to go trudging around the neighborhood.

Helles belles. I didn’t even have the energy to brush my teeth before falling into bed last night.

Dog is off her feed. She’s been showing some reluctance to eat over the past week or so but, being a corgi, finds it well-nigh impossible to turn down a pile of food.

She’s been licking the tile flooring, too. This is a sign of a doggy upset stomach. (Don’t we all lick tiles when we feel bilious?)

This morning she’s finally given in to whatever is ailing her: left half her food in the dish.

And that is unheard-of. Since corgis live to eat, it’s a bad sign.

Nice timing, just when I’m about to shell out a pile of money for a pup and then some more money and then some more money and then…and then…and then… Can’t really afford a big vet bill for Cassie just now.

Damn. It’s been one ungodly expense after another ever since the first of the year: the trees, the eyes, the glasses, the contact lenses, the landscape repair, the dentist, the puppy, the nagging need for clothes that fit… Holy mackerel. Or is that holy doggerel?

If I were still using the old bookkeeping system wherein I put $200/month aside for emergencies in a cookie-jar savings account, by now — the middle of February! — the short-term emergency fund would be drained. That savings account only had about $1,000 at the end of December. I’ve spent at least four grand since then.

It’s all coming out of the gigantic pile of dough I threw into checking for the purpose of supporting me through 2014. Because of course I’m earning a little each month — at last a check came in from the community college district, and the Social Security Administration is also throwing money into that checking account — the bottom line doesn’t look so gut-wrenching. Certainly not as gut-wrenching as a savings account balance of $0.00.

On the other hand, that pile of dough has to cover taxes and insurance, which in 2014 will come to around $5340, assuming I don’t have to buy a new car this year. What I’m concerned about is that if these extraordinary expenses continue, they’ll eat up the set-aside for those unavoidable gouges.

And that is not good.

To avoid running out of money this year, I’ll have to see to it that some $4,000 is made up by sheer, raw frugality: the slack will have to be taken out of the food, clothing, entertainment, gasoline, and household budgets. I bought another couple pair of Costco bluejeans yesterday, since running the washer every couple of days isn’t very practical. That will have to be the last clothing purchase for the next three or four months. At least.

It still astonishes me that I can get into a pair of jeans with the number “8” on them, and it’s even more amazing that jeans that fit and last can be had for $15.99. I returned the annoying bras to Soma — was amazed that they took the damn things back — but then replaced them with two more from Saks, where I finally found a sales-lady who was willing to wait on an elderly woman (rarity of rarities!). So no net gain was had there, except that now I have one (count it, 1) bra that doesn’t hurt outright and one that’s comfortable enough if I don’t wear it longer than about 45 minutes.

Welp, here’s Gerardo with his campesinos. And so, to work…