Monday

Sept. 24, 2001

pack again

I slept fitfully. Once I got up to read but had trouble focusing, eyes aching although I couldn't fall asleep either.

I finally got to sleep and then it was time to get up. Sigh. Then there were trip things to worry about. People in Europe saying it would be too much trouble to have ANY carry on. As if I'm consigning my laptop to a baggage handler who may lose his job next week. As if I'm going to change planes twice and consign my bags to handlers three times and not have so much as a clean shirt, dress shoes, dress slacks and clean underwear and a toothbrush on my person. As it is, I'll be surprised to not have my bag mislaid at least once during this trip.

Then someone over there says Sabena may go on strike and I had a couple of flights with them. And there is confusion about one of the flights because travel sent me a wrong itinerary and never a right one. But we get that straigtened out and start thinking about alternates to Sabena (cars, trains, other air lines?).

Mom needs her meds printed out and doesn't remember how. I decide to go show her and leave work early and then work from home. She thinks she can remember the printing thing but we print several just in case. She has been to the dermatologist today, has eye doctor on Wednesday and the lung biopsy on Thursday. "Tomorrow," she says, "We get to rest." I hope my life does not get down to resting between doctor's visits. Not soon anyway. I think the Tegritol is causing her skin problems. I wonder if either doctor (the one treating skin or the one giving the Tegritol) actually knows that it is a common side effect?

I go home and work on my presentations and then I repack my bags to (1) eliminate a bunch of stuff; and (2) get carry on into one bag. As a result, I won't be taking a camera, nor a transformer to get power and work on the plane. I also ditched the hairdryer, various clothes, extra dress shoes. But, geez, you have to take something for over two weeks and lots of business. You'd think. I'm now down to a set of things that I think can be pawed through by the airline in a reasonable time. I can relax on that score. Or can I?

I'll say it again: the airlines and the Feds need to find a way to make the flying public not feel like criminals or it's going to be an entirely different set of airlines in a few years. Fifteen billion dollars won't touch what they lose when people feel it's too much trouble. At the end of the day I decided to put the anorak in the checked bag, too. Already today it isn't getting over 60 in London and it can rain but, if they lose my bag, I'll be so screwed I might as well be cold and possibly wet to boot.

It's like autumn outside and walkies seems like a great idea. We go urban adventuring (FFP, too, because, of course, you need a third person for that) and we stop and visit with people about dog groomers and the car lot near our building and visit a friend who has built a new garage.

The walk has made some of the tension disappear. It's dark when we get back toward our street. Rock 'n Roll house is serenading the neighborhood with Elvis' Are You Lonesome Tonight? and the weird guy on the corner is mowing his yard in the dark. The touch of cool in the air is magic.

We eat salmon and spaghetti squash casserole and a salad. I should be losing weight on FFP's diet, but I had pizza and salad for lunch. (With Bleu Cheese dressing and extra mozzarella cheese.) I have a coke because it sounds good with the dinner after walking although we didn't seem to go that far or fast. Later I have a little extra cheese.

I finally relax. FFP gives me a foot rub. That makes everything seem right. Really relaxes me. It's Monday. I do the crosswords. The New York Times puzzle has answers with agresssive words that are in innocuous context like 'strike one' and 'hit parade.' I finish it. It's Monday and I can do that.

It's just a trip. It's just a job. Get over it. It will be fine. Okay, maybe it's the whole screwed-up world that is getting me down. Yep. I'll bet that's it.

Lots of journalers are worried about the U.S. reaction being too much at the wrong place at the wrong time. It's hard. When friends are dictators and only slightly less fanatical than enemies. When friends are countries we fought to an arms and economic stand still. When the people of South Africa worry that we will 'take them off our Christmas card list.' When meanwhile they are losing 5000 people a day to AIDS. Or some very large number. Oh, yeah. The former agressors in South Africa deserve some of their fate. But we boycotted to make the lives better of the blacks and mixed race people there. For all the one-time and probably present oppression and poverty, the rest of Africa tries to move in. Where things are much worse. Where people kill and maim hundreds of thousands with machetes and where there are areas with 80% AIDS infection.

And we've been rounding up Arab men, willy-nilly. But at least we haven't started interment camps. Maybe we get a little bit better with the passing years after all. Or not.

In Austin, neighbors protect owners of a convenience store and laundry but a carpet store is attacked in what is described as a hate crime. I'm against such a designation. The penalty for arson (or murder for that matter) should not be increased nor mitigated by motive except as the law allows the distinction already between pre-meditation and heat of passion. The law is the law. We need to vigorously enforce it.

Personally, I will go out of my way to give Arabs and Arab-Americans the benefit of the doubt. I see their freedoms and mine flowing away in the same stream. That's arrogant, you say. You are white. You know nothing. Wrong. I'm a woman. All women everywhere know discrimination. Maybe one day it won't be so. Certainly if I were 23 instead of 53 I would have seen less of it. But there it is. Sometimes I wish women would rise up and take a turn running the world. And maybe if we have hate crime we can simply add all crimes against women to the list. See how silly it is? Crime is crime. Freedom is freedom. You only have it when your neighbor has it. And your wife.

.

luggage, new version

"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace..."

John Lennon, "Imagine"

lest you think nothing is changed...some of the stuff being left home

Meta:
We'll just be keeping Lennon's radical lyrics here for a day or two. Sometimes this journal is enough just because it gives me a voice, however poorly articulated.

JUST TYPING
It
adds
up to more
than you might think.
A pair of socks, then two.
A tootbrush.
A shirt.
Pants.

And, suddenly, things are stuffed.