Friday. November 16, 2001

"Writers are always selling somebody out."

Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, preface

The paper has four dead and some missing. Don't drive into water rushing across the road is one lesson. Actually they are counting a car wreck victim and someone miles away. But it was a dangerous situation.

I wake up from a hard sleep, induced by the pills no doubt, with a renewed drip in the nose and scratchy throat and headache. I struggle out of bed, swallow pills, have coffee. FFP has taken all the recycling and garbage out. He's a wonderful guy. In my drug-induced stupor, I'd forgotten that it was the all important trash day prior to holiday.

I get dressed and check e-mail and stuff.

I have to clean out the outside refrigerator in preparation for the Thanksgiving event. It would be nice if I got it done before the trash men came. I hear the truck coming, though. It hasn't gone down the other side of the street, though, so FFP puts a sticker on it that represents $2 and puts it with our neighbors' trash across the street. Important to ditch as much as possible before next week. This stuff wouldn't have fitted in the pay as you throw container anyway.

I was going to start on the pantry, but decided (why I don't know) that it was necessary to first clean the shelves under the island where we keep liquor and mixers.

Finally, I start on the pantry. FFP cleaned out the foodstuffs not long ago. So, I'm sorting through vases, jars, tools, batteries, paper goods and assorted swag and junk. It is a long labor but, at the end of it, you can walk in the walk-in pantry. I'll clean up the food stuff later, maybe, but it had a major purging recently.

And I'm tired, sweaty and sleepy. So I read and nap for an hour or so. Doesn't sound like I did much, does it? But I moved a lot of stuff around, scrubbed shelves, threw stuff away, carted piles of stuff to the garage to be discarded when convenient. (Just putting stuff in the garbage is not an option. There would be no room for the real garbage we will create at Thanksgiving. I'll have to put the old broken coffee pots, unwanted ashtrays and such on the curb for free or in the garbage a bit a week. It's amazing what people will pick up from the curb, though. If it will just stay dry one day and justify carting the stuff out there.)

Dad and Mom and my sister show up way early. Mom and Sarah sit in the van and talk and Dad sits in the big room. I was still in the shower when they arrived and FFP wasn't dressed. Why do they always come early? I get ready and I tease Dad that he thought it would take as long to get here as it took him to get home last night.

"I went to sleep in my chair after we got home and woke up with a cramp in my right foot from hitting the brake so much."

Dinner at Zoot is always a nice affair. We had taken a Mondavi Reserve and we bought a Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc/Viognier blend. SuRu went with us as official driver and fourth drinker. Mom and my sister don't drink. Can't because of their meds. They have other dietary restrictions, too. For example, my sister asserts that she can't eat green beans. Convenient, because i don't think she likes them. She does enjoy her strip steak. She has it even though I tell her the filet is wildly better. She doesn't like the sides with the filet. FFP tells her she can have any sides she likes. Still she gets the steak with the green beans. But she likes the potatoes. The filet had mushrooms and baby spinach.

I mention to my sister that we were both picky eaters as children.

"I'm not as bad as then," she says. But I'm not really convinced.

I am, of course, a picky eater in a different way today. I only like good food!

est

The evening winds down. We are home fairly early. We change and the phone rings and the answering service is still on. It's Mom saying that they got home in thirteen minutes. Better than the hour and forty-five minutes last night.

I don't feel like I accomplished much today. But my body says it's time to rest and I do.

JUJUST TYPING
Truth.
Will always hurt someone.
That's the problem.
There's a pain in truth.
And the last place we want to undercover pain.
Is in ourselves.