8:10 a.m. - 2002-11-01
Birthday Girl
Yesterday was that once a year event that it is getting harder and harder to psyche myself up for. It was my birthday.

It was also Halloween. I used to get very solemn about it and have a little altar for the people I know who've passed on, but since Jim died I haven't been able to face that. So I just went out in our little brick courtyard and stared into space instead.

That was in the afternoon. In the morning Bruce and I packed up all the potted plants in the backyard and brought them back to our little greenhouse at UAH. It's always kind of a sad event to me because I love all those plants and it just isn't the same seeing them in the greenhouse, which is very small and cramped. And I had a white ginger which was blooming, big, white blooms that smell like Hawaii in a pot, and I'm going to miss the last of its bloom cycle.

And the greenhouse is a mess, because in all the discombobulation of moving I never cleaned it out properly and so we had an ant bloom in there over the summer, as well all the other usual suspects. I did a quick cleaning on Monday but not enough to get it into the shape I would have liked.

And some of those ants are nasty! I got bitten by some small ones and now I have itchy welts on my hands!

Anyway, while I was out I was also noticing how obnoxious and selfish people are. In particular a woman sitting in her car for an hour and a half in the UAH parking lot, studying, WITH THE ENGINE RUNNING!! Excuse me folks, but are we not about to have a war in the Middle East about oil? Shouldn't we all, perhaps, be thinking about the consequences of our actions just a tiny bit more than usual? I know I'm not perfect, but this was so blatantly self-centered I couldn't deal with it.

I couldn't stop myself. I very politely asked her why she was in the car with the engine running when there was a library and didn't she feel concerned about wasting gasoline. Do you know what her answer was?

"This is how I study."

Yes, folks, everyday this woman goes to UAH, sits in the parking lot for hours, and burns gasoline. Because she's too damn self-centered and selfish to change her study habits. What a bitch!

I actually had promised myself that I wouldn't go into this whole story, but it kind of set the tone for the day. I wound up feeling like I am a total misfit and probably the only one who cares about these things, and the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And not only that, but it is happy, pleased as punch in fact, to be going that way.

Sigh.

After that I went to the thrift store near UAH, which always has something to cheer me up. This time it had a number of items - an old encyclopedia of Britain with groovy old colour photos, a pair of Calvin Klein shoes, barely worn, which were very punk and, most importantly, did not say Calvin Klein in any visible place, a pair of cotton pillowcases with rosebuds on them, and a bunch of cheap plates to put under the plants that we've kept at home. Wouldn't want to ruin the windowsills we spent so long painting.

And then I went home. Home is a lovely sanctuary. The most self-centered beings at home are the rabbits. And when they act self-centered it's cute.

There was a lovely package waiting for me from Gregg, who sent a very funny black cat maraca which made me laugh in spite of myself. And two more packages arrived later - one from Sarah which had a 1950's Vogue sewing book, a heart shaped potholder, and a photograph she had taken of a still life in her house. The other was from my sister, who sent me a liqueur cake (and God knows I needed it) and some groovy plates with 1950's fashion illustrations on them. It must have been the 1950's fashion birthday.

This on top of a package from my mom last week with all kinds of field guides to butterflies and insects, a card from Helen, emails from my cousin John and from Simon, who is deep in the heart of home renovation territory, and a wonderful package from Seth with a long, juicy letter and a copy of "The Ragtime Ephemeralist" in which one of his stories appears. I must get the other issues of this little Ragtime rag - if you've never seen it it's just delightful.

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