Thursday, November 7, 2024

Please To Remember: November 2019 Diary

 


11/3/2019: Up at 5 AM, but it's 6 AM really because of the time change (can tell for sure because of the computer and the TV - which has no programs on right now). That's okay, I relish the extra time and my body don't know any better. Prayers, Bible, and catechism; then showered and got dressed, and here it is 6 AM and I've got a whole hour before I need to leave.

So went to church in actual daylight. Felt spiffy in my long sleeve blue shirt and black vest. Came home, and for most of the day thought my cable was out, but I figured out what was wrong about 5 PM.  I had a lot of food over the day, as when I went in a little after noon to get an apple and orange, Andy also gave me the rest of the stew, and later Susan brought me two breakfast tacos and a bunch of bananas. Sometime in the afternoon Kaitlyn picked up her dogs - I forgot to say they've been here for a few days - I think since Halloween. Watched Sunday Special, some of Willy McBean and His Magic Machine, and Russian animation Beloved Beauty [both of them stop-motion films].



 Because of the time change the day has seemed very long. The new Fox animations haven't even started yet (which they will at 7 PM). I applied myself to WWF - which I had skipped for a week or so - and got the weekly badge.

 

11/4/2019: How many of us forget, once we are grown, how big a room seems to us when we are children, what a vast church-like space a living room can seem, incapable of being assumed in a glance as we do when we are adults. Things whose use and purposes are a marvel - TVs, stereos, even hanging pictures like portals into other worlds, that seem alive and watching; furniture that must be climbed and conquered; tiny secure spaces hacked out of the world behind couches or in cabinets or behind the headboards of beds.

Got up very early this morning (time change dissonance), got dressed, prayed, read catechism and Bible. Was reminded of the ridiculous case of Breece D'J Pancake [that hillbilly hipster!], who published 6 short stories in his lifetime (with 6 published after he died) and committed suicide when he was 26 (despite having become a Catholic a year before). His personal story arc fitted so well with the romantic ideal of "the writer" that he became the rarefied darling of the literary elite, despite the fact that "Pancake's stories have a dreamlike quality--they don't explain themselves and they are never unequivocal; readers must make their own interpretations." So, everyone plugs in their own feelings, feels that somehow that makes them profound, and therefore - genius! Makes me want to spit when I consider his assured "immortal fame" compared to Mike's struggle for meaning amid the backwash of literary ennui.



Today? As close to nothing as possible. Wash, made chicken salad, boiled eggs, brought in mail packages, made broccoli salad, fed and grassed dogs, made supper salmon patties and couscous. Feeling bored with everything. John sent me a nice picture of Goggle that Morgandy worked on; the one bright part of the day. 



I look at everything tucked neatly away on shelves and in bins and feel that nothing is worth disturbing. Must get something to arouse my interest in life, or at least to keep me alive until I get out of the dumps. I feel that anything I try with BB2 [Bob’s Book 2] will be uninspired, but maybe an effort is just what I need. Perhaps trying a script form? It has been warm enough to have the house open, though, but the time still feels janky.

Kam asked me to make him corn dogs, taquitos, and TX toast, and then he hung around a while. We watched some of Over the Garden Wall. He went in and I prayed a rosary at 8:30 PM. Reading some of The Cunning Man.

 

11/5/2019: Up about 6. Today’s menu: ramen, ramen with bell pepper, sausage and cabbage and taters, though I only ate sausage and broccoli salad at supper. Didn't do full prayers, catechism, Bible, or Rosary until evening after supper. Read more Cunning Man today; I had started reading yesterday from when he sets up his practice, and I read to the end today.


The last quote about the Theater of Life so apt, as this was his last book. 



Kam came in about 6 PM and I made his supper and he hung around until 8 PM, when I went in to clean up. He heard my Bible and rosary. We finished watching Over the Garden Wall; I need to get the DVD [which I did later].



 I feel very withdrawn from the "World" lately; it seems to have a toxic touch that is wearing away at me. Susan said the window man may come tomorrow; to keep my eyes open and I may have to pen the Rotts if he comes. Christmas comes a-creeping.

 

11/6/2019: Up about 6 AM. Dressed, prayers, catechism, Bible AND rosary, right off the bat. Considering buckling down to 10 pages of writing today. WWF. Must clear the deck of distractions. But what to write? Continuing BB2 seems the most obvious choice, but how to get the machinery going? PB sandwich at 7 AM. Kam wants eggs and bacon this morning. Listened to Neil Gaiman and Art Spiegelman talk on YouTube.

Well, Kam changed his mind and had apples, which was fine with me, because less work. Had my ramen, with bread and a couple of sausage patties. Wrote at least the first line of BB2:Chapter2, and posted on Power of Babel [my other, older blog] after working on straightening up my picture morgue. Got Kam off to school, with sitting on the porch for a while; the breeze was nice, the weather mild. Napped for a while from 11:30 AM to 1 PM, then had toast and cheese and broccoli salad, because I couldn't face cabbage and taters for a while, or ramen for lunch. Watched DW shows.

After calling Susan and telling her we didn't have brussels sprouts, I started pork chops and garbonzo beans, and made the couscous with bell pepper, which, to judge by the amount left, did not go over particularly well. Kam came and hung out with me and ate his taco till it was time to go to church. I dropped Kris Jerome a message, and we set up a way to send me payment by Paypal through John and Amy. After I bit I got the results: $33.05 for these three months. Well, it's a start. Should come through by Friday. Washed up at 8 PM; ready to watch the season finale of South Park at 9 PM. Did so, then to bed pretty early.

 

11/7/2019: Up at 7 AM, wrote down one sliver of a dream of the several I had all night. Prayers, catechism, Bible, rosary. Went in and 9 AM and made Kam's bacon and eggs. It started out drippy this morning and got drizzly over the day. Ramen for breakfast, potatoes and mushrooms for lunch, broccoli salad and chili and bread for supper. Wrote three pages on BB2Chapter2. Sent them to John, subtly hinting that the 20 pages are fulfilled. In and out all day with a towel for my wet feet.


Notes
It's been quite a while since I worked on Bob's Book 2; perhaps I should consider dusting it off and start working on it again. Goggle is just the tip of a long saga; it began life as a "swinging playing", and met its greatest flowering in a long comic saga drawn and written by John, the exact name which of course deserts my scattered mind the moment when I want it, but which I recall as "The Treasure of Crowtree." That $33 might be the most I ever got for A Grave on Deacon's Peak; I was still scrabbling around for that $20 from John for twenty new pages from me.  

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