It’s 3 am. I’m up, channel surfing. I went to bed at 9 pm and woke up with a headache. I didn’t drink enough water yesterday and my sinuses are like cement. I drank a pint of water and retired to the sofa.
I watch “While You Were Sleeping”, some informercials, a ‘why did he kill her’ on A&E, and a news report on CNN. I watch these things at about 30 second time slices (why can’t women keep up?), although I linger on the A&E show. I want them to cut to the chase. I can’t believe they can get 60 minutes of air time out of a 10 minute story. The news report on CNN is about an E Coli outbreak that was traced to spinach.
I watch the CNN show for a while and they focus on a little girl who was infected with E Coli and now has damaged kidneys. They no longer filter potassium, and the mother can not give her anything with potassium, e.g., bananas, carrots, leafy greens. I see a field of greens and it is yet another image of corporate America, this time, corporate farming. We are so disassociated from the source of our food. I like getting a box of organic greens from Costco, but I wonder what the true cost is. This strain of E Coli is damaging in concentrations of 100 colonies, each of which can be only 2 bacterium.
On the show, they try to clean spinach and are only moderately successful. Over 1000 bacteria still remain after the best efforts to clean contaminated spinach. The best method is to irradiate it, but the question of how accepting the public would be of irradiated food is stopping its widespread use.
I go back to bed a 4 am, and wake up when JMan gets up at 5 am. I manage to sleep for a while, dreaming of story consultation with Ben Affleck. Bookzilla gets up at 5.45 and I manage to get back to sleep again. The phone rings at 7.30 and I almost make it to the phone before it stops ringing. I go into the family room and say hello to the kids.
Bookzilla has lined up a Nintendo Wii party this afternoon. She wlll be going away with her mother for a few weeks and wants to see her friends before she goes. Bookzilla and JMan saved their allowance for several months and, along with birthday money, had enough to buy a Nintendo Wii. I’m not crazy about all of this electronic entertainment, but they worked together for this goal.
At 8 am, Sacha calls. Sacha is one of the girls who plan to come to the party. She asks if it is morning. I say yes. Before I can say more, she hangs up. I plan to tell Bookzilla. But there is a knock at the door.
I open it, and Sacha is there, and her mother is driving away. For some reason, she thinks that the party is from 8 am to 2 pm. I had told Bookzilla that the time for the party is from 2 to 4 pm. Sacha is from Russia. She realizes the mistake and I take pains to put her at ease.
Bookzilla, JMan and Sacha start playing with the Wii.
This has upset my plans for the day. Oh well.
I need to get something from the store so I lock up the house and tell them that I will be right back. The store is 400 yards away. I need some tape to bandage my foot. Call it, as my vegetarian friends put it, the ‘revenge of the ribs’. Last weekend, I was making ribs on the grill and a small coal escaped the grill. I stepped on it. It lodged between my smallest two toes on my left foot. Burned the hell out of it. I had a blister that was 50% larger than a quarter. It burst on Wednsday, and now it seeps.
When I come back from the store, Rodney, a grey cat that has been crashing around my house for more than a year started awake, and hopped the fence. He has always run from me. I made breakfast for the kids and, while doing dishes, saw Rodney outside the front door. I took some left over bacon to him and he seemed to want petting more than bacon. He is healthy and strong.
At 11.45, we took Sacha back home and went by my office. The kids had a soda while I caught up on some email and talked about technical problems with the other engineers who have been working through the weekend on our new products.
I take the kids over to Costco and they sampled a few things inside. I took them home to try to clean up a little before Glide came over at 2 pm.
Sid called at 1.45 and we talked. Glide showed up at 2 pm and looked like a girl from central casting. She is tall and lean, 10 years old. She was wearing a funky hat, a jean skirt and carried a handbag made of zippers. I wonder if that was her fashion statement or that of her mother. I like having Glide around. She is more of a girly girl than some of Bookzilla’s other friends. Bookzilla is in an accelerated program, and girly things take a back seat there to other pursuits, e.g., Pokemon.
I talk to Sid for most of the time that Glide is here. Sid and I talk about stories. He has a couple that he wants feedback on, and we talk about narrative content and trends in narrative. I pitch a couple of ideas that are new story starts, “255 Love Jag” and “Angel of Life”. The first is about a couple of very dissimilar people, a nerd and a woman who drives a Jag. The second is about a woman who brings people back to life when they should have been dead. It’s a comedy.
I ring off from talking to Sid and interact with the kids for a while. Glide is a sparkplug person. She is good to have around. Her mother comes at 4 pm and then I start the charcoal. I started a margarita before Glide’s mother came. It is a warm day and tastes good going down.
It tastes so good that I make another when that one is gone. I’m feeling a little buzzed as I tend the ribs (this time wearing shoes). JMan and Bookzilla stand in the sliding door to the back deck and ask if they can pee on me. They are giggling and take great joy in responding to my negatives about peeing. Here’s a short collection of peeing requests: Can they pee in my pockets? No, not on me. Can they pee on the sofa. No, but they can pee in the toilet. Can the pee on the food? No, thank you for asking. Can they pee on my feet? No, but thank you for asking. Why are they so silly when I’m the one who has knocked back a couple of margaritas? I hug them and they hang on me.
After dinner, I am in my office when Rodney eases down the hallway, neck stretched way out. I left the front door open and he is slowly making his way down the hallway. Bookzilla calls to me and Rodney splits. I find some scraps for him and Bookzilla goes out to look for him, but he is gone. We put the treats on the doorstep and retire to the house.
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon, in the summertime. Reminds me of a Kink’s song:
And I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
In the summertime.