2002-01-16 - 2:25 p.m.

So it's long and boring, but a fair representation of my days lately, and I wanted it down, for me.

Feel free to skip it.

It's almost 2 o'clock and I'm still sitting in front of my laptop. I've been dressed and ready since 10 am, but somehow I still haven't made it out. Burrowing, is what I'm doing. I feel lethargic and a bit depressed and I know that getting out will make me feel better, but here i sit, typing this to procrastinate actually getting it together to go to the DMV. I WILL go, it will make me feel so much better to get something accomplished. And do my little shopping errands on the way back.

Sitting at my mosaic table. Around me: my job hunt notebook, my portable phone, a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights and a small pink bic lighter that the Indian woman at the store near my grandmothers gave me when I bought a carton of cigarettes. My black Lucky Strike ashtray, stolen from some long-forgotten NYC bar,with a cigarette burning in it, sending up swirls of blue smoke.. A box of matches from Lupa. A postcard of Jon@than Blum's "Lamb @s King" The ever present Mexican crooked glass with water in it, my green vase (empty)

Hearing: Garth Brooks on S@turday Night Live rerun

Smelling: cigarette smoke and my cucumber candle.

Light: Daytime, shades up, beaded lamp on, candle burning

Eating: Peanut butter and jelly on a portuguese muffin (blech) and 2 cups of coffee. Don't feel like eating.

Smoked too much

Reading: too many damn internet journals

Obsessing: getting the hell out of the house. Why oh why is this so difficult?

Wishing: I could get all this stuff out of me so I could stop writing so obsessively. Maybe some good will come from it, later.

It's 2pm, and haven't done much. I talked to Debbie, and Michael, and returned Amy's call and left a message. I called Jeff at the company I want to work for.

I also made the bed, washed the dishes, and um... well, that's it. Lame lame lame. I am going to go upstate tonight, and then I'll stay in NJ on Sunday night. I'm not really looking forward to it, but I gotta do what I gotta do, and it is always soothing to spend time with Nan. Maybe she'll want to go to a movie. Or maybe we'll cook. Suppose it doesn't matter much. When I spend the better part of a day at Nan's, I invariably fall back into that kind of fuzzily contented stupor, where it's enough to just smell her cooking and watch stupid TV and make pots of coffee and read her National Enquirers. The world stops for a minute, in my grandmothers house.

I have so many memories of that house - it's where they always lived. The rooms are small, and the kitchen still has the original tile halfway up the walls. She wallpapers the top half with fussy floral/stripe combinations, and she has numerous sets of curtains, which she changes on the season. (I, apparently, have not inherited this gene, as it's a miracle if I even remember to dust my blinds or wash my sheers) The table is always set with placemats and a centerpiece of some sort, and napkins in napkin rings. Which she takes away when we actually eat. Heh.

I remember sleeping over there, and big dinners where we ate in the finished basement, with the table pulled out all the way.

Christmases, so many Christmases. A million presents, and a giant stocking, big as us, filled with all kinds of crap and candy and little toys - that was always the best thing. They were just little things, but for us, it was SO MANY. Endless little presents to unwrap, I loved that. Even when he was so ill, he'd sit next to the tree in his recliner and we'd all sit on the floor around him and open our presents.

Laying on the couch when I got my wisdom teeth removed, listening to my Nan and her sisters fight over my proper care and feeding. At one point, through my Percocet-induced, drooling stupor, I heard them discussing a trip to the store. And her sister said, "Well, who's going to babysit?" I was 23 at the time, heh.

Laying down on the bed in the back room, over the years. When I was little and tired, or a teenager filled with angst and needing an escape, when my boyfriend killed himself and all I could do was hold myself up against the scraping, bloodying pain of it. When I was getting divorced, and I was just so tired of holding it all together, getting it all done.

Ok, that just came out. And so it stays.

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