2003-01-11 - 11:29 p.m.

I spent the day in, mostly, popping Motrin and doing laundry and hanging curtains, and cleaning this nasty place up.

And tonight I had dinner in midtown with Red and our old friend Jen, and we sat at the bar and had a glass of wine, then went in and had an awesome dinner. Rue McCl@nah@n was in the restaurant, having dinner with a man. The dapper, older waiter pointed her out to us in hushed tones, and I broke my own cardinal rule and pulled out my cell phone (but I turned around and scrunched down into the banquet, with my hand over the mouthpiece..oh, shut up.) and called P, and got his voicemail.

"Where ARE you? I'm in a restaurant, B_____, and Rue McClanahan is here! BLANCHE! I can't believe you're missing it."

P and I spend many hours on the couch in our sweatpants, watching the G0lden Gir1s.

Anyway, the point was that I was telling the girls how I was feeling, I said I woke up crying this morning, sobbing in the bathroom at 8:30, and they nodded knowingly. I feel much better that it's not just me. I have never had PMS in my life, and then came 35. And every month it takes me by surprise when it happens.

This morning, we went to breakfast at French R0@st, and walked past B@lducci's on the way. It closed on Tuesday afternoon, and people are in mourning around here. There were white-jacketed men pushing pallets full of boxes out of the store and loading them on trucks, and as I walked by, I looked in the open doors and saw bare wood shelves, and a shabby scuffed floor. So sad, it is, it's been there since I was a child, and you've probably already read my entries rhapsodizing the shopping experience, and it was one of the things I thrilled to about my new neighborhood when I moved here. People were milling around outside, sheilding their eyes to the glass to look in, questioning the workmen. Rumor has it they're looking for another space below 14th Street, but don't have one yet. It won't be the same, anyway.

This neighborhood has changed so much since I moved to this apartment. I insisted on staying in a four block radius from my old place, because I felt so firmly entrenched here, in my little neighborhood. And now some of my favorite places are gone.

The women beneath my old apartment sold the bookstore, although that was a good change. In the summer, the owner of the dry cleaner died, and his wife fired Evan. The neighborhood, en masse, boycotted, and soon that bustling center of the neighborhood stood empty, no plastic covered dress shirts obscuring the new paint she so optimistically covered the walls with. She blatantly, and insultingly, tried to hire a look a like for Evan, big and bald, right down to the hats and the sweat suits and the gold chains. She stayed open for a few months, and then closed down, and has since been replaced with a new dry cleaner, also struggling. Steve, at the leather store on the corner, decided to leave the city after 25 years, closed up and moved to Seattle. Two weeks ago my French corner bistro, one of my comfort places, shuttered the windows and put up a relocation sign. And now my beloved market.

If there was ever a period that I could freeze in time, cement into place, it would be these last three years. It feels, strangely, like the end of something, of an era of my life, and in a way it seems like it wasn't long enough. And maybe that's been contributing to my PMS funk, feeling that change.

You'd think I'd get used to it, wouldn't you?

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