February 26, 1997 - Bells & Whistles

~~Bells & Whistles~~

Wednesday, February 26, 1997, 10:30 p.m.

A about 8:00 I thought I would lie down on the couch for a half hour or so and then maybe I would be able to wake up enough to write something. If Bob's mother hadn't called, I would probably still be asleep. She wanted to let us know that they were on their way home, so Bob didn't need to go over and walk the dog tonight. He's already over there, so her call didn't accomplish their objective, but I'm glad she called and woke me up.

Bob went to a movie tonight--"Star Trek - First Contact." I always wonder what people think when they read that Bob and I spent our evenings separately. We aren't angry with each other, or upset with each other, or bored with each other; he wanted to go to a movie and I didn't, so he went and I stayed home. I had a long day at work, starting at the usual time (up at 6:00, at the office by 8:00), but not ending until about 6:30, and by the time I got home I was worn out. I had a quick dinner (macaroni and beans), started working on the journal--only getting as far as opening a new Notepad document--and had the aforementioned nap. That's the extent of my evening so far. And I can't stop yawning. I'm amazed that caffeine has no more effect on me than it does. I've had four Diet Cokes so far today and I could lay down and go to sleep right now. Wait--make that three Diet Cokes and a Diet Pepsi. At about 4:00 I went to the kitchen for caffeinated sustenance for Lisa and me and there were no Diet Cokes. I had to settle for Diet Pepsi, which just isn't the same.

Bob, on the other hand, hates Diet Coke with a passion. If faced with no other choice, he'll drink regular Coke. I'll take either one, but prefer Diet Coke.

I've been carrying Melody Beattie's "Journey to the Heart" back and forth with me to work all week, hoping to get a chance to sit down with it and talk about some of the things in it; the book is absolutely full of slips of paper that I've placed in it, markers to remind me of passages that I want to re-read. The chapters that I have marked deal mainly with allowing yourself to be vulnerable, opening your heart and not being afraid of being hurt. That's what I'll talk about in my essay for March, if I can ever find time to get it written.

At lunch today I finished "Love Warps the Mind a Little." This passage jumped out at me, toward the end of the book:

. . . time is not out there but here in us, and we measure it with dreams and memories, that time is not a river we drift in, but a sea that we swim in, and we can swim in any direction. I understood then that history is an empty notion. History is what happened. Memory is what happens. There is no now, no then. There is only the everlastingness. Eternity. An absolute. It's hard to explain this. We need a language without tense.
~ John Dufresne, "Love Warps the Mind a Little"

I reached a milestone of sorts today--the 100th person signed up for the Mailing List. I know that's not a lot by some standards, but it's an incredible accomplishment for me. I never would have imagined that it would come this far. Meet Wisteria, who said in her email to me:

I thought I heard bells & whistles after I pushed the send button! Monte Hall didn't show up though so I just dismissed the whole thing as my imagination.

Previous Entry | Next Entry