Monday, January 05, 2009
Last night I felt like a pile of sludge, so after working out briefly this morning I spent a couple of hours cleaning like a mad housewife. It seems counter-intuitive that scrubbing stray hairs from behind a toilet should make me feel better about life; they could gather together into a massive brown tumbleweed, for all I really care. I only dislike the idea of having to push aside a hair forest every time I make water.
Pars prima of my errand-running for the afternoon consists in purging myself of a few books that I do not particularly need. The list:
Elie Wiesel- NightMost of these I read in high school and have clung to for little reason, other than especially liking them. But let some other kid read them fo' cheaps. I had two copies of Tess, which is probably unnecessary.
Harper Lee- To Kill A Mockingbird
Lord Byron- Byron's Poetry
Barbara Ehrenreich- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Thomas Keneally- A River Town
Elizabeth Winthrop- The Castle in the Attic
Jerry Spinelli- Maniac Magee
F. Scott Fitzgerald- Flappers and Philosophers
Robert Cormier- Tenderness
Thomas Hardy- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Anzia Yezierska- Bread Givers
Thomas Keneally- Schindler's List
My housemate has mentioned I may have his old bike, which needs tire replacements; if this does not prove costly, I will wheel it down to the shop (pars secunda).
Labels: bicycle, books, Byron, Elie Wiesel, errands, hair, Maniac Magee, Nickel and Dimed, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Keneally, To Kill a Mockingbird, toilets, working out
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 10:43 AM]
The Boat Bobbed, Listed, Righted Itself...
Saturday, July 19, 2008
In March I took antibiotics that put a hold on my plasma donations. I only became eligible to donate again in late June. The plasma donation center ran tests that showed my blood is still abnormal. I cannot donate, again, for two months. This translates to a monthly loss of two hundred dollars' income. Ach.
I nodded at the phlebotomist and somberly left the office, but recently wondered whether I ought not call the center to find out what "abnormal" means. Do I have AIDS? Are there vicious, alien lifeforms using my platelets as surfboards?I finished reading an edition, published in 1978, of selections from Byron's poetry corpus. Most lines, with the exception of Don Juan and a few stanzas here and there, induced sleep. The editor's notes hardly illuminated anything. Many of the notes written for the numerous classical references over-simplified or led to popular (but not wholly accurate) interpretation. The copy hurt meine Augen.
Byron wrote best when he dared be bold.
Labels: AIDS, antibiotics, blood, Byron, classicism, heart, income, phlebotomist, plasma, poetry, reading
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 8:22 PM]