Yesterday was “Take Your Children to Work Day” and my work friend Kara and I were entrusted with four children - all girls - between the ages of 9 and 12. We had to keep them occupied for two hours whilst their parents were in meetings and otherwise doing their jobs… while trying to show their children where they work.

Anyway, I got them to finish assembling some presentation kits/folders for me, and then we put them to work picking out book covers according to some simple criteria… they did a pretty good job artistically. However, their grasp of world geography left much to be desired - but in a superbly cute and endearing way.

“Prague” rhymed with “Ragu” - like the tomato sauce.
“Kauai” rhymed with “Maui”. That I can understand.
“Budapest” was pronounced, “Buttapest.”
When I asked them to narrow down their choices to pictures of places in the United States, they picked up the Canada and London pictures and then said, “Well, they’re not REALLY in the United States, are they?”

The 9-year old asked where Canada is, and I said, “North of us.” They all looked at me quizzically… then I realized they were asking where the picture of Canada was, not the nation itself. I blushed.

Anyway - they had a lot of fun and it was really cool watching them work together and how they dealt with decision making and organizing things, while trying to maintain a fair consensus-style democracy while making their choices. It was a totally fascinating sociological experiment.

Later in the afternoon, the two oldest girls came by my cubicle to say hello and then stayed and chatted with me for a few minutes. Before they left, they ran up to me and gave me hugs. I hugged them back and told them it was lovely to meet them, and there were smiles all around. I was honestly quite moved… and it made me happy. This morning, one girl’s father brought me a note that she wrote last night and asked him to give me… it said, “Dear Eva - you were sooooo nice to us. You’re the best person ever. We love your cubicle and loved hanging out with you. Love, [their names] P.S. Kiss Izzy every day for us!”

I told them my iPod’s name was Izzy and they loved that. I think I may have started a trend. Anyway, that note is up on my filing cabinet.

I got a haircut last night and I think it compliments the new glasses nicely. It’s short again… not terribly short, but chin-length bob short. Which is good - this is my most comfortable length. Several people at work today just walked by and went, “CUTE haircut!” A good sign.

When I got up this morning, I was totally dizzy. This continued past the initial, “Oops, got up too quickly!” moment and had me feeling dizzy even when I was on the train. I had some orange juice and Cream of Wheat at work and felt a little better then, but I don’t think that the usual 8-12 hours of not eating overnight would cause me to be dizzy from hunger. Later in the day, the dizziness transformed itself into a nasty sinus headache. I just took some Motrin to battle that nonsense.

Tomorrow is going to be le Grande Cleaning Day. I have my Swiffer dusters, trash bags, and all other necessary products on-hand. I can put away my winter clothing and bring out the few spring-only pieces I own.

I ordered “Kingdom Hearts 2″ for my PS2 and it arrived today. I played for about 10 minutes, but the headache made it a little less than pleasant. However, I know that I have something good to play when I’ve got insomnia… this game, it seems, is much like the original. It’s the CRACK of video games. For me, anyway. It’s a good thing I don’t have a Disney-hatred thing. I am not a huge fan either, but I like most of the movies enough to enjoy the use in the video game. The fact that they used “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” in the first one won me over. We’ll see what they do in this one…

So… yes. I have to be up early tomorrow to go to the bank and get some cash for the upcoming week. I also want to get a little extra so I can hit up a few stores and look for some travel clothes. I need some loose fitting cotton pants for Tunisia. I am not wearing artificial fibers in 100 degree + heat. I have plenty of cotton t-shirts, and I have to get a hat… but I don’t have any sort of loose cotton or linen pants I could wear when walking around. SO that’s something to search for before my departure. Worse case scenario: I can order by catalog. I have a travel catalog that sells this stuff made of crinkle cotton (so you can shove it in a suitcase and not have to worry about wrinkles) and those crazy packable straw hats. I’d have to order far enough in advance for the stuff to get to me… but if I order in the next week or so, I should be OK.

OK. Time for some water and then sleep. This headache is not quitting. I probably took the Motrin too far into the ache for it to help much.

I will write tomorrow.
I am tired and want to sleep.

I just submitted that final paper online a whole day early. That’s right. I am that girl.

I got all caught up in it tonight and polished it off. Interesting stuff, really. I’ll share it at some point.

At work today, some of my co-workers and I took a “Which Saved by the Bell Character Are You?” quiz. I’m Jessie Spano. I think checking off the box for my dark secret as “I’m addicted to caffeine pills” did that for me. But it was odd because my other co-workers (both young 20-something chicks) ended up as A.C. Slater and Screech. I have a feeling they might have skewed their answers as well.

Anyway - I’m super tired now. And I have to get up early for a bank run. Haircut tomorrow night = need $$$.

I will have this final paper finished, basically, tomorrow. My struggle will be staying within the maximum/suggested/required word count. I’ll just write the thing then go through and edit down as much as possible; it’s amazing what a few colons and semicolons can do.

Physical manifestations of stress? My neck is really sore and crunchy, and my left calf is extremely sore. I soaked it in Epsom salts Sunday night, used a heating pad last night + Icy Hot right before bed, and tonight will be another Icy Hot night.

Additional sources of stress? My father. < start> When I got home from work today, I was going through the mail on the kitchen counter and pulling out my Netflix, Time Magazine, bills and my monthly train pass. I said hello to my father and he came over to me and was just looking at me, smiling. Sort of sweet and fatherly, so I started kidding with him: “I said hello - I’m being a good daughter.” He patted me on the head and said (in Polish), “Hello, my cute daughter…” then proceeded right into, “…but what about the rest of you? Do you see your mother on the treadmill? She’s taking care of her figure and minding her looks. You should do the same.” I just sighed and walked away. What else can I do? How many times can I have this argument with him? How many times can I have this civilized conversation with him? The one that goes, “when you say things like that, it really hurts me and drives me to hate myself. It doesn’t inspire me to change; it makes me want to give up.” He just doesn’t understand that. < end>

So. As a reward for getting a significant portion of this paper done, I am settling in for the night with a tube of Icy Hot and one of the first prison-break movies ever made: La grande illusion (Parlez vous anglais? Oui? C’est “Grand Illusion”)

Netflix summary: “Two French soldiers — blue-collar Maréchal (Jean Gain) and genteel de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay) — strive to overcome their differences while plotting their escape from a German prison camp during World War I. Meanwhile, de Boieldieu finds a kindred spirit among his captors in a patrician German officer (Erich von Stroheim). Directed by Jean Renoir, the film is one of the first prison-break movies ever made and is considered a genre classic.”

Film classic! Prison-break movie! Jean Renoir! Criterion Collection! Overcoming differences! Kindred spirits!

It might end up being boring as shit, but I doubt it. There will be something to latch onto, whether it’s some great mise en scene or lighting or a relationship between characters.

Actually, I’m not too far off with that last bit. I guess taking three undergrad film courses at NYU really did teach me to bullshit effectively in the cinema arena. Just kidding. They were great classes and I learned a very interesting lot. However, since I realized that I have no idea what a “typical” Renoir film trait is, I checked it out:

“Typical for his films are continually changing relationships between people, deep-focus frame, moving camera, and long takes which recorded the intimate thoughts of his characters. “In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed,” Renoir once said. “Simplicity is absolutely essential to creation. Those people who make love while saying: “We’re going to have a magnificent child”; well, they won’t have a magnificent child, they may not have any child at all that evening… The magnificent child comes by chance, one day after a good laugh, a picnic, fun in the woods, a roll in the hay, then a magnificent child is born!” (from Renoir on Renoir, 1989)”

Changing relationships between people… check! I’ll report back at some point.

I have a haircut on Thursday night. Late Thursday, but I am in dire need. Friday night = doctor. Saturday we’re having (finally) my brother’s birthday dinner… the one that he himself couldn’t be bothered to attend in the first place. We’ll see if it actually transpires. The rest of the weekend, I am cleaning my room of the accumulated paper waste of a semester of print-outs and rough drafts and scribbles on paper. There’s lots of other messiness I can’t blame on school, but I can blame school for my lack of cleaning time and energy.

Sigh. I’m getting in the mood to clean. It’s a strange thing. I develop a taste for it the way some people might go, “I feel like getting a manicure.” I go, “I feel like cleaning.” It makes me feel better. I cleaned and organized my cubicle today. It wasn’t disorganized to start, but I had far too many cardboard boxes sitting underneath my various work surfaces and on the floor. So I ordered two large Rubbermaid bins from our office supply website and moved everything into them. They’re clear and plastic and have nice lids that I can slide right off and I can see everything inside of them and they’re easy to lift and move, and - most importantly - they fit perfectly under my desk and can act as a footrest, too, if need be.

Prison-break time.

Apparently, my father neglected to share a previously unmentioned condition of the trip to Tunisia: that I need to be “in good condition.”

By this, he means I need to be thinner. I told him that if that’s the condition, then he should call the airline and the resort right now and try to get his money refunded because I am not going with strings attached. Would I like to lose weight by then? Sure! Am I going to stress out and freak out about it? Hell no. If he’s going to give me shit about it for the next five weeks, I’m happier just staying home and taking a vacation that I’ll actually enjoy sometime later - even if I have to pay for it. That’s fine. It’s not worth my mental health to deal with this crap.

He was in a particularly shitty mood today, and this might pass… but I can’t count on that. URGH.

Whatever. I have one paper left and then I have all the time in the world after work to take long bike rides and treadmill runs. I can’t do much Pilates or yoga because of the wrist, but what few positions I can do, I will. I will be fine in whatever state I’m in by the end of May; if he has an issue with it or is embarrassed to bring me out of the country, that’s his problem and he’ll have to stomach the loss of a few thousand dollars if his pride will be THAT hurt.

I hate ending the weekend in anger. It usually puts a bad spin on the week ahead… but I think I can settle in comfortably enough to prevent that. I am going to fold some laundry, do a mini facial with my clay mask and “Little Japanese Girl” soap from Lush, and then read for a bit. It’s still sort of early, so if I need to take sleeping pills, I can take them in the next half hour or so and not suffer for it in the morning.

My friends and I were unable to find fava beans anywhere in the supermarket for our “The Silence of the Lambs” themed dinner tonight.

We found a nice chianti, though. In terms of dinner, we settled for green beans, butter beans, filet mignon and then some lovely rosemary bread which we dipped in olive oil with herbs. Mmmm. Tasty. Oh, and chocolate cake for dessert.

I just got back a few minutes ago since they live about 45-60 minutes away and the rain (that’s been falling non-stop since this morning and will apparently continue through tomorrow and most of Monday) made the drive a little longer. People just get stupid when the roads are wet. The hot-shot asshole drivers opt for the “I am indestructible!” attitude and do things like cut across four lanes of traffic to make their exit by slipping through the following distances between other cars at 75 mph with about 3 feet of “wiggle” room. Yeah. I honked at that guy. Stupidly, horribly dangerous. Then there are the other people (usually very young or very elderly) who feel that the only correct way to drive on a wet road is either very slowly or constantly hitting the brakes. ALSO dangerous.

Anyway… I am tired. The rain is falling. CourtTV has some interesting stuff on. In about an hour or two, it will changeover to informercials, so I’d better enjoy it now. Tomorrow is devoted to writing my last paper this semester… and until the fall. I am glad of it.

I picked up my new glasses tonight. They’re so very PoMo librarian.

It’s crazy. Onto the lessons learned today:

1) It’s dangerous to read a textbook called, “A Short History of the Movies” when you’re a not-so-closet cinephile like me. I started having fond flashbacks to my film studies classes, had a moment where I reconsidered my entire path in life, snapped back to reality and just added about 26 movies to my already-on-the-verge-of-400-movies Netflix queue. I added a bunch of early films like “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, which I’ve seen before but now want to see again, and a silent film called “Broken Blossoms” starring Lillian Gish.

2) Cut flowers, while pretty, stink something awful when they’re dead. I have them in the trash up here and I’m going to have to take them outside since the warmth fostered the growth of the stench. Yuck.

3) My new glasses are truly PoMo librarian. They’re by Anna Sui, for Pete’s sake, and came in a slick black case embossed with the Anna Sui logo, and lined with purple velvet. Just my style. The lesson here? Well, when I went to the pharmacy after putting on my new glasses, I was treated with more professionalism and attention than usual by the usually sullen and nasty pharmacist. He’s ALWAYS totally rude and sort of ignores people; he was actually FRIENDLY. I don’t think he was just in a good mood - I’ve been dealing with the same guy for three years now and this was the first time he looked up from the keyboard to ask me for my information.

4) The palmaris longus is connected to all the fingers in the hand and my cortisone injection into the palmaris longus yesterday is causing some MAJOR soreness in my thumb. I called the doctor and my mother talked to one of her work friends who is an occupational therapist; apparently, this is normal when there’s been some trauma (like a deep tissue cortisone shot) into the palmaris longus.

5) I can pull off wearing metallic green eyeliner pencil without looking garish.

6) Next week, I’ll be getting another performance appraisal and the customary (for my employer, anyway) modest 6-month completion raise.

7) Buying Easter candy after Easter is good especially when you’re buying Peeps. They’ve already begun to reach that stage of chewy petrification that makes Peeps so gosh-darn tasty. I recommend buying them after Easter. They’re half price and cheap as hell to start with. I paid $0.58 for my Peeps today. CRAZY.

That’s it. I am friggin’ hungry and think I might order some Chinese food. OK. I just did. It’s going to be ready in five minutes so I’d better put some shoes on and get in the car. This is quicker than fast food, really. And sweet and sour chicken and brown rice somehow strike me as being a little healthier, too.

Another visit to the doctor on a sunny, cloudless, warm spring day. No surgery talk just yet… I got another shot, this time into a deeper tendon. I still have pain, so I have another visit in two weeks at which time he’s going to try giving me a shot way deep into my wrist (”about halfway through”) to see if that reduces the pain at all. All the shots I’ve had so far have been into the tendons and through the underside of my wrist… not very painful or anything. I can deal with the sharp but short-lived pain of an injection better than I can deal with a long dull throbbing and at times sharp pain. Wait. That’s the kind I’ve been dealing with for a year now. Ha. How about that?

So, as I was saying, the sun was shining. A harsh, glaring, unrelenting sun beating down without a single cloud to soften its blow… and today was the first time I went to turn on the A/C in the car since I was stuck in traffic and there was no breeze coming through the open windows… only to find that I’m out of coolant.

So I need to take the car into the service center to have them recharge the A/C. That might cost me under a $100; it might cost me a lot more if the problem isn’t just that it needs recharging. I don’t look forward to it, but the warm weather is upon us and this girl can’t breath outside air for too long without sneezing, getting a runny nose and watery eyes (all of which are currently in play).

Tonight, I watched, “Orlando” with Tilda Swinton. Sooo good. It’s one of those movies that I could have seen myself watching for a class in college (gender studies or literature, since it’s based on a Virginia Woolf novel and deals with issues of gender/sexuality over a span of 400 years… kind of a less preachy “Picture of Dorian Gray” in a sense) and then would have purchased at Kim’s or TLA Video or ordered from Facets to add to my collection.

I’m heading off to bed. I got very little sleep last night and while I’m not terribly tired at this point, I think I can get there rapidly if I read or do some crossword puzzle craziness.

I started reading a travel book on Thailand today. I’m not going there anytime soon, but I’d like to someday. It never hurts to read up on a place.

However, my use of Phuket Bay is far more crass. I have been dropping “F” bombs today like they’re going out of style. If they were ever in style, that is. Right now, the BIG “F!!!” is that I can’t fall asleep. The completion of that paper released some endorphins or adrenaline or something and I am wide-ass-awake.

I finished the paper by 11:04 - featuring the worst “conclusion” I’ve ever written since I’m entirely unused to writing papers that don’t require a thesis or conclusion or “thread” woven through the entire paper. I have an incredibly difficult time drawing to a close when I feel like I’ve already been repeating myself for 14 pages prior to that point.

So, right now, I’m just annoyed as hell since I can’t relax and chill. I watched two episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” on DVD, and now I’m watching “X-Men 2″ on FX since it’s something I’ve seen several times and can sort of tune out while watching. I tried reading, but I can’t concentrate right now. I’ve been reading and writing analytical text all night.

If I had a great picture book… THAT would work. I need to get some more art books or coffee table type books that aren’t quite as huge and tome-like as the coffee table books I already own. I need something that I can flip through mindlessly and just enjoy for the sake of the pretty pictures.

It would be divine if I could fall asleep since I have a short day at work tomorrow and I’m driving into work in the morning so I can leave at 3 to make my visit with the orthopedist at 4. Tomorrow, I think I will find out that I need surgery and might be able to discuss all the details, etc., that go with it. I’ll bring a notepad just in case.

Alas, I’m AWAKE. SO AWAKE. Not even yawning or affected by droopy tired eyelids. I was just in the bathroom doing some maintenance tweezing on my eyebrows. I’d do my nails but I know that I’ll probably get sleepy 5 minutes later and end up totally botching up the whole paint job.

Oh, these are the thoughts that run through this girl’s mind when it begins to unwind.

Hey, that might be a good line to use in a poem. Yeah… I’m putting that into my poetry journal and I’ll see where it takes me. I should re-start my “idea box.” Back in the college days of creative writing class, I had one of those index card files full of index cards. Whenever I came up with a line or snippet of text to use in a poem, learned a new word that sounded great or meant something cool, misheard something that ended up being a really cool bit of serendipity or learned a new poetry form, I’d jot it down or paste it to an index card and keep it in the file. When I felt some writer’s block creeping in, I’d pull out some cards and just flip through them or rearrange them until something “took.” Sometimes, it would lead nowhere; other times, I’d end up on a writing jag and create a magnum opus that would make Milton blush.

Except that last part. That’s a lie.

I just found the box of index cards. It was in my office supply drawer and there are about 30 good index cards of ideas in there already. The rest are blank. Depending on my mood, that can either mean “Look at all that potential for creativity!” or “How pathetic. I can’t even fill up 50 index cards with ideas.”

For tonight, I’m going to go with potential and jot down some ideas. Maybe that will help me settle into sleep.

I am about 3 pages away from the end of my paper… just a conclusion away!!

I am drinking water and have the TV on. Without even noticing it, I’ve sat through two horrible lifetime movies already… paying about 25% attention to them. The first was about the Glen Ridge rape case that was covered in the book “Our Guys.” The one on right now is about an Amish girl who had a baby and abandoned it so it died… and is being tried for murder.

It’s a good thing I’m immune to the addictive nature of Lifetime TV movies. I’m actually pretty immune to most TV shows that “suck in” other people. I think it’s because I almost always have the TV on to provide background noise and block out other sounds in my environment. It doesn’t distract me anymore. My mother, the older of my two brothers and my sister are all prone to paralysis when watching TV. They become totally engrossed in what they’re watching - even if they’re just commercials - and you can’t even talk to them. They register that you’re speaking, but they’re not listening; they’ll just “shush” you like automatons. There’s no way to get through. It’s kind of eerie.

As for my, my father and the younger of my two brothers, I think we all function with TV as background noise, and when we’re watching, we can focus on other things like conversations, fire alarms, and the like. Strange how the halves of the family can align like that.

Well… no more for me now. I let myself rant through a [rather long] commercial break and I have to dive back into my paper and write a nice conclusion… and I don’t want to be up until midnight working on this. I can’t. The paper is due at 11:59.