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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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4:02 p.m. - 2010-01-03
I'm thinking about the casual bounty of my life, things I pretty much take for granted. Things that not so long ago would have been amazing and wonderful or even impossible to come by. No, not like this machine of the gods I'm using to speak with you, this is still amazing and wonderful even if now an ordinary kind of miracle, an everyday magic. I am thinking about some of the other goodies scattered around on my desk. The chocolate covered raisins, for instance. A big old 3lb jug of them just sits there on the printer. I take the occasional handful, Mick even more frequently, though only when he visits my office and it's why the jug lives on my desk and not his- otherwise they'd be gone in a day or two and he'd have a chronic case of the squits. When the jug eventually empties I'll buy a new one and not even blink or think about how cool it is that I can buy 3lbs of seedless raisins, seedless raisins covered in chocolate any old time I want to. Or the wee lilies. I have a vase of pretty, rather exotic looking, small lilies on my desk. It's the dead of winter. There's snow and ice covering the ground, and as I type this even more snow is skirling down, and yet I have delicate white lilies with pink and yellow stripes in a vase near my elbow. Not just one precious single bud either, but a few dozen. I'm not royalty or a millionaire, but this profusion of tropical flowers is mine to have, pretty much at will, even in the winter. The clock? To me a junky bin buy from Ikea for a buck. A 100 years ago? Yes, there were cheap time pieces, but one that looks like crystal and has an alarm and doesn't ever need to be wound? That silly clock gets knocked over all the time and I am casual of it, not minding if it gets the occasional splash of coffee on it or thumps off the edge of the desk onto the floor. Heck, now that I'm really looking at it I see it's still set on daylight saving time. The clock's only purpose is to be the back-up time keeper when I'm working full screen and can't see the clock in my monitor's task tray. Such largesse. My cruddy desk strewn with what had once been things only available to the very wealthy. If they were to be had at all. No other point to make. No grand synopsis. Just an observation on a slow Sunday afternoon. My guys took me to see 'Avatar' yesterday. They'd already been once, earlier this week when I chased them out of the house, unable to bear another minute of being so crowded and at their beck and call. Mick and Wolf are mourning how short their vacation has been, but as predicted I am going out of my gourd from the lack of privacy and quiet. 16 solid days of, "Mom! Where's the�?" "Baby? Did you read that article?, How does this work?, What does this word mean?, When is breakfast/lunch/dinner?" Etc, etc, etc. Barging in. Demanding attention, answers, entertainment, food, solace, an audience. And even when not directly in my face, just fricken HERE. Tromping around, yelling at the Wii, slamming doors and chasing the pets, and generally messing with my peace of mind. I guarantee that no one in the entire tri-state area will be gladder of tomorrow's return to the regular work and school day schedule than I. To hasten tomorrow's resumption of the normal I just now undecorated the Christmas tree and stripped the house of its holiday d�cor. Even took the Christmas wreath off the front door and replaced it with a dopey stuffed snowman doorknob hanger thingie I picked up at the Dollar Store a couple years ago. I'm not crazy about that dumb snowman but can't think of anything else to put there. It's far too early for the glitzy foil wrapped heart-shaped Valentine's wreath and the front door looks naked and stupid with a big brass hook mounted in the middle and nothing on it. So far nobody's come up with some iconic house d�cor for MLK Day, it and my birthday being the only whoop-dee-dos between now and Feb 14th. Well, there's Presidents' Day, but somehow the severed heads of Washington and Lincoln dangling on my front door just doesn't do it for me. What can I say? I'm goofy like that. Anyhow, 'Avatar'. I liked it a lot. I'm also at the time in my cycle when a zingy colorful Good Guys vs Bad Guys shoot 'em up (with an environmental twist no less!) was just the ticket. I had a great time and let myself be enthralled with the luminescent world of Pandora, the sylph cat-like Na'vi, Sigourney Weaver's slight weight gain and how much prettier she is now that she's not so gaunt, and how satisfying the clich�d plot devices were. Every damn gun that was on the mantle in Act 1 went off by Act 3 and a girl who likes her dramatic/cinematic conventions obeyed can't ask for more than that.
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