Close enough

Intended use of October 24, 2006:
10-12: clean house
12-1: eat lunch and go on a walk
1-3: work on writing Sociology paper
3-5: finish cleaning house and make fabulous vegetable pot pie for dinner

Actual use of October 24, 2006:
9:30-10: breakfast with Dan, Sam and Bill
10-11:30: completely wasted doing nothing I can remember
11:30-11:45: chat with an old hippie in an alley
11:45-12: take car to shop to get power steering hose replaced although I could have done it myself and saved $40
12-1: go to the Gap and spend $68 on things I only sort of need and could definitely have gotten cheaper
1-3: clean house
3-4: watch Dr. Phil and feel guilty about unwritten Sociology paper
4-5: intend to get up and do something useful but instead watch the first half of Oprah and the bonus features disc of Season 1 of Deadwood
5-6: go pick up car, return rented movies and see half-priced appetizers sign at Teller's Italian restaurant
6:30-9: eat hummus, pate and figs in grape leaves with toasted baguettes (all half-priced) with Sharon and Tracy.

Whatever.

I went to Taco Bell and couldn't remember how to order for a brief, panicky moment upon walking inside. I don't know why I went there - I was in my house puttering around to the background of my landlord painting the wall. Maybe it was too many people in a hundred square feet, but I went to Taco Bell.
Upon receiving my combo #1, the idea of eating it in the cool, fluorescent, vacant restaurant seemed somehow sad, so I drove to a park I've never been to before. It's randomly placed right on the edge of possibly the busiest road in town that borders an upscale old neighborhood. It felt like a real city park with its smooth, sloping grasses and bulky benches placed here and there alongside sidewalks. The invisible traffic filled the air with its burble and occasionally a siren streamed by while I sat at a picnic table amidst trees.
I noticed three other people in the park at first. One a college student lying on her side facing away from me in a spot that had probably been sunny an hour ago, her jeans rolled up at the bottom and her tan back showing under a short shirt. On my right side, a black lady shared the expanse of her fuzzy blue blanket with two black trash bags full of bulge. She looked expectant and bored at the same time, standing up every now and then to look around and sit back down as if she were waiting for a bus in the middle of the grass. Another woman power-walked around us all on the looping sidewalk. She wore athleticy spandex shorts and a t-shirt and looked as if she were talking herself out of thinking about work. Six-fifteen, I'll go for a walk around the park, burn off some steam. She looked neither right nor left but looped us continually.
Trash bag lady began to distinguish her self as the most amusing park coinhabitant as she started a seemingly choreographed ritual with her posessions. She wadded up the blanket and tried several times to cram it into one of the overstuffed bags. After giving up and trying again several times, she must have succeeded because the blanket was gone when I looked up. She then spaced the bags out about a hundred feet and walked away, out of the park. I was ready for them to explode since spending half my life in airports has now convinced me that any package is suspicious and must be reported to airport officials, but she reappeared shortly thereafter and put the bags together again, and then moved them apart again, carrying one of them across the space and leaving it on a bench, settling herself beside it and facing the other one still sitting in the middle of the park.
A moment before this, a youngish guy had walked into the park with a black duffel bag and had settled under some trees on the far side of the park. Right about when she came back into the park, he started to juggle five or six red balls produced from the bag. The two of them continued these behaviors until I had finished my dinner, packed up and walked down the sidewalk toward my car.
I think if I ever go there again I'll expect them to still be there, putting on their little show. I'll miss them if they're not.

And it's getting me down.

1. Most of the spice jars on my windowsill are still very full.
2. I am a pasty white color heading into winter this year instead of just coming out of it.
3. I will be asking for a raise from people for whom I have very little respect and no affection whatsoever, and will probably not get it.
4. All my endeavors and the sacrifice of all creative impulses to have time for work (my violin case is covered in dust) have not improved my financial situation one degree.
5. My self-confidence has decreased rapidly since returning to this country.
6. The power steering pump in my car is trying its best to self-destruct.
7. Everyone I work with has been hired very recently and requires lengthy explainations.
8. I remember the sun on the mountain, and the sun on the ocean, and feel the lack of them both.
9. The dirty dishes in my sink have been sitting in water for so long and are now so nasty that I'm thinking about writing off the kitchen altogether, setting fire to the sink (does mold hamper ignition?) and eating only at Taco Bell.
10. The groceries in my house consist of one overripe banana, a can of corn, a can of green beens and some frosted flakes.
11. Plane tickets home for Christmas are going up at a rate of $30 a day, but I can't buy them until I negotiate time off with the scheduling guy at work, whom I can NEVER FIND in his office. Mysterious location of scheduling guy = a minimum $60 loss.
12. I have a whiny blog (but I feel better now).